RTW 1.5 and SPQR 6.0 expectations

[Siena72]

I have been playing RTW 1.5 with some very light modding. I removed pigs, dogs, screeching women, peasants, diplomats, arcani, druids. Made triari available when princepes are, and added a few points to experience bonuses that non-roman factions get from the temples.

I am playing it on VH/H

This is one difficult game. I started it as Julii and in the beggining was holding back. My plan was to make the game interesting and start civil war as soon as I could provoke it - thus giving time for other factions to develop.

But soon I was forced to actually try to find ANY way to advance. Year is about 220 BC - marius reforms happened in 230 BC! I barely can afford two armies - which are mixed pre-marius and post-marius units, meanwhile Scippii and Brutii are the two strongest factions and advancing by leaps and bounds.
They are actually helping ME, instead of the other way around.

I have about 9 provinces, and fighting Spain, Gauls, Britons and Carthage. This is vanilla, so Carthage is almost dead - especially that Scipii is so strong.
AI does A LOT of naval invasions. I was pleasantly surprised and eventually annoyed to have to fight off Carthaginian and Spanish naval invasions into Italy almost every year.

I have to treasure every soldier - pre-marius and post-marius alike. Cannot afford to disband old units.

The way I see it - 1.5 based SPQR does not have to weight non-Roman units so heavily against Romans as 1.2 based SPQR did - since AI is smarter now and doing quite well. Especially that Rome will be unified now, so there will be no help from the allies - which I am getting.
So SPQR 6.0 is actually easier to make to be possible to play ANY factions - since AI does not need as many bonuses.
I have not even tried fighting battles on VH - I can imagine that in that case I would probably lose the campaign...

Anyways - waiting for SPQR 6.0
And for the possibility to see how balanced it will be.
I can easily predict that it will be harder.

[lt1956]

SPQR is a complete overhaul of the battle and strategic system of what isnt hardcoded. It plays MUCH different than the vanilla. In SPQR 6.0 the Roman allies didnt expand. See the difference between the vanilla and SPQR? There are MANY other things also. comparing vanilla 1.5 to SPQR 6.0 is like Apples and Rocks! lol They are that FAR apart.

Lt

[Siena72]

Point taken.

In any case - vanilla RTW 1.5 is much better than vanilla 1.2.