A few army spawning ideas to make things interesting

[coit105]

Sorry for the constant babbling's on this here forum but I just read through this:http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=88608 and being a tech noob most of it made little sense to me. However I thought the idea sounded quite grand. Being stuffed full of ideas for forces, having both a little and big book of Rome and an uncontrollable urge to write but avoid homework, I thought that I couldn't simply let the idea slide without mentioning it and decided to begin this thread with a few ideas for some possible generals with huge armies that could spawn at the drop of certain hats, metaphorically speaking, and could add to the campaign experience greatly, for many different factions, if you observe Anallein's advice a few posts down on the link. Gradually as the mod grows in the future you could maybe include windows that show short clips with voice overs (that btw I'd gladly give a shot at doing as soon as I get ahold of a half decent mic) that appear warning the player for added drama and impact.

Now for a few ideas for generals, locations and triggers (those that I'm not sure are possible I'll include in brackets), I'll leave the armies up to you guys as you know the units best. I'll start with the obvious; Pyrrhus, triggered by Rome being at war with Greek cities date between 280 and 275 b.c. around Tarentum (if possible triggered at taking of certain provinces in Italy), Hannibal, triggered by Rome being at war with Carthage date 218 b.c. near the Po valley (if possible set a trigger that bypasses or changes this if Rome has a large number of Iberian provinces or alternatively just have the army/armies spawn in Carthage) Spartacus, triggered by massive population in a province like Narbo/Osca/Massilia date 73 b.c. Roman rebel/rebel armies spawn near aforementioned provinces and finally Julius Caesar, triggered for no real reason in 49 b.c. Roman rebel armies spawn in Northern Gaul.

Few more ideas for generals and factions for you to figure out for yourselves if you think it sounds like a good idea and want to go to town; Antiochus faction: Seleucid, Marius faction: Roman rebels, Jugurtha faction: Numidia, Carbo of the Cimbri faction: Germans/Gauls, Teutobod of the Teutons faction: Gaul, Vercingetorix faction: Gaul, Ptolemy faction: Ptolemaic empire (The one that opposed Caesar in around 47 b.c.), Marcus Junius Brutus faction: Roman rebels and Marcus Antonius faction Roman rebels.

Any feedback will do, including how possible it is or errors in the logic/idea which I'm sure there are. As expected, I think it's quite a good idea as it'd put the realism factor way up and, due to the fact that you can do different generals for different factions, the more you find out about ancient history the more you could include. =D

[Caligula Caesar]

The problem with spawning stacks is that they tend not to actually do anything, so are pretty useless. That said, we may well spawn some choice stacks to represent, for example, Germanic incursions across the Rhine and Danube (bear in mind that that is the limit of the VII map) and perhaps Seleucid and Pontic incursions into western Asia Minor (that is the eastern border of the map). This has not yet been decided. These invasions would be represented by the three mini-factions.

[Muizer]

We've thought about various ways to implement something like this. The main difficulty here is that unless you create a mini-campaign like TIC where you have the player chase historical events from one moment to the next, you cannot really make a great deal of assumptions about how the game will develop. The farther you get away from the starting date, the less predictable the situation gets. I mean, the odds against Carthage being at war with Rome in the Po valley 250 turns into the game are staggering. You would have to widen the bracket concerning the date and place considerably. A better approach (IMHO) would be to base a monitor directly on the wider Carthaginian strategic considerations. The "hannibal" event wouldn't probably take place at the same time and place as it did in history, but it would appear to be for the same reason. That's a much more solid approach than assuming the strategical situation will magically unfold like it did in history over hundreds of turns.

[coit105]

Well OK then so how does a monitor work?

[coit105]

Oh and btw why is the map for VII downsized massively?

[coit105]

Would just like to add the Spartacus one and the Julius Caesar one could work quite well; [for Spartacus] if you just had a trigger like happiness in Capua reaches level lower than 150% and regions surrounding Capua have arena's, then initiate a single unit Thracian style Slave army under a character, Spartacus, then next turn spawn another army, if the first is still there, (can you do that?) on the same co-ordinates with more varied slaves with no character of any distinction, then so on and so forth until you have about 6 full slave armies surrounding Capua. They should cause some level of disturbance in the settlement even if they don't siege, plus, this is kind of what happened during the Spartacan revolt, the armies just rose and rose in the surrounding land of Capua and said they were campaigning to take Rome but really they were a bunch of slaves so they didn't really know what they were doing. Rather much like AI. However Spartacus supposedly had quite a nack for strategising so give him some good command/traits. But anyway after this initial spawning have the armies grow in size the more cities fall to rebels through siege or revolt. The difficulty of taking back the territory rises if you up the price of upkeep for the post Marian legionaries (sorry to bring this up again) to quite high so that the player can only afford to stack near the borders of his/her enemy factions. You could take it a step further and have a background script running for Spartacus' lifetime that says 'if player's income reaches below -10000 denarii turn their armies into rebel forces (if it's possible). This could really cause a problem for the player if they don't suppress it quick enough and they could have to watch their whole world slowly fall to masses of rebels within a few turns or so.

As for Caesar, if you could make the Roman rebels an emergent faction, which they probably already are, and it's possible to script them to emerge after a certain settlement is taken, have them emerge if the player has anything in Britain, quite a long few turns into the game (Caesar started making trouble around 50 b.c. just after he'd captured France and hit British shores but I'll doubt the player will be affected if you just have it triggered in 50 b.c.). Have them begin as just that settlement but, if it's possible to do so, give more settlements in [modern day] France to them as turns go by. Carry on giving everything up to Liguria to the Roman rebels and spawn a single full army of experienced but thinned out legionaries around the border to Liguria. Now if you have the faction's goal as Rome and only Rome you need not leave it to fate, assuming it's possible to hand settlements over to the rebel faction, you could just have a script that runs on for 20 turns in the or so in the background after the Roman rebels have been given Liguria that has the Roman rebels capture Rome as a trigger then the event is that you hand over the rest of Italy then all the small islands in the Meditteranean and then all the Iberian settlements to the Roman rebels, gradually mind Caesar wasn't that bloody fast, and then just let it play out from there. That's about as realistic as you can get under these circumstances because Caesar didn't face any real opposition from anyone important until he'd already captured Rome Suppressed Italy and stomped down support for Pompey in Iberia and the little Meditteranean islands. Of course if it's impossible to hand over settlements like that, the plan does fall a little flat on it's face, in which case I apologise for wasting your time having you read this, but please do consider the Spartacan revolt idea. =D

[Sphere]

Oh and btw why is the map for VII downsized massively?

It is still the maximum allowable size. It is just "zoomed in" to make the mini-regions possible. To be frank its the only truly novel idea in RTR VII and it wouldn't be worth playing otherwise.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

It is still the maximum allowable size. It is just "zoomed in" to make the mini-regions possible. To be frank its the only truly novel idea in RTR VII and it wouldn't be worth playing otherwise.

Well, that and the completely awesome units

[Remlap]

It is still the maximum allowable size. It is just "zoomed in" to make the mini-regions possible. To be frank its the only truly novel idea in RTR VII and it wouldn't be worth playing otherwise.

That's a bit insulting to say that all the rest of our idea's and implementations would make the game worthless. Perhaps you can explain your reasoning?

[coit105]

Fair play to you Sphere. Kudos on the simplicity of your name and picture btw.

[Delta146]

Yeah, the map being "zoomed in" is hardly the only thing special about the RTR VIIs. While of course they are not perfect as with any mod, they have a lot more to offer than just a different map, which is why I consider RTR: FOE to be among the best mods for Rome Total War.

[Sphere]

That's a bit insulting to say that all the rest of our idea's and implementations would make the game worthless. Perhaps you can explain your reasoning?

I noticed it could come off as insulting, but I say it after playing total realism games since Shogun as well as playing the majority of the RTW mods including RTR 5 (and the whole Tyr saga for those who remember).

After playing through all that I can honestly say that RTR VII offers something unique and novel that makes it worth playing. That the RTR team has been able to break new ground in an area that has been trodden over so many times I think is actually the highest compliment I can give. Shiny units have been done, giant maps have been done, scripted battles have been done, but the campaign dynamic developed so far for RTR VII has never really been done by other mods and the RTR team deserves substantial praise for bringing the concept to it to life.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Now that's more logical

The way you said it before was like "RTR VII has a nice campaign; if you don't care about that there's no need bothering about it".

[Tony83]

Lol - yes, I wonder how many here remember RTR5! When the Senate faction was protected by several stacks of Uber Praetorians, to prevent the Roman faction, and others no doubt, from taking them out too early.

As for the "Tyr episode", least said, soonest mended, I think.

[Spartan198]

What's this about Tyr? Is that in reference to the Phoenician city or the Norse god of war?

[DukeCanada]

What's this about Tyr? Is that in reference to the Phoenician city or the Norse god of war?

Well he does seem to be mythological around here. He's certainly no God though.

Just a rogue member of the RTR team that caused some serious issues a while back. Way before my time, but he's constantly brought up around here.