Simulating the cost of the empire

[a tw player]

I know large features are pointless being discussed at this stage, as they will mostly have already been developed, but hey, may as well discuss nonetheless

One thing in TW games is that, as a general rule, the larger your nation the stronger you become. However, as we all know, Rome fell when it became overextended and economically reduced in power.

How can this be triggered in R2TW? When your empire becomes so large, it should become harder to control that empire, be it through increased base unrest in each city or, the option that in my mind makes more sense, increase the upkeep of units the further they are from your capital [Rome].

This means that operations further from home are costlier and costlier, meaning you can't just think "my borders are larger, but I'm so powerful I'll just pump out some more legions to cover the ground". Defence of the larger empire should become much harder. The idea can be further developed into smaller "bonuses" of the upkeep cost based on the nearest friendly town. Ie. Overall the cost will still be higher, but the cost will increase further into enemy territory before dropping off slightly again when capturing the city in that hostile territory. This would simulate the cost of the smaller scale expansion too.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?

(PS - Apologies if this is badly written, I'm just so excited for this game! )

Well make it so armies upkeep raises the farther from supply depots. Supply depots can be built by the armies or in towns? So if You control all of Gaul and decide to invade Germany you better have some depots built to supply your armies.

Good idea

What would be important though is that those depots themselves come with an upkeep cost, so that a player can't just spam loads of them...Perhaps the upkeep of these depots would increase the further away from Rome they are (what I'm trying to get at is somewhat related to the "supply tax" in Paradox's HOI); wars should be expensive to fight on the empire's outermost frontiers.

Making such wars so expensive would also bring in an interesting and accurate gameplay issue for the player when the empire reaches a certain size:

- Do I continue to expand, relying on looting and high tax exploitation to fuel further expansion. Past a particular point it would be unwise to simply defend such large borders due to the cost of doing so.

- Do I pull back to a more manageable area, that does not overstretch my legions' capability?

How large the empire can get would be a great measure of how skilful a player would be, and I'm sure would lead to some great competition on these forums!

Edit - hope you don't mind, but I'll add these points to the OP to build up the big picture

[saber]

Well historically, in order for emperors to maintain political stability, they had to give out cash gifts, honorifics, titles, and other prestigious things to important army commanders and to important civil servants. Whenever said commanders and civil servants felt that they weren't getting their share of the imperial cake, they would put up their own contender for the purple. And then you can factor in (as Shogun 2 has) how economically viable certain regions are through agricultural fertility. The reason why the Romans did not extend very far into Germania was because Germania was not very wealthy to begin with (likewise with Britannia but that was more of a political decision than it was economic). The poorer a region is, the more money it should suck up because they're not money producers but money consumers. And then the farther a region is from the capital, the more expensive it should be to maintain political stability (this is partly a reason why the empire was divided into the tetrarchy).

[MathiasOfAthens]

Well make it so armies upkeep raises the farther from supply depots. Supply depots can be built by the armies or in towns? So if You control all of Gaul and decide to invade Germany you better have some depots built to supply your armies.

[a tw player]

Well make it so armies upkeep raises the farther from supply depots. Supply depots can be built by the armies or in towns? So if You control all of Gaul and decide to invade Germany you better have some depots built to supply your armies.

Good idea

What would be important though is that those depots themselves come with an upkeep cost, so that a player can't just spam loads of them...Perhaps the upkeep of these depots would increase the further away from Rome they are (what I'm trying to get at is somewhat related to the "supply tax" in Paradox's HOI); wars should be expensive to fight on the empire's outermost frontiers.

Making such wars so expensive would also bring in an interesting and accurate gameplay issue for the player when the empire reaches a certain size:

- Do I continue to expand, relying on looting and high tax exploitation to fuel further expansion. Past a particular point it would be unwise to simply defend such large borders due to the cost of doing so.

- Do I pull back to a more manageable area, that does not overstretch my legions' capability?

How large the empire can get would be a great measure of how skilful a player would be, and I'm sure would lead to some great competition on these forums!

Edit - hope you don't mind, but I'll add these points to the OP to build up the big picture

[Dominici]

MathiasOfAthens I salute you! Great idea! But when you have a big empire you don't look at every province each turn then they rebel.

[Biggus Splenus]

That's a great idea OP +rep

[a tw player]

Thank you

[zg0301zg]

well I think it was solved before, you have a thing called penalty for distance from the capital, romans solved that in real life by sending retired soldier / legioners into newly conquerd teritories
further more if I remember correctly depending on the region you are limited for creating / recruiting certain troops so thats more then enough, for example the distant the teritory the more troops you need to have in garrisson.... which is of course more expensive, you are more vunerable to attacks and such...

[a tw player]

I personally don't think that idea went far enough though compared to what I propose though...

The question is, was Gaul any less likely to rebel than Brittania? Of course there are minor regional variations into what might cause revolt, but in my view any region that was not "core Roman" territory, was as likely to rebel as the other. The only difference being the ease in which such rebellions can be dealt with (linking back to distance which the legions have to travel).

The real thing I want to have simulated is the simple fact that a military operation conducted in Mesopotamia would be much more difficult to properly supply than, say, an operation in northern Italia, and also that defence of the empire's huge borders was a colossal financial burden on Rome's treasury, eventually leading to the fall of the Western Empire.

If something like this isn't put in place, I can simply see this scenario:

1) Player starts as Rome.
2) Player struggles, but eventually overcomes tough opposition in initial expansion of the empire.
3) Empire is now at a reasonable size, development of regions' infrastructure takes place.
4) This allows the player to focus on pumping out more troops from this vast stretch of land, with little problem due to the amount of income generated per turn.
5) Expands territory further, simply pumps out another legion to be able to defend this territory.

See the late game problem from this sort of scenario? It shouldn't be some sort of arbitrary realm divide scenario (although the roman civil wars need to be represented in this way imo, that's a completely different issue however) that provides late game challenges, it should be some genuine constant progression of difficulty that manifests itself on a historical/logical basis.

[Ichon]

If supplies were simulated simply by higher upkeep the further from the Capitol that is a good start but I wonder if supplies should cost the same for an invasion of Egypt as an invasion of the Baltics which are about equal distances from Rome. If there were a way to trade how much of the distance was over water vs over land that might be interesting but I don't think even heavily modified Warscape engine would be capable.

Still it could be an interesting feature even if slightly unrealistic it would still be a major improvement on the current totally unrealistic of armies existing without supplies.

The best way for me would be that additional capabilities of an army require additional supplies. So if Rome and Macedon get better siege trains/capabilities their armies also cost more in supplies than a Germanic army which is able to forage for about 1/2 its supplies while the Roman army can only do that for 1/4. In this way early Roman Republic armies won't be that different from Celts they are fighting but if choosing to adopt more capabilities with either technology or military/government reforms than the costs of supplying armies increases. So that would also give the same choice to 'barbarian' factions if they want to advance to become more 'civilized' but it has a cost.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

It would be nice if, according to the number or riches of your cities, you were able to maintain and support a certain amount of units. I don't want to be able to spawn armies whenever I need them, I want the game to force me to use limited forces wisely. Say that at the beginning, Rome can only maintain a sum of two full stacks (including city garrisons). If you surpass that number of allowed units, the cost of maintaining the additional units will start becoming disproportionate. For example, say that a unit of hastati normally cost 100 gold to maintain. If you surpass the number of allowed units, the additional unit of hastati will cost 500 gold and so on.

[MrOuija]

It would be nice if, according to the number or riches of your cities, you were able to maintain and support a certain amount of units. I don't want to be able to spawn armies whenever I need them, I want the game to force me to use limited forces wisely. Say that at the beginning, Rome can only maintain a sum of two full stacks (including city garrisons). If you surpass that number of allowed units, the cost of maintaining the additional units will start becoming disproportionate. For example, say that a unit of hastati normally cost 100 gold to maintain. If you surpass the number of allowed units, the additional unit of hastati will cost 500 gold and so on.

So essentially a support limit based around wealth? I like the idea of a support limit but if you tied it to wealth then you could simply go conquer more territory. I wish manpower could be factored into the equation.

[Luther0811]

Agreed 100%,

The biggest problem I see with TW games is the whole "Rich get Richer" effect for the player. When you become to powerful you cannot be stopped, it is much to difficult for the AI to even pose a threat to you, and losing a stack army can get replaced within a single turn. It was a problem I saw in Shogun 2 even, when I was playing as the Archer faction (excuse my bad memory) I took over the island, conquered a little bit into mainland Japan, and before I knew it I was making 20,000 credits a turn haha.

Litterally I was a plague on the land that could not be stopped, we need something in Rome 2 that gives us a much harder challenge once we have expanded a good portion of the map.

Please regard CA!!!

- Wes

[sasquatch32794]

I think they should also make it so that a nation is not capable of making its base units(romanized units) in newly conquered territory for a decent amount of time. This would make a more realistic logistic system in that it would take a couple of turns to first make the units and then have to transport them all the way from italy to spain.

[Lord Dakier]

Tax - Well for a start make the tax system harder. If I raise taxes I don't want to see a few angry civs I want to see quite a few pissed off people. Now if I lower taxes I don't want my town getting super rich, I want to see migration. People coming to that town from others. It will make you have to juggle the population a little. This was an issue in Rome when there was not enough land to be given in Italy so some where better off jumping ship.

Upkeep - Next up increase upkeep. I want to see double the upkeep of what was in Shogun 2. Blacksmiths and so on need payment, the cost is just too damn low. Maybe increase upkeep slightly the further away the army is from the capital. This stops the great crusades to rich lands. As Rome I'd usually go for Spain, North Africa then Britain. Punish me a little for not establishing those land routes!

Corruption - It needs to come back smarter than ever. This was the section where bribes and officials were brought off. This invisible figure kept away the "how do you pay off the guards blah blah blah arguments too!". Make corruption cost money not happiness.

Character Traits - I want to see not just effective admin traits but characters who take some money from the state. When I the faction leader notices these traits on my characters I can disband them effectively exiling/imprisonment or killing them. In fact give me an option for this!

Battles - If my Scythian army uses all their arrows I want +5% upkeep next turn... just saying!


I generally want the economy to in some cases be harder than the warfare side of things. I want to be able to lose a campaign just cause I can't feed my soldiers.

[Adreno]

Well ive allways wanted an upkeep slider for every stack with a general.. the higher you set it the better the men get paid, and are more resilient to attrition and have better morale in battle and are less likely to rebel against you.. and the otherway around.. and now that armies are getting some sort of overhaul you could also factor in penalties for things like distance to capital or being in regions you dont own etc etc.. would like a sort of food system tied into it aswell..

[Lord Dakier]

I want it simple, kill the slider as its just too much unnecessary micro-management. Vets should have more morale simple as.

[Adreno]

Well you wouldnt have to use it, just keeping it in the middle would keep it the same as it is now..

[Lord Dakier]

Ok, I'm desperate to win a battle. Slider full!

I have units on patrol in southern Italy. Slider low!

Its one of those fickle mechanics that could never please everyone. Best if it were to just nor be there.

[Adreno]

They should rebel very quickly if they go from high paid to low paid to fast.. and if overpaid and not doing anything really for a whole bunch of turns in a town or city might have them cause trouble in those places.. like the s2 small events