Byzantium (Constantinople/Istanbul) vs Antheia (Sozopolis)

[General David]

Voted for Byzantium. It would have potentially made for some epic siege battles (including naval units).

[August]

Just to clarify... How do people know that the game has no Byzantium present as a city in the province?

Or the argument is purely about wanting Byzantium to be the capital of the province? Which is a vastly different thought.

[Caledoni]

Just to clarify... How do people know that the game has no Byzantium present as a city in the province?

Or the argument is purely about wanting Byzantium to be the capital of the province? Which is a vastly different thought.

It says Antheia in here (http://maps.totalwar.com/) for the province and im sure at some point it has been stated that only one city per province will exist

further confirmation at 6:27 in this video in a fly over http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vurxSzLVUUE

[Stavroforos]

There is only one city per region now, and in this case that city is Antheia.

[omzdog]

There has always been one city per region. Which is probably the problem. The logic behind 1 city 1 region is intolerable.
Read biographies and historical recounts and they tell you how it was often necessary to fell each (walled) city one by one.
The concept of centralized conquest is laughable.

[August]

There has always been one city per region. Which is probably the problem. The logic behind 1 city 1 region is intolerable.
Read biographies and historical recounts and they tell you how it was often necessary to fell each (walled) city one by one.
The concept of centralized conquest is laughable.

Logic is clear and straightforward. Total War always had an issue with late game turning into an endless succession of sieges. Shogun tried to fix it with, silly hard land divide. Now the intention is to make siege a truly special affair, not just series of random maps. And that requires sacrifices.

[Philadelphos]

Logic is clear and straightforward. Total War always had an issue with late game turning into an endless succession of sieges. Shogun tried to fix it with, silly hard land divide. Now the intention is to make siege a truly special affair, not just series of random maps. And that requires sacrifices.

So what? Ancient history was an endless succession of sieges, especially in the 3rd century!

Leaving out Byzantium really makes you cry out for justice! I'm a historian, I've even written a book on the Peloponnese War, but I had never heard of Antheia/Sozopolis before. This forum knows that the place was later called Sozopolis, because I researched it finding a small voice on Wikipedia, but anybody could do that.

Names are important. There is no satisfaction conquering a village named Antheia.

As a result of this mess I can already state this:
I will definitely not play a game where essential strongholds like Byzantium, Tarentum and Syracuse are substituted by such obscure places. That means, if this crappy map is not moddable I won't even buy the game.

To see what a good map can look like and how it drives the game click here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...H_1-1-released

[Ghost_loy]

Logic is clear and straightforward. Total War always had an issue with late game turning into an endless succession of sieges. Shogun tried to fix it with, silly hard land divide. Now the intention is to make siege a truly special affair, not just series of random maps. And that requires sacrifices.

Isn't that going to drastically shorten the game? Hell I usually win my sieges by starving them out anyway. So I guess I can thank them for not making me wait too long for all the cities to starve out..... Lowering the number of sieges isn't the answer to having the end game full of boring sieges... making the sieges more fun was the answer.

I don't think anyone ever made a mod for Rome or Medieval that cut the number of cities in half and said they were making the end game more fun.

[omzdog]

Logic is clear and straightforward. Total War always had an issue with late game turning into an endless succession of sieges. Shogun tried to fix it with, silly hard land divide. Now the intention is to make siege a truly special affair, not just series of random maps. And that requires sacrifices.

Constant siege is the fallout of total war. Generals feel very safe behind high places.
But I think you say this because you've been handed the idea that a siege is an even that happens in a 'couple of turns'.
Some sieges were affairs that lasted quite some seasons and became a delicate operation when supply lines could be threatened or disease and starvation occurred.
None of this is in the game.

[tungri_centurio]

i gonna mis byzantium,but hey we got nicomedia

[Caledoni]

yeah, im going to build nicomedia up a lot, looks like its could expand and become pretty much a land block. makes playing as pontus quite attractive

[ChairmanCrassus]

yeah, im going to build nicomedia up a lot, looks like its could expand and become pretty much a land block. makes playing as pontus quite attractive

Yeah I hope when Nicomedia expands it reaches the Bosphorus. That way I can build a pseudo-Byzantium.

[Emperork]

I'd also prefer Byzantium, it's one of the greatest RP-cities and has a very interesting location. But i guess Nicomedia will replace and serve the purpose of Byzantion. I guess that it's because of the small string of land around marmara strait and the new growing cities with their zone of control that creates the biggest conflict here - you simply can't have two cities at each side of the marmara.

I think its more a choice of inclusion between Nicomedia and Byzantion, than Byzantion and Antheia.

Nicomedia might have been more important than Byzantion at the time.

I think this makes the most sense

[HigoChumbo]

I'm sure CA knows what Byzantium is and I'm sure they have their reasons not to include it.

I'd expect it in a fall of the Roman Empire expansion.

[Sir Robin]

Personally I figure it was a space issue for why Antheia is in and Byzanton is out. Yes I too think that Byzanton should be in. I just suspect that they couldn't "fit" it properly with how oversized the cities are in Rome 2. They say its their biggest map ever but with the cities being so big, it actually looks smaller than the previous maps. To me at least.

So Antheia gets picked instead.

[sanbourne]

I'd like it because of what the place became. But I reckon it only become important when Constantine found his city in its place.

[August]

Total war always was about grand pitched battles. Sieges were always the weak point, as AI and pathing always struggled in urban maps. Europa Universalis - yeah I can see it there, but this is not EU.

And frankly, according to just about every historical source out there, sieges were the most soulshriveling, and boring thing a man could do, from gameplay perspective. Infinitely worse than trench warfare. The only people that could be interested in realistic recreation of sieges(and more of them!) are the people who don't have a full understanding what sieges actually are, I recon. Especially from a Roman perspective, where siege was 95% supply, engineering, planning and construction.

EDIT: Actually, I can think of a way to have more realistic sieges - just not have any real-time battle component to the whole affair, and have sieges be just a series of numbers converging, along with some random elements - essentially have every siege become a drawn out auto-resolving event. That even may be moddable. But I'm pretty sure that's not desirable to most.

Even events like Alesia were primarily an engineering/organizational affair, with a relatively brief dramatic finale.

Constant siege is the fallout of total war. Generals feel very safe behind high places.
But I think you say this because you've been handed the idea that a siege is an even that happens in a 'couple of turns'.
Some sieges were affairs that lasted quite some seasons and became a delicate operation when supply lines could be threatened or disease and starvation occurred.
None of this is in the game.

With turn per year of R2TW, the time scale if fine, simplified version of disease and starvation has been present in the series since at least Medieval 1(I don't recall if Shogun 1 had it).
Like I said before, you seem to want to have your Europa Universalis in your Total War game. Which are two different games, with two different aims. EU doesn't need the direct battle involvement and 3d eye candy. TW doesn't need the almost intimidating depth and breadth of mechanics(and mods of TW games, don't reach the depth of EU mods).
I LOVE EU series. I LOVE TW series. Sometimes I want to delve into meticulousness of former, sometimes I want to enjoy the cerebral action of the latter.
These two cannot be mushed into one without losing much of their features.

I mean, if you want to see what an elaborate supply system looks like, I invite you to play something like Black ICE mod for Hearts of Iron 3. I just can't see this being implemented in a TW game.

Lowering the number of sieges isn't the answer to having the end game full of boring sieges... making the sieges more fun was the answer.

Not the focus of total war games. Never was.
The engine is not designed around it. I mean we all want all the best stuff, all the time, but that's unrealistic. Besides, forced repetition is hard to enjoy.
CA's solution is reduction of QUANTITY, in favor of QUALITY. It's a sound, realistic plan.