EB House Rulesab

[Yerevan]

Hey, I used those before in the name of role play and story telling. But as RTW's AI is a bit old and rusty for some matters I decided to add a new set of house rules to help the AI factions. 2 exemples :

_ I always declare war a few turns before attacking an AI faction. Surprise attacks are too easy with RTW. (actually that is something I started to do in R2 when I realised the AI has huge delays in its processes of attack/defense).

_I rarely use the max mov points. In ancient times there were always something to delay huge troops movement. Especially when using boats. Let's say the weather for exemple !

_ For important decisions like a peace/war treaty, my diplomats have to stay one turn in the capital before going on mission (or the settlement where my faction leader is).

_ As Rome, I recruit a minimum of cavalery (I'm in 250 and I have just 4 units; 2 campanian & 2 equites). If I need more, I use mercenaries.

_ Conquered sttlements north of the Rubicon and in Sicilia I let under client state gov as long as possible.

Etc, etc...

I"m curious about other players houserules. If you use some, please share !

[nicks1107]

Hi,

here are my rules, if you have few ideas, share them...

[Siegfroh]

My personal house rules/handicaps:

For moving a stack, building, recruiting or changing tax level, a general must be present. Only generals can initiate battles.

Occupying a city, the only buildings allowed to be destroyed are the AI government buildings.

A Government type 1 or 2 can only be built, if there is no cultural malus in the public order panel. (If there is, I have to start with a Government type 3 or 4, build/upgrade some buildings for a few years, and then I am free to change to a Government type 1 or 2.)

For a Government type 4, a general must be recruited immediately after construction.

In a settlement all available adminstrative (government) buildings must have been built first, then all damaged buildings must be repaired (only one repair per turn), before any other building (including e.g. palisades) can be built. Units or agents can be recruited after all admistrative buildings have been constructed/repaired/upgraded.

Land bridges are for the AI only. If I want to cross them, a fleet of mine must be present (except for diplomats/agents/leaders). For travelling overseas, the added up strength of my fleet must be at least 10% of the
added up strength of the units transported (1 "man" of the fleet can transport 10 soldiers).

If troops embark outside a harbour, they must have been adjacent to the sea tile at the beginning of the turn, if they disembark outside a harbour, they may not move for the rest of the turn.

The faction leader and his heir will always fight their battle on the battle map (reinforcements led by the AI), all other battles will always be autoresolved.

During the battle, the camera is restricted to the general's view, and orders can only be given to units adjacent to the general.

Before the battle starts, I investigate the battlefield, but leave my troops where they are positioned by default. When the battle starts, I move them to the position I selected before, so that I don't have too much advantage over the AI, which doesn't handle fatigue so well. Doesn't help it so much, though.

Siege equipment can only be built if an engineer ancillary with building points is present, or the leader has got a trait of this kind. Otherwise, a besieged town will be blockaded until it surrenders.

For every faction with which I have a treaty, there must be a diplomat present at their capital. If he dies, he must be replaced. For the fun of it, if a diplomat defects (is bribed), I send an assissin to locate and kill this trraitor.

For trade rights agreements, receiving the world map of the other faction must be part of the deal.

No retraining, units can be merged only with others, when they are down to less than 50% of their original strength.

If I want to change the faction heir, the new and old heir must be present with the faction leader, and the new faction heir must have a higer influence than the old heir (to be achieved by transfer of ancillaries, or it is impossible).

The changes I made to the game (EB 1.2 on BI enginge with Jirisys' EB Mega Mod Pack, campaign difficulty H, battles H, large units):
- "Realistic" Movement - starting action points set to 160.
- increased price and building time for the better roads
- increased price and building time for city walls
- increased price and building time for Governments
- my faction's satrapal ancillaries removed, except for archistrategos and dioiketes
- cost for a fort set to 1000, and for a watchtower village to 10000 (actually, instead of a watchtower, I always build a fort garrisoned by a unit with a spy in it)
- reanimated armourer and foundry, but reduced the effects of the smith buildings tree to armour only (armour +1 up to +3)
- replaced colony building tree with a three- level weapon smith buildig tree (light and bladed weapons +1 up to +3)
- I added a small garrison script for the AI
- I halved and then rounded down the trigger chance for aquisition of ordinary BI ancillaries at CharacterTurnEnd

[tono4850]

If I play as a barbarian faction I dont develop any diplomatic relations with non-barbarian factions (no trade rights, no alliances, no cease fire, just wars)

[Nad]

I play on VH/M with a few amendments to vanilla EB:

- Fog of War off.
- Rebels toned down.
- Modified traits and ancillaries file (traits are a lot slower to develop and have more realistic effects).

My house rules are as follows.

Diplomacy

i) Since diplomacy in EB/RTW is broken, I have the rather drastic houserule that no diplomacy is allowed whatsoever. No trade rights, no alliances, no ceasefires. Any war is permanent until the elimination of the opponent faction. The only thing a diplomat can do is bribe, but even that is restricted as below.
ii) Family members, cities and agents from other factions, including rebels, cannot be bribed. Only captain-led opposition armies can be bribed.
iii) We can never declare war on another faction. We will only go to war if an opponent declares war on us (not exactly difficult on VH, as soon as an opponent shares a border with you they'll declare war anyway). The exception to this is prompting or responding to scripted war declarations, which are allowed (e.g. carthage declaring war on Rome when Rome invades Sicily, KH declaring war on Pontos when Pontos attacks Sinope or Trapezous, Pontos declaring war on anybody attacking Byzantion or Nikaia, etc).

Character / City Management

i) The capital at the start of the game is the empire's capital and can never be changed under any circumstance, even for one turn.
ii) My Faction Leader resides and rules at the capital. The Faction Heir resides at the next city closest to the capital.
iii) The Faction Heir cannot be changed, whomever the engine selects at the death of the former leader or heir is the next heir.
iv) The tax rate at any city is the highest rate possible while retaining public order at 100% or above. If public order cannot be maintained at 100% or above, a low tax rate has to be set.
v) Retainers can never be transferred between characters. They are for life and are lost when the character dies.
vi) Whenever a city is taken, the government level selected (1-4) is permanent. Once chosen, a government cannot be abolished and changed.
vii) No mercenary generals can be recruited. If a province is granted independence (level 4 government), it cannot have a governor (though I still set the taxes and choose what to build/recruit).

Military

i) All armies, whether defending or attacking, must be led by a family member. No battles can be led by a captain. This means family members are required to govern border settlements, or be within reach of that settlement if it is attacked to lead the response.
ii) We can only have one offensive army at any time. We cannot expand on two fronts at once.
iii) We can only have one agent of each type, which are attached to the offensive army. No fresh agent can be recruited until the existing one dies.
iv) The offensive army must be a balanced army, at least semi-historically accurate. It cannot be full of elite units.
v) Retraining is only allowed for zero-XP units, or where the new recruits would have initial XP equal to the unit being retrained (e.g. for some factions, if a Level 3 government grants new units with 1XP and a Gymnasium / House of Strength grants another 1XP, then a 2XP unit could be retrained there since the new recruits would also have 2XP; but a 3XP or higher unit cannot be retrained).
vi) When attacking a settlement, we are not allowed to starve it out. We must build siege equipment immediately and storm the city at the first available opportunity.
vii) Enemy ports cannot be blockaded and assassins are not allowed to sabotage buildings. Spies are only allowed to inflitrate a city we are about to attack, and cannot be left in other cities speculatively to cause unrest.
viii) We must maintain fleets at strategic ports to guard our coastal areas adequately. This requires a lot of naval spend. For example, as Rome, if we control Italy, Sicily and the islands west of Italy, we would need at least 3 fleets - for the east, west and south coasts (e.g. I would have one fleet at Taras to guard the Adriatic strait, one fleet at Syrakousai to guard Sicily and patrol the crossing to Africa, and one fleet at Karali to patrol the western Italian coast).
ix) The battle timer must be off. This prevents exploits like repeated sallying / using up ammo / repeat next season.
x) No battle cheese tactics to exploit the AI are allowed, such as an overabundance of archers/slingers, getting the AI to chase cavalry to tire themselves out, deliberately targetting the AI general first etc.

[Yerevan]

So many challenging and interesting housules ; that was unexpected. I think I will borrow some of those !

I found inspiration in one of those and decided to follow just one of the branch from my family tree. For this campaign it is the gens Aurelia (and all the characters from other gens that will marry/be adopted to that line).

I'll only play battles when a member of this branch will command the army. And autoresolve the others.

Usually I only let consuls (its rare though), or ex-conculs, praetor and faction leaders lead a full army (consul exercitus), assisted by tribunus militum. But with this new rule I'll have to find a compromise as there are very few chances to have a consul in the family branch.

As Nad does I decided I wouldn't change the faction heir.

I like Siegfroh houserule about battles too :

orders can only be given to units adjacent to the general.

[Legatus Legionarii]

Basically, I try to follow the house rules mentioned in the link below:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...-(Redux-for-EB)

In addition, all newly conquered territories get a type 4 government. A client ruler is established and if he dies, meaning after one generation, I upgrade to the next higher government type, because I believe one generation is a acceptable time frame that a region becomes more and more Romanized. Of course, there are exceptions because some really outlying regions at the peripherie will always have a type 4 government...