Next Update (0.95d) Preview

[Dresden]

I won't be updating tonight, Litharion and I have been working all day on fixes and they aren't quite completed. Someone give poor Litharion some rep because I don't think he has slept the past 3 days. However, I wanted to preview some things we are working on that will hopefully be released tomorrow night:

Crash Fixes
- We are going to have to revert the new Germanic subculture to the vanilla version for now. For some reason it is causing Lugii battle crashes on a regular basis. If I can't single out the cause it may mean that custom subcultures are going to be rough.
- We also have a fix for a mid-late game Getae turn crash.

Food System
- We will be giving the player 1 food bonus to help with early game small factions. In this way, they won't starve when recruiting.
- Most barbarian and eastern mustering stances use 1 food too much right now. This will be fixed.

Public Order System
- The player will be receiving a small increase to the public order difficulty bonus.
- We are adding a new stance that will be called Improve Province. The idea is that the army is policing/improving the infrastructure. It will give a small public order bonus, income bonus, replenishment bonus and upkeep bonus. However, there will be serious negatives attached with the stance as well. For technical reasons the army cannot move while in the stance.
- The AI bonus to public order will be slightly reduced.

Early AI Expansion
- The bonuses to AI income and unit upkeep/cost will be reduced.
- The number of recruitment slots the AI receives will also be altered based on difficulty level (3/3/4/4/5)
- Some of the personality settings will be altered to be more balanced. Our intent is to have a realistic experience in the early game that doesn't see large empires forming in the first 10-20 turns.

Late Game Player Difficulty
- We will be increasing the effects of corruption so that hopefully the income situation for the player in the late game is not out of control.


Various other skill/trait/small fixes

[krunsh]

Incredible, this sounds like great compromises and fixes to please everyone. Thank you so much!

[Ganossa]

Late Game Player Difficulty
- We will be increasing the effects of corruption so that hopefully the income situation for the player in the late game is not out of control.

Everything is good but THIS is really great!!

[Chereye]

Early AI Expansion
- The bonuses to AI income and unit upkeep/cost will be reduced.
- The number of recruitment slots the AI receives will also be altered based on difficulty level (3/3/4/4/5)
- Some of the personality settings will be altered to be more balanced. Our intent is to have a realistic experience in the early game that doesn't see large empires forming in the first 10-20 turns.

Considering you put early in the title I can take it that this wont slow down mid to late game AI expansion?

Late Game Player Difficulty
- We will be increasing the effects of corruption so that hopefully the income situation for the player in the late game is not out of control.


Various other skill/trait/small fixes

Anything that slows down the snowball effect with money in this game is a welcome change.

[Dresden]

@Chereye That is indeed the plan. We want the mid-game AI (and late) to be highly aggressive. However, we want to eliminate the quick build up and expansion in the first turns. This will, of course, require continued balancing.

I forgot to mention we are also considering adding a recruitment bonus for Rome in their home regions. I also want to add some more auxiliary options for their aux barracks in the home Italian regions (similar to the other AOR region areas).

[Chereye]

@Chereye That is indeed the plan. We want the mid-game AI (and late) to be highly aggressive. However, we want to eliminate the quick build up and expansion in the first turns. This will, of course, require continued balancing.

I forgot to mention we are also considering adding a recruitment bonus for Rome in their home regions. I also want to add some more auxiliary options for their aux barracks in the home Italian regions (similar to the other AOR region areas).

That's good to hear.

Dresden there is a request I'd like to run by you if you don't mind. As a Carthage player I found that the Rome AI never accepts peace from me, no matter what I try to give him I will always get into an' inevitable war with Rome that you can never get out of, was wondering if that can change to where Rome acts like any other AI faction to Carthage (sue for peace and the like)

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

That's good to hear.

Dresden there is a request I'd like to run by you if you don't mind. As a Carthage player I found that the Rome AI never accepts peace from me, no matter what I try to give him I will always get into an' inevitable war with Rome that you can never get out of, was wondering if that can change to where Rome acts like any other AI faction to Carthage (sue for peace and the like)

Rome fights till the end haha. They do not fight conventional wars. Either you are destroyed or they are. On a serious note, yes often I see factions completely unwilling to use for peace even after a the annihilation of their field armies and the loss of a major settlement which threatens their existence. Some factions could use an increase in the chance of accepting peace.

[mephhhh]

im playing as rome right now and i have had delmatae, veneti, genua, syracuse all offer me gold and a peace treaty as i was destroying them. needless to say i destroyed them and made delmatae my client state.

@dresden: the major factions like carthage, macedon, ptolemy are doing so poorly right now in my campaign. would giving them extra income change anything? the only major faction that is doing anything right now is seleucids who are expanding almost as fast as i am. the seleucids has pretty much all of middle east under their grip as well as asia minor. ptolemy is a client state of one of those desert tribes for some reason. im sure the war with seleucids weakened them but its not quite right having them be a client state to a desert tribe. the suebi has wiped out much of the west/northern europe and if i didnt have a military alliance with them im sure theyd be bearing down on me as well. macedon got wiped by sparta who now controls greece and the celts control most of iberia and france.

destroying syracuse was much more difficult than destroying carthage. i think it might be better to get rid of the client states of carthage and give them control of most of africa and boost all the major factions income. maybe improve the diplomatic conditions a little bit for the major factions. right now the factions i really wanted to fight are disappearing off the map.

[Litharion]

@dresden: the major factions like carthage, macedon, ptolemy are doing so poorly right now in my campaign. would giving them extra income change anything? the only major faction that is doing anything right now is seleucids who are expanding almost as fast as i am. the seleucids has pretty much all of middle east under their grip as well as asia minor. ptolemy is a client state of one of those desert tribes for some reason. im sure the war with seleucids weakened them but its not quite right having them be a client state to a desert tribe. the suebi has wiped out much of the west/northern europe and if i didnt have a military alliance with them im sure theyd be bearing down on me as well. macedon got wiped by sparta who now controls greece and the celts control most of iberia and france.

destroying syracuse was much more difficult than destroying carthage. i think it might be better to get rid of the client states of carthage and give them control of most of africa and boost all the major factions income. maybe improve the diplomatic conditions a little bit for the major factions. right now the factions i really wanted to fight are disappearing off the map.

As we reduce the bonuses to AI income and the number of recruitment slots the AI receives, small AI faction will have more difficulties conquering bigger ones. Dresden and I already discussed tweaks to the starting diplomatic relations, especially Syracuse - Carthage. Right now it can be frustrating playing the Romans and seeing Carthage getting destroyed by Syracuse.

[UsulDaNeriak]

Public Order System

- We are adding a new stance that will be called Improve Province. The idea is that the army is policing/improving the infrastructure. It will give a small public order bonus, income bonus, replenishment bonus and upkeep bonus. However, there will be serious negatives attached with the stance as well. For technical reasons the army cannot move while in the stance.

I guess you are reusing the Forced-March Stance, as discussed in this other thread? Now, will the general, acting as a governor in this stance, get experience and increase his skills this way?

That was the biggest disadvantage of the new PO system for me. For increasing skills without fighting you had to put the general into a city. But his caused the new PO penalty.

[Zonac]

First of all as requested: +rep for Litharion! thanks for the effort! and 2nd: have you considerd ( if modable) to change the recrutingslots per region? so for example if you start as macedon you could recrute in each region 1 unit per turn. if you manage to conquere macedon and thrace province you should be able to recrute 3 units in macedon and 4 in thrace that way major factions would have a better start and it would give mercs an even greater purpose

[Chereye]

First of all as requested: +rep for Litharion! thanks for the effort! and 2nd: have you considerd ( if modable) to change the recrutingslots per region? so for example if you start as macedon you could recrute in each region 1 unit per turn. if you manage to conquere macedon and thrace province you should be able to recrute 3 units in macedon and 4 in thrace that way major factions would have a better start and it would give mercs an even greater purpose

Theres a submod that does exactly what you ask - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...re-mod-manager
A little out dated it might be and does a little more than what you're looking for but maybe you can reach out to the guy who made that mod and see if he can't do just the recruitment system for you.

[Zonac]

thank you for mentioning that.( i almost forgot that this sub mod existed.) however for gameplay purposes the current recrutmentsystem shoud reconsidered because it would solve many problems. and if it was once modable i hope that it can be done again and this time hopefully in the main mod

[Marcus Marcellus]

Meemphh: You could allways get the major faction "insert name here" mods? They give extra income to the faction of wich name you get.

And a plus rep for Litharion based on hard work on DeI and that awsome WH pic

[BunnyPoopCereal]

We are adding a new stance that will be called Improve Province. The idea is that the army is policing/improving the infrastructure. It will give a small public order bonus, income bonus, replenishment bonus and upkeep bonus. However, there will be serious negatives attached with the stance as well. For technical reasons the army cannot move while in the stance.

My only concern is that AI wont know how to use this stance and it will be too good for the player

[Ano2]

My only concern is that AI wont know how to use this stance and it will be too good for the player

Well the AI may not use it but given it's heavy public order bonuses I wouldn't imagine it really needing to use it either.

[rjacko10]

Well the AI may not use it but given it's heavy public order bonuses I wouldn't imagine it really needing to use it either.

As long as it doesn't use it incorrectly and is caught off guard with it's massive penalties.

[KAM 2150]

One of the reasons to dump whole forced march stance was because AI was being ambused all the time. Like seriosusly, at one point 3/4 of my battles were ambushes...It was too easy.

I was also thinking about adding an army stance like "return to fields/homes" to simulate fact that when not on campaign, soldiers would go back to their estates, towns etc, it would generate PO, a little of food or income depending on culture. It should be countered by giving this army big penalties to stats to simulate that army was gathered hastly and soldiers are not prepared enough. Still, I think that it would end up with player attacking AI armies iin this stance all the time, hence gaining easy victories.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

One of the reasons to dump whole forced march stance was because AI was being ambused all the time. Like seriosusly, at one point 3/4 of my battles were ambushes...It was too easy.

I was also thinking about adding an army stance like "return to fields/homes" to simulate fact that when not on campaign, soldiers would go back to their estates, towns etc, it would generate PO, a little of food or income depending on culture. It should be countered by giving this army big penalties to stats to simulate that army was gathered hastly and soldiers are not prepared enough. Still, I think that it would end up with player attacking AI armies iin this stance all the time, hence gaining easy victories.

This is such a good idea! I really hope it can be implemented. Perhaps a certain seasons would require this otherwise the player might face food problems. That way the AI and player are usually using this stance at the same time. But if the player thinks they have the resources to keep food production up even if less people in agricultural then they can attempt to surprise attack the enemy during a non campaigning season.

I've also been thinking about a winter camp stance because often armies did not campaign during the winter. They could gain an xp bonus or something during this stance but be immobile. This would also help slow down the empire expansion. With four tpy empires are often built at far too fast a pace as seen in the ancient world.

Or one other stance to replace the fortify stance as right now it seems almost useless. A camp stance where two armies can draw up and prepare for battle. Occasionally armies did not want to engage in battle immediately and would wait in their camps until they believed they could win (maybe it would be possible to have little skirmishes between the camps) The camp would be difficult to assault, perhaps placed on a hill with fortifications and other bonuses, but an option for a night assault on the camp would be available. It would require a trait from the general and would be risky, but if successful would be very effective. If no assault came then either a battle would commence when both sides believe they can win or one side will attempt a hasty withdrawal.

[Baldos]

One of the reasons to dump whole forced march stance was because AI was being ambused all the time. Like seriosusly, at one point 3/4 of my battles were ambushes...It was too easy.

I was also thinking about adding an army stance like "return to fields/homes" to simulate fact that when not on campaign, soldiers would go back to their estates, towns etc, it would generate PO, a little of food or income depending on culture. It should be countered by giving this army big penalties to stats to simulate that army was gathered hastly and soldiers are not prepared enough. Still, I think that it would end up with player attacking AI armies iin this stance all the time, hence gaining easy victories.

The new stance to put the men to work is a great idea!.... but I have a suggestion....

In the early days of the Republic the men went home to the farm.... in the post Marius/ Empire the men built roads and other public works. The difference would be extra food in early game.....post Marian reforms the effect should be extra income.