Spies, Ships and exploration because of too much fog at start.

[Baldos]

Dei is a great mod, not only does it vastly improve vanilla but it makes Rome 2 a much more enjoyable game. With out DeI I would be playing something else.

That said, I find the fewer number of spies in Dei together with lower ship movement negatively effects my game play. In all TW games I like to expose as much as possible of the game world as my nation would have known. I like to remove the fog to the other side of the nations that border my nation at minimum. I also want to expand trade possibilities to realistic areas. The way it is now at the start the fog is so extensive that I feel compelled to use my one spy and ships push it back.

A possible solution is to decrease the amount of fog at the start of the game for major powers like Rome, Carthage, Greeks, the successor states....
It is not realistic that the successor states do not know what is to the far east, that Rome and Carthage do not know what boarders the Mediterranean.

Fog in barbarian lands and fog for barbarians adds to game play, but the major powers of 270BC it is so very unrealistic as to effect game play.

The limits on number of spies, their movement range and ship movement range just makes this problem worse.

[TheRazaman]

Rome/Carthage may have known about whatever powers existed in the East but they were assuredly ignorant of the army composition, income, trade partners, city layout etc etc of said nations. All of this is obscured by fog of war.

Its not at all difficult to create one naval unit and send them out exploring the Mediterranean, Black sea, North sea, Atlantic. It takes some 20 turns and you can then initiate trade with whomever has a port. Btw, the realism argument is really awful for this game and discussed disproportionately to the amount of actual realism in the game. Everything is always balanced first and foremost to gameplay, not realism.

[krunsh]

I like it. I know the geography, but not what's going on there.