An Idea for the Late Game
I think we all notice that the late game of Rome 2 (like many TW games before it) is often lacking. Campaigns take on a fairly predictable (though still fun) rhythm: struggle to survive in the early game, have some nice, exciting wars in the mid-game, and then steamroll everyone in the late game. Whether it is a lack of large AI empires to fight or a lack of well-equipped enemy armies serving even a large empire, AI empires never seem to be able to put up much of a fight once we start to unlock our best troops and develop an economy that can sustain even a few of them among assorted levies an mid-tier units.
I have seen many attempts to remedy this: giving bonuses to historically large empires to try and force tough enemies to exist in the late game, make civil wars more extreme or prevalent to slow the player down, mess with the player's PO upon conquest, etc.
Often these fixes either do not work (even when I used to play with some "large AI empires" mods Rome was never a threat) or add disproportionate difficulty to the early or middle game while still making the late-game a walk in the park. Also, though the politics mechanic is much improved from R2's launch, it is still clunky and unpredictable (if only the internal politics model from Attila could be patched in!) so I hate to rely on the somewhat random and annoying civil war mechanic to limit the player.
The problem, as I see it, is this: the player is generally much better at managing his/her empire on a macro level than the AI is. The only way we can really work around this is to give the AI bonuses to food, PO, income, and give the player handicaps as she/he progresses. I think the current system works excellently at providing an initial challenge to the player and making the player carefully plan province, agent, and even general/admiral specializations to avoid PO, cultural, diplomatic, and empire maintenance disasters.
To save, the late game, I would suggest the following (if it is even possible): instead of an across-the-board constant increase to AI income bonuses (like what change with campaign difficulty) give the AI a per-city income bonus that increases with the player's imperium level. That way, as the player expands, her enemies will become proportionally more powerful. Furthermore, the more cities an enemy has, the bigger bonus the AI would get, which may help AI empire develop as they can more easily snowball and absorb each other. If possible we could make this bonus bigger for certain factions (like Carthage, Rome, Makedon, etc.) to help ensure that those factions become big and fun to fight. To add more challenge we could also add to the penalties that effect the player, but I want the late game to feel like a series of boss fights (maybe with the occasional civil war) in which you use all of your powers to crush a formidable foe, and simply hamstringing the player, I think, removes a lot of the sense of progression and accomplishment from the campaign.
Now I have three questions for you, DeI community:
1. Does this sound like a remotely good idea?
2. Is this possible to mod?
3. Any suggestions as to where I might look to mod this or how to do it? I have only recently started making very basic mods, and still get a bit lost in all the pack files.
Thanks for your feedback!
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Originally Posted by Finn
