Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[Rad]

I third it

[Guils]

I suppose it has already been suggested, but is it possible to add princesses for the Hellenistic factions? Marriages between kingdoms and among reigning families played a big part in the era. There were princesses in the Vanilla MIITW, so the code must already be there.

[Lusitanio]

I suppose it has already been suggested, but is it possible to add princesses for the Hellenistic factions? Marriages between kingdoms and among reigning families played a big part in the era. There were princesses in the Vanilla MIITW, so the code must already be there.

Well, it is possible but it would require a lot of work regarding models, skins and traits. Tell me if you find someone able to do that.

[Roma_Victrix]

I third it

My alter ego fourths it!

Also, could we perhaps revisit the "Eranag Payadag" Western Iranian archer spearmen unit and improve their textures a bit as well, in particular their faces? I would only touch up the Illyrian units a little bit, but I regret calling them "cartoonish" in the Twitter thread, because they look mostly okay in comparison to this unit. The "Nizagan Eranshahr" Iranian archers almost look like something out of the first Europa Barbarorum or even just vanilla Rome: Total War. They could definitely be re-skinned entirely.

Not to sound like an entitled, spoiled brat or anything, because I appreciate all the effort that went into making these units that we get to play with for free.

[Guils]

Well, it is possible but it would require a lot of work regarding models, skins and traits. Tell me if you find someone able to do that.

[Krampus]

Something to be able to add at least one more tick of population growth to Large Towns. Can't hit 6,000 without having a 3rd lvl farming/fertility temple or having an FM with an ancillary/trait that reduces famine. Whether it be that 3rd lvl farms add an additional pop growth, or that food imports are buildable in large towns.

Large Town -> City is the only transition that is impossible by just building all buildings available at that settlement level. And you don't realize it until you're looking at your towns sitting at like ~5,800 with low taxation and no population growth thinking "but I did everything right?". Then you have to either tear down your temples and build farming/fertility, wait until Law temple grants Supervisor and then wait for them to get Satisfied Supervisor (and hope that it just doesn't randomly go away), or rotate your FMs with coveted negative famine bonuses.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Something to be able to add at least one more tick of population growth to Large Towns. Can't hit 6,000 without having a 3rd lvl farming/fertility temple or having an FM with an ancillary/trait that reduces famine. Whether it be that 3rd lvl farms add an additional pop growth, or that food imports are buildable in large towns.

Large Town -> City is the only transition that is impossible by just building all buildings available at that settlement level. And you don't realize it until you're looking at your towns sitting at like ~5,800 with low taxation and no population growth thinking "but I did everything right?". Then you have to either tear down your temples and build farming/fertility, wait until Law temple grants Supervisor and then wait for them to get Satisfied Supervisor (and hope that it just doesn't randomly go away), or rotate your FMs with coveted negative famine bonuses.

I think the mechanics is a right one - the last tick should require more than only buildings (eg a trait of the governor). This is also a basic tenet in the SSHIP: you need to get a good governor to make the cities grow.
However this should not require tearing any building, imo. This is gamey and the mod should not encourage it.

[Colos1987]

I agree, getting to city level should not be easy, as it opens up a lot of new building options (like grain doles). What I would change is to actually increase the pop limit for large and huge cities. Currently your settlements won't spend much time at city level, because all the available buildings boost population massively, even if you have a crappy governor. I'd go with a pop limit of 15-16k for large cities and somewhere around 30k for huge cities.

[Satapatiš]

TBH I'd slow down the population growth... If it's possible on the game engine. It's not taking very long for the one's major settlements to turn into the Rome or Alexandreia-rate behemoths.

[Gigantus]

The easiest way to slow down growth would be to reduce the 'fertility index' of the regions in descr_regions - but that's already set to the lowest.
Next step would be to work on the multipliers in descr_settlement_mechanics, all the SPF values - again they are already way down.
That leaves population bonuses applied via buildings and settlement level upgrade limits.

[Jurand of Cracow]

The easiest way to slow down growth would be to reduce the 'fertility index' of the regions in descr_regions - but that's already set to the lowest.
Next step would be to work on the multipliers in descr_settlement_mechanics, all the SPF values - again they are already way down.
That leaves population bonuses applied via buildings and settlement level upgrade limits.

There's also another easy way: lift the thresholds of the settlement upgrades.
It's currently

<!-- city --> <level name="village" base="400" upgrade="800" min="400" max="1500"/>
<level name="town" base="800" upgrade="2000" min="400" max="3500"/>
<level name="large_town" base="2000" upgrade="6000" min="400" max="9000"/>
<level name="city" base="6000" upgrade="12000" min="400" max="18000"/>
<level name="large_city" base="12000" upgrade="24000" min="400" max="36000"/>
<level name="huge_city" base="24000" min="400" max="72000"/>

while in the SSHIP it's:

<!-- city --> <level name="village" base="100" upgrade="1500" min="400" max="2500"/>
<level name="town" base="500" upgrade="6000" min="1000" max="8000"/>
<level name="large_town" base="1000" upgrade="13000" min="2000" max="16000"/>
<level name="city" base="6000" upgrade="33000" min="10000" max="40000"/>
<level name="large_city" base="15000" upgrade="75000" min="20000" max="100000"/>
<level name="huge_city" base="25000" min="30000" max="250000"/>

[Krampus]

I think the mechanics is a right one - the last tick should require more than only buildings (eg a trait of the governor). This is also a basic tenet in the SSHIP: you need to get a good governor to make the cities grow.
However this should not require tearing any building, imo. This is gamey and the mod should not encourage it.

I disagree. Compare this to upgrading camps to settlements: it’s supposed to be hard in game, but there’s a building chain tied to it such that it’s a somewhat linear process. Also, there’s a section in the guide that tells you “hey, camps can be upgraded to settlements but you have to do XYZ to do it”

I don’t think that this was intended. Because upgrading large towns to cities is such an integral part of the game that there would have been something in the guide. Like with upgrading a camps, or factional reforms. Though, you’re more active on here than me so you might know better than I do.

If it was intended to be difficult to upgrade large towns to cities, you could do something simple like making a structure that adds the +0.5% popcap boost necessary to reach 6k, and represents urban development or migration or something. Maybe it’s expensive and/or takes like 12 turns to build. Maybe there’s another resource like the colonists mechanic tied to it. Maybe it requires other buildings to be built as well. This way it’s a linear process that represents the role play elements of upgrading to cities.

Edit: I don’t want to make it sound like I’m on the mod. It just seemed like this was a bug because I haven’t seen anything explicit indicating that it’s a feature, and bypassing it encourages gamey behavior.

Compare to the colony and camp systems which I think were wonderfully fleshed out and well represented in-game. And yes, you can accelerate the process of camp conversations and colonization by having a governor with high influence, which allows you to min max by shuffling around your faction leader/heir/potential heirs to camps and uncolonized settlements. But you’re not reliant on gamey behavior to do this. The primary route of camp-conversion/colonization is still through flavorful building chains.

[Krampus]

I agree, getting to city level should not be easy, as it opens up a lot of new building options (like grain doles). What I would change is to actually increase the pop limit for large and huge cities. Currently your settlements won't spend much time at city level, because all the available buildings boost population massively, even if you have a crappy governor. I'd go with a pop limit of 15-16k for large cities and somewhere around 30k for huge cities.

Or just gets rid of food imports. Or reduce the population growth bonus of food imports.

[Neyak]

One slightly odd feature right now is that it is easier to bring settlements in pastoral regions to city size because of the parallel existence of agriculture and herds. That feels a bit funky.

And regarding population growth in short amounts of time, some of the places founded by Alexander and the Successors grew from nothing to large cities within a few years/decades, such as obviously Alexandria (by Egypt, obviously), Antiocheia, Seleukeia, and various others from Thrace to India. In those cases, Greek settlers helped to build population, which raises the question ... should colonies provide some population growth (e.g. +0.5% while population < 6000 or so -- though I'm not sure if that sort of mechanic is possible to implement easily)?

I think the fundamental limitation to finding the right balance is that there are no intermediate step sizes, like 0.25%. Maybe this could be simulated with a mechanic that adds population growth bonuses/maluses based on what season it is (e.g. +0.5% every summer, but not otherwise)? I suspect that would need to be implemented via the script though.

[Gigantus]

Or just gets rid of food imports. Or reduce the population growth bonus of food imports.

Food imports is created by the grain trading resource in the trading partner\settlement's region - that would be an option but I am guessing there is a reason why certain regions do have that resource.

There's also another easy way: lift the thresholds of the settlement upgrades.

Yup, that's what I meant with 'settlement level upgrade limits'

[Guils]

I'd like to see a political reform for the Arverni. Historically, after the defeat of their king Bituitos against Rome in 121 BC, the Arverni switched to an oligarchic government with annual magistracies (we know about some of them). So perhaps it could be done like the Romani election system. It would trigger after the death in battle of the faction leader, or several large defeats by him.

[Roma_Victrix]

This request has been ignored repeatedly, but could someone PLEASE take like the five or ten measly minutes it would take to fix the user interface for the campaign map, where the last unit cards on the right-hand side are partially hidden/obscured by the decorative pillars? At least for Western Greek factions. It's really annoying having half of a unit card shaved off or hidden from view whenever you have a tenth or twentieth unit in a stack and you're trying to view the units in your army. I know it's a minor thing, but it's also something that should be fairly easy to fix, right?

[Titus66]

EB 2 is a great mod and all, but some of the scripted rebellions are down right infuriating: I've been playing as Rome (750 turns or so) and have had nonsensical rebellions, such as Iberian rebellions in Syria, Ptolemaic rebellions in west-Germania, Carthaginian rebellions in Anatolia, Epirote rebellions in Spain, and much more, too many to mention. These rebellions are unhistorical and completely immersion breaking. And more often than not these are unavoidable. I really do hope these broken scripts will be fixed in the future ....

[Lusitanio]

EB 2 is a great mod and all, but some of the scripted rebellions are down right infuriating: I've been playing as Rome (750 turns or so) and have had nonsensical rebellions, such as Iberian rebellions in Syria, Ptolemaic rebellions in west-Germania, Carthaginian rebellions in Anatolia, Epirote rebellions in Spain, and much more, too many to mention. These rebellions are unhistorical and completely immersion breaking. And more often than not these are unavoidable. I really do hope these broken scripts will be fixed in the future ....

That's related with the reemerging script. It's something hardcoded, the script has been reduce by Quintus but there isn't much we can do.

[mAIOR]

Continuing the population request, I think this mod needs a scale factor both in campaign as well as in combat. Right now, Archers and slingers fire way too far and are a bit too effective imho. I like that I can make units break quite easily and then they can rejoin but a 1:5 scale would suit this mod quite well. That is each unit represents 5 irl. This would make full stacks around 20,000 troops strong which is quite fitting for most of the armies of the time. Another interesting scaling factor would be economy scaling in the strategic map so that we could have the same relative size of armies as the corresponding power had irl. Again, a 1:5 scale would mean that if a state could afford in total 100,000 troops between garrisons, field armies and reserves, we could field have 20,000 troops raised total keeping with the same ratio.

Also, removing experience gain would be a plus as I don't think experience bonuses should play a role at this scale. I can have a body of troops raised from turn 1 for 200 years. What does the experience even represent?

Maybe give troops starting XP based on tier (like Professional troops would get silver, elite professional would get gold, levy troops would have none and experienced levy troops get bronze) so that each body of men starts from the same point and the difference in effectiveness comes from equipment and experience.

Anyway, just my 2cts.