Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[Kull]

Dear EB II Team, thanks a lot for your brilliant mod! I hadn't had so much fun with Medieval II Kingdoms battles for a very long time!

My suggestions...

1) make siege engines available for barbarian factions - I know historically...but isn't it all about writing history new?!? There could be a building for stolen/conquered siege equipment with very long recruitment times for barbarian factions

2) give the player the option before starting a campaign wether he wants to play with full upkeep and recruitment costs or with reduced upkeep and recruitment costs (-50%) - this would make the mod more popular even to unexperienced, lazy or impatient players...the first thing I do whenever there is a new EB I or EB II release is to change the whole export_descr_unit.text to half upkeep and recruitment costs to have even more fun playing EB! I started a Sweboz EBII2.3 campaign for several times on all difficulty levels with full unit costs and made the experience that now with reduced upkeep and recruitment costs (-50%) my current Sweboz campaign on VH/M is ideal for me...I better say...exeptionally awesome!!!

We won't be doing either of those things, but there's certainly no objection if you were to create a sub-mod which does. Just create a thread in the "EB Unofficial Modding Projects" forum, explain what your submod does (and why you think others should use it), indicate which version of EB2 it applies to, and post a download link and instructions.

[The Great Khan of Rome]

More units. Like say the gymnetes, (naked skirmishers) grosphomachoi, (skirmishers with axes, likely) and the lithoboloi (men without slings that throw stones).

[nvm]

Can you make it so client rulers do not get bored? It appears agent_type = family also includes generals that aren't family members for the purposes of this trigger. And it's pretty annoying to have to move client rulers for any purpose other than attacking stacks in their own province when the description says they are supposed to stay within the city. Just doesn't feel appropriate for them.

[QuintusSertorius]

More units. Like say the gymnetes, (naked skirmishers) grosphomachoi, (skirmishers with axes, likely) and the lithoboloi (men without slings that throw stones).

There are no more Greek units planned. The last one won't work in the engine anyway, anything with a range of lower than about 50m doesn't work with skirmish mode.

Can you make it so client rulers do not get bored? It appears agent_type = family also includes generals that aren't family members for the purposes of this trigger. And it's pretty annoying to have to move client rulers for any purpose other than attacking stacks in their own province when the description says they are supposed to stay within the city. Just doesn't feel appropriate for them.

I'll raise it and see what the team thinks.

[Beezertheturnip]

I have no idea how plausible this is, but just an offhand thought: As the game stands, while tactical combat is much slower paced than regular RTW and M2TW combat, you still tend to get the same "routing infantry gets completely wiped out by pursuing cavalry" If anything, the advantage at the end of the day of the battel winner is even more pronounced; without the chase and capture, it's hard to actually kill enemies what with how high the defense relative to offense is.

While I don't have much experience with the mod, this seems to make it hard to have wars last as long as they did. 2-3 battles lost will usually crush the armies of a faction, and they can't recover quickly, especially with how expensive units are, and then all their cities get gobbled up in a few years tops. I was thinking that instead of making units, relative to the core game's baseline very expensive but not much in the way of upkeep, you could go the other way around. Cheap units with very high upkeeps being the norm. This way, it's easy to recover from battles lost until you tap out your manpower pools, and you'd actually have an incentive to disband your armies en masse in between outbreaks of peace and re-raise them during wartime.

[Kravixon01]

I have no idea how plausible this is, but just an offhand thought: As the game stands, while tactical combat is much slower paced than regular RTW and M2TW combat, you still tend to get the same "routing infantry gets completely wiped out by pursuing cavalry" If anything, the advantage at the end of the day of the battel winner is even more pronounced; without the chase and capture, it's hard to actually kill enemies what with how high the defense relative to offense is.

While I don't have much experience with the mod, this seems to make it hard to have wars last as long as they did. 2-3 battles lost will usually crush the armies of a faction, and they can't recover quickly, especially with how expensive units are, and then all their cities get gobbled up in a few years tops. I was thinking that instead of making units, relative to the core game's baseline very expensive but not much in the way of upkeep, you could go the other way around. Cheap units with very high upkeeps being the norm. This way, it's easy to recover from battles lost until you tap out your manpower pools, and you'd actually have an incentive to disband your armies en masse in between outbreaks of peace and re-raise them during wartime.

Historically, most of the killing took place during the rout. EBII is at least accurate in that regard. The issue is like you said the ability to replenish armies. I like your idea - after all, citizen farmer/soldiers and local levies wouldn't constantly be under arms. Whether the AI can cope with the system would be a different story.

[James the Red]

How about the Egyptian Blue Lotus flower as an ancillary? It appears all over Egyptian art and I'm wondering what significance that plant may have played to Egyptian culture. From what I understand, it's a drug.

[QuintusSertorius]

The AI never disbands any unit. It certainly doesn't understand the notion of disbanding a unit so they can re-recruit it a few turns later.

So high upkeep would be a recipe for permanent AI debt (relieved by script, but they'd never build any surpluses). It might also necessitate a complete reworking of the underlying economic system, which has been designed with the high recruitment-low upkeep model in mind.

[Beezertheturnip]

Ah well. Nevermind then.

[e22big]

Hi, this is my first post in this topic

I don't know if somebody already made this suggestion but is it possible to add a late campaign scenario in future update of this mod? I have played this mod in both EBI and II and I noticed one thing that every single time in both of the game, the Seleucid seem to be dominating the entire region with neither Saka or Pahlava be able to pose any serious threat to them. This in turn made the entire campaign turn out pretty similar (if you didn't play as the Pahlava or Saka yourself), taking too long and they became permanent grey field of death sending stack after stack until you rush them out to extinction.

While I don't mind having strong Seleucid that much, having repetitive gameplay experience is quite bothering to me. So I was thinking that EB should have its own version of a "late campaign" map like in MTW2, may be around the time of Antiorchus III with the majority of the Seleucid territories being already conquered and you will have to play the catch up game to win all those territories back. Factions would start at a more set up position with the majority of Rebel settlement being conquered with first reform already in place.

This should make player who just want to role play as Late Roman Republic able to do so with much less tedious task of having to wait 500++ turns to get the Marian Reform ( although they may still have to wait 200 - 300 turns or so while others are about to get their second reform).

[QuintusSertorius]

Hi, this is my first post in this topic

I don't know if somebody already made this suggestion but is it possible to add a late campaign scenario in future update of this mod? I have played this mod in both EBI and II and I noticed one thing that every single time in both of the game, the Seleucid seem to be dominating the entire region with neither Saka or Pahlava be able to pose any serious threat to them. This in turn made the entire campaign turn out pretty similar (if you didn't play as the Pahlava or Saka yourself), taking too long and they became permanent grey field of death sending stack after stack until you rush them out to extinction.

While I don't mind having strong Seleucid that much, having repetitive gameplay experience is quite bothering to me. So I was thinking that EB should have its own version of a "late campaign" map like in MTW2, may be around the time of Antiorchus III with the majority of the Seleucid territories being already conquered and you will have to play the catch up game to win all those territories back. Factions would start at a more set up position with the majority of Rebel settlement being conquered with first reform already in place.

This should make player who just want to role play as Late Roman Republic able to do so with much less tedious task of having to wait 500++ turns to get the Marian Reform ( although they may still have to wait 200 - 300 turns or so while others are about to get their second reform).

That is a major undertaking. It's not as simple as just editing the descr_strat to change who holds what and changing the start date. It means re-doing a number of factions (Epeiros wouldn't exist in any "late" version just for starters), changing most of the reform and early event scripts, and if we're being thorough it would also mean re-writing a lot of text (province descriptions, etc). Possibly reworking the map as well, places which were relevant in 272BC might not be so in 133BC or 31BC.

So while it's a perfectly valid topic for a submod if people want to have a go, we've got our hands full with the main mod.

[e22big]

That is a major undertaking. It's not as simple as just editing the descr_strat to change who holds what and changing the start date. It means re-doing a number of factions (Epeiros wouldn't exist in any "late" version just for starters), changing most of the reform and early event scripts, and if we're being thorough it would also mean re-writing a lot of text (province descriptions, etc). Possibly reworking the map as well, places which were relevant in 272BC might not be so in 133BC or 31BC.

So while it's a perfectly valid topic for a submod if people want to have a go, we've got our hands full with the main mod.

I can see your point. I was thinking about making some of the mini version of that myself (just shorten the reform for each faction by massive amount) after seeing the whole script, that alone would already be a huge undertaking (not even count tasting and such)

Say if I am willing to spend sometime to make this as a submod do you have any suggestion for where to take a look for basic assistance?

[QuintusSertorius]

I can see your point. I was thinking about making some of the mini version of that myself (just shorten the reform for each faction by massive amount) after seeing the whole script, that alone would already be a huge undertaking (not even count tasting and such)

Say if I am willing to spend sometime to make this as a submod do you have any suggestion for where to take a look for basic assistance?

I'd say start with the descr_strat, and look up the tutorial in the Mod Workshop that covers it's intricacies. Most of your initial work is either going to be in that file, or else result from changes you make there impacting other files or sending you off to update other elements.

That covers everything at the start of the game - start date, factions playable, who owns what, starting characters and strengths, faction relations. You could make a reasonable "quick and dirty" submod just by editing that and the campaign_script (turning on the triggers for date-based events which have already happened, deleting a lot of the now-irrelevant reform scripts).

[nvm]

I would appreciate not having to wait so much for Sweboz and Roman reforms myself if anything can be done about this, however I have to add that Seleucids turning into grey death is not a guarantee in EB2, in fact in two of my games as Areuakoi and Makedon the opposite hads happened instead.with their empire partitioned between their neighbours and being a shadow of it's former self. So that doesn't happen all the time.

[e22big]

I would appreciate not having to wait so much for Sweboz and Roman reforms myself if anything can be done about this, however I have to add that Seleucids turning into grey death is not a guarantee in EB2, in fact in two of my games as Areuakoi and Makedon the opposite hads happened instead.with their empire partitioned between their neighbours and being a shadow of it's former self. So that doesn't happen all the time.

I guess so, I actually heard some people who got that as well although I would appreciate not having to RNG every time in order to see how the campaign play out differently. And also make more use of the post reform unit without not having to wait until the game's literally finished.

[Rad]

Can I get anyone to speak to me about the Ligurian units? I noticed that something is off with some of their shield models.

[BHL 20]

Can you please make siege battles shorter? 2 hours for a battle that isn't particularly tactical but rather just an grind between two masses of men, is really boring.

[QuintusSertorius]

Can you please make siege battles shorter? 2 hours for a battle that isn't particularly tactical but rather just an grind between two masses of men, is really boring.

Use the accelerate time option.

There's nothing we can do about it, the structure of battles doesn't give us the ability to vary sieges and field battles, and the latter are more important. Pathfinding is intrinsically broken in sieges, and the "town square" business is both hardcoded and thoroughly broken, too.

Whatever parameters we set for field battles will also apply, unaugmented, in sieges. There are no levers we can adjust to make sieges take less time.

[Tiggo]

Hello there EB-Team

I'm a long time fan, but mostly just lurking around and not actively posting here. Thank you very much for this grat Mod!
I'm currently playing with the Romani and I'm wonderin if it might be possible to represent the always present struggle between the influencial political figures in Rome. For example there are many examples of politicians and generals accused of misconduct after their terms of office ended. Might it be possible to randomly trigger such events like "underwent persecution", "punished for misconduct", "banished from Rome", "succesfully defended himself from persecution", etc. for fromer consuls/provincial governors who return to rome?
I think this would add even more depth to the roman system. Of course not everyone should get these traits.But maybe a higer risk for those with more dubious character traits?

Kind regard

[jdofo]

Hello there EB-Team

I'm a long time fan, but mostly just lurking around and not actively posting here. Thank you very much for this grat Mod!
I'm currently playing with the Romani and I'm wonderin if it might be possible to represent the always present struggle between the influencial political figures in Rome. For example there are many examples of politicians and generals accused of misconduct after their terms of office ended. Might it be possible to randomly trigger such events like "underwent persecution", "punished for misconduct", "banished from Rome", "succesfully defended himself from persecution", etc. for fromer consuls/provincial governors who return to rome?
I think this would add even more depth to the roman system. Of course not everyone should get these traits.But maybe a higer risk for those with more dubious character traits?

Kind regard

Great idea! Currently reading roman history books and it was a constant threatening weapon against other factions within the roman senate This could actually bring more dynamism to FM development, so that a great character gets his dignitas ruined by defamation, as it stills happen nowadays.