Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[QuintusSertorius]

It's not a value-neutral change; the CAI tends to swarm around watchtowers. Which might divert them from attacking settlements (which was the reason we removed minor forts).

[CanOmer]

My all attempts to play EBII 2.3 faded away due to CTDs. Before 2.3 I could play EBII. My suggestion is to improve EBII stability.

[QuintusSertorius]

My all attempts to play EBII 2.3 faded away due to CTDs. Before 2.3 I could play EBII. My suggestion is to improve EBII stability.

That's weird, because 2.3 is much more stable than previous iterations on many other people's machines. I've never seen people get 700-800 turn games in previous iterations, yet they have with 2.3.

[gannibalbarka216]

Maybe you asked this question repeatedly. Do you plan to release the EB to the base Rome 2 or Attila?

[QuintusSertorius]

Maybe you asked this question repeatedly. Do you plan to release the EB to the base Rome 2 or Attila?

No.

Those are completely different engines requiring a complete re-write of almost everything we've done. Rome 2 is also much less mod-able than M2TW.

[gannibalbarka216]

ReallyBadAI Battle System v5.7 and G5 Settlement Tweaks compatible with EB 2.3?

[QuintusSertorius]

ReallyBadAI Battle System v5.7 and G5 Settlement Tweaks compatible with EB 2.3?

No. You'd have to rewrite them to adapt them to what we've done, you can't just paste them over.

[gannibalbarka216]

No. You'd have to rewrite them to adapt them to what we've done, you can't just paste them over.

Thanks for the good answer.

[wermez]

What do you think about scripted Jewish rebellion?

[QuintusSertorius]

What do you think about scripted Jewish rebellion?

Ioudaia is already part of the Troublesome Regions script.

[GenosseGeneral]

That's weird, because 2.3 is much more stable than previous iterations on many other people's machines. I've never seen people get 700-800 turn games in previous iterations, yet they have with 2.3.

I can confirm, I started a Pergamon campaign a couple of weeks ago and so far I encountered 0 CTDs* and not a single memory leak. When playing a 2.2x campaign last year, I had those constantly after 1-2 hours play time.

* Excluding occasions here where it was my own fault, e.g. my laptop going into hibernation.

[Morrowgan]

Can you imagine a way to represent Meroe somehow within the Saba faction? Or can you give me any ideas how Sabean rule of Africa would look like?

[Kilo11]

I hope this hasn't been suggested already, but one thing that would be awesome, but definitely a project to be taken slowly and introduced a bit at a time, would be to make some custom settlements for those places that have something significant or grandiose to be seen. I was thinking in the spirit of the awesome settlement maps from the Third Age mod, maybe make the core cities with historically attested layouts look the way historians say they looked, or at least include the particularities of that settlement. E.g. Carthage has that awesome port attached to the city, Alexandria has the Pharos connected to the mainland by that mole, etc.

The thing that is so loved in this mod is the just fantastic depth of history and how you feel like you've fallen into antiquity, and at least for me, whenever I have a battle in a place that I know, that I can imagine vividly in my head due to my knowledge of how it was then, it sort of always breaks the feeling for me because of those 4 squared walls. I know how big of a project that would be, but it would be amazing to see come through!

[crazy123]

How about deleting the shield bashing/pushing animation? I like what you guys did to the animations all ready and it definately looks much better than the vanilla animations. But the shield pushing/bashing animation from vanilla m2tw just looks so unrealistic and boring that it somehow sometimes kills the battle immersion. I know its possible because some mods like stainless steel or third age total war already did it. I would also be happy to do it myself but I already tried many times but failed unfortunatly so if someone tells me how to do this I will try again.
Another different suggestion: how about using material from the natus ob imperium mod? They realy put much time and effort in the mod which released alfa recently but got abondoned. Im sure some of their models/textures from the units and the buildings can be used somehow?

[QuintusSertorius]

Another different suggestion: how about using material from the natus ob imperium mod? They realy put much time and effort in the mod which released alfa recently but got abondoned. Im sure some of their models/textures from the units and the buildings can be used somehow?

We can't use any of their material, because we can't be sure of it's provenance. The team did make contact with them a little while back, but it was clear they didn't care about intellectual property or permissions for anything they used, including from R2TW. The EBII team isn't going to risk the mod by using unattributed and unauthorised content.

[Lusitanio]

I hope this hasn't been suggested already, but one thing that would be awesome, but definitely a project to be taken slowly and introduced a bit at a time, would be to make some custom settlements for those places that have something significant or grandiose to be seen. I was thinking in the spirit of the awesome settlement maps from the Third Age mod, maybe make the core cities with historically attested layouts look the way historians say they looked, or at least include the particularities of that settlement. E.g. Carthage has that awesome port attached to the city, Alexandria has the Pharos connected to the mainland by that mole, etc.

The thing that is so loved in this mod is the just fantastic depth of history and how you feel like you've fallen into antiquity, and at least for me, whenever I have a battle in a place that I know, that I can imagine vividly in my head due to my knowledge of how it was then, it sort of always breaks the feeling for me because of those 4 squared walls. I know how big of a project that would be, but it would be amazing to see come through!

I have been suggesting that for some time x) Custom cities would change EBII forever aha But I know it is a lot of work and the EBII team is already improving the cities.
Anyway, there is a lot to look at from the third age mod, especially the Divide and Conquer submod that I have been playing. The blood textures they have make the battles feel more real and bloody (of course), the armies keep the formations before engaging, contrary to EBII that rarely manages to keep the AI formation intact before engaging. And one last thing, they managed to add a garrison for both the player and AI when in sieges assault. Let me explain more, I think you have to build a particular building that provides the garrison and when you are assaulted on a siege you get something like two units that disappear after the battle. For Gondor appears a unit called Gondor defenders that are a reasonable unit, and this really brings more reality because the population would help to defend the city when attacked.
Btw: I love EBII. I just want to help make it better.

[Morrowgan]

There are more important things to be implemented than custom cities tbh.

[Genghis Skahn]

There's been quite a bit of debate regarding custom cities as well among the team. In order to use them, the Huge City level must be reserved solely for these custom models. So, at the cost of many many cities being able to become huge, you get one huge custom city. Personally, for that huge gameplay affecting reason, I'm against custom cities since they would look very pretty, but really not add much else IMO. I mean, it would be cool to fight in Carthage or Rome and all, but I'm not really sure if that's worth restricting every other city to large-city size so that could happen. They would also take a TON of work--but most importantly, I've played TATW and some of it's custom settlements...Some of the pathfinding in those settlements(eg. the dwarven halls) are quite buggy. I loved playing TATW, it's a great mod, don't get me wrong, but making custom settlements has a whole host of potential gameplay mechanics concerns. If the above problems didn't exist, I'd be all for custom settlements, but unfortunately I can't resign myself to supporting the idea so long as it means capping every "normal" city at large size for the sake of, at most, one custom city per faction.

Then, there's also the fact that at 272BC Carthage and Rome weren't as large or, rather didn't look as we imagine them to be in pop. culture, during that time period. For example, the famous docks of Carthage didn't exist in 272 BC AFAIK.

Finally, there are many many more settlements which need work over custom ones. For example, it would be nice if the Indians, Iberians and Getai received proper city models before any work on a custom settlement began, since those would have much further reaching gameplay+aesthetic effects than a single beautiful custom city. The Iberian settlements are fully concepted, and work even began on them at one point, but currently no one's working on them anymore--it would really improve the whole of Iberia to replace all the default "barbarian" settlements with proper Iberian ones.

[Lusitanio]

Firstly, I would like to thank you, Genghis Skahn, for taking time to reply to our suggestions!
About the Huge City level being reserved solely for these custom models, I think it would make sense because historically, not many cities would be able to develop to a level such as the city of Carthage, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Babylon, etc.
Besides that, it would add even more importance to those cities becase they would be even more important to keep and would be an enormous loose for both the player and the AI. Personally, the thing thamanaged to keep me interested in playing roma surrectum III was the unique cities and the feelin I had when I saw them on battle map and conquered them. It was amazing. And currently, it just feels weird to attack an historically important capital city that does not even have a port or is to small.

About the pathfinding problems, yes, I know some of them are buggy, in TATW DAC I barely had buggs with that but I experienced a lot with the Roma Surrectum II customed cities, but despite the pathfinding problems, its still better to have it than not having it.

It is true that cities like Carthage and Rome were not as large or did not have buildings like the docks of Carthage at the time period of 272 BC (some say it was built around 222BC) but that is only a minor concern, especially because its impossible to represent (and to know) the exact time of what existed in the particular time periods.

Finally, its a decision for the EBII team, I'm just giving my opinion about it and I really appreciate all your work. EBII is a masterpiece!

[Kilo11]

As Lusitanio said, very many thanks for the solid reply Genghis. I see your points, and I also see Lusitanio's points. I think all told, I'd prefer custom cities to the possibility of making a huge city in more places, but I didn't at all even think of the issues about buggy gameplay them. Obviously, you guys will do what you think best (it's your mod, not ours), and in this case I also think the decision really should be up to you all, as there are pros and cons for both sides, and ones which aren't easily comparable.

At the very least, if there is someone on the team with some spare time, it would be cool to have a couple custom cities for skirmish battles. Then there could be a model for Carthage/Rome/Alexandria/etc. at their heydey, and we could at least run our troops around in a custom battle, even if they aren't on the strat map.