Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[QuintusSertorius]

A suggestion: removing the 2 regions (or 1) in scandinavia and add 2 regions/cities (or 1) in Greece - Boetia (thebes)/Euboa(Chalcis)/Achaia ? - to reflect the complexity of this regions at the time

We're not changing the map.

[Roma_Victrix]

I know you guys do your best to try and balance the game to make it fair and challenging and everything, but EBII has to be more than that. It has to be authentic to the ancient world. For this reason I am rather disappointed in Egypt. It should be the breadbasket of any empire and the greatest source of revenue for any faction that holds it, and yet the Ptolemies in my campaign were a weak, wimpy power compared to the Seleucids, easily preyed upon by the Sabaeans. Now that I control Egypt as Rome, it's rather anti-climactic to see it generates no greater revenue than Italy and probably a bit less. That's completely ahistorical and just inexplicable considering what happened to the Roman treasury following Octavian's conquest of Cleopatra's Ptolemaic Egypt and transformation into an equestrian-led Imperial province. By the 1st century AD Egypt, with its gold mines and legendary profits from taxing the Indian Ocean trade, accounted for roughly 2/3 of the empire's entire revenues.

And no, that's not a joke, that's a fact.

[Lusitanio]

Uow :o, the amount of revenue that Roma got from the Egyptian provinces was just gigantic, really an enormous quantity. Well, I don't know very well how could the team improve Egypt, maybe increasing the revenues from the resources or adding more.

There was a modder who had a nice idea for his submod that increased the importance of Alexandria and grain. Basically, you needed to hold "granarie" cities in order to not get revolts and moral problems, I think we could do something similar to that, but instead add a public order or economic bonus for holding Alexandria.

This was his ideas:

Holding Rome is also holding a great responsibility. That is, you are responsible for feeding the citizens of Rome. In peace times, this is not much of a problem because with Sicily, Sardinia and Africa Province there are three ‘granaries’ right across the sea. Things become more complicated in civil wars because Roman governors do not hold back from starving Rome herself in order to bring a rival into trouble. In order to secure Rome’s supply you have to control five corn exporting cities. The corn exporting cities are:

Syracusae
Lilybaeum
Caralis
Utica/Carthago
Leptis
Chersonesos
Crimean Neapolis
Pantikápaion
Hermonassa
Alexandria (The Alex counts for four corn exporting cities)

When you do not hold five of them you still have the option to buy corn from them. Each ‘load’ of corn costs you 1,000; again Alexandria counts for four cities, means you can buy up to four ‘loads’ from there. Buying corn only is possible when you have sufficient funds and as long as the respective city not is held by a hostile faction.
Supply is checked for every January. When he holder of Rome ensured sufficient supply everything is fine and his faction gets 5 moral points. In case the holder failed to provide full supply the City might see a ‘Corn Rebellion’. The chance of such rebellion is happening is depending on the amount of grain missing (from 16% to 84%). When a Corn Rebellion happened the faction that is holding Rome loses 18 points moral and unrest in Rome will seriously rise.

The link to his mod: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...(Based-on-DBM)

[Lusitanio]

Nice post Roma_Victrix! It's impressive to see how much revenue Roma got from the Egyptian provinces. I think that the best ways to represent that on game could be to either increase the resources in the Egyptian provinces or make it so that when you hold Alexandria you get a general economic bonus for your Faction.

There was a mod that did something interesting with Alexandria, basically, you had to hold "granarie" cities and hold get moral bonus for that and possible revolts if you hadn't enough grain to sustain your people. This is the mod idea:

olding Rome is also holding a great responsibility. That is, you are responsible for feeding the citizens of Rome. In peace times, this is not much of a problem because with Sicily, Sardinia and Africa Province there are three ‘granaries’ right across the sea. Things become more complicated in civil wars because Roman governors do not hold back from starving Rome herself in order to bring a rival into trouble. In order to secure Rome’s supply you have to control five corn exporting cities. The corn exporting cities are:

Syracusae
Lilybaeum
Caralis
Utica/Carthago
Leptis
Chersonesos
Crimean Neapolis
Pantikápaion
Hermonassa
Alexandria (The Alex counts for four corn exporting cities)

When you do not hold five of them you still have the option to buy corn from them. Each ‘load’ of corn costs you 1,000; again Alexandria counts for four cities, means you can buy up to four ‘loads’ from there. Buying corn only is possible when you have sufficient funds and as long as the respective city not is held by a hostile faction.
Supply is checked for every January. When he holder of Rome ensured sufficient supply everything is fine and his faction gets 5 moral points. In case the holder failed to provide full supply the City might see a ‘Corn Rebellion’. The chance of such rebellion is happening is depending on the amount of grain missing (from 16% to 84%). When a Corn Rebellion happened the faction that is holding Rome loses 18 points moral and unrest in Rome will seriously rise.

The mod is called

Imperium Romanum
The Roman Civil War Mod
(based on DBM)

[Lusitanio]

Nice post Roma_Victrix! It's impressive to see how much revenue Roma got from the Egyptian provinces. I think that the best ways to represent that on game could be to either increase the resources in the Egyptian provinces or make it so that when you hold Alexandria you get a general economic bonus for your Faction.

There was a mod that did something interesting with Alexandria, basically, you had to hold "granarie" cities and hold get moral bonus for that and possible revolts if you hadn't enough grain to sustain your people. This is the mod idea:

olding Rome is also holding a great responsibility. That is, you are responsible for feeding the citizens of Rome. In peace times, this is not much of a problem because with Sicily, Sardinia and Africa Province there are three ‘granaries’ right across the sea. Things become more complicated in civil wars because Roman governors do not hold back from starving Rome herself in order to bring a rival into trouble. In order to secure Rome’s supply you have to control five corn exporting cities. The corn exporting cities are:

Syracusae
Lilybaeum
Caralis
Utica/Carthago
Leptis
Chersonesos
Crimean Neapolis
Pantikápaion
Hermonassa
Alexandria (The Alex counts for four corn exporting cities)

When you do not hold five of them you still have the option to buy corn from them. Each ‘load’ of corn costs you 1,000; again Alexandria counts for four cities, means you can buy up to four ‘loads’ from there. Buying corn only is possible when you have sufficient funds and as long as the respective city not is held by a hostile faction.
Supply is checked for every January. When he holder of Rome ensured sufficient supply everything is fine and his faction gets 5 moral points. In case the holder failed to provide full supply the City might see a ‘Corn Rebellion’. The chance of such rebellion is happening is depending on the amount of grain missing (from 16% to 84%). When a Corn Rebellion happened the faction that is holding Rome loses 18 points moral and unrest in Rome will seriously rise.

The mod is called

Imperium Romanum
The Roman Civil War Mod
(based on DBM)

[QuintusSertorius]

I know you guys do your best to try and balance the game to make it fair and challenging and everything, but EBII has to be more than that. It has to be authentic to the ancient world. For this reason I am rather disappointed in Egypt. It should be the breadbasket of any empire and the greatest source of revenue for any faction that holds it, and yet the Ptolemies in my campaign were a weak, wimpy power compared to the Seleucids, easily preyed upon by the Sabaeans. Now that I control Egypt as Rome, it's rather anti-climactic to see it generates no greater revenue than Italy and probably a bit less. That's completely ahistorical and just inexplicable considering what happened to the Roman treasury following Octavian's conquest of Cleopatra's Ptolemaic Egypt and transformation into an equestrian-led Imperial province. By the 1st century AD Egypt, with its gold mines and legendary profits from taxing the Indian Ocean trade, accounted for roughly 2/3 of the empire's entire revenues.

And no, that's not a joke, that's a fact.

We are discussing Egypt's wealth. The "challenge" for them should be the availability of Hellenistic settler-soldiers, not money.

[QuintusSertorius]

I know you guys do your best to try and balance the game to make it fair and challenging and everything, but EBII has to be more than that. It has to be authentic to the ancient world. For this reason I am rather disappointed in Egypt. It should be the breadbasket of any empire and the greatest source of revenue for any faction that holds it, and yet the Ptolemies in my campaign were a weak, wimpy power compared to the Seleucids, easily preyed upon by the Sabaeans. Now that I control Egypt as Rome, it's rather anti-climactic to see it generates no greater revenue than Italy and probably a bit less. That's completely ahistorical and just inexplicable considering what happened to the Roman treasury following Octavian's conquest of Cleopatra's Ptolemaic Egypt and transformation into an equestrian-led Imperial province. By the 1st century AD Egypt, with its gold mines and legendary profits from taxing the Indian Ocean trade, accounted for roughly 2/3 of the empire's entire revenues.

And no, that's not a joke, that's a fact.

We are discussing Egypt's wealth. The "challenge" for them should be the availability of Hellenistic settler-soldiers, not money.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Yes, yes, yes!
The challenges should differ between the factions!
In this sense I'm looking forward to the opinion of the EBII teams on the supply costs as developed by Lusitanio: as they may differ depending on the factions, it may put more strain on those more civilized where they're realistic, while less strain on the steppe, desert or Celtic and German.

[Kilo11]

I am not familiar with the mod Lusitanio mentioned, and so I would not speculate about how well or easily it might be able to be incorporated into the immensity of changes that EBII has made to everything. But to Roma_Victrix's original point about the wealth of Egypt, in particular the wealth garnered from agriculture and trade, I imagine that idea could be easily built in using the hidden resources, right? I mean, I just looked in the descr_regions file, and if I read the bits there correctly (which, I admit, is a big "if", given how cryptic that file looks), it seems that territories in "Egypt" proper have as a hidden resource "egypt". My thought would be to just add a few simple lines to the agriculture or trade building tree buildings, giving the following capabilities and requirements:

trade_base_income_bonus bonus # requires hidden_resource egypt

and

farming_level bonus # requires hidden_resource egypt

Does the team have any thoughts on doing something like that? I guess that simple method could be used to create some more variety for a lot of regions, in terms of the law/morale/happiness/income boosts of various buildings depending on where they're located.

[James the Red]

Is there any way to have two different types of general bodyguards? I don't know, I feel like there should be a difference between the bodyguards of some guy in charge of a regular city somewhere and the bodyguard of the king and the princes, or a consul of Rome and some guy leading some roman horsemen.

Is there no way of swapping the bodyguard unit of a general if they meet certain requirements?

[QuintusSertorius]

Is there any way to have two different types of general bodyguards? I don't know, I feel like there should be a difference between the bodyguards of some guy in charge of a regular city somewhere and the bodyguard of the king and the princes, or a consul of Rome and some guy leading some roman horsemen.

Is there no way of swapping the bodyguard unit of a general if they meet certain requirements?

Not possible, I'm afraid. The game picks the first unit available for that faction in the EDU.

Sending units off-map to swap their bodyguard requires names or labels, which aren't known after the starting characters.

[James the Red]

That's a shame. I kinda would have preferred it if Generals had the less opulent bodyguard, and the better bodyguards ones were for the human player instead a recruitable unit. Like for the Roma player, Roman generals had regular Equites as bodyguards (no extra hit points except with traits) but if you wanted a consular bodyguard unit you had to train it and keep it with your important generals yourself.

[QuintusSertorius]

That's a shame. I kinda would have preferred it if Generals had the less opulent bodyguard, and the better bodyguards ones were for the human player instead a recruitable unit. Like for the Roma player, Roman generals had regular Equites as bodyguards (no extra hit points except with traits) but if you wanted a consular bodyguard unit you had to train it and keep it with your important generals yourself.

We would have loved to do something like this, where only the FL and FH get the "royal" bodyguard, and everyone else gets something more pedestrian, but not possible.

[QuintusSertorius]

That's a shame. I kinda would have preferred it if Generals had the less opulent bodyguard, and the better bodyguards ones were for the human player instead a recruitable unit. Like for the Roma player, Roman generals had regular Equites as bodyguards (no extra hit points except with traits) but if you wanted a consular bodyguard unit you had to train it and keep it with your important generals yourself.

We would have loved to do something like this, where only the FL and FH get the "royal" bodyguard, and everyone else gets something more pedestrian, but not possible.

[James the Red]

No, I meant like even the faction leaders has a regular bodyguard. The fancy one is just an elite unit.

[Kilo11]

QS, do you have any thoughts on my suggestion above, that I made with regards to Roma_Victrix's point about Egypt's wealth? I was just wondering how the team would feel about such a change, or if my suggestion even makes sense/is implementable (I am familiar with the files, and making small changes, but I am definitely nowhere near your guys' level of competence).

[QuintusSertorius]

QS, do you have any thoughts on my suggestion above, that I made with regards to Roma_Victrix's point about Egypt's wealth? I was just wondering how the team would feel about such a change, or if my suggestion even makes sense/is implementable (I am familiar with the files, and making small changes, but I am definitely nowhere near your guys' level of competence).

Aside from agreeing we need to do something, we haven't gotten on to how yet.

[QuintusSertorius]

QS, do you have any thoughts on my suggestion above, that I made with regards to Roma_Victrix's point about Egypt's wealth? I was just wondering how the team would feel about such a change, or if my suggestion even makes sense/is implementable (I am familiar with the files, and making small changes, but I am definitely nowhere near your guys' level of competence).

Aside from agreeing we need to do something, we haven't gotten on to how yet.

[Kilo11]

Aside from agreeing we need to do something, we haven't gotten on to how yet.

Ah, no worries. And thanks for the info. I hope my suggestion maybe proves of some use for the team, for thinking about how to make some changes.

[Slaytaninc]

I'd like to see hard numbers on that. I could see Egypt accounting for that high a proportion of surplus going into central imperial coffers, but I have a very hard time accepting that it accounted for 2/3rds of all provincial revenues.