Ancient Empires: Divide et Impera - Upd. 2/13/2016

[maxstill]

Hey guys

My opinion for the moment is i don't like this submod...

I regret:

I regret:

No fighting in formation !! I see no way to fight the Romans in disorder like that ... The Roman and other ancient units fought in formation. Why have it removed?
The camera too close to the battlefield.
The significantly worse graphics
The rooster of the ugliest units
Very slow moving units. Even when they charge

I confessed to be disappointed this time.

First of all graphics have nothing to do with the mod, yeah Rome II looks like crap, no mod can fix that.
Second, the camera has different settings you know, it's very easy to edit as well.
Also formations in RTW II , what game have you been playing, are you sure it's Rome, even I tried modding that crap, did not work, not at all.
Units are historically accurate, that means no flashy stuff, well at least not on the none elite units.
That being said I do wish for a little bit more fluff when it comes to the textures.
Ahh!!
Constructive criticism is hard.

[Orphydian]

wait you guys have changed the units?

[FlashHeart07]

Have any of you tried the graphic mods which is out there? GEM?

[Ygraine]

Have any of you tried the graphic mods which is out there? GEM?

GEM works fine with AE submod (why wouldn't it?).

[FlashHeart07]

GEM works fine with AE submod (why wouldn't it?).

Never said that it didnt work. People complaining that the graphics suck, are usually people who have no knowledge of graphical mods like GEM. I was merely informing people of its excistence

[ABH2]

The rooster of the ugliest units

I am curious on this one. What specifically are you referring to? Colors? There is an issue there that will be a quick fix for us.

I'm assuming you played DeI before.

[GatoVolador]

Speed of units is weird. Light units move normally, but medium and heavy seem to walk through water. I wasn't able to catch a unit of slingers with medium baktrian cav. On top of that they turned winded somewhere in between the chase...
Is this intended?

[Petellius]

Water maybe a problem I'll have to check but cav is intentionally slower unless charging. Also the speed of infantry hadn't actually been changed from DeI, just the charges. Both charges and speed will be increased. Morale changes will be looked at and casualties increased.

I've yet to get our battle mechanics to quite gel with DeI stats.

[ABH2]

It's a big task. DeI has a ton of units. Probably some 1800 that end up in the campaign, and then a ton of equipment given to those units, and battle entities and so on.

A lot of respect for KaM for the work he put into to balance that stuff. It's going to take us a little bit of time to get it right with our new mechanics.

[Dresden]

Battle balance took almost 6 months prior to 1.0 release and we are still working on it actively. It is a major headache with the unit count. KAM somewhat simplified it with custom weapon/shield/armor entries but its still a mammoth task.

[veverčák]

Hello Folks!

I have recently try to play Carthage campaign and notice some stuff.

a) After the leveling of my general I got some weird choices. I click on Skilled Tactician and basically every skill gets mixed up stats. For example the one giving the night battle option gives +3% construct cost. The other one for sieging +5 Public Order etc. Almost thing happen to Army Tradition. My Army get +3% for melee skill for assault ships.

b) Carthage get only 2 factions/clans to pick from. Magonid faction than get trait Corruption which is giving +6% tax rate. Is it bug or WAD?

c) The first technology take 7 turns to reserch. Again is it WAD or bug? And in the case of WAD are you thinking about possibility to change it back to 4 turns/standard DEI research rate?

Perhaps it is not important/factor but my Windows 8 got upgraded today, so it could perhaps mess some files? But then integrity check did not find any problems and this sub mod I have downloaded after the upgrade.

[Maetharin]

First of all, congrats on the Release!

Is this submod compatible with the faster battles submod? I'd like to try our how that would influence battles.

In combination with that I'd increase shield strength a little, this way it won't have that much of an impact in frontline combat!

What do you guys think of this idea?

Best regards

[SpardaSon21]

I've done a couple test games as Athens and the Aetolians, and neither of them have cultural dominance in their regions, and combined with the existing DeI recruitment this means they cannot recruit any of their core units. Is this going to be fixed at some point?

[Sheridan]

Well, there are few reasons why I myself will never go for small scale. Two major reasons are difficulty level and campaign progression.

With the frist one, game is unplayable on legendary as it forces you to play with VH battle difficulty, which means +7 to most of AI units stat. That makes levies rout your hypaspists. That is not fun ; P That plus most of people not realizing that higher battle difficulty = more AI stat bonuses and they spam threads about how unit x routed y this mod sucks etc Additionaly with higher scale you can play with Hard battles and have fun as AI units will present a bit bigger challange but not unbearable. The same goes for VH with larger scale, it is tough but manageable if it is someones cup of tea.

As for campaign progression, units get various stat bonuses from exp, army traits, general traits, tech, building and so on. I know that it might be realistic for some super hardened hastati with all shevrons possible to go toe to toe to some elite units or have comparable stats. But that does not work for gameplay as player has no need for upgrade. You basically go with some starting units up till the end of campaign because they can go to to toe with elite units that all musters. That with having some provines fully dedicated for OP units produced armies that were simply to strong for AI to counter as AI is unable to both present any tactics in battle and nurse its units to that kind of training and equpement. That aspect is even more improved for 1.1.

To my memory, there was a very prominent morale buff to the AI on higher difficulties. It kind of spoiled all and any balance on the lower scale. Luckily, this is not the case with Attila, where morale from difficulty levels can actually be determined in the table. As for other bonuses, I wonder how true that is. It certainly can't be melee damage, that would make itself very visible in this combat system. Melee attack and defence are plausible, if unlikely, and I'm confident this is not the case in Attila.

In the campaign, it's a matter of limiting effects to the actual campaign, and units as little as possible. We've been very careful to only buff units from a very small number of sources; army traditions, attributes, a very small number of traits and certain buildings. Even then, only a neglectible number of these will have that effect, the majority will concern the campaign in some way. By limiting the effectiveness of chevrons, as well as the experience required for new levels - done in conjunction with how the "discipline"/training level is assigned in the combat sheet - elite units won't lose any of their purpose.

[KAM 2150]

In Rome it is melee attack, melee def and morale, those for sure, otherwise levies with 14 attack would not win with 20 attack units with sligtly superior armour ;P It was tested by a bit of people.

[SpardaSon21]

After playing a bit and thinking through what you're trying to do by having culture represent your actual cultural control of the area, perhaps just tie it to all buildings to represent greater centralized control of the area via urbanization and central development?

EDIT: If that's done, then cultural assimilation can happen a lot faster, assuming you have undisputed control of the province. However, if there's competing regional power structures in place, then it should be much harder to exert your own control over the area.

[ABH2]

Adding in new effects for culture conversion wouldn't be an issue.

But the way the game works, it's not really about how many cultures are there competing. The reason its slower is I've set it far slower with campaign_variables. Basically, it's as slow as it can be. It would be very easy for someone to release a submod to speed up the rate. When I get all the bugs ironed out, I will throw in some submods like that for people to get some variety.

[SpardaSon21]

Adding in new effects for culture conversion wouldn't be an issue.

But the way the game works, it's not really about how many cultures are there competing. The reason its slower is I've set it far slower with campaign_variables. Basically, it's as slow as it can be. It would be very easy for someone to release a submod to speed up the rate. When I get all the bugs ironed out, I will throw in some submods like that for people to get some variety.

That's not entirely my point. The point I'm trying to make is your painfully slow cultural conversion combined with starting cultural differences in starting regions and the way AE uses the existing DeI cultural recruitment system means I'm 45 turns into a game as the Iceni, have total control over my starting province, and I'm still stuck using the local levy units, while my opponents in the area were able to recruit the core Britannic troops from turn 1.

[stevey1112]

Hey Guys, thanks for a Great mod. I just started a Rome Campaign and it seems very authentic, the Map with walls for Syracuse especially.
One thing that struck me was that you still have the Event messages about Carthage and Syracuse from DEI and they don't make sense
in the new Campaign. It is really good to have decent Armies at the start as well and I had a big clash with Carthage for Panormus that
lasted half an hour. It is a shame that nothing can be done about the AI attacking from Boats with skirmishers and cavalry minus their
horses but I know that probably can't be fixed. Really looking forward to continuing my Campaign.

[vpapako]

Hi guys, I redirected myself here from you TWAttila thread. I 've done some testing and the most notable things I found so far were: The Macedonians having bactrian units and units never routing, which you fixed superfast (Kudos once more), the tech tree not showing buildings that unlock with each research project, traits for generals being a little messed up, units sometimes routing for no apparent reason. Also, playing as Sparta in my second turn I got the mission achieved message, (completely controlling 2 provinces blah blah) just because I allied myself with Egypt.

Some things that are more preferential now. I noticed you use a lot the relations penalty as a faction trait, and major instead of minor. This becomes kind of a "everyone attack me trait", I don't think the CAI can use it properly and I'd rather you decreased the penalty. Also I'd rather you used all of the DEI models as they are and the new DEI generals. Also, if cultural conversion is going to be as slow as possible, (which is nice), perhaps you should lower a bit the public order penalties, or add cultural techs that give big public order bonuses.

And a bit of praise. The edicts you added are imho just amazing. They are more important gamewise now and much more interesting.

Once more, congrats on this release, cant wait for the future versions.