DEI feedback from a long term fan

[Garbad]

Hey guys,

I've played dozens of games in DEI using every faction (usually on Hard). First off, thanks for such an excellent mod. Second, I thought you might like some feedback from an experienced player. This is mainly from the perspective of Rome, the true master race.

1. It takes too long to get auxillia. I like playing with varied, historical armies with lots of auxillia. But after conquest and stabilizing an area, the construction times of buildings are just too long. 16+10+6+4 turns, by then I have long since moved on. I would like to see some skills in the construction or engineering lines reduce construction times on military buildings, so that you can get auxillia into production soon after you take an area.

2. Making armor apply to all areas was a good idea. I think the same should be true of ALL upgrades, such as training field --> better heavy infantry and so on. If these upgrades were faction wide, you could produce more troops in more places without having to forfeit critical stat boosts. If necessary, increase costs.

3. Africa/Iberia needs some love. Africa has nothing but worthless troops. Specifically I'd like to see them have better horse skirmishers (superior to tarantine), and perhaps some elite light infantry similar to the media peltasts in thrace, but with more focus on melee. Iberia just generally needs improvements on their medium infantry, perhaps just marching speed to make them better at flanking attacks.

4. IMO, increase the upkeep cost of elite units and lower it for cheap units even more. Elite legionaries are flat out superior to any other choice. In order to incentivize the use of other troops, make it so a legion might cost 500 a turn to maintain but a local, medium quality spear unit might be only 150 and a levy spear unit is only 25. With faction limits on the number of armies, stack spam shouldn't be a concern so why not? Something needs to be done to prevent using only top troops endgame. This would encourage me to use some of the excellently modeled local units that I otherwise pass on because my legions are just better.

5. Navy units need to be much more powerful. The feared athenian marines, for example, can't even beat a garrison. This needs a buff, ideally to unit numbers. I don't see why they should be smaller unit sizes than land units. I think they should be more mobile, perhaps more lightly armored, and vastly more expensive...but not necessarily worse or smaller than land units.

6. Agent spam can be really annoying, especially when the AI repeatedly spams agents at a town without a war declaration.

7. Better AI, if possible. Both in battle map and campaign, although I know there is only so much you can do.

8. Early game is hard primarily because you can't afford to get enough armies. Once you can field 3+ armies, its pretty much over. I'd like to see more endgame challenge (perhaps more upkeep and unit caps, combined with a reason not to have elite only armies) and less early game zerging.

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Anything else would be great. Thanks again for an excellent mod. I really appreciate your work.

[Dresden]

1. Since we moved auxilia to different building tiers, it may be a good idea to change their barracks build times. Not a bad idea at all.
2. There are no training fields anymore in 1.1, those bonuses got moved to basic barracks. But, since they would stack it would be a problem.
3. If you mean AOR troops, they have some decent ones in various locations. If you mean their faction troops, they have some specialties that others don't (like guerilla deployment). It may be true some of the African factions are not up to speed, but they are about where they were historically with their units I would think.
4. In 1.1, we have done just that. Levies are a lot less upkeep and there are even techs that lower it. Elites have a larger upkeep. Also, levies are now more viable in battles in the new battle system. They don't immediately route. In fact, there are quite a few threads about the difficulty of keeping full elite armies now, you have to diversify.
5. I am going to assume at this point that you haven't been playing 1.1? Navies have received a large buff, and historical naval factions are quite nasty with their true naval units.
6. Agents are already lowered in terms of cap and budget for the AI. We have also further limited their action options in 1.1. There is only so much we can do without removing them.
7. This was a focus also of 1.1. So I have to again assume you aren't playing our latest release. If you are, this report goes against most of our test reports over the past 4 months.
8. Corruption (empire maintenance) is one of the only mechanisms to do this. Also, imperium level penalties. We have added to those penalties in 1.1. But, like in any Total war game, if a player gets established and rolling, eventually the late game is going to be much less of a challenge than the early game. That is, sadly, just part of it. We could increase Corruption to crippling levels but this brings its own problems.


Thanks for the specific feedback and we do always try to take these things into account. I wanted to answer each point because we do appreciate someone leaving targetted feedback. I can only hope that you are mostly referring to pre-1.1 playthroughs, because a lot of the issues you raised were specifically addressed by a lot of work and testing in 1.1.

[Garbad]

Thanks for the response. I hadn't noticed 1.1; I was still on the older version. I suppose that voids most of my post.

I'll give it a few playthroughs and get back to you.

[Dresden]

Great, and yes please do leave feedback! Thanks again.

[rjacko10]

I just want to say naval troops are tough folk. The archers smash my garrison units to bits in melee. Quite terrifying.

[Gilad]

Bit off-topic - did/do you by chance play WoT?

[Garbad]

Bit off-topic - did/do you by chance play WoT?

I did. I am the Garbad, hater of arty (did you know that the Latin word for arty is tormentum, aka, torment? So fitting).

[Gilad]

I did. I am the Garbad, hater of arty (did you know that the Latin word for arty is tormentum, aka, torment? So fitting).

Awesome No idea you also enjoyed this game/mod. I was a pretty big fan of yours, personally quit a couple of months ago. HeroGilad / Captain_Benchwarmer / Mahou_Is_Recruiting if you by chance remember my name at all

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I did. I am the Garbad, hater of arty (did you know that the Latin word for arty is tormentum, aka, torment? So fitting).

So it was you. I knew the name.

Hey, listen.

You suck and I hate you.

[Garbad]

So it was you. I knew the name.

Hey, listen.

You suck and I hate you.

Let them hate, as long as they fear.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Let them hate, as long as they fear.

Unicorns arent scary.


It is always interesting to recog nize people between communities though.

[papaya beast]

Back to the Africa question...

Could there be reforms instituted to make the African factions more viable, assuming that their militaries would have evolved if they are still around past a certain point? The Numidian legionaries are a good example of this, but it's just nice to dream of more units in that vein, maybe with Carthaginian and Roman-influenced units for the North African units and more Ptolemaic-inspired troops for reformed Aethiopian tribes.

[tum0]

Upkeep costs of elite troops are mainly good, but eagle cohort is too cheap. I think it should be doubled.

[Garbad]

Ok, now that I have played a campaign on the newest patch, here's my feedback:

1. The baggage system was not intuitive to me. Several brave legions starved to death before I figured out how to make it work. In particular, I feel like major city areas should support large armies longer than they do. Rome fed 1 million; surely my ~3k army can survive for more than a turn there. Still, overall its a good system, just frustrating to extend lines far enough.

2. Bag train units die way too easily in autosim in hard mode. Its practically impossible to keep them alive.

3. 1-2 unit caps are lame, imo. Unless its an eagle cohort, there should be at least 3 or more cap so things like bavarian horse or whatever are actual usable.

4. I would love the ability to check a box to automatically decline treaties with a faction. No pontus, I won't pay you 10,000 for a nonaggression pact. Again. -_-

5. Suggested new modifier: Marius' Mules -- Roman provinces extend supply +1 region further after marius' reform. You could recycle this for other faction's (Legacy of the 10,000 or so on).

6. Balance on elite vs. regular troop types is great. Well done.

7. Faster access to auxillia is also great. The only catch is captured barbarian buildings (such as horse speed +20%). I think they should give their bonus to all regions as well, or not at all.

8. Navy are still weak on land. 42 men vs a typical infantry unit of 70-105 just doesn't cut it. I think a better way to balance navy is full size and full strength (maybe slightly less armored) but very expensive. I think this would better reflect the power but high cost of naval supremacy.

Overall, good improvement to an already good mod.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

The naval troops are very potent. Using 4 quintquiremes, 4 quadremes, and 4 triremes worth of troops (and 2 Cretan archer trihemolia + 2 rhodian slinger trihemolia) I can take on a level 2 garrison, and non-Greek level 3 small town garrisons.

The naval troops are exceedingly powerful, hence the limited number.

[Garbad]

The naval troops are very potent. Using 4 quintquiremes, 4 quadremes, and 4 triremes worth of troops (and 2 Cretan archer trihemolia + 2 rhodian slinger trihemolia) I can take on a level 2 garrison, and non-Greek level 3 small town garrisons.

The naval troops are exceedingly powerful, hence the limited number.

With massive casualties, sure. It should be a lot stronger, so that a lighting strike by a navy stack should easily take any undefended town, an omnipresent threat to land lubbers. They should also be able to defeat a middle quality land army with a top notch fleet, imo, but have huge costs (500-1000 per unit upkeep).

I read somewhere recently that a trireme would have ~200 men on board but would cost somewhere on the order as much as 2,000 regular infantry to maintain. That's more what I would like to see -- devastating power, great cost.

[KAM 2150]

I read somewhere recently that a trireme would have ~200 men on board but would cost somewhere on the order as much as 2,000 regular infantry to maintain. That's more what I would like to see -- devastating power, great cost.

That must have been some uber triple-start destroyer class trireme, because they would not hold 200 marines on board. For example Greek ships at Salamis had from 10-20 marines, Romans increased those numbers to gain more naval superiority during boarding yet not on triemes but on their much larger btorhers and with only a bit more then 100 marines.

[papaya beast]

I think the 200 men figure must include rowers as well, which were sometimes provided with simple arms to add numbers to landing engagements but were certainly not reliable, high caliber troops. For instance, I find it *highly* unlikely that Cimon only used marines at the battle of the Eurymedon River to rout an entire Persian navy and army combined, given the number of Athenian marines per ship and his number of triremes.

[papaya beast]

I just really don't think it's realistic in the slightest. Now admittedly most of my knowledge of ancient naval warfare is Peloponnesian War-era. But the fact remains that navies weren't meant to be able to defeat field armies. The advantage of navies was that they could travel much faster than land armies (Spartan fears that an Athenian fleet would sail into Messenia to raise a helot revolt) and that they could control shipping lanes and supply lines (Athenian pressure to hold Byzantium, access to Black Sea granaries; idea behind the Syracusan expedition to cut off Corinthian supply lines to the West). There was never any proof that marines were significantly better soldiers at least in the Classical world. Their advantage was that they could fight on board ships; that's why they cost so much. In comparison to the traditional Greek hoplite (serving for free), crewmen and marines were paid handsomely, and officers even more so. Without Persian gold, Lysander could never have assembled the fleet needed to crush the remnants of Athenian naval power.

TLDR; marines are already over powered. If makes no sense that 40 Roman marines should be able to hold a flatout charge against 100 of Hannibal's cavalry bodyguard and take three losses. Ships have their place in warfare, and marines have their place in ships.

[KAM 2150]

Sometimes yes, they could fight too, but also if we would take this as an argument for giving naval units bigger numbers, we would have to make them much, much worse in quality too. Also dunno if many people noticed, but marines have highest stats among all infantry units.