First Impressions and Suggestions

**cah2** · November 21, 2015, 02:31 PM

Just downloaded this mod yesterday and thought I would submit my first impressions. So far I've played a migration campaign as Bactria and a campaign as Carthage.

1. The scope of the map is daunting. It's also very beautiful and the accuracy is breathtaking. I consider myself highly knowledgeable when it comes to ancient geography and it's challenging to find a neighboring settlement (especially in mountainous/forest regions.) Never the less I'm well pleased by the beauty of the map. Something I do not like are the forts. I see their practicality but just looking at them all sends my stress level through the roof. If they were removed I would not complain.

2. Many factions are dispersed far and wide. In the case of the Gauls and Celts I understand as this makes sense with reality but to lump Baktria in with the Greek states is not really a reasonable approach. I understand why you did it but for someone who is an avid fan of Baktria (secure starting position with phalanx and elephants heck yes) this sucks the fun out of my campaign. Maybe I can learn to love it but a pure Baktria faction would be nice if it could be done

3. I love the concept of an expanded build tree. I am not a fan of military buildings increasing unrest in settlements. Farms and mines make absolute sense but ports and military buildings doing so seems to discourage building a military in a far flung empire (see point 2) but I would think having a military installation in my town would provide order. A port provides jobs and people seem to like those as well. Also, the sheer amount of temples is daunting to navigate. I see what you were trying to do but the number of religious buildings is a lot to take in. Combining them could be an option but I will say the attention to detail on this instance was breathtaking. I know that some temples in vanilla influence the personal development of a family member. For instance the temple of Dyonysis always seemed to make my generals alcoholics in the long run. Do temples and other buildings still have an effect of character development and if so could this be at the least hinted at in the building info card?

4. I like what you've done with the units. From what I've seen they make sense and are accurate. If you've got plans for limited elite (hero) units that would just make this even cooler.

5. Probably my favorite part of this mod aside from that stunning map are the unique buildings. They add a certain flavor to the campaign. I've seen this tried out in other mods and I think it adds a certain flare to each faction. I spend a lot of time deciding what factions I want to play then spend hours optimizing and building the perfect empire. Unique buildings always add a certain pride to your hard work of conquering your neighborhood and beyond.

I'm having a lot of fun playing so far and I've not had a single crash so yet (cross your fingers.) Well done and I look forward to more excellent work from you guys

**Philadelphos** · November 24, 2015, 04:02 PM

Thanks for your appreciation. This is a very articulate comment, and these are most precious to us.

Here are some answers:

1. The forts can esaily be removed in the descr_strat file. Here are the instructions:
- Open rth/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign and open descr_strat.txt.
- Make a backup of the file.
- search "Conchobar Pendragon" and remove all the following immobilized spies.
This will make sure that most of your forts will disappear after the first turn.
You can also remove single forts right from the start. To do that go to the end of the same file, where you find all the forts by region and name.
If you remove a fort I'd suggest that you also remove the related immobilized spy.
However, there is a downfall to it, because removing a fort will cost you in a number of cases the possibility to acquire a determinate ancillary.

2. Yes, the faction Hellenic Kingdoms was a compromise, because RTW has only 21 faction slots. I'd like to have at least 28, like in MTW II Kingdoms. But I'm not prepared to move the game over to that machine, because it would really mean too much work.
In the meantime, if you want to play Baktria alone, I'd suggest to dispand all your other units and drive your other cities, like Sparta and Pergamon, into rebellion. This can be done within two or three turns and then you are free to play your favourite faction. To get rid of your Spartan kings, send them on suicide missions.

3. Unrest through military buildings was introduced to increase the difficulty level, but I have already understood that it wasn't probably the best idea. So the next edition will see this featuer largely reduced if not completely removed and I will try to create more trouble for the player through negative character traits and malvagious ancillaries. Regarding the effects of the temple of fun, I have reduced the incidence, so it will not happen so often, but the possiblity is still there. You are right that it should be mentioned in the building descritpion and I've put that on my to do list.

4. Currently there are no plans for limited hero units, but if you want to develop on this idea you're welcome.

5. The next edition will have a lot more unique buildings and you will see many cities in aerial view.

**cah2** · November 26, 2015, 07:21 AM

Hey Philadelphos, thank you for the response!!

I could probably learn to live with the forts because I started conquering them after I wrote this and I saw some of the really unique ancillaries. As I said before you guys should be proud of the level of detail you've implemented.

I know it's an absolute shame that we can't have more factions in RTW. I personally like RTW more than MTW2 in several regards. I'm familiar with migration and fall-back campaigns (doing so is an excellent option when playing Western Roman Empire in BI.) Btw, is this mod playable for BI?

So, I played Rome and conquered the Italian peninsula and finally broke even. The huge family tree makes that difficult but Gaius Marius became my top general and if that isn't enough to make any fanboy of history cry tears of joy then idk what is. Are you going to examine certain factions to determine if family trees are possibly too large in certain instances? I can't imagine cutting anyone out as I like seeing Gaius sticking it to the Gauls.

After action report: lost my awesome southern army sieging Terentum. You guessed it, Pyrrhus showed up and demolished it but I did teach him the term Pyrrhic Victory. But, it was the worst loss I've had in 8 years of playing TW. In the long run the loss of so many mouths to feed probably got me out of debt sooner. So after Gaius was done subjugating the north I sent him south to clean up the mess and my men feasted on elephant meat. I just wanna say WOW. That experience was awesome and helped teach me some historical lessons. Epirus as a nation had a fine force of men but they were not easily replaced. Rome had monetary, materiel and manpower advantages. Reminds one of the dynamics of WW2.

Regarding the building effects, I think having so many buildings to build in so many provinces and providing a garrison and good governance in all of those settlements is challenging enough. If I were you I would keep the negative happiness traits for farms and mines but provide a slight law bonus for barracks and walls. Historically and realistically that's normally how it goes: force the peasants to mine iron/copper/gold/silver and grow food for the war machine but cower them with imposing barracks (police stations) and impressive walls. Also thank you for looking into the info cards. I think that's something that could have been implemented in vanilla but like so many other things was likely deemed unnecessary.

Did you ever consider my point regarding the number of temples? I typically take time to queue up each city but now it feels like I'm just queuing temples 24/7 just to keep public order. I'm considering auto-management due to the large number of cities but that's just not even fun.

Again, thanks for getting back to me so soon Philadelphos! Any word as to the arrival of the next edition?

**Philadelphos** · November 28, 2015, 07:47 PM

Yes, the mod is playable in BI, but I'm afraid you'll have few benefits. If you try you could let me know what could be improved. I always play with Alexander, which is best for RTH.

I really like the description of your campaign. So Pyrrhus was a tough one! Should be, he was one of the best after Alexander! But ultimately he is always conquered. Once however, when I played Macedon, it took the Romans 17 years to capture Tarentum. Milon was a tough one, too!

The family trees will more or less remain as they are. The Romans are needed to have a variety of families. After the conquest of Italy you'll quickly see, that they are not too many. Breaking even is a challenge for every one, but most for Pyrrhus.

Regarding the building effects, I'm still thinking about it and I will take your ideas into account. Maybe you're right with the farms and mines.

The temple availability should be reduced a bit. You write that you need to build a lot of different temples for public order, and I agree that it should be a more concentrated affair. But I also want a large variety. So it's a complicated tweak between prerequisites and effects. I don't know if I get that all done before the next release, but there will definitely be some important improvement on the building tree.

Next edition, yeah, I hoped to get it out before mid December, but now I'm not sure anymore, because the biographies took an entire month to complete. So maybe it will be in January.

**SharpEyed** · January 25, 2016, 05:17 AM

Regarding forts:
Forts are good feature but they are just a bit too much, also rebels can have them too and considering their high spawn ratio it can get annoying really as they block the ways between your cities.
Being not able to move the spy out also not make a lot sense to me.. Actually I did brought them out but "Sleeper" trait doesn't go off for some reason.

Regarding public order stuff:
I think military buildings should effect the happiness (Not the Law, if not Positively!) but maybe only some of them and not this much.
And idk why Farms also giving public penalty.. I mean bigger farm = more work opportunity which would help to public order imo

However if you change these, to balance, you also should reduce the temples a little bit.

Regarding historical battles:
They are really great, you did big job there!
Just one thing; units can go throu even the most perpendicular hills/cliffs which defeats the purpose of battles like Thermopylae

Regarding historical characters:
I really love to have them in game (even thou seeing Caesar, Crassus etc at 280 bc is a bit weird

) but wouldn't be better if there were some scripted stuff about them?

Talking of Scripts I keep seeing some Historical stuff showing up every 2-3 turns but mostly they don't do anything.
Are you gonna implement their effects later on or they will stay like infos only?

Regarding Main Menu theme or w/e its called:
Do you think of making one? Which has the name of mod and so forth? (And maybe a different background music for it)

Regarding Walls:
I think they could give some buffs (public order etc) just like in BI

Meanwhile how about Missions/Quests? Do you think of implementing some?
For example it's historical to have Rome as one rather than 4 parts, but I still would love to see some Senatorial stuff (rather than only ancillary/traits wise)

Please excuse me that if I mostly gone with negative comments but believe me I really like the mod!
Especially the historical details, infos, images and all that stuff!