So much AI expansion

**CIaagent11** · July 15, 2016, 04:46 PM

Thank you very much for this mod. It is truly beautiful and such an improvement in nearly every aspect.
One thing that bugs me though is that AI factions expand way too much. By turn 120 some minor faction will have killed off all of it's neighbors and become a huge empire. Usually Massilia and the Odrysians own half my bordering regions. This kind of ruins the roman empire campaign, because just battling the same enemy all the time is boring and unrealistic. I want to fight macedonians in Macedonia, not Odrysians, and iberians in Iberia, not Massilians. Is there a way to tone this expansionism down a bit to keep some of them alive?

**Dresden** · July 15, 2016, 06:16 PM

The problem is that if you are running up against small regional factions in the mid-late game there is no challenge for the player. Its a balancing act. Also all campaigns are different, but yes the AI will eventually for mid sizes empires by turn 120, which is considered around mid game turn number.

Hopefully the AOR system has you facing interesting army compositions that aren't just one note also.

**FlashHeart07** · July 16, 2016, 03:31 AM

Campaigns are different. I have had campaigns where Epirus ruled from Greece and well into the Middle East. I have had Macedon rule Macedonia and north into present day Poland. The Selecuids conquering all of their satrapies and a Roman empire from Iberia to Greece. We have already done a lot to help the bigger factions survive, but there are some limitations in how the game works that prevents us from avoiding minor factions growing too big.
We could force things, but it would be dull if everytime you went to Greece you automatically knew who would be there.

**dahooscarl** · July 16, 2016, 07:15 AM

I'm on turn 72 in an Egypt campaign on hard with 12tpy. I've only just United Nabatea and taken Garamantia. Rome hasn't even broken out the peninsula. Not sure if the 12tpy and difficulty slowed expansion at all but I'm nearing "mid game" though it's only 266BCE at the moment. Yet most all the factions are still there. Save the ones I've annihilated.

**CIaagent11** · July 16, 2016, 01:46 PM

Thanks for the replies, guys.
If 120 turns is mid-game, that doesn't leave me with much time. In my last campaign, I was barely out of Italy by turn 100. I kept losing Sicily to the Carthaginians. It was fun gameplay, to go fourth and back and struggle with money. But I would not want to make the game easy so I can rush the expansion just so I get to fight the proper owners of the regions. Maybe this is a pet peeve, but it bothers me when factions aren't where they're historically supposed to be.
I certainly understand that it would be no challenge to just go up against single-region city-states as the romans. But shouldn't it balance itself because they need to keep troops at all sides of their empire and have huge empire maintenance costs? It does not feel like a true roman empire campaign if I have to battle the athenian juggernaut in thrace. Does anyone have an idea how I could mod this? I'm playing with increased upkeep costs to have fewer units on the map to slow everything down a bit, but it doesn't seem to do much.
I think part of the problem is that armies can just walk into cities immediately without having to wait, and giving the owner a chance to respond. In RTW attackers had to siege for a few turns, which made the AI fight them in the field, so regions changed hands a lot slower. As far as I know, that's not something DeI does, but vanilla Rome II.

**FlashHeart07** · July 16, 2016, 02:21 PM

Im unsure what you are looking for? We havent changed anything regarding the amount of time you need to siege. You have always been able to immediatly attack unwalled settlements and for walled you need to build siege equipment. To me it sounds like you want a slower campaign? DeI are known to be slow paced so if you want it even slower. Then... Wauw

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**CIaagent11** · July 16, 2016, 03:06 PM

Good point. I must just be very patient...

What I would want, since you ask, is to be able to play a realistic roman empire campaign, where I fight my way across the empire in the order it really happened, fighting the kinds of factions that were actually there, e.g. gauls in Gaul, not massilians in gaul. If the map stratifies into giant (unrealistic) empires by turn 100, then my campaign essentialy has a timer ticking. I have to rush the expansion before everyones somewhere theyre not supposed to be.

**FlashHeart07** · July 16, 2016, 03:34 PM

Every campaign is not the same, but we are working on something new for 1.2 where certain factions will join forces to fight invaders. So if the Massalians invade gaul the gaullish tribes will join to fight them off. Hopefully it will help. But its difficult for us to force the campaign

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**tgoodenow** · July 20, 2016, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by FlashHeart07

Every campaign is not the same, but we are working on something new for 1.2 where certain factions will join forces to fight invaders. So if the Massalians invade gaul the gaullish tribes will join to fight them off. Hopefully it will help. But its difficult for us to force the campaign

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Out of curiosity, are you guys aiming to achieve this by using diplomacy (increasing the X in "-X war with Rome") or a forced confederation type deal?

**dahooscarl** · July 16, 2016, 04:18 PM

Try upping the difficulty. Also as I mentioned, using the 12tpy submod seems to slow AI expansion a bit. Also gives you more time to get attached and max level your generals and agents.

**Meraun** · November 04, 2016, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by dahooscarl

seems to slow AI expansion a bit. .

Is taht actually confirmed? Taht woud be bad..

**CIaagent11** · July 17, 2016, 04:12 AM

Originally Posted by Dresden

The problem is that if you are running up against small regional factions in the mid-late game there is no challenge for the player. Its a balancing act.

I see it now. I managed to get a bit of an empire going, and as soon as the romans got some money coming in, they would completely steamroll little 1 city factions. The problem was in my last hard campaign with increased upkeep, I only had mainland italy, and I didn't generate enough income fend off the carthaginians and do anything else. As soon as I sent my troops somewhere else, they would conquer it back. So I got stuck in Sicily.

Originally Posted by FlashHeart07

Every campaign is not the same, but we are working on something new for 1.2 where certain factions will join forces to fight invaders. So if the Massalians invade gaul the gaullish tribes will join to fight them off. Hopefully it will help. But its difficult for us to force the campaign

That sounds like a really fun idea. But I'm not in that waiting-for-the-next-verson mood right now.

Originally Posted by dahooscarl

Try upping the difficulty. Also as I mentioned, using the 12tpy submod seems to slow AI expansion a bit. Also gives you more time to get attached and max level your generals and agents.

That campaign I mentioned was on hard, and it was just way too much of a struggle. Everyone declared war on me and I had to fend of stack and stacks of armies they buy with their free base income. I want it to be a challenge, but not so hard it's frustrating. Right now, I'm not sure whether to go back to hard campaign difficulty, because normal is just too easy. Everyone in the diplomatic window is super cozy with me and there's just no war!
Thanks, I will try 12tpy.

**dahooscarl** · July 17, 2016, 07:04 AM

Build level 2 and 3 settlements asap. The larger garrisons, income, resource production and unit accessibility is paramount. With level 2 settlements across a province you can typically defend the entire province with a half stack of medium to good quality troops that can be rapidly rushed to crisis.

**dahooscarl** · July 17, 2016, 07:08 AM

Another neat trick to squeeze the most from trade agreements. Say they have high acceptance of a 3k pymt for trade, but low for 6. Click on offer payment, (you'll need to have a couple k to do this effectively) offer between 4.5-5k but then click back on demand. Now you're demanding the price you were offering and they're much more likely to agree and you get 4.5 instead of 3.

**dahooscarl** · July 17, 2016, 07:02 AM

If you have access to a coastal settlement, recruiting and admiral and sending him around the coasts can net you thousands from trade agreements. Every faction who is willing will normally pay 2-8k for trade. It's a huge help in early game. Also mind who you're engaging in NA and TA with. If they're at war with a neighbor of yours, you might want to rethink it. It's very easy to get drawn into WW1BC.

**FlashHeart07** · July 17, 2016, 07:38 AM

Something I hope will be changed in the new version

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**CIaagent11** · July 18, 2016, 05:23 PM

I know this isn't the mods fault, but this unrealistic expansion ruins the game for me. I send around my armies, manage my empire, it's really fun, but suddenly I look at the map and the fricking macedonians conquered dacia and there's a massilian empire across half of gaul. I can't enjoy it like that. It's kind of sad, because Rome II is a worthy sequel to my favorite video game. They seemed to have done a lot of improvements since the troubled release, and with DEI it's a really well-functioning game. There should be a way to play a roman campaign where you fight the actual historic opponents.

@dahooscarl: Thanks for the tips. I can barely get anyone to agree to trade agreements in the early game, let alone pay for them.

**CIaagent11** · July 19, 2016, 06:57 AM

I got Rome 2 when it came out, and never played it much, because there was such outrage about it's state, and because my graphics card had that bug where units weren't visible. I'm glad I finally got to try it. With the patches and DEI, it brings the Rome experience quite close to where it would be flawless. It fixes many of the annoyances I had with Rome 1. But I uninstalled it because I hate the unrealistic expansion. Again, I know this might not be something the mod can do much about and maybe it's just me being neurotic. You did some fine work.

I just want to be able to do the gallic wars thing, where I send legions to gaul, and there are gauls there, not greeks. Massilia had a population of 6000 at it's height, it was never a big empire. I know campaigns are different, but not being able to fight all the realistic enemies in one campaign makes putting all that effort into a campaign pointless. Basically I wish factions would roughly stick to the areas where they historically were or had been. So for macedon to get a bit of an empire towards the east would be ok, bot not all over dacia. Gauls should have gaul. Germans should have germania. Iberia might be one faction, as long as it is by an iberian one, not that african tribe. (But it would be way cooler to get there as the romans and fight different tribes. There's got to be some way to balance this so it is a challenge. Rome could have big trouble financing armies all around and fighting everyone or something.) Carthage should be strong, and not get reduced by some african tribe. No athenians in thrace. No Knossos in illyria. And I'd prefer Egypt and the Seleucids to still be big when I get there. Basically, I wish campaign gameplay would be more stable and everyone just waits for the romans to come get them. RTW 1, even though it did a worse job at delivering the experience I am talking about, was a bit more like that, with the bigger, more stable starting factions. But eventually the balancing would hit a tipping point and some faction would just unrealistically explode.

These are my main beefs with the game, as it stands. Some of these might be deliberate or hardcoded by vanilla. I'm not posting this to complain, but also to have a list in case I ever decide to take up modding the game. I'd very much like to hear which of these I could realistically mod as a beginner. I did a lot of Rome 1 modding, but never got into it in any newer TW game.

-As mentioned above, factions unreasonably expand beyond where they're supposed to be.
-The DEI battle morale thing, while an improvement over everything I've seen before, is a bit overblown, in my opinion. I do want fatigue to matter, and it is realistic for a levy to rout if it loses half it's men. But it's just too much micromanagement. I don't want to spend so much time hovering over every unit to check whether it needs to be pulled back to refresh.
-Not so many full stack elite army templates. 15 units per army is fine. And I don't think barbarians had that many armored units, just fighting warbands is fine in the beginning.
-No walk-in cities during the same turn. All settlements should require at least one turn of preparation before being able to assaulted, like in RTW 1. I've lost and retaken some settlements half a dozen times. This is how it would have been historically, with for example Hannibal having the military upper hand in Italy, but not being able to get into the cities.
-Garrisoned troops should be cheaper, like 40%. This is to counteract that it can be really damaging to your empire to have peace, because having units is so expensive.
-I would prefer for beaten legions to be able to retreat and not get attacked again and destroyed in the same turn. A far further retreat range would fix this.
-Thinner regions. For example, that Massilia region shouldn't stretch that far inland.
-No or lower base income.
-Assassination attempts that remove your generals from their armies are annoying.
-Triple character names confuse me.
-All cities on the battle map are way too small and look the same. What we're seeing on the battle map are towns of a few hundred people. Even in Rome 1 they were bigger.
-Fewer decisive battle marks. I get one every damn battle. The map is scattered with them. Often there are several on top of each other, which is ugly as hell.
And if I want to be really nitpicky: (just posting this as an encouraging hint to the modders)
-Shirtless units in battle are way too muscular. They all look like underwear models. Post the agricultural revolution most people were heavily malnourished, especially the kinds of social classes you'd would find as infantry in a battle.

**Augustusng** · July 19, 2016, 07:26 AM