[Feedback] Questions, Critiques and Requests

[KYREAPER]

The idea, is that you only should pick the fortified upgrade if its a border-city that you absolutely want to protect who is at risk of being sieged. It gives better garrisons and more artillery to achieve this.

If its not in imminent danger, realistically it would be dumb to fortify a city thats protected by allied territory all around it. Sure, some world leaders did it back then, but its gonna make them lose money and never use the fortifications. Leaders make bad decision ALL the time. Its smarter to choose the economy version when the city in a safe inside your territory.

If, for example, you are bordering Rome(as a greek faction) and you are nervous they may declare war on you, make it fortified just in case. Thats what i do with Apollonia.. since if Rome declares war, thats a 1 turn boat ride across the sea.... so i want that to be safe with just a garrison(and a barracks).

In my opinion it currently functions fine.

It would be unbalanced if the fortified building was economical enough/or buffed too much with troops and artillery. It already serves its 'role' quite well.

[Dresden]

They should be situational - one for the border towns, etc. I nerfed trade variants and buffed fort variants a few patches ago.

[AugustusRoman]

Hi! I would like to see the following:

After looting a place, foreign population should be added in your provinces. To keep it simple, according to the city size you should add +1500 foreigners in your provinces. So if you loot a lvl 2 city +2500, lvl 3 city then 4000 and lvl4 city 6000.

Moreover, it would be nice if the AI's cities had a boost in population. The AI seems to ed up with population and in late game their cities have like 4000 people max!

[Dresden]

If you loot/raze a city, then that city will have a much lower population for you. That may be why it seems the AI has less population when you take a city and loot it.

[The Despondent Mind]

Can you provide some screenshots please? You know what they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Of every army I encounter? I'll try to remember if continue the campaign, since this is getting absurd.

[Dresden]

No units or generals start with xp or levelled up. I assume they must have earned it.

[geala]

The idea, is that you only should pick the fortified upgrade if its a border-city that you absolutely want to protect who is at risk of being sieged. It gives better garrisons and more artillery to achieve this.

If its not in imminent danger, realistically it would be dumb to fortify a city thats protected by allied territory all around it. Sure, some world leaders did it back then, but its gonna make them lose money and never use the fortifications. Leaders make bad decision ALL the time. Its smarter to choose the economy version when the city in a safe inside your territory.

If, for example, you are bordering Rome(as a greek faction) and you are nervous they may declare war on you, make it fortified just in case. Thats what i do with Apollonia.. since if Rome declares war, thats a 1 turn boat ride across the sea.... so i want that to be safe with just a garrison(and a barracks).

In my opinion it currently functions fine.

It would be unbalanced if the fortified building was economical enough/or buffed too much with troops and artillery. It already serves its 'role' quite well.

I was speaking only of the cities. Apollonia is not a walled city (omg, I wish so much you could wall towns, like in Attila:TW), do you refer to some of the yellow buildings here? I never had a case in any of my campaigns where a garrison a little bigger could have saved an unwalled town. You have an army there or you are lost. Or the smaller garrison is enough, against rebels for example. Rome in my current campaign usually attacks with two legions, no chance for a garrison. Also other factions attack with more than one army. Yesterday the Triballi attacked me in Naissos with two stacks. Naissos is one of the best defense towns ever fortunately and I could repulse it but only because I had a defense army in it.

I really like the idea of a fortified city in a dangerous region. I like fortifications and the best days in holliday are when you can visit ancient or medieval fortresses and castles. But from the fortified city you get a few units more and some useless artillery. Which is not a great help in a case of attack in my opinion. If there is an endangered border region, I put an army in it. Or several. I rarely ever faced the situation of an attack on a walled city which was "interesting", aka with some chances to defend but chances to lose. It is a kind of auto-loss (two+ stacks against garrison) or auto-win (army in it).

If against fortified cities you could use no ladders (like in older TW games on high walls) or had a scripted delay of storming till enough siege equipment is built, so you would get some time to react as defender (which is one of the most important reasons for using fortifications), I would consider using it.

They should be situational - one for the border towns, etc. I nerfed trade variants and buffed fort variants a few patches ago.

Yes, it is better than before. But the differences are not big enough for me. I usually have my armies in the border regions. And border regions often are borders only for a restricted time. It is not worth to spend money on the fortress city. I never used it in my campaigns (ok, exaggeration, I used it sometimes, just for diversity) and I never had to regret it, which is a pity.

[motaboy]

Merge units, CTRL+M

• As you fight battles and lose men, you can merge two identical units together. On the campaign map, select them both using Ctrl + Left-click. Then press Ctrl + M. This is beneficial if you can't replenish your units or that will take too long. It also saves on upkeep costs as upkeep is always the same for a unit no matter if it's at 100% or 20%.

I just read this in the H/H small faction guide - this is AWESOME! But I think it should be more often highlighted and mentioned somewhere, it's the first time I heard of it.

Btw, someone got a hint how I could replenish my troops in an enemy terroity? I have 2 of 3 regions of the province. Can't replenish my troups because of lack of people, also can't hire any new soldiers. Mercenaries are too expensive.

[KYREAPER]

Geala, Appolonia is a tough one, but ill give it the fortified one and i always build a barracks there(for the extra troops). It also doesnt hurt to have a shrine to boost their stats. If Rome ever does declare war on me, i send a full stack straight to appolonia, as its the first place to probably be attacked, and its the fastest way to get to the heart of rome.

[Radina]

After four campaigns which lasted between 100 and 250 rounds of Hard/VeryHard gameplay as Epirus, Baktria, Athen and Massalia I had to make an account to tell you, that you made a great job spicing up the early game.

I really like the backstabbing AI. Before 1.2 there was no way an AI that had a Non-Agression Pact with you would ever declare war on you. Nowadays even a deep green relationship does not save you of the treacherous behavior of some factions. Playing as Massalia you would normally stay close to the Romans so you have at least one other side you do not need to care about. They declared War on me at turn 3 twice, after I restarted just to see if some random event broke our relations.

Trade relations are as good as nonexistent anymore. Pre 1.2 I would always send a Columbus unit around the world to find some factions who are willing to finance my armies. Usually, half my income would be paid by foreign accounts giving me a stack or more Units I would not have without them. You could count the number of trade relations I accomplished to seal on one hand in all the campaigns I played since the patch.

You might say now that they completely removed the diplomatic window from the game, but Non-Aggression Pacts, whatever they are worth with the factions you choose to seal one, are still a wonderful way of keeping those pesky neighbors from stealing your cities, or, far worse, killing your citizens. At last for a few turns.
Also, I kind of had a rough time to balance the internal politics. Some parts of the campaigns I dropped below four points of Influence and had a really hard time to get it back up there, where it would not screw up my public order, or bring me to the edge of a civil war.

The midgame, however, is not too different to the pre 1.2 area, ignoring the fact that you have to play "Horde mode" with your dented armies to have a reasonable replenishment time. This is not bad in any way. Midgame was and still is my favorite kind of state in this mod, It feels rewarding every time to get to it and finally be truly able to choose whom you fight and where to conquer, having the income to field advanced units and so on.

The Lategame. Well. I normally just trash the campaign at that point and begin another. It is boring as hell. I would wish for a realm divide or something of this kind. It would not be historically accurate, but it would spice the end game up, especially if it would spawn some more forces in if you try to conquer major capitals, like it did(or does) with Rome. Late game is sadly just a boring mess.

At last, I really do not like the decision you made about shrinking the enemy banners and refusing to give us information about the enemy units in the info panel. That is just annoying. If there is a mod or option to revert this I did not find it. I just find myself clicking on the Highlight button constantly and hating the guts out of the guy who's idea it was to bring such a feature to the non-legendary battlefield.

If you came so far then I thank you for reading all the way through. I deeply appreciate the amount of time and heart blood you pumped into this project. Rome 2 would not be a game in my Steam library with far over a thousand hours if you guys did not mod it.

[GMFH]

Btw, someone got a hint how I could replenish my troops in an enemy terroity? I have 2 of 3 regions of the province. Can't replenish my troups because of lack of people, also can't hire any new soldiers. Mercenaries are too expensive.

I do not know of any way to replenish an army in enemy territory. Having a second army available to garrison your new territory while you pull back your main army to replenish can speed the process. One way to speed the replenishment process is you put your depleted army into a fleet with a supply ship, docked in your nearest port. The army will then draw replenishment population from your capital region like a fleet. This doesn't work for most barbarian factions, which do not have access to supply ships. If you can afford to recruit units elsewhere, recruit a reserve army with the cheapest available units using the population classes your main army needs, from a different province. Then move reserve army to the depleted region that you control and disband those units, increasing the region population the following turn. Hope this helps.

[Dresden]

@Radina glad you enjoyed it - Hard/VH is definitely rough especially early game! I am not aware of any specific decision we made to remove information or shrinking enemy banners. Maybe KAM would know more, but that isn't something I remember.

[skimyy]

I'm having crashes in 2 stack vs 2 stack battles. I'm not sure if it's mod specific though. Although I've never had crashes in previous DeI.

It's probably on my end. I'll try fresh install, etc.

[Dresden]

Is it crashing in the middle of a battle? Is it a specific battle or multiple battles? You can try reverifying the game cache as per usual, but also sometimes battle crashes can be due to system resources being pushed to the limit or also some antivirus programs.

[Roma Invicta753]

DEI team, many units are overpowered than their stats. For example I was defeated on 1 vs 1 battle against Caledonian heavy swordsmen, at first with Evocata Germania and then even with Cataphract Legionaries. Both Roman units have much more better stats than caledonians, but still they won (On normal difficulty).

[Vardano]

Hi. I want to start next campaign with all factions in their second stage of reforms already. The reason for that are battles and campaigns are played out very differently when AI have a chance to recruit a better units and not to stack with cheap low tier ones for a long time. There is actually a big unfortunate problem that AI can't disband troops and hire better ones. For example I saw examples when smaller faction which have recruited newer and better troops could advance and beat bigger factions stacks which made early game success and stuck with bunch of cheap spearmen. Second reason is that I rarely see latest reforms for AI and myself so I would like to play with those troops too.

How do change that? Thanks.

[Dresden]

The reforms guide explains how to change the settings in the manuals thread.

[Oskar_GD]

Guys, do you have plans to seriously rework german tribes in future?

[Vardano]

Thank you Dresden.

[KAM 2150]

At last, I really do not like the decision you made about shrinking the enemy banners and refusing to give us information about the enemy units in the info panel. That is just annoying. If there is a mod or option to revert this I did not find it. I just find myself clicking on the Highlight button constantly and hating the guts out of the guy who's idea it was to bring such a feature to the non-legendary battlefield.

We never made such decision because that is based on difficulty level of battles or graphical settings you use