[SUBMOD: a Slower Paced DeI Campaign] TESTUDO v.1.7 + Custom Packs [upd: aug.09/20] - OUTDATED

[TheLonelyEmperor]

Fantastic to see you finally updated it Jake! I've been out of the loop for a few months now due to travel and life but look forward to trying out testudo finally!
Do you have any particular faction suggestions to get the full experience? (Besides Rome )
I was thinking Egypt, Carthage or a faction in Gaul. I'm sure they are all fun but I'd like to make sure I get to experience all of the features in the first run so I learn the ropes.

Congrats on the work mate your a legend!

[Jake Armitage]

Glad to see you again!

I lke to play Egypt and Carthago a lot but keep in mind that their campaigns are really slow at start. They have a nice map campaign position though.
Boii is the best pick for gauls, with a lot of lands to raid in every direction.
Pergamon and Hayk are other two really interesting factions for a campaign.

Thanks. I should release 1.6.1 quite soon (it won't be save game compatible), think before next week.
Plaese report yor gameplay impressions.

[TheLonelyEmperor]

Cheers mate you, yourself!
Thanks for the info, and I can't wait to see what comes up with the new update!
I'll still try and mess around a little on this version just to get the hang of things. Probably dive into Egypt first to see how it is, I remember it being tricky trying to handle the culture conflicts.

[Jake Armitage]

Indeed but I think you'll find it overall slightly easier than what you were used to.

[nikossaiz]

Hello jake, next month i will have plenty of time to enjoy a new testudo campaign and make a proper feedback. For now, and for the upcoming version may i ask somethings? A) the events about the seasons ( mild winter etc etc ) have colours according to the specific season ( Blue for winter, orange for autumn and so on ). Can we have red for season that give negative stats and green for seasons that give bonuses? Just for better on the fly observation. And b) a way to gain food via edits or indrigs? I mean a real help?

[DominusEtDeus]

Jake, let me tell you another idea about armies and recruitment. I was always lacking some distinction between levied and professional armies. Since many nations get reforms it would be good to display this change in a more distinctive fashion.
Why not make this under your RPGu submod by making the basic general unit into a "Levy army" unit and give some appropriate stats like cheaper and faster recruitment and upkeep and some gathering negative PO and food malus BUT only after some 5-6ish turns. For example: -0.5 PO and -0.5 food after 6 turns and each turn decreasing it further by 0.5 like the fleets work in DeI. If these modifiers should be global or u can tie them to a region or province is your choice. After the Marian reforms you unlock a "Standing army" with other bonuses and maluses.
What dou you think?

[Jake Armitage]

@nikos

UI: Testudo (and all my oher submos) effects UI are quite a pain. I know that.
Reason is 'cause they tend to have a lot of effects with low values. This is, sadly, a necessary feature.
Reason is 'cause the complexity and different situations of a deep strategical games requires this kind of "algorythm". Many things coming from many place trigger the will to plan and really work well, speaking of campaign balance.

The only solution coming to my mind would be to do a sort of summary into texts. Something like:
ATTACK: good
PO: lightly bad
CULTURE: average

You get what I'm speaking of. This way you won't have to bother about effect list but you'll have just to check the summary.
I'm thinking to do that for the new RPGu version. Not sure though.

For now, UI will remain this way. Seasons colors are more an aesthetical thing. It's an element the eye will catch easily.

gain food: civic administration intrigue (+2?) and RPGu land adminstrator (+1,5) give food
When you remove taxes from a province all the food that province give is 0, keep in mind (you porobably already know)

@Dominus
This is what I'm working on about next RPGu version (BG only, units will come later)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

01: deployed army (mostly as vanilla)
02: marauding army (quicker and cheaper, good for plunder, cap at 10)
03: garrison army (to defend settlements without having PO issues, cap at 10)
04: drilling army (add recruit oints and level but you'll recruit with 1 turn more, more exp to units per turn, cap at 7)
05: mounted army (focused on cavalry, cap at 5)

06: land adiminstrator (more or less what's now cap at 1)
07: urban administrator (more or less what's now cap at 1)
08: governor (when garrisoned and with at least 3 regions in a province, cap at 1)
09: diplomat (useful to give specifi diplomay ir loyalty bonuses. One day it will be needed for the transfer region system, cap at 1)

10: deployed navy (mostly as vanilla)
11: marauding navy (quicker and cheaper, good for plunder, cap at 10)
12: harbour administrator (similar to the other 2 administrators)

Every RPGu army will have different campaign stances (given via script)
a) garrisoned
b) deployed in owned region
c) deployed in foreign region
d) not respectiong conditions (like unit cap and soemthing else)

Regarding your proposition I like it a lot and I'll keep in mind it. Honestly I'll have to figure out how to do some parts via script...
But I may make a merge with the marauding army for now.
Make a sort of halfway between plunderer/levies.
Any suggestion for the name?

------

I'm modding quite slowly lately, I'm just a little mind tired.
Luckilly 1.6 is a good release with no evident flaws.
But there are still a loooooot of things I'll hopefully add, in time.
Thx to everyone who is partecipating into discussions, I appreciate.

[DominusEtDeus]

Wow these armies are looking cool but I think its too much of them, and giving them unit caps are further reducing their usefulness. Personally I dont know what are aux. and garrison armies good for if we have cap on them. My advice is to reduce redundancy and remove or rework them completely. About the others, I think "Levy army" should be the basic army of every faction till reforms like historically was.

[Jake Armitage]

No, I don't think they are too many. They resemble many differnet things (and they are propedheutic for future plans, when I'll start adding custom RPG units linked to RPGu BG).
It's up yo you to decide wheter use them or not.
Everyone is specialized on a particular feature.
Strategical videogames are a matter of choices. The more and well done they are, the better the experience.

Auxiliary army (as it is now in the campaign you're playing) will give you +1 recruitment points (necessary when you own just a region in a province), +2 exp chevrons to recruited units, +1 turn time recruit + other minor things.
Auxiliary army will be called Drilling army in the next version.

[DominusEtDeus]

Its clear now, but why the unit cap?
And what about my original suggestion about making the basic army a levied one? Most of us here love playing as historical as possible.

[DominusEtDeus]

Sounds good. Im in 60 turns of my roman campaign using medium parts 4tpy and Im currently using one full stack army for historical reasons but you may be right about smaller armies. (cant afford another one)
I think cap on levy army isnt necessary if u will put on some penalties or maybe 15 units.

[Jake Armitage]

Think you're right, maybe it's better if I do:

01: professional army (more expensive, slower but stronger, no cap)
02: levy army (cheaper and faster but weaker, cap at 10)
03: mercenary army (focused on mercs, good for plunder, cap at 7)
04: garrison army (to defend settlements without having PO issues, cap at 10)
05: drilling army (add recruit points and chevron but you'll recruit with 1 turn more, more exp to units per turn, cap at 7)
06: mounted army (focused on cavalry, cap at 5)
07: ranged army (focused on renged units, cap at 5)

Unit cap is needed to give importance to professional army and to keep it RPGish.
Non professional armies cannot be the core of a battle, they are supporters, everyone with its own feature.
I mostly play battles with more than 1 army. It is a better choice to have more and smaller armies in Testudo for strat reasons.
So I never build an army to 20 (except rare cases), I keep them between 14 and 7 usually. And move 2 of them when I have to fight.
It's also better and nicer to have more than 1 general involved in a battle. One mounted and one on foot for example.

[Jake Armitage]

I'll think about that

[Demon Soul]

I've just lost my Roman campaign. I played for 62 turns and I did not defeat Epeiros. Is annoying to fight over and over full stacks that cai filed against you. Also was annoying usage by cai the heroes, dignitaries and spies. Just two towns and so much potential- now I have to fight them and rebels.

When I take advantage over Epeiros, my two neighbours suddenly declare war against me.

End of campaign.

[DominusEtDeus]

The very first game with Rome in Testudo was the same for me. I didn't know the challenge and let Etruscia and Epirus build their armies, then they overwhelmed me. In this second campaign I attacked the etruscians as soon as possible and then gathered forces against Epeiros. Make sure to secure urself from north with trade agreements. Now Epirus is defeated, subjugated Syracuse and Carthage dwed me. 264BC. Just like in history. [emoji16]

[Demon Soul]

The title of this thread says "slower paced dei campaign". How can we compare our experience to this? If we wouldn't recruit units from begging and if we wouldn't hesitate to attack ai first, you wouldn't prevail war from south and north at once and I wouldn't live a little longer. Maybe I'm in lack of strategist skills or don't understand mod mechanics but my campaign wasn't "slower paced".

I was having one full professional army.

[Jake Armitage]

I get what you're saying but I think it mostly comes from lack of experience/concentration.
Testudo might be tricky and you have to pay attention both when you're turtling or rushing.
Diplomacy is really important, you have to build alliances and try to stay focused on less fronts of war as possible (which is pretty historical too, mostly for little factions).
Sometimes some factions will just declare war without reason. That's an hardcoded vanilla feature coming form very unlucky dice rolls. If it's a nonesense just reaload a previous save. There is no shame in this.
You'll need more than 1 campaign to become able to ride it, every faction has its own start and needed things to do.
You may want to use a light turtle weight or even play it at easy difficulty.

For Rome, follow what Dominus said.
1) make genua declare war on etruria and a trade agreement with veneti. They'll end fighting each other.
2) rush for etruria as soon as you can, probably Epiros will conquer bruttium (hopefully it's not beneventum)
3) garrison at beneventum and turtle until you have a good economy or it's the right time to attack.
4) conquer italy. Then you may choose to make peace with epirus (which will probably be conquered by some greek sooner or later) and liberate bruttium to avoid carthago and go north 8cisalpina is easy to conquer if you've secured the southern border)

Testudo is clearly slower. You just played the campaign wrongly. Sorry but testudo simply needs to played in a certain way you have to master through experience/concentration, otherwise it will end up as you're reporting.
You may check the map shots into OP. After 250 turns (Huge version) I had 8 regions (so, yeah, it's decisively slower) but I was in a full control of the situation (for now at least...).

[asher237]

I am 153 turns in. I have all of italy, Epirus is a client state, Corsica and Sardinia are mine, Syracuse is a client state and I hold the other half of sicily. This is great. I just wrapped up a devastating war with Carthage and I am spending most of my time balancing the political aspects of the game rather than constant global war. This is great!

[Jake Armitage]

Well, this is... great!
Glad you're enjoying the style.

Would you send me the savegame when you hit 200?
With the list of the packs you're using. Thx.

[asher237]

Well, this is... great!
Glad you're enjoying the style.

Would you send me the savegame when you hit 200?
With the list of the packs you're using. Thx.

Sure thing!