[SUBMOD: a Slower Paced DeI Campaign] TESTUDO v.1.7 + Custom Packs [upd: aug.09/20] - OUTDATED

[Jake Armitage]

@ Noone like Thebes

Thx for posting the savegame, it was really useful for checking some late campaign issues.
I've also put some shots from the campaign into OP.

1. My provinces don't really want to grow, like, at all. Asia, where i had low taxes for ages and have built Pergamon city to stage IV, I still don't have more than two other buildings (out of possible 5?). The population growth (the one that unlocks more buildings) thus seems obnoxiously high in requirement. The AI has easily built up all of their territory though to the point where I have to raze some of them to keep them under control.
ok, I'll raise it a little more

2. PO options seem limited. I've maxed out the possibilities for focusing on PO control only and I've still had to fight sooooooo many garbage uprising battles. Feels really tedious, you could probably solve it by giving more and better role play generals next patch to handle it, right now they're mostly pretty weak. Mind you, the problem is more pronounced for foreign cultures, which is fine, but since the victory conditions require a good chunk of the map to be conquered, having every outlier region be an eternal ulcer can be tiresome.
Yeah, effectively you have some issues here and there, I'll lower the cultural penalty and the PO maluses given by buildings
Keep in mind that your taxes were high though (when I opened the last savegame), it is not much wise (for growth, PO and the economical VPS system).
I don't know how you managed them through all those turns but it is advicable to keep them low (normal at max) and then raise them for few turns when you're in need for cash.
Also, you can recruit 6 generals more and appoint them to admins (land or urb). In the new RPGu versions I'm adjusting their values.

3. late game economy becomes too baffling to control as far as trying to "plan" for anything, as I think there are so many scripts running and so many weird hidden modifiers that each turn is a totally unpredictable income level. Sometimes i will be struggling, other times i will suddenly be making 5-10k a year, and then go back with nothing having changed except the seasons, sure there is a pattern of making less in winter and more in summer generally, but that isnt always the case. It also feels kinda weird that, rather than having my taxes just be reduced to near zero, they now actually hemorrhage into the negative, far more costly than the meager two armies i maintain. This is hard to track down in the UI just why it is, I'm guessing its building maintenance flat costs per turn ontop of the myriad modifiers and empire maintenance depressing the taxes to zero?
I've hit a couple of turns but I didn't noticed money jumps. Were they from turn to turn or did they have a sort of curve?
Keep in mind that the economical VPS is made exactly for this reason: to erase all the useless money you can get in vanilla.
I have too few infos from your savegames (I should play the campaign, actually) to make important changes to the VPS.
Anyway, I will lower empire maintenance, it seems too high.

4. Agents are actively useless now, as even the noob generals on the AI side are all sporting 8 to 9 stats on authority/zeal/etc. Thus, I cannot act on them in anyway unless my agent is an ancient legend. Spies are food stealing bots, champions PO/upkeep bots, and dignitaries just feel pretty useless.
Yeah, that was more or less my intention. Speaking of "agent wars", which I don't like at all.
I wouldn't say that dignitaries are useless, they have a lot of skills about governorship (PO, culture, tax, banditry...).
I'll do an optional pack for this feature.

5. XP rates feel too low for both agents and generals. They keep dying from old age before doing anything interesting stat wise. When I do eventually get a few stats going, it all just has to go to PO/empire maintenance.
Ok, I'll slightly lower the thresholds for the 4 tpy versions

6. Given how expensive buildings are to build and how long they take, a few of them feel pretty weak now, though overall building feels much better and more important than just instantly upgrading everything right off. Sprinkling some empire maintenance suppressors in to the more cultural buildings would be nice to free up some generals to take other skills, the trade off would be the time and expense to build.
You're probably right but I don't wanna mess up much with buildings (I'm just changing their DeI values).
But I may add those maintenance values. By cultural, do you mean temples or the yellow ones?

7. Not sure about some of the maluses introduced later into the game "just because". I feel these would be better balanced by tweaking Imperium maluses, having them stack ontop of each other feels a little urgh.
Mmhhh, I pretty like that timeline feature and it also helps me to better balance things. Anyway I've already begun to rework it (longer and less impactant).

8. Some of my generals feel weirdly slow? I didn't notice it early on but in late game they seem to be crawling around... will have to test more on this one though.
Didn't notice this in the savegame. Besides the general reduction, I've added some movement effects depending on age and other various things but they are quite low so they shouldn't interfere much.
Also, some RPGu Bodyguards (like land and urban) has reductions by default.

Nothing has been back breaking thus far but I feel some of my options are actually more limited due to certain malus stacking. However, overall, decisions are more important and the game must be played slower, so that is on target.
Good, happy to hear.
I knew that this submod could not be "perfect" for advanced campaigns (mostly 'cause I haven't much experience about this).
I'll try to fix some of the things you've reported, hoping it will be more playable

Other thoughts:
I've never liked DeI's victory conditions, they seem to only make sense for a small handful of the largest factions while being obnoxiously large for the small ones (the ones I usually like to play) not your fault but the slower pace makes it even more painful.
To tell the truth I never even read the victory conditions... I don't care much about them but I'll see to check them when I'll start doing custom/smart events

Also, since the player is forced to play slow, I would really love some even larger reform delays. Fighting multiple stacks of armored imperial legionaries in ~220bc just feels gross. It doesnt bother me for most factions, the greeks and celts seem pretty well timed, but the Romans are still wayyyy too early.
You can change them with a turtle pack, check #3 post for turns (under "CHANGED DEI SCRIPTS" spoiler).
Anyway, I'll slightly raise the roman AI thresholds.

Politics and general economy pacing seems good, haven't had any troubles with either.
Ok

--------------------

@deeptrance

So, thanks a lot for pointing me that script bug, I forgot to put all the removals in the pack...
Here, you can use this patch (keep in mind that syracuse declared war on me as soon as I clicked end turn...), it will work from next turn.
Put it above the test pack
https://www.mediafire.com/file/kob12...atch.pack/file

I've also noticed that armies can get stuck in another forces sphere of influence (the red circle)
Yes, it has already been reported and it is true (mostly for low movement packs)So, I've already done new movement packs that are lowering the AoE of both cities and armies.
The reduction will be scaled, the less you can move the more they will be reducted.

I've had issues changing the stances of armies out of Fortify (no icon to click after going into it)
Yeah, that's a vanilla UI issue, try to deselect, reselect, select something else or just wait for the next turn and should be ok
It might be boring but it is necessary to limit the stances depending on BG type or unit numbers

-----

Thanks a lot to you both (and all the others who are reporting, ofc)
Hope to come with 1.6.1 soon.

[Jake Armitage]

1.6.1 TEST PACK
UPDATE

You can play it as 12tpy/HUGE/Rome faction
It has everything inside except the official 12tpy submod (so, load it)
Not save game compatible (except for the savgeame I've put in, turn 27 where you are ready to build the attack to Epeiros)
Do not load anything else (graphics/rank sizes/movement packs excepted), just this pack:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/3hsju..._test.zip/file

There have been a lot of changes and rebalancements.
I'm 99% gonna close the pack as it is and finally start doing the others I need.
Reports are always welcomed.

[leonardusius]

That's very good. Always many thanks for your dedicated work. So, only 12tpy/huge/rome, when the others ?

[Jake Armitage]

Well, there is quite some work to do, mostly for the factions packs.
I've almost finished packs for macedon, carthago and ptolemai but I would like to do at least 10 factions playable for the first release.
And then I have to change quite a lot of things for the 4 tpy version (T/S/M), since I changed quite a lot of things.
So... I would say between 4-10 days (this weekend/next weekend). I think I will respect this schedule (if nothing weird happens) 'cause I really want to rid off from this release...
And then begin to work on the next version which will be focused on some PIGS features I want to change/implement (for diplomacy too, maybe even the trade regions system, I will decide while I mod, as always).

Anyway, I know you're not a 12tpy fun but inside the pack you'll find a savegame (at turn 27) where you're ready to take Taras without many efforts.
You may wanna test the campaign just to test how the new RPGu works.
Campaigns are also overall easier, so even if it is Huge there shouldn't be many "frustrations" like for pre 1.6 versions.

[TrippinDaJive]

Cool man, I'm gonna try this next update out! I tried Rome/Huge back in 1.5 but that was too incredibly difficult for me. But I'm ready for this next challenge! [emoji1733] (and I wonder if my recruitment mod would work?)

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

[Jake Armitage]

Nice
I think your recruitment mod is technically 100% compatible but I don't really know if I would personally recommend it, mostly for 2 reasons:
1) testudo already has reductions to recruitable units per turn and now also seasons affect it. It is not really easy (economically too) to raise armies
2) if I'm correct you set very high turns needed to recruit, even 12 if I'm not wrong... I don't know I fear that testudo + your recruit could be kinda unplayable. Maybe settings turns to 1/2/3 would make it playable

[NorthernXY]

Corrupted my save game learning SaveParser and PFM trying to add in additional political factions to my Rome game (copied a Political Group, then did some renaming, province political assignment stopped changing) so am looking forward to giving this new version a try. Though sad because this is the first game I've seen Seleucia and Parthia not die early.

Just bought the Greek DLC so was thinking about making a run with Athens, but saw the "Rome Only". Unfortunately nobody, developer or modder, want to attempt to make any faction comparably as interesting as Rome. Rome is a favorite, so a lot of time is spent on it, so people mostly play as Rome because it's by far the most in depth to play, and the downward cycle continues. We know what Rome did, but what if they pulled a Ming dynasty and closed their borders, and not adapt or adopt different people's military tactics? If Rome became a monarchy again would they really be so culturally flexible? What if the Greeks somehow united into a republic and became the dominant land power in the Mediterranean? There would be no need for mercenary reforms. That would take A LOT of people understanding history enough to see what generally leads to what. A member of the DeI team told me that Macedonian cavalry was on the decline so they made the generals worse in late game (subjectively). They go from heavy cav to heavy skirmishers that can't form a wedge or contrabian circle (I don't think they have skirmish mode either). So even though my Macedon was on the rise, my military is railroaded to decline, and Rome to incline.

[TrippinDaJive]

Nice
I think your recruitment mod is technically 100% compatible but I don't really know if I would personally recommend it, mostly for 2 reasons:
1) testudo already has reductions to recruitable units per turn and now also seasons affect it. It is not really easy (economically too) to raise armies
2) if I'm correct you set very high turns needed to recruit, even 12 if I'm not wrong... I don't know I fear that testudo + your recruit could be kinda unplayable. Maybe settings turns to 1/2/3 would make it playable

Yeah I tried it with the recruitment mod for 40 turns and it was absolutely brutal. It's incredibly difficult to maintain an army after campaigning because it's already really slow with replenishment. So unless one is a sadistic masochist, you won't have too much fun I reckon And it was siege equipment that could take up to 12 turns. So I'm running your mod by itself and I gotta say, so far, so great! Took me a 100 turns to consolidate Italia and I just ended the Epicurean War by taking Apollonia. I've been using those RPG units (which help a lot) and I've managed to modestly secure the borders with some mild half stacks. I'm getting nervous now though cause Carthage will probably war with me soon cause they took Syracuse and the Illyrians and Gauls to the north aren't kind (and they're expanding rather modestly). But I managed to secure a defensive alliance with Egypt and the true Greek states are friendly with me. By the way, I'm playing as the Patricii family (diplo penalty) so I've been focusing on diplomacy a lot. One question I do have though:

How can I control the policy outcomes I get each year? I'd really like to know what determines that so that way I could plan things out better.

[Jake Armitage]

@northern
I've uploaded those packs for testing reasons.
Doing a pack for the new RPGu is quite time expensive, for now I've done Rome, macedon, Pergamon, Boii and Ptolemi, which are the factions I usually test.
As soon as I reach 10 I'll release the definitive version (I've made quite a lot of changes since last test upload).
If I were you I would wait for the definitive version.

@Trippin
Yeah, I don't see testudo + turn recruitment as a good choice.
Glad you're liking it, definitive version will have some rebalancements I've already done. They seems better to me.

How can I control the policy outcomes I get each year?
Completely dice-rolled but I plan to do something different in an advanced version (basically, linking various actors vis VPS).
Also, I'll overhaul that policy for 1.7 (so, not this next version but the next next one).

[nikossaiz]

hello Jake, i believe that the real succes of a mod is the gameplay options that the moder give to the player. more or less ( more more than less ) What you did with the testudo packs. i tailor it in my way of playing and is the closer mod to what i find a perfect gameplay balance. i will once more admit though that while i enjoy the vast majority of the base testudo features i get a bit off with the RPGu element and the path that it take. To much specialization that just ( for me offcourse ) distract and overwellm me. I like the administration, diplomat and the seperation between professional and militia armies, a real distinct and realistic one, but the others, mercenaries, plunders etch etch are just ( for me again ) feel kind of an artifficial and gamie seperation. anyway, i may change opinion easily once i have the time and hapiness to play the full release of the mod. i also wish there will be an option to select ( really hard, i know ) RPGu units via packs or at least ( basically most of all ) that will not be an element that the final mod will compel us to use it.

Ps. I just saw what you guys did in the alexander campaign, based on RPGu mod. Well , i wanted to say that I dont oppose the mechanic , witch it may prove fundamental, just the exact variations.

Ps 1. I cant give you a proper feedback with the test pack cause i exclucively play with macedon or other greek factions and i can only make comparison with those campaigns.

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, I get what you say, I have 3 things to say about:

1) as you already stated, for now we have a RPGu Bodyguards (so defining general effects to whole army), one day we'll have Bodyguards + specific units which will largely widen the rpg possibilities (some will be for everyone, some specific)
2) I try to plan things considdering what I plan next and I assure you these BG differences will be very useful for next versions ('cause I can easily link them via script)
3)basically, you have (from left to right):



> NORMAL FIGHTING ARMIES
- Levy (less strong, less costly, infantry BG only)
- Regular (average)
- Professional (stronger, more costly)

I think these 3 possibilites are perfect (thx to DominusetDeus for the advice) 'cause they are both historical and game-wise

> SPECIFIC FIGHTING ARMIES
- Mercenary (focused on mercs and plundering, this type of army has a limited use ofc, sometimes could be useful imo)
- Garrison (mostly to guard borders and dissuade AI to invade you on sensible regions)
- Mounted (focused on cavalry and giving penalties to infantry, I did this one 'cause most of the times - with greeks - I fight with 3 armies: the main one with infantry and 2 "shoulders" with cavalry, some times just the BGs, so they are meant as a backup with more possibility to move on the map)

> DRILL TROOP
-Drill (in final version: + 1 to recruitment points, +1 to exp chevron, bonuses to exp per turn. Since the overall recruitment has been lowered and it depends also on seasons now, you'll see it will be very useful)

> ADMINS
- Land (land administration)
- Urban (urban administration)
- Province Governor (land + urb in a single army)
- Diplomat (raising diplomacy/loyalty in different ways based on the campaign stance and one day will be useful for the transfer region system)

Basically, I'm covering every "historical" and game (speaking of what we can do via script) possibilities.
This doesn't mean, though, you'll have to use them.
Admins are quite useful (probably necessary) for a game like testudo.
The fighting ones, well, it's up to you, you can just always go with regular ones. It's up to you to decide which one to recruit
To make an example, I personally never used the garrison, mostly 'cause I never needed it, but in other people's savegames I saw they were used quite a lot.
So, I really think it is a personal choice.
And, also, don't think the differences are actually really sensible. Yes, there are differences but they mostly resides in the world of micromanagement and rpg choice.

[Dolen]

Playing as Rome seems impossible.
Epirus just keeps sending full stack armies like they have infinite money and supplies, while Etruscans continuously terrorize the north.
And I can barely afford 1 full stack army if most of my cities produce little income (50~300 wtf!), and needless to day can't afford ships to interfere.

[Jake Armitage]

Man, you need to adapt to the gamestyle, otherwise you won't go anywhere.

Epirus: that's unlikely 'cause they are set to recruit 3 units per turn for the first 24 turns and then just 1 (if they didn't occupy another settlement)
I can barely afford 1 full stack army: you have to build your economy before start recruiting invading armies

so, if you wanna play rome, do the following:
1) make genua declare war on etruria and set trade agreements with them and the 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 or erase an anemy army.
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 (cisalpina is easy to conquer if you've secured the southern border)
5) always work wth diplomacy, make many friends and few enemies. send spies to discover factions and obtain new trades

or, use my savegame (24° turn, ready to conquer taras 'cause he's busy fighting in greece), you can download it at post #802

[Dolen]

probably Epiros will conquer bruttium (hopefully it's not beneventum)

Thanks for the advice, I'm just not used to the idea of allowing settlements to be occupied and reconquering it, since such occasions have always been rage-quitting ones for me

[Jake Armitage]

anytime

you may prefer to wait for next version which I should release this sunday

[leonardusius]

Took me a 100 turns to consolidate Italia and I just ended the Epicurean War by taking Apollonia.

So what ? 100 turns means how many years, please ? Rome 2 isn't RTS game at all.

[leonardusius]

@northern
How can I control the policy outcomes I get each year?
Completely dice-rolled but I plan to do something different in an advanced version (basically, linking various actors vis VPS).
Also, I'll overhaul that policy for 1.7 (so, not this next version but the next next one).

A strong idea ! Keep the good work on !

[leonardusius]

Leo, I believe this is the file you are interested in http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php...59740101235093

I'm asking myself if you can somehow make the AI use of the pack created some time ago by Jake, just like your fixed AI for pigs character ? https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...1#post15599821

[Jake Armitage]

Do you mean adding the cultural effect (the pink/purple turtle) to Ai too? Well, that's quite useless as they are now, no I really don't think there is a need for that. It is really easy to do though.
I see you're referring to a testing pack I have no more, which probably worked with recruitment points too. There is no need for now to do that 'cause recruitment points are heavy modded (by number of regions, climate, RPGu, intrigues) in 1.6.1.

Fact is that I'll do something different and more cultural oriented sooner or later (via cdir we can track down not only the majority/minority but the actual cultural x value of a province).
I don't know yet how it will be though.

[leonardusius]

Do you mean adding the cultural effect (the pink/purple turtle) to Ai too? Well, that's quite useless as they are now, no I really don't think there is a need for that. It is really easy to do though.
I see you're referring to a testing pack I have no more, which probably worked with recruitment points too. There is no need for now to do that 'cause recruitment points are heavy modded (by number of regions, climate, RPGu, intrigues) in 1.6.1.

Fact is that I'll do something different and more cultural oriented sooner or later (via cdir we can track down not only the majority/minority but the actual cultural x value of a province).
I don't know yet how it will be though.

Please Jake, do it as an option for someone's who want ....more challenge, even harder play, and more realism. I am for this because it was historically accurate. Very small pack, I will try to find it on the old drives.