Something is wrong with the campaign design of this mod (and recent historical TW in general)

[Petellius]

Well, as said above, we do actually have all those features already in the mod, but it is most likely a matter of balancing. Give us some time to continue on with adding in mechanics and balancing the current ones and I think you'll slowly see what you want begin to appear. The AE team really wants to create a whole new experience, but it may take some time and polish to get it right.

[Jurand of Cracow]

To be frank, you've added a lot of options, but little strategy. There is only one strategy in this mod (as in vanilla) - get as rich as possible so you can field the strongest military possible so you can overwhelm your enemies, and also make sure that public order doesn't get low enough for revolts.

As long as that remains true, no number of new buildings will make the game more strategically interesting. Buildings are in a sense tactical, not strategic. They are only there to help you move towards your strategic goal, but right now there is only one strategic goal.

I have to say, I am still in awe of this mod, and excited for what it brings to the table, these kind of posts only add to the sense of passion and interest this community has in making this mod great. I deeply appreciate the articulate nature of your gripes and I think the mod team would do well to heed your advice.

Hi Guys,
I just want to say that:
- I appreciate the efforts of the team very much. As I started playing the TW many years ago with RTR and EB mods, this mod reminds me of that experience.
- I think the new TW games are, ehm, not rewarding for me anymore because of the one-sided gameplay and arcade-style historicity. This mod gives me much fun back, breaking the limits of the Warscape mechanics.
- I think the strategy of the gameplay is the most problematic for getting immersion in the new TW titles - and the Fraxinus' thoughts express much what I feel (although not necessarily his solutions ;-)
- I fully share the opinion of AIV that " these kind of posts only add to the sense of passion and interest this community has in making this mod great".
- having seen in many mods how the team would just turn a deaf ear to the comments about the fundamental issues while discussion petty details, I hope the team would indeed come up with a bit more rational gameplay as Petellius said :-)
I keep my fingers crossed for the future developments! I guess the most laborious part is already behind you, and now adjusting, balancing and fixing the exploitable players' strategies is what consumes your time.
JoC
PS. I've just played both DEI and AE, and my conclusion is much more positive on the AE. Partly because of the ATW engine, partly because of the design choices. More features do not necessarily give better gameplay, it's rather the interplay between features and the balance what's essential.

[Fraxinicus]

Well, as said above, we do actually have all those features already in the mod, but it is most likely a matter of balancing. Give us some time to continue on with adding in mechanics and balancing the current ones and I think you'll slowly see what you want begin to appear. The AE team really wants to create a whole new experience, but it may take some time and polish to get it right.

Like I said before, you have the beginnings of those features, but I don't actually feel like I'm playing a different game, and I don't feel like I have any more interesting strategic decisions over vanilla. I'm making hideous amounts of money on industry and trade, AND fielding large armies of elite native soldiers, AND I have the option of recruiting elite local units from wherever I want (although Armenia's balanced roster gives me little reason to do so). I DON'T see any ability to play the game and essentially ignore cultural unrest - the best I can see is a -25% reduction in it from the second-highest level of one town center chain. Oddly enough, the "let the locals rule themselves" building line drastically increases cultural unrest, and instead gives more PO from having my own culture... which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. Not sure if that's WAD, actually.

You need to make more radical changes if you do want to create a whole new experience - and that's very important for all of us. Considering how Three Kingdoms and its offshoots will likely be much more arcade-y, like Warhammer, I think this mod is the last best hope for gripping historical TW gameplay. But the problem of Warhammer wasn't that it got rid of things - all the things it got rid of provided nothing interesting to the TW campaign experience (M2, probably the best TW campaign thus far, had no sanitation or food systems like Attila). It's problem is the same as vanilla Attila - that it didn't add anything interesting to the TW formula.

[druchii7]

Absolutely agree: something is wrong.

The campaign economics are too random and there isn't enough ballance between discontent countermeasures and taxation.

Bugs? possibly, I don't think so.
Unbalance? Probably.

The main problem to me is an underworked UI. There's not enough information about what's going on in your economy or there is, but it's terribly difficult to understand.
Good UI rare in complex games and bad UI ruin lots of good strategy games. If I don't know what's going on or need 10 minutes/turn to have even an approximate idea why I went from +3000 to -4000 income in 2 turns, I can bear with that a gaming session, maybe two, but I'll quit the game before I end the campaign.

I find it wonderful that modders try to mix the best of paradox games and the best of CA games, but if you introduce those new mechanics. I know it's difficult. CA makes quite dumb campaign mecanics and therefore they only need to develope dumb campaign interfaces with little information, but it's enough due to the lack of any complexity.

If you make economy complicated (god, it's cool but maybe too complicated for a TW game), you need to counterballance with a very well designed UI that provides good information.

Strategy games are about understanding what's going on and try to make the best choices. If information is not there, you simply cannot choose wisely. If information is there but it's hard to find/understand, the game gets slow and boring.

I think that AE has some of the best ideas ever developed to make a TW mod, but the experience is not enjoyable. Not due to difficulty, but due to anoying lack of control. I love complex games, I love challenging games, but only if they have good enough UIs that let me focus on managing the complexity in an effective and time efficient way.

Another thing I wanted to point out: overcomplexity kills many mods. IMO, AE has been able to avoid that, there aren't too many kinds of units, no nonsense mechanics, but maybe there are too many buildings. It's wonderful to see such a complex and free builiding roster, but some seem a bit redundant. For example, I think that city buildings are fantastic, soci&amici, foederati... it makes sense and really changes the way cities work, but some others are all almost the same.

[Fraxinicus]

If I can offer two more concrete suggestions for how the mod could provide a significantly different and better campaign than existing TW games:

1. Make every province's future potential be decided from day 1, based on its fertility.
A fertility 1 province will be doomed to eternal poverty. You can make it less poor, but no matter what you do, it will always be poor. A fertility 6 province will be - or have the potential to be - one of the great centers of human wealth, culture, and civilization. A prize for every would-be empire builder to lust after and fight over.
Suddenly, the campaign map becomes much more interesting, because provinces are no longer largely interchangeable. The forested wilds of Germania are no longer interchangeable with Italy. The Armenian highlands are no longer interchangeable with the lush irrigated plains of Mesopotamia. We've made different parts of the map different, in a way that will have a huge impact on how we play the game.
In mechanical terms, there are several ways to go about this. An obvious one is to tie (almost) all building income to fertility level. But this ties into another change I'm suggesting, so let's move on to...

2. Make urbanized areas rarer, much harder to build, and more economically important.
There should be a strict and massive distinction between urban and rural settlement types. Far more than we have now. The type that a settlement belongs to should dictate every type of building that can be built there. Urban versions of each building should provide vastly, hideously more income, and that income should not be tied to local fertility. Instead, it should be tied to the tier of the building, which should be limited by the tier of the main settlement building, which should be very difficult to upgrade. There should be strict caps on the main settlement size based on local fertility, UNLESS you have a food port, in which case the port level dictates the cap. Higher levels of food ports will have massive food requirements, but no other building will. Global food will exist strictly as a limiting factor on urbanization.
Oh, and upgrading cities and urban buildings should be hideously, hideously expensive. Bootstrapping an entire urban economy ain't easy, and it ain't cheap, but it should pay off handsomely. This means that Gallic chiefs won't be pulling new Alexandrias out of their asses within the first 50 turns, and it also means that the urbanized areas of the world at the start of the game will become extremely important places to protect and conquer.

These two changes alone will drastically change the way we play Total War. Geography will suddenly become much more important, and games played in different parts of the map will be played very different. We will have new goals - to conquer and protect the most fertile and most urbanized areas, and to save up great stores of wealth in order to develop what we already own. Of course, this would require a complete overhaul of the entirety of both the building and economy systems, and also military recruitment as well, because tribal societies will need to be able to field large (but not too large) armies despite being piss poor.

Of course, this would be a huge amount of work, and it would be asking a lot from the mod developers to make such a drastic changes. But I hope these suggestions can provide some inspiration for the future direction to the mod, at least. Some kind of radical overhaul is necessary to make a fundamentally new campaign experience.

[druchii7]

To explain my point (in the previous post) in a clearer way:

If you want to know the true economic output of a province, there isn't such information. The "province income" data is false and leads to confusion, because it doesn't take bulding upkeep, so you see a province with 5000 income but the truth is that you might be loosing money in that province. Therefore it can be impossible to understand why you're going straight into bankrupt and solve it. We have lots of crude information, which is good, but I'd like to have a nett income tool.

I can expend hours doing calculations and checking province by province, but that isn't enjoyable after a few hours. Not enjoyable at all.

If you compare it to battle UI, by pressing spacebar you can check all units, where they're joing, how tired they are, how demoralized they are... ¿see the difference? It doesn't mean that victories will be easy, it means that data is accessible, trustworthy and useful and help you plan your strategy and tactics.

Appart from those flaws I want to deeply congratulate the programmer that did the moral. It's so fuc**** ballanced, realistic and inmersive!!!!!

[stevehoos]

My first few campaigns I didn't understand the economy or how public order can affect it etc. Now I do, I can't understand how people are so confused by this?

[TSD]

Culture is indenpendant of PO. Try looking for buildings that give bonuses to your cultures influence. For Rome the biggest are Town Centers and temples.

When you say culture influence, do you mean state influence? I am playing pergamon and looked at every possible building and see nothing in regard to increasing cultural influence, the only thing I've seen is state influence.

[Sheridan]

We appreciate the suggestions. Keep them coming.

There are some radical changes en route for economy and province management. The only reason it's been delayed for almost a week is due to my exam period, which is now over. I think the thing people will notice first is that in the next major update, the type of government building you choose isn't just a financial and public order consideration any longer. The government chain has been altered to also determine which buildings that you can construct in that region. This puts an emphasis on a broad trade-off; imposing harsh conditions on conquered regions enables more building options such as additional garrisons, mints, administrations etc. Conversely, the downside about a liberal rule over some regions is that you have some fewer options of how to customize them, but in return these become more easy to manage.

[Joysong]

When you say culture influence, do you mean state influence? I am playing pergamon and looked at every possible building and see nothing in regard to increasing cultural influence, the only thing I've seen is state influence.

some religions share buildings chains. So for these factions the culture influence is called state culture. The mod will take a look at which culture is bound to that faction and starts multiplying that one. so state or named culture bought is good.

[Petellius]

If you want to look at the income of each region you need to look in the province detail tab, it gives you the income and income modifiers effecting each city and it's expenses. Makes calculating income much easier. I usually go hunting for regions where the maintenance is higher than income and invest in its infrastructure.

[Alexander Iulianus Verus]

Appart from those flaws I want to deeply congratulate the programmer that did the moral. It's so fuc**** ballanced, realistic and inmersive!!!!!

^^ THIS like 100000000000000%

FINALLY. AT LEAST. an AMAZING battle mechanics mod. I've had epic battles now with 12k troops no lag, no slowdown, amazing. I actually have to THINK about my strategy because units can't escape usually once engaged, so you have to think ahead to how the long battle will play out. Simply brilliant.

I won a crazy match against Cisalpine Gaul BARBARIANS and it was 10k vs 5k and I won a close victory.

[Aodh Mor]

We appreciate the suggestions. Keep them coming.

There are some radical changes en route for economy and province management. The only reason it's been delayed for almost a week is due to my exam period, which is now over. I think the thing people will notice first is that in the next major update, the type of government building you choose isn't just a financial and public order consideration any longer. The government chain has been altered to also determine which buildings that you can construct in that region. This puts an emphasis on a broad trade-off; imposing harsh conditions on conquered regions enables more building options such as additional garrisons, mints, administrations etc. Conversely, the downside about a liberal rule over some regions is that you have some fewer options of how to customize them, but in return these become more easy to manage.

This sounds great, the only comment I would have is that it needs to be very clear what the implications of each choice are for building construction in the region! One problem I think a lot of people are running into with the mod is just that you're at a disadvantage when adding design into a game where the UI wasn't intended to cater for it. I think a lot of the issues are caused by the difficulty of getting info to the player when the game didn't intent the mechanics to exist at all.

[Jurand of Cracow]

It would be helpful to have a few pop-up windows with information about the new features that would be shown at the beginning of the campaign (I recall in AoC there's always a window about War Weariness). A kind of in-game manual that player may skip if he's aware of these changes, but can also read.

[Palaiogos]

What battle difficulty are you on? All battles seem way too easy as it is literally: win cav advantage, cycle charge, rinse and repeat. I mean, it feels like a Med II battle, which is awesome, but it seems really easy. Also, ranged units are way too weak.

[Fraxinicus]

Battles are easy as hell. Had some trouble when I was stuck with t1 levy spearmen, but Armenian t2 spearmen are for all intents and purposes as good as elite legionaries in field battles. They hold the line indefinitely as long as they aren't flanked, which is all you need to win with your cataphracts.

Elite infantry should be rarer outside of the late game. That goes for the Seleucids too - one or two stacks of elite swordsmen and pikemen would be alright, but they've got 10 full armies of them, and all of their garrisons are decked out in elite units as well. These kinds of troops to a great extent negate the great new morale changes, as they will never take the >30% losses morale hit when in formation.

[TSD]

What battle difficulty are you on? All battles seem way too easy as it is literally: win cav advantage, cycle charge, rinse and repeat. I mean, it feels like a Med II battle, which is awesome, but it seems really easy. Also, ranged units are way too weak.

This I can agree with. I've been getting a very good challenge on the campaign map, but I absolutely wreck the AI in battles. Last battle I fought they outnumbered me 3 to 1 and superior quality. I had 3 cave though and was basically able to just hold the line and roll up the AI like a carpet.

[Whitey McKnightey]

Yes, the battles are way too easy at least on normal (which i understand is the recommended setting). One major problem is that the enemy AI sends these single units against your line before comitting their main force, and you have all the time in the world to encircle and destroy them. Then, even when they finally charge you full force, they pile their units on certain points of your line instead of trying to flank you. The only time I've seen AI even try to envelop me is when they have 3:1 advantage or something. The AI just doesnt seem to handle any kind of coordinated action.

[Apio Claudio]

Well it took me 3 failed campaigns to understand how the economy worked and some tips from the community, cause i was really asking myself what i was doing wrong, but after you get the economy and build some economical buildings your campaign starts to move on.

The main issue i m having currently is the lack of enemies to kill. Currently i've played around 150 turns wiht Rome and i basicall have all my legions seating on my borders. The big powers that i m going to fight are Carthage, i allowed them to live, and the seleucid empire. Have dived into Gaul since i m trying to make a slow conquest, otherwise it would end to quickly and it would result as any other normal attila campaign, where you have a lot of armies, but no one else to fight.

The mod is really good and i enjoy it a lot, has been a long time since i enjoied a total war game, since CA now is slacking a bit with the games. I would only ask, if possible, in future content releases and patches if the devs could give more armies to the enemies.

I think this was the aim of the team, reminding us of the good old days of Roma Surrectum and many other mods, it has that vibe and feeling, but the only issue is the lack of enemies to kill ;P. Probably related with some game mechanics constraints, since i know nothing about computer science and programming. Nonetheless this mod is really something. first time i saw it in 2016 i was eager to play it and waited patiently for its release and it has not let me down one bit, apart from the lack of enemies ;p

[Pacman110]

What battle difficulty are you on? All battles seem way too easy as it is literally: win cav advantage, cycle charge, rinse and repeat. I mean, it feels like a Med II battle, which is awesome, but it seems really easy. Also, ranged units are way too weak.

In concur with that notion. I find ranged units to almost be usless, unless when fighting against elephants. I hope the dev team considers another balance pass on ranged damage. Otherwise great mod and it's only going to get better. Much love!