Suggest taking some tips from DEI

[Poacher886]

So firstly, thanks for the excellent campaign mode and mod, clearly lots of work has been accomplished with much still a WIP.

After playing R2 DEI for the last 4yrs while waiting on this mod, it has become apparent the speed of game-play in DEI provides inho a much better more believable experience.

Admittedly i play this and that with 40 unit stacks, but DEI accommodates this without issue...I would suggest increased garrisons, as regardless of 20 or 40, the AI has never been great at defending itself, and the far larger garrisons in DEI provided a much harder, slower and more realistic speed of expanse, this being compensated by nerfed arrow towers and 'harder to burn' siege towers etc, thus allowing a better chance for the enemy to penetrate your defences.

Also settlement growth is incredibly fast, and not effected by pestilence!, again in DEI growth is not just stumped, but reduced during these times, along with population. This in turn, curtails the speed in which you can develop and ultimately steam role the map. They also managed to stop 'mini-army's' running around the map, with the AI sticking to mostly full or at lease larger stacks providing more decisive battles.

I realise its alpha, with still much to do, however i would suggest taking a few tips from DEI mod, on the pace...it really makes for a more in-depth, engaging, and harder more satisfying campaign imo.

Keep up the good work.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Settlement battles have always been tricky since R2TW, because you have to fight so many of them and there are only a few maps per settlement per culture, and some maps are the same between cultures with a simple asset flip. This gets repetitive fast. Since the latter portion of the campaign consists mainly of knocking over city after city with your unbeatable armies and generals, I think most players give up on their campaigns at this point and start a new one since if feels more grind than fun. Since the design of TW basically makes this "city grind" unavoidable, the challenge in building a campaign is making the player take as long as possible to get to that point without making the player feel like they aren't making progress in their game.

Attila did this by making garrisons very small and city defenses extremely powerful, which at least in theory made city battles more tactical because the defender has so few units, so each one lost is very important. At the same time it also makes the late game annoying because the player has to tippy-toe around towers which can destroy even the best rank 9 max veteran units in the game very quickly, so sieges can feel very slow.

DEI did this by making garrisons huge so that every siege would feel like a real battle that would take all of your attention. That had the effect of making sieges little bit more exciting than the standard "clamp ladders to wall > kill units > rush town center" maneuver that could take out any modest garrison, but it also has the effect of fatiguing the player with large battles that begin to feel pointless later on then you have to fight them every turn. DEI also has a problem where some cultures that have extremely strong garrisons, like the Celts, will choose to sally out onto the field on most sieges and their garrisons can deal much more damage to my armies than the actual armies made by the faction, which feels cheap. When I know my expensive army is going to take more damage to a cost-free garrison sally than any actual army stack, it's discouraging to even attack a settlement and can lead to a feeling that I'm not making progress, that free garrison armies make my progress unreasonably slow, or that my progress is illusory.

1212 did this by hitting sort of a medium between the two, but slanted more towards Attila. The garrisons are much stronger than Attila, but the defenses are still extremely strong a la Attila. Towers do little damage but burn sieges engines very quickly, and towers and walls are extremely durable to the point where 5 catapults only have enough ammo between them to destroy two wall sections.

Here are my problems with this model:

* the AI never takes that much siege with them so their armies are always incapable of taking my cities. This makes the 1212 campaign very easy because the AI can't break down the defenses and therefore cannot take cities.

* catapults have a serious AI problem where they constantly aim at the very top of a wall instead of center mass, leading to massive numbers of misses due to overshooting. With 10 catapults shooting 4 stones each at a wall, it's not uncommon for 30-35 out of the 40 rocks to overshoot the wall and miss. This is a problem in Attila itself so I don't know if a mod can fix it, but in Attila catapults deal 20% damage per hit to walls whereas in 1212 they deal only 2%. This massively magnifies the overshooting problem and can make sieges very frustrating when 3 catapults fail to destroy even one wall section.

* large garrisons in 1212 are overkill. You'll only need a few units to hold the gate or one wall breach the AI manages to make and your towers can burn down their ladders within seconds of reaching the walls. As the player however I make an army of 19 catapults and easily take any city. It leads to an uncomfortable position where the player can easily take cities but the AI cannot take them.

* city defenses count enormously in autoresolve meaning the AI often cannot take another AI's city even with a superior force and when they do, they lose so much military that they are out of commission for several turns. They may lose so much of their military that other factions declare war and destroy them.

* indirectly affecting sieges, missile units deal damage much more quickly in Attila/1212 versus DEI, where it takes several volleys before a missile unit scores any kills. This makes missile units extremely powerful in sieges where walls obstruct the attacker's ability to return fire on them which further reduces the AI's ability to take a city.

Some suggestions I have:

* towers should take much longer to burn siege engines like ladders. Burning them at a reasonable rate should require concentrated fire from fire arrow missile units.

* catapults should be much more effective against walls. Currently they deal 10% damage per hit to towers, but only 2% to walls and there's the overshooting problem described above. Are trebuchets planned for later to take walls down more quickly?

* a note on settlement growth: the pacing feels fine in 1212 but much too slow in DEI. DEI shows the problem with making growth too slow: the AI with its cheats are unaffected by this and will grow their cities very quickly. This leads to the situation where your starting cities only have 3-4 out of 6 slots grown but you are capturing AI cities fully grown with all 6 slots, 150 turns into the campaign your starting province is the only province in your empire that is still growing. Your homeland will be the weakest part of your empire because of the crippled player growth. This is not a good situation. I do agree plagues should reduce growth to 0, maybe even negative to encourage controlling sanitation.