New Map Thread

[cherryfunk]

With all the splintering of threads I thought we could concentrate all feedback specifically for Patch 10 here.

So far I've played Greek, Gallic and Getae campaigns. I'll start with some general feedback:

-- I think mercenaries in general should cost more; currently they cost about the same as an equivalent recruitable unit. But historically mercenaries tended to cost more; they had no national loyalty, and were often better soldiers than levied troops. In EB, they have mercs cost about twice as much as recruitable units, which might be too high, but I would add at least 20% to all merc costs across the board.

-- Roads at the basic level take only 2 turns to build. On the Big Map in particular this seems too short; roads represent an entire network of roads across a province, which would take a long time to build. And on the Big Map in particular, roads have a HUGE impact on gameplay with the increased travel range. So I think it should take at least 4 turns to build basic roads.

-- Ships: Seem too inexpensive. Navies are enormously expensive to build and maintain. I would raise prices by at least 50% for build cost and upkeep.

-- Diplomats: should take 2 turns to recruit (like the spy), not 4. There's no reason for them to take twice as long as spies, in fact they would be easier to find and train than good spies.

-- Macedon's purple: can we change it from purple to something else, or at least deepen the shade so it's not so bright?

[dvk901]

With all the splintering of threads I thought we could concentrate all feedback specifically for Patch 10 here.

So far I've played Greek, Gallic and Getae campaigns. I'll start with some general feedback:

-- I think mercenaries in general should cost more; currently they cost about the same as an equivalent recruitable unit. But historically mercenaries tended to cost more; they had no national loyalty, and were often better soldiers than levied troops. In EB, they have mercs cost about twice as much as recruitable units, which might be too high, but I would add at least 20% to all merc costs across the board.

DVK: I agree...never thought about them much and no one has said much.

-- Roads at the basic level take only 2 turns to build. On the Big Map in particular this seems too short; roads represent an entire network of roads across a province, which would take a long time to build. And on the Big Map in particular, roads have a HUGE impact on gameplay with the increased travel range. So I think it should take at least 4 turns to build basic roads.

DVK: I agree.

-- Ships: Seem too inexpensive. Navies are enormously expensive to build and maintain. I would raise prices by at least 50% for build cost and upkeep.

DVK: I agree

-- Diplomats: should take 2 turns to recruit (like the spy), not 4. There's no reason for them to take twice as long as spies, in fact they would be easier to find and train than good spies.

DVK: I disagree. A Spy could be any bum off the street, or shifty criminal element adept at sneaking around and getting into places because of his\her 'checkered' criminal past. A diplomat was a well trained courtier, trusted and highly educated. I don't believe there's any comparison between the two. Besides, the whole purpose of changing this was to reduce the number of cheap diplomats running around (and standing around) constantly trying to bribe cities and armies, or constantly making peace, demands, over and over. If this is going to happen, then it should be expensive and waited for. A 'diplomatic mission' or 'office' to a foreign nation was no cheap venture, and surely not quickly obtained or achieved in this age of long distances and slow torturous travel.

-- Macedon's purple: can we change it from purple to something else, or at least deepen the shade so it's not so bright?

OK....I'll try something else.

[Marku]

Personaly i'd make the mercs cheaper since its hard to replace lost numbers after battles, especially you move away from the AOR.

[tone]

My thinking is a to make them a bit more expensive. Got to make it hard! If they run off then it's our bad luck!

Just started a rome campaign H/VH on big map:

My impressions - much better, not getting crazy amounts of money, but I still think it's a bit too easy.
Thoughts for improvement:
1) Make free peoples missile cavalry weaker in melle
2) I need to reskin the free people!
3) Music is fantastic as Romans!
4) Battles seem better but it wouldn't harm to give the free people a bit more morale maybe
5) Really we need one map don't we? It'd make life so much easier

It'll be interesting to see how things go later

[cherryfunk]

DVK: I disagree. A Spy could be any bum off the street, or shifty criminal element adept at sneaking around and getting into places because of his\her 'checkered' criminal past. A diplomat was a well trained courtier, trusted and highly educated. I don't believe there's any comparison between the two. Besides, the whole purpose of changing this was to reduce the number of cheap diplomats running around (and standing around) constantly trying to bribe cities and armies, or constantly making peace, demands, over and over. If this is going to happen, then it should be expensive and waited for. A 'diplomatic mission' or 'office' to a foreign nation was no cheap venture, and surely not quickly obtained or achieved in this age of long distances and slow torturous travel.

Actually I think the opposite is true -- diplomats were wealthy, well-connected nobles who could be dispatched quickly. They still are -- look at how the US selects ambassadors. The president picks some well-connected rich guy and in a few months he's off to his new job, no real training required. Spies, on the other hand, take years of work to train. Look at what a new CIA agent has to go through.

So in terms of historical reality, there's no reason for diplomats to take 2 years to produce. And in terms of gameplay, it's not good because sometimes you have to produce one quickly to negotiate a ceasefire or try and bribe an invading army, and four turns is too long for any sort of fast response.

I think having both spies and diplomats take 2 turns to produce is the best balance. Diplomats should cost more though.

[cherryfunk]

Here's some more general feedback (note these are reactions to the Big Map):

Important Free cities still need some elite units in them. For example, Sparta has no Spartans. Massillia has no elite units. These were powerful Greek city states and should have powerful units in them, including a general or general equivalent. Further, I think every Free city on the map should start the game with 2 or 3 elite infantry and an elite heavy cavalry. You can't count on the AI to build these units, dvk, because they don't. The units have to be in place at the campaign start.

Some faction-specific thoughts:

Gaul:

-- Should have some good elite units at the game start, because they can't build much. In fact, every faction should begin with a few elite units; I noticed that Pergamum also starts with only low quality units, it should have 2 or 3 elite infantry.

-- Gallic Light Cavalry are too cheap to buy and maintain (400 recruitment/110 upkeep vs. 350/85 for the cheap Light Spear Infantry) -- cavalry are hugely expensive next to infantry and the game should reflect this (except for Parthia and Sarmatia).

-- Gaul needs a field army at the campaign start, it only has one tiny stack of 2 units in the Po Valley, which can't do anything. A faction as large as Gaul needs some field troops at the outset.

-- There are two separate Light Spear Inf. recruitable at Alesia, with almost identical stats.

[Angel]

well dont worry with my new stats and editing, i think you wish they had those 2 tiny stacks. In the descr_Strat alot of factions will be able to build there desire troops, but keep get realastic though. Each General will have his own army with comprise of elite,inf,missile,cavarly. Captains or non-generals with have half the army of a general. Elite will lead them. Each faction has increase money do to increase man power. Im doing great progress on descr_strat and edu.txt cant wait to send it to ya dvk and make it to patch 11 or add it to patch 10.

[Squid]

I ran an AI rome campaign (on Mundus) over night last night here are my findings:

1) Rome was destoryed by 218BC
2) All roman cities start the game with negative population growth (I think because they have blacksmiths)
3) By this point Macedon was huge, they stretched from the channel to steeps and controlled northern gaul, southern germany, most of non-black sea balkans and greece and were into the western edge of the steeps (this was without me having fog of war turned on, so I couldn't see everything).

[Squid]

I don't think we want factions to be build their higher quality troops at the beginning of the game, that defeats the purpose of building up your empire.

[Angel]

No i mean there'll be one city that can, everything else is still low lvl, and requires time to build it up. Im sure in this time period there were cities that can produce there elites but just 1 city however.

[Squid]

No i mean there'll be one city that can, everything else is still low lvl, and requires time to build it up. Im sure in this time period there were cities that can produce there elites but just 1 city however.

Espcially with 0 turn recruitment you'd still run into problems with this since even with only one city teched up, every other turn you could be turning out a stack of elite troops . . .

On the other hand some factions should start more teched up then others, macedon, which would already have been a developed nation would probably be more teched up then say rome which was just starting on its road to empire.

[tone]

I was looking at the Macedonian companion cavalry stats just earlier. They certainly hit hard...I guess that's the intention, but they have something like 58 defence versus 42 of Carthaginian sacred band.

Maybe that's why Macedonia were doing well

[Angel]

Heh ya i noticed too, i changed it, most cavalry is around 30-40 defense wise. Missile cavalry are doing there job now and inf too. More test but I think it looks good. I hope me reworking the stats that itll provide an great challenge to all players type. Always got to work harder, i notice that some units animations are wronged will look into more.

[dvk901]

Good grief....that's the way I had these maps in the first place a long time ago! One good city per faction. Then people said no that shouldn't be that way. Probably Tyr. Anyway, I can see it's still not right. Damn it! I'll have to change the Blacksmiths back to what they were, because the AI is apparently too stupid to know that building them is cutting their own population's throat! Or no...maybe just remove ALL bonus from them..then only the player would build them. The AI wouldn't bother.

[tone]

Probably me as well saying no to fully tech'd city. As Squid says, it'll pump out loads of elites!

Things are close to being right though I think. What's the problem with the AI producing a normal blacksmith?

I wouldn't do too much that's drastic! Maybe cut back Rome a bit, cut back Macedon's elite cavalry a little. Or better still give the other nations a bit more starting cash or better trade or reduce unit costs. Anyone else seen Bosporan take off?

I think the long-term option has to be one map. BBW wasn't good on all campaigns, there was only one that I think worked well ....that was the unified Rome on big map. RTR has one map, EB has one map, SPQR has one map. Why do you think that is? Is it because they haven't got enough people on their teams to produce more than one? My advice would be optimise on one map...my vote would be for the big map and improve it to make it more accurate and also extend further east if we can, or else take mundus and make bigger scale.

What are people sseing Seleucids do?

[Angel]

Trust me from expierence the AI wont build full stacks of elite units. They will build few but depends on there income and population. Im making elite unit expensive for a reason, so AI wouldnt just chew on them, they'll accually provide an enthic group of units.

[dvk901]

As far as one map, I found this a while back. It's called 'Blarge'...a map made for BI. Note the scale and coverage of this map. It would take a lot of work to make it usable for RS, but may be worth it.

[Squid]

Here's my suggestion for the map we should use. I cut off the right 20%, and bottom 20% of the mundus map (and eliminated any provinces that this cut on the edge of the map). This saves us 33 regions we can add elsewhere. From here I'd re-enlarge the map so its the same size as the mundus one started at.

Unfortunately my photoshop skills are rather poor so I was only able to do the shrinking and recoloring of the map. As you can see it still goes pretty far to the east. I can upload the shrunk version of map_regions.tga if required.



EDIT: I still would be hesitant to tech up any city.

[dvk901]

Did you actually get that to work in-game?

[Squid]

I probably could but I didn't try, I just changed a copy of map_regions.tga. I'd have to look at turotial to figure out what changes I'd need to make to other files. There's no reason why it wouldn't work if all the correct changes were made. map_regions.tga would still need to be enlarged (I couldn't figure out a quick way to do that).

I was hoping that if I got this far, then NR or someone who's better at graphics and graphic editing could take it the rest of the way.