Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

@loki
they have to otherwise the AI doesnt even build them. the same goes for the samnites and the barb warriors with hidden nationality, whose name escapes me now.

@ Pink!

This mod is totally awesome! I finally got around to having a go with 0.62 - It's just incredible, I can't believe how good this really is. This is going to be completely brilliant when it's polished up!

I think I've been far too defensive, my empire is pathetic, I gave up trying to conquer Carthage, we now co-exist in an uneasy peace. I even found it hard conquering Gaul! My legions haven't even heard of Jerusalem, let alone occupied it Don't make this easier though, this should be a challenge.

It might be nice if there was more of an explanation for each wonder and how to achieve them, this is a really complex Mod!

I would suggest you remove the Lethal Land Bombard ability from all of the triremes etc. It doesn't seem right to see Messina red lined by a monster stack of quinquiremes before being invaded. (I'm impressed that the AI actually *does* carry out naval invasions though )

My game was brought to a halt by a missing file: Art\Units\Sarmatian Swordsman\...\AnsarWarriorRun.amb

I'm looking forward to playing some more of this

EDIT: Just found the correction for the AnswarWarriorRun.amb bug on page 3 here should have read the whole thread first!

King Coltrane said:

@loki
they have to otherwise the AI doesnt even build them. the same goes for the samnites and the barb warriors with hidden nationality, whose name escapes me now.

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The predatores.

What if you made it so that instead of Anarhcy, you had civil war? This means that you would have a civil war each time between changing govs, very realistic, and would be able to build the improvement that require civil war to build.

loki1232 said:

What if you made it so that instead of Anarhcy, you had civil war? This means that you would have a civil war each time between changing govs, very realistic, and would be able to build the improvement that require civil war to build.

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That could actually work, but not with Anarchy and the wonders in their current form. Anarchy's corruption would have to be changed from Catastrophic to something that actually allows you to build things. All the wonders that require Anarchy/Civil War as the government to build and operate would have to have their prices reduced to 0 shields so that they can be built immediately before Anarchy runs out. Otherwise, it should work fine!

With those changes, you could also (possibly) remove the Religious trait flag from the Romans. However, from my recent studies for a research paper, I've learned that the Romans were, in fact, a very religious peoples, much more so than any of their neighboring countries. I guess that's a choice to leave up to you, pink!

Some more quick comments on your proposed changes in the next version:

- Making the AI use units both on the offense AND defense didn't really have the desired effect; Macedonia, the Greek City-States, and Magna Graecia just used the Hoplites/Phalanxes as defense units most of the time, and therefore never really sent much of an army out to attack since they were using most of their units for defense. I think units are just going to have to be clearly defined as an offensive or defensive unit for the AI to use it correctly; it just seems to get confused when you check both for one unit. The AI does use defensive units to guard the offensive units when invading, by the way.

- Making the Phalanx and Hoplite cost 1 pop point to make really seemed to weaken the Greek City-States & etc., having most of their cities under size 6 for most of the game.

The other things seem to be working out fine so far. I'm only at the end of the first age right now, however!

as far as the anarchy = civil war thing goes... i think the romans should NOT have the religious triat if this will be the case, even though they were indeed very religious as Randy points out. the purpose of this is to allow the lex agraria and similar civil war wonders to actually have an effect. think about it. 1 turn to build the lex AND the civitas that would follow? i think not. but if you had a few turns to do it then it shoudl work. also, having a random # of turns to build the civitas really makes everything more interesting. in all though, i tend to agree with you guys on this point.

@loki
yup, predatores it is. i hope my info was useful though.

@Randy
since you obviously have been testing this a lot (which i thank you for) im curious whether you actually change gov'ts other than to civil war and later forms of imperialism.

@pink (based on the above)
i think it is necessary to redo the govts because there is no incentive to be any of them

@everyone
i dont see why we cant have more of the *forbidden palace*-like wonders be really cheap. i understand that its more in line with civ to have em expensive, but to make it more realistic i think the prices shouldnt be extravagant.

I've been testing the changes too and I totally agree that the Monarchy govt. change has worked for a solid fighting chance, although it might need to be tweaked toward the original.
I also like the overall unit pop. cost suggested..
I only changed my Legio's bombard to (3) and kept 3 defense and it worked very well on offense, still dying quite a bit, but giving a good attack, still using hoplites as defense. btw- if Legio has just as good defense as hoplite alari- why ever build it? gotta increase incentive somewhere
For barbarians, I gave a break by 1 pop. cost (unless already 1) to all of their units and it seems to have worked well to make them a serious annyoance/threat.

I've been thinking ... and I like how Carthage is so close to Rome, but there needs to be more of an incentive to wage war in Spain in the Second Punic War. Maybe adding a colony to defend there? I don't know if that will work though, because of balance though.
Anyways just some thoughts...

King Coltrane said:

@everyone
i dont see why we cant have more of the *forbidden palace*-like wonders be really cheap. i understand that its more in line with civ to have em expensive, but to make it more realistic i think the prices shouldnt be extravagant.

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Perhaps you could have more invisible resources and create "Province Capitals." There would be a resouce in Carthage, Gaul, Persia, etc. allowing the capital, and it would require some Roman-only advance.

King Coltrane said:

@Randy
since you obviously have been testing this a lot (which i thank you for) im curious whether you actually change gov'ts other than to civil war and later forms of imperialism.

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Yes. In fact, the only government that I haven't really tried yet is Absolutism, and that's because I didn't want to go thru Forced Resettlement just to switch to another new government with Forced Resettlement (Christian Imperialism) not too long after that. Now that Absolutism doesn't have Forced Resettlement, however, I do plan to try it out this time around.

blitzkrieg80 said:

I only changed my Legio's bombard to (3) and kept 3 defense and it worked very well on offense, still dying quite a bit, but giving a good attack, still using hoplites as defense. btw- if Legio has just as good defense as hoplite alari- why ever build it? gotta increase incentive somewhere

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I don't know about you, but I still build plenty of Hoplite Alariis for the defense of my troops and cities (because of their lower cost). Another incentive to consider can be for them NOT to cost the 1 pop. point, much like all the other "... Alarii" units.



Another thing I forgot to mention:

- I changed the minimum research time for techs to 12. So far, this has been working pretty well. I'm about to enter the 2nd age at around 20 B.C. and have been keeping my tech rate at the minimum of 12 turns/tech (which is pretty easy if you manage your empire well). I really recommend setting the minimum tech rate to 10-12, so this limits how quickly the Romans can advance through the time periods. I also doubled the tech costs for all techs in the 2nd age on, hoping that this will slow down the tech rate later on when the Roman Empire is (supposed to be) huge. I haven't gotten a chance to test how well this works out yet, so I'll have to report back on that later.

About what you mentioned, Randy- in Ver .62, the cost of a Legio (first unit) is the same as Hoplite Alarii and both have the same EXP, so there really wouldn't be any reason to buy it at the beginning, which historically would be the only time they would be effective. I also already tried the NO POP. COST to make up for the 4 def and i agree it could work to make them appealable, but then why build praesidium? have to alter that too... and in the end it changed things a lot... too much power in my opinion, but definitely would need beta testing ;O) heh, our job I guess...
I totally agree with the tech rate... set my tech rate coincidently at 12 and it seems to work pretty well so that the rate maxes around 70-80% and so you almost have to make some money before you have to spend so much on support...
I gave up on the extra starting buildings idea too, since it made Rome too powerful at the beginning... I did put a Portus in Arminium and Moena in Naples, but thats it. I really think just a better offense for the Legio is the way to go, as mentioned before.
I noticed the ballistae barely hit anything and now barely do any damage, but if you build SOOO many of them you can't help but eventually get some results... don't know if that's intended...

sorry, forgot to mention something else. To Pink and anyone interested.
since the Parthians historically come from the desert steppe of Central Asia, the units should be able to ignore desert, and maybe hills too (haven't tested for balance)
also- similar in concept to using the "Pesian" culture complex of the Middle East, therefore "Scythians" is a more accurate description of the culture complex of the steppes of the Ukraine and Southern Russia and also stretched all the way to Mongoia and the Altai Mountains- indeed the Eastern Germanic Tribes (Goths, Heruls), Huns, Bolgars, besides other Proto-Turks and Indo-Iranians were called Scythians for a long time by Greeks and Romans. Using Sarmatians is still good for a name, since they were important as an especially known tribe (used later like Scythians for all) after the Scythians of ancient times, but since the Sarmatians are just another Indo-Iranian (and others) tribe of the Scythians, I think you could go with Scythians, like Persians? Then again, technically the Parni of Parthia are thought a Sakan tribe, which was Scythian in origin aka Indo-Iranian... so that means maybe not... hmm... something to think about.. the "Huns" was used for everybody later, but that of course is Medieval and not what we're interested in.
Heh, You all know I'm a geek since this is what I'm doing on Friday night. oh well =O)

blitzkrieg80 said:

About what you mentioned, Randy- in Ver .62, the cost of a Legio (first unit) is the same as Hoplite Alarii and both have the same EXP, so there really wouldn't be any reason to buy it at the beginning, which historically would be the only time they would be effective. I also already tried the NO POP. COST to make up for the 4 def and i agree it could work to make them appealable, but then why build praesidium? have to alter that too... and in the end it changed things a lot... too much power in my opinion, but definitely would need beta testing ;O) heh, our job I guess...

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Hoplites Atarii take military support, Praesidium don't.



Some more quick comments on things I've run in to!:

- I think you accidently allowed Rome to build BOTH of the Castrum Numidicis, pink. In my game, I was able to build 2 Castrum Numidicis, one which creates Numidic Horsemen very 4 turns and 1 which creates them every 10 turns.

- Rome's support gets out of control way later in the game. In my current game, I have most of south England, France, all of Illyria, Hispania, all of West Africa, all of Italy, Sicily & all those other small islands in the Med., Greece, Macedonia, and a fairly large foothold into modern-day Turkey (@ 38 AD). Thanks to that wonder that doubles city growth, my military support has grown to 211 (and growing quickly)! I'm actually having trouble keeping enough units up to use up my military support limit. It's not so much that I have a lot of large cities, but that I have a TON of cities. Not too sure what to do on this one, since the 1 military support for small cities early on really helped.

- One thing I forgot to mention when fixing the tech rate for the AI: you missed adding some 0's (only have the cost set at 100 instead of 1000) for a few of the AI techs. Make sure to double-check that.

- The wonder splash entry is missing for the Colosseum in PediaIcons.txt. Just add its entry in and it works fine.

- I'm not so sure about letting Camelites move around in Swamps. I can't really think of a reason why they would be able to move around in Swamps (while no other units can). Normally this isn't a problem, but in my current game Egypt actually became a superpower and started ripping apart Persia. I joined in on Persia's side and have stopped their offense into Persia, and started pushing them back. My forces keep getting killed by these stupid Camelites that just hide in the Swamps and don't come out; there's nothing I can do about it, since I don't have any units that can attack into the Swamps. Obviously, this is pretty unfair. I guess I can understand Egypt's Camelites dominating in the desert... but swamps, no. Why can't units enter swamps and deserts, by the way? It makes it so units like the Camelites who CAN enter that terrain are pretty much invincible. Just make the movement cost on the terrain be very high and allow units to enter the deserts and swamps (but keep Marshes so that they can't be entered, for the trick with Germania's cities).

- I've tried everything I can with the Christiani unit and I just can't get it to be sacrificed. I guess only captured units (e.g. Servis) can be sacrificed. The only other thing I can think of to really make the wonder do what you intended it to do is to do this:
- make it so neither the wonder nor the "Immolatio Christiani" buildings make any Christiani.
- keep everything else the same, except make the "Persecutiones Christiani" wonder give 30-60 culture per turn; basically what you would get from sacrificing a Christiani in Rome every turn.
- maybe make the "Persecutiones Christiani" wonder require the Colosseum in its city to be made to limit the wonder to Rome only, and only after the Colosseum is made?

Hello all,

new to the forums here, well met indeed !

well, I have been playing this mod now for a week and i have to say I like it ALOT...too much maybe heh..

I do have a couple of issues though with certain aspects of the game that dont seem too make much sense.

1.The slaves that scour the lands are too powerful. Giving them the ability to a) destroy a structure while attacking, b) having a higer attack value than any defender available in the beginning (they are, um, slaves afterall) and enslaving to a unit that is better than a legio makes for a very frustrating experience. Not to mention the fact that they can capture a city without declaring war on you but you have to declare war to take recapture the city. I also don't understand why slave warriors are so great, but servi are horrible workers. A stack of 10 or so will build a road on grassland in 5 turns? C'mon

2. Legios in the beginning are too weak. They need an extra attack , bonus hps or a movement increase to balance out their inferiority to nearly all other civs units. Rome did not conquer the known world by having an inferior military.

3. The starting date makes it impossible to have a historically accurate experience.

Aside from that, thus far I love the mod. Really terrific concepts being used and you get major Kudos for the depth in which you have gone into the various stages of the Roman Republic/Empire.
Excellent job =)

When is the next patch coming out?

jeez Loki, Pink said by this coming Mon when he first addressed our comments...

Ok, yet another idea: Delete the city Barium (Sorry citizens of Bari, but we don't like where you live =oP), but use the same pop, buildings, units for a new city: Saguntum, which can be placed on the second tile above Valentia... and hopefully it should cause Rome to go to Iberia during the Second Punic War? It would be accurate since Rome's alliance with the city did start things off... Any thoughts on this?

blitzkrieg80 said:

Ok, yet another idea: Delete the city Barium (Sorry citizens of Bari, but we don't like where you live =oP), but use the same pop, buildings, units for a new city: Saguntum, which can be placed on the second tile above Valentia... and hopefully it should cause Rome to go to Iberia during the Second Punic War? It would be accurate since Rome's alliance with the city did start things off... Any thoughts on this?

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I'm all for removing Barium and adding another city elsewhere. Barium always ends up being some small, junky town that doesn't help much. I like your idea.

Hey, I got a small idea:

Rename the Imperialism as principate
and christian Imperailism as Christian Principate.

If you wanted the Player to have to have to switch govs, you could make all building's after that era require that gov, until you hit a new era.

blitzkrieg80 said:

Ok, yet another idea: Delete the city Barium (Sorry citizens of Bari, but we don't like where you live =oP), but use the same pop, buildings, units for a new city: Saguntum, which can be placed on the second tile above Valentia... and hopefully it should cause Rome to go to Iberia during the Second Punic War? It would be accurate since Rome's alliance with the city did start things off... Any thoughts on this?

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If you did this, Saguntum would probably fall during the First Punic war.

It is historically accurate so I don't know what to do.