Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

The screenshots look awesome! It sounds to be very tempting. I will download it and hope to find enough time to play this asap.

when can we expect a patch based on user results i just downloaded it and will have comments once i finish, assuming its' not alrdy perfect

I played it a little bit. It's a very good scenario!
Edit: I realize that it's the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, but maybe you could make other nations be playable too?

viper, i agree that it would be cool to smash the romans with macedonian phalanxes, but if you check the tech tree and pretty much every aspect to the scenario, its centered on rome. i think having the other civs playable is an option, but one to be considered as a RFRE 2.0 or something, but not for this version at least.

Some more feedback:

- I tried switching to the Civil War government this tiime. There's a major problem with it! Its corruption is set to Catastrophic, so you can't build anything while under that government! So how are you supposed to build anything under that government if your cities don't produce any shields? I'd imagine you meant to make the corruption be tremendous, but not completely crippling, so I lowered it to Rampant.

- Transition time between governments (in Anarchy) can waste a LOT of valuable time (esp. for unlucky people like me). I don't think there's a way to set minimum and maximum government transition time, so I think the only way to fix this is make the Romans Religious as well as Militaristic, or something to that degree. That way the Romans can quickly switch between their numerous governments.

- Again, with the problem of Carthage's mainland in Africa being completely uninvadeable. I really think the problem is its government (Monarchy); the support from that government is 4 - 6 - 8 and military units beyond that cost only 3 gold per turn. This allows Carthage to maintain a MASSIVE army; not just one that will put up a fight in its holdings in Hispania and constantly fighting back your advances in the Mediterranean (both on land and sea), but to also have enough forces on the African mainland to fight off nearly any invasion force that Rome is able to land, with ease. I think lowering the military unit support ratio should be decreased by 1/2 (2 - 3 - 4) of the current value so that Carthage can actually be defeated. I haven't even gotten a chance to fight Egypt (also a Monarchy) yet, but I'd imagine it'd be the same problem.

- Using Accelerated Production didn't work at all. Fortunately, I noticed that it halved the research times and didn't even bother playing with it. Instead, I'm going to try halving the shield cost of all Roman buildings and units. Also, while talking about Rome's production problem, I'm also going to try reducing the cost/unit for the Roman's governments down to 3 gold/turn so that a slightly larger army can also be maintained by Rome.

- I see you were messing around with the Flavors in the civ editor. Just as a suggestion, maybe you could make a bunch of different Flavors, such as Barbarians, Roma, Greek City-States, Carthage, etc. etc. (not too sure on the political factions/status of the time) and use the Flavors to make certain civs hate each other even more and further encourage conflict.

- I tried lowering the VPL value to 25 so that the game doesn't end so early. That apparently was much too low in the game I played, so I'm going to try raising it to 75. Hopefully that will do it.

- Hoplites Alarii "upgrade" to Milites Alarii, which has 1 less HP bonus (meaning no HP bonus) and 1 less defense. Is this intended, to represent the increased use of "Barbarian" men to fill the ranks of armies instead of Italians?

Hi pinktilapia,

Thanks for this great scenario. I really like it and I really admire the huge effort you put into this. Here a few thoughts/ideas I had when playing your fantastic sceario:

1.) Tech tree:
a.) As the Lex Agraria is rendered obsolete with the nex tech, when one researches down that path, it seems that one would have to build Civitas in every city almost right away after completing the Lex Agraria. Wouldn't it be better to have it rendered obsolete by a later tech - ust to give the player an incentive to build that wonder? (The same is the case with the Imperium Scipionis.) Or did I overlook something here?
b.) In the "Praetor"-tech there is 4times the Praetorium.
c.) The same is true with respect to Diocletian's Reform (4times Diocese)
d.) Is there any incentive to research the techs in the last era? The "Fall of the Empire" seems to be something one would like to avoid almost completely. By setting research to zero the player could in fact avoid it. Thus, it might be a good idea to provide some incentives for the research in this time period. Perhaps you could do something like the following (just an idea, I am not sure if that would work out):
you could increase the attack/defense stats of the other Civs (the ones that are supposed to attack the Romans) by a several points (to make them better then the Romans), while rising the stats of the Roman units only slightly by 1 or 2 points. That would give the player an incentive to research the techs of the "Fall of the Empire"-period, because that would give him units that are at least a little bit more capable to fight the others and might help him to hold out a bit longer.

2.) Civilopedia
Just a really minor thing: For the description of the Servi you wrote "Servus or Slaves", shouldn't that be "Servi or Slaves"?

3.) Other:
Do you intend to implement more difficulty levels? Perhaps you could use the Latin words for them?

Thanks again for this really great scenario!

CellKu

Feedback! That surely is going to help, thanks!

IXIRandyIXI
- VP and early victory Well I wasn't very familiar with the winning conditions and certainly have to review them. The idea was no winning conditions, but just that Rome has to keep more strategic cities (cities with a victory flag) than the other players. I am going to review that completely.
- 2nd age in 31AC is pretty accurate ok, you are 60 years late. If I can get feedback from other tests, triangulate them, I will be able to adjust advance costs. Curiosity, did you stay at 50% tax-50% research?
- Production: in my games, I usually had plenty of cash (not maintaining a very large army, but again I never playtested as far as you did), so I could accelerate production with cash. Being a bite late on historical Rome is ok since there is 200 years (0AC-200) which historically were pretty empty of conquests (ok, Britain, Dacia, and an ephemeral conquest of Mesopotamia). Rather than changing the costs (and indeed do not flag accelerated production!), rather test giving mines a 2 shield bonus rather than one.
- Carthage: arrrr, what's wrong with my games - I never saw that happen... But Coltrane did . You could recruit the Numids to your cause to make a diversion, but I am sure it would be not enough. I will see about reducing free support. The problem I believe is that Carthage is like an island (isolated by the desert, in order to push it going naval). PS. Egypt is usually pathetic on land, until they get Marcus Antonius, when they will start to stockpile consular legions, so don't get them too late )
- More free support for Roman: NO , or just not yet. But I may reconsider later, just remember that later government allow more support (e.g. triumvirate republic)
- Civil war, my bad! It will be fixed next version.
- Transition: idem, sorry for the lack of testing beyond 150BC- will be fixed!
- Hoplites alarii don't actually upgrade to Milites alarii, they just become obsolete when these troops become available.

Viper 275
Playing other civ? Uh, I would have to redesign the whole thing... But Coltrane is right, as a scenario, that would be perfectly possible. The problem is that Rome as such would have no chance to complete the conquest of the Mediterranean if not played by a human player.

Cellku
- Lex agraria: I am not sure I understand, and again that's maybe because I spend more time modding then actually playing Civ... If Lex agraria is made obsolete, all the civitas build in the cities disappear? In that case, must be fixed. Imperium Scipio (and ther other similar wonders) on the other hand is how it should be, you should't rush to Macedonian wars and try to get the wonder ASAP, conquering your southern and north-eastern neighbours.
- Praetorium, Diocese and Theme: you have four of each, to place in your empire to reduce corruption like a forbidden city (you have no 'courthouse', until you can build a forum in your largest cities which also reduce corruption)
- Going through the bad times (end era 2 - era 3): yes there are incentives! I try to summarize it quickly: once upon a time, you had a nice small republic, and corruption is such a lofty and organized peninsula wasn't a big issue. But suddenly, you wake up with a beefed up nation which cover half the Mediterranean and you have to reorganize the territory under the jurisdiction of Praetor (using the praetoriums). The Republic becomes an empire, and the great emperors become ineffective, or even worse, self destructive rulers. After Commodus, the Roman institutions loose all their values, and your Praetoriums become obsolete (due to the Barb reaching a tech, you have no control on this). In other word, your nice Empire suddenly become a banana republic (empire). Diocletian allow you to reorganize things a bit (and for a short while), but again, after Constantin, your dioceses get obsolete (by a another barb tech) and the mess is back full strenght. Now pretend you decide to stick at the Antonine age: You will have 400 years of an empire crippled by corruption, not able to build much, not speaking about maintaining. The only way is to get a short revival with the Soldier-Emperors and Constantin, and then to rush forward to get the theme before the whole empire is conquered by the barb new devastating units. Of course this as yet to be tested in details, lol
- You idea about the unit stats are there Just look in the editor. Later barbarian units are tougher with massive HP bonus while the Romans are stuck with defensive merc legions and an expensive heavy cavalry.
- Civilopedia: anyone willing to go through a proof checking for English, layout, and historical accuracy? It should't take too much efforts, unless my English is worse than I think...
- Difficulty level: it is hard to change, as it was said earlier on the thread, it would change the tech rate, but by modding it, maybe possible... Not just for now tough.

To end that post, tell me what you folks thing about this:
1. Removing mutual protection pact, and just military alliance on, in order to avoid the massive world war I experienced in my last game
2. Switching to a less merry version of Sn00py terrain set (the one made by Rye for his great mod - but is it 'common domain'? see preview below)

I will post a first patch before next weekend.

Just got into the second age again in another new game. I think it was around 30 or 40 BC. I actually went thru the (corrected) Civil War this time (that was tough!), so that 2 free tech wonder probably helped.

Some more things...

- I built the Praetorium and the game crashed! Error was:
Missing entry in "Scenarios/RFRE/text/PediaIcons.txt"
WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Courthouse

I guess it's missing an entry.

Quote: " If Lex agraria is made obsolete, all the civitas build in the cities disappear?"

Yes, when any wonder goes obsolete, ANY effects (including buildings put in cities by it) are eliminated.


In my current game, where I halved the cost of buildings and units, worked out pretty well. Maybe halving buildings was too much, tho.

pink! i have got a solution to the carthage problem i believe!!! (i havent tested it because i still cant reinstall civ 3 BLECH, but if someone wants to try this and tell me how it works... yeah) ok, so we need a new gov for carthage. (could even be "carthaginian monarchy" or whatever.) heres what we do. make the cost per unit more than rome, say 5 or so (key is a high number). then we beef up the support per city, but make it so its a bit unbalanced in the biginning so carthage is actually losing money. that way they HAVE to expand to keep their army and funds. and finally, here is the key. create a "flavor ship" (can be the exact same everything except with a spacebar after the name of the ship) for each ship and make it have no upkeep cost. thats right, you read correctly. think about it. carthage will pump out a massive navy and will have a more moderate army and will be forced to expand (obviously clashing with rome). seems pretty good to me. this way, with a smaller army, the hard part for rome will be defeating the carthaginian navy and fighting the barca's mercs. (hannibal) while the landing in africa becomes much simpler.

PS, i think you can just not check the "VP Victory" (or whatever it is) flag in the scenario editor.
heres another idea i just thought of. why dont we make a building (a cheap one) that requires civitas be built in that city. i would diminish the effects of civitas and give most of them to this new thing. that way when it goes obsolete you still have these new buildings that have the bonuses.

Just some ideas... im chocked full of em

Ok, you are working hard, no reason I shouldn't also :
I have posted the first patch which should address all issues raised here and a few others. Let me know if works fine. The link is in the first post.

Changes: RFRE0.61

- Minor map changes such as wetlands added in Illyria
- Bovianum noved east to hinder it to cover the ore near Capua once reaching 100 culture points
- No more mutual protection pact, you can still bring some civ into a war at your side (i.e. Numids vs. Carthage).
- Numid capacity to wage a serious war increased with cheaper Numid cavalry which must not be supported
- Mining is now faster
- Changed some improvements' obsolete advance
- Catasta: 50% production increase instead of 25%
- Mine: increase shield production of 2 instead of one
- Spaceship victory is back, strategic cities only left for AI guidance (there should be no winning possible based on VP)
- Civil war government reviewed to a milder version, with less corruption.
- Rome is now Religious to reduce anarchy between turns (religious building unflagged)
- Monarchy maintainance reduced to 2-5-8 instead of 4-6-8
- Quinquireme now can destroy land units (which should provide backup for the invasion of Africa, or for Carthage if you don't rule the seas!)
- Armies have a now a 2HP bonus rather than 1.
- Added Wonder Splashes for Praetorium, Claustrum Piraticae, Diocese, Thema, Castrum Baliaris
- Replaced the Wonder Splash of the Pantheon
- Changed the effects of Lex Agraria (now placing Limited Citizenship which is needed to reach full citizenship later on). The wonder expire much later, and is replaced by the Antonine Constitution which give full citizenship to all cities.
- Limited citizenship help resisting propaganda; Citizenship reduces war weariness; the forum only reduce corruption and slighlty add to revenue.
- Mare Nostrum now generates Triremes Summae rather than just Trireme, at the same rate.

@Coltrane
Get your Civ CD back ! If current changes don't address the Carthaginian issue, I might consider. But really Carthage has already a massive fleet and usually is maintaining troops in excess of its capacity. The AI deal poorly with units at a high cost per turn (build many and then loose them since it can't maintain them). Originally, I gave all civ a system of government similar to Rome but it didn't work and - I think- even slowed down the game. Now, by all means, test it!

@Randy
Thank you for all the feedback!

No problem! Guess I better restart again! My 6th game now and I still haven't gotten past the first line of techs in the 2nd Era.

Oh! Before I go on...

"- Changed the effects of Lex Agraria (now placing Limited Citizenship which is needed to reach full citizenship later on). The wonder expire much later, and is replaced by the Antonine Constitution which give full citizenship to all cities."

Lex Agraria requires Civil War for its government. Unfortunately, after you've built Lex Agararia and switched to another, more stable government, it's pretty much like Lex Agararia went obsolete (except they can again become active if you go back into Civil War). So that idea didn't work. An idea: let Lex Agararia build an improvement in all cities that does nothing, except allow the construction of the Lesser Citizenship. The Lesser Citizenship should only cost 1-10 shields (as low as you can get it) so that it won't take forever to build. Then when you leave Civil War, that hopefully now-worthless building that it placed will be gone and no more cities can get that Lesser Citizenship, or even Citizenship at all, until the later wonder or yet another Civil War. While on the subject of Citizenship, was it intended to allow the actual Citizenship improvement to be built other than by the later Great Wonder? Because it can be built normally after the research of Sulla's Rule. (UPDATE: I've tested my suggestion, and it works perfectly! I just created some temporary improvement that can't be built that Lex Agararia gives that the Lesser Citizenship improvement requires in the city to create, and then made the Lesser Citizenship's cost 0 so that it can quickly be built anywhere.)

Also, in the quick test I just did, it didn't appear that MPPs were disabled -- in the first 5-6 times, about 3 civs had signed MPPs. Guess we're lucky I caught that one early. Only those with the City States are allowed to make MPPs, but this also allows them to sign MPPs with those who don't have the City States tech. If your intention was to make it so when one Greek City-State went to war with another nation, then all of them would, you could create a special permanent military alliance with them in it.

Another problem I'm not too sure if you've fixed yet is disappearing and reappearing resources. I've had times where vital resources like Illyria's capitol's source of Fine Wood sudden runs out and disappears. I've also had Wheat pop up in Italy in a couple of my games. Although it kind of makes sense for resources to be found and to run out, this can cause some random unexpected problems with some games. You may want to change that.

And to answer your question from an earlier post, I normally play with my research at 40%, and gradually lower it as War Weariness sets in to keep a profit. I'm obviously a dirty warmonger.

Just wanted to say that I am finally downloading and am eager to play ...

mfG mitsho

pinktilapia said:

Feedback! That surely is going to help, thanks!

Cellku
- Lex agraria: I am not sure I understand, and again that's maybe because I spend more time modding then actually playing Civ... If Lex agraria is made obsolete, all the civitas build in the cities disappear? In that case, must be fixed. Imperium Scipio (and ther other similar wonders) on the other hand is how it should be, you should't rush to Macedonian wars and try to get the wonder ASAP, conquering your southern and north-eastern neighbours.
- Praetorium, Diocese and Theme: you have four of each, to place in your empire to reduce corruption like a forbidden city (you have no 'courthouse', until you can build a forum in your largest cities which also reduce corruption)
- Going through the bad times (end era 2 - era 3): yes there are incentives! I try to summarize it quickly: once upon a time, you had a nice small republic, and corruption is such a lofty and organized peninsula wasn't a big issue. But suddenly, you wake up with a beefed up nation which cover half the Mediterranean and you have to reorganize the territory under the jurisdiction of Praetor (using the praetoriums). The Republic becomes an empire, and the great emperors become ineffective, or even worse, self destructive rulers. After Commodus, the Roman institutions loose all their values, and your Praetoriums become obsolete (due to the Barb reaching a tech, you have no control on this). In other word, your nice Empire suddenly become a banana republic (empire). Diocletian allow you to reorganize things a bit (and for a short while), but again, after Constantin, your dioceses get obsolete (by a another barb tech) and the mess is back full strenght. Now pretend you decide to stick at the Antonine age: You will have 400 years of an empire crippled by corruption, not able to build much, not speaking about maintaining. The only way is to get a short revival with the Soldier-Emperors and Constantin, and then to rush forward to get the theme before the whole empire is conquered by the barb new devastating units. Of course this as yet to be tested in details, lol
- You idea about the unit stats are there Just look in the editor. Later barbarian units are tougher with massive HP bonus while the Romans are stuck with defensive merc legions and an expensive heavy cavalry.
- Civilopedia: anyone willing to go through a proof checking for English, layout, and historical accuracy? It should't take too much efforts, unless my English is worse than I think...
- Difficulty level: it is hard to change, as it was said earlier on the thread, it would change the tech rate, but by modding it, maybe possible... Not just for now tough.

To end that post, tell me what you folks thing about this:
1. Removing mutual protection pact, and just military alliance on, in order to avoid the massive world war I experienced in my last game
2. Switching to a less merry version of Sn00py terrain set (the one made by Rye for his great mod - but is it 'common domain'? see preview below)

I will post a first patch before next weekend.

Click to expand...

pinktilapia,
thanks for you huge answer!

1.) To the Lex Agraria: I thought that usually when you build a great wonder which gives you a building in each city these buildings will only be there as long as the wonder has not become obsolete and then disappear (but I might be wrong, I will test it in RFRE.)

2.) About the Imperium Scipionis: thanks for the advice on the game concept! That makes sense.

3.) Praetorium, Diocese, and Theme: Sorry, didn't know that.

4.) Bad times: Thanks for summing it up so nicely. The corruption thing is great, but I thought of an additional incentive. See also 5.

5.) With regard to the better hps of later Non-Roman units: I did see that later Barbaric units are better. But I could not find any (slightly) better stats for the Roman units. Did you also give any better stats to Roman units (e.g. "later" defensive merc legions) in the "Fall of the Empire"?
(So that their stats get better in absolute terms, but worse compared to the other Civs. Thus the player has a more obvious incentive to researchin addition to the corruption thing (= to get the "least bad" units possible).
But perhaps I understood you wrong and you have implemented that, as well.)

6.) Civilopedia: I didn't mean the English word "Slaves" but the Latin word "Servus" (I thought it should be "Servi" for the plural.).

7.) Difficulty level: ah, okay. I understand. I must have overlooked that earlier post.

About your questions: I think you should remove the mutual protection pact, but stay with the terrain you have - I like it.

Thanks, again!
CellKu

Ups, I wrote my answer when I was offline for a (long) while - sorry for the redundancies.

When i was playing I bombarded Carthage with my Trireme Summaes (best triremes) and destroyer the Portus Carthaginius??? Is there a way to make that impossible?

@Randy - It is amazing how much it seems I should play the game more! I am going to closely follow your ideas for this Lex Agraria. It will be (hopefully) really fixed in the next patch. MPPs, I must have overlooked a flag or two. Easy to remove, for next patch! For the resources, it is a question of taste; such random event can add some spice to the game and make games look different. Maybe will I reduce the % chance for fine timber to dissapear?

@Mitscho - welcome and don't forget: feedback!

@CellKu - does that mean you don't want to proof read the pedia ? For the Roman better units, well yes, they have in the Byzantine Era (stratiots, cataphracts, dromons, greek fire, spies) but they come late unless you really speed up in research. You should have at least 50 years (25 turns) which these units, in order to get a payback from these barbarians.

@Loki - The harbor gives a naval defense vs. bomb, which is why he can get destroyed. It is ok since anyway you can't get the port for yourself (it is a small wonder) but weaken Carthage navally. Meanwhile, if it is too easy to destroy the harbor, he will have to change that. Did you rule the sea and besiege Carthage, or just sneak a trireme in and get the port destroyed in one shot?

pinktilapia said:

Feedback! That surely is going to help, thanks!

IXIRandyIXI
After Commodus, the Roman institutions loose all their values, and your Praetoriums become obsolete (due to the Barb reaching a tech, you have no control on this)..

Click to expand...

Are you saying that a barbarian researching a tech makes your stuff go obsolete?


I was in charge of the sea, but it was my first shot so i could have just snuck one through withthe same results probably.

pinktilapia said:

@CellKu - does that mean you don't want to proof read the pedia ? For the Roman better units, well yes, they have in the Byzantine Era (stratiots, cataphracts, dromons, greek fire, spies) but they come late unless you really speed up in research. You should have at least 50 years (25 turns) which these units, in order to get a payback from these barbarians.

Click to expand...

pinktilapia,
well, I would proofread the civilopedia - but I am not a native speaker. Thus, it would be better to let someone else do it.
Thanks for the info on the Roman units!
CellKu

i am a native speaker and will help proofread, however, not this week lol. (STILL NO CIV)

loki1232 said:

Are you saying that a barbarian researching a tech makes your stuff go obsolete?

Click to expand...

Yes I do Which explains why Praetorium and Diocese are all wonders.

King Coltrane said:

i am a native speaker and will help proofread, however, not this week lol. (STILL NO CIV)

Click to expand...

Great!! But you don't need Civ to open civilopdeia.txt