Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

[Gaias]

Yes having '40 slaves' would increase the build time of the roads, but would also increase the micromanagement of directing them to build the roads where you want. To me at least, it is easier to direct... say 10 slaves to do work than it is a stack of 20 slaves. Now I am aware of auto build road feature, but that only extends so far, and usually effective in straight lines.

To me; considering how much the game gets bogged down near the end of the senario; having less units to the same amount of work would, would in theory, make an increase in speed considering how much less 'dictating' you would have to do. Then again this would no be a problem if CivIII didn't have the ability to kill even the most high end computers.

 

[pinktilapia]

The slaves being mostly owned by the player, reducing their number would not I think increase game speed. In all, what bogged down the game near the end were the HN units, which are now gone. Reducing the number of slaves would however reduce micromanagement. If we double their working rate, we will want to reduce their number by half, unfortunately, enslaving rate can't be changed, which means I will have to remove the enslave ability from some units, but considering the bulk of your slaves come from legions, it will be hard to achieve (it is all or nothing). Also, slave are intended to join cities in some occasions (for drafting, troop building or simply to quickly grow population and make a city prosperous), which is unlikely to happen with the "superslaves". Great games would also be an unlikely option, even if doubling the culture gain. If you don't like big piles of slaves, why not building a few engineers early on: they do a good job!

 

[Asclepius]

- Cargo ships (latin name?); moving fast and carrying lots of units

A merchant or transport ship could be called navis oneraria or just oneraria

I don't have much time to test for the next couple of months but I look forward to reading everyone's comments.

 

[blitzkrieg80]

I understand the purpose, which is a good one, of having some of the Anatolian civilizations' capitals in the desert steppe area between the Aral and Caspian Sea is for historical effect (culture flip)- BUT by having the map missing the land between the seas, besides civilizations that are not historically in that area THERE- it seems counter productive... how much do we gain by having a couple instances of historical inheritance (culture flips) by adding absurd possibilites? My opinion is that the area should be redrawn and have the useless desert that started originally on the map, because it looks so artificial otherwise with a HUGE Capsian Sea and I think if anything, Bithynia, Pergamum and Nabatea should be thrown out and consolodated into existing powers like the Seleucids and Ptolemies.

 

[captain beaver]

I know I'm cloggin' the post, but I just want to mention that I think it's reasonable to travel from Mediolanum to Croton in 1 year of travel in the anicent world and since troop movement is an issue - 22 movement on roads sounds good... I remember there was a max on road movement, but I forgot what it was and 14 works...?
Anyways, more importantly I remember somebody had this idea already and used some data to figure out reasonable travel distance in a year in ancient times, so if you read this... please repeat what you said.

well i couple posts back (maybe more than just a couple, but I dont want to search through all those pages), I proved that a Legio requiring more than 1 year to build 1 case of roads was unrealistic. I used the actual lenght of the Italian Peninsula devised by the number of cases used in RFRE, which gave something like hum... 50 km per case? Im not really sure but it was something like that.
Anyways, its not a bad idea, but it would put the focus on the let the enemy get in your territory first strategy.

Concerning the movement problem, I suggested a while ago to use an air transport to move the units faster. It can cross both water and land, gets trashed with every unit in it if attacked and you can select which unit can or cannot be transported by using the transport foot unit ability.

 

[blitzkrieg80]

Pink, what is the purpose of those cities in Germania and Scythia, which have grassland as their base, but ancestral forest all around? Shouldn't it have ancestral forest for a base too, or did you want it conquerable by some unwheeled unit?

 

[pinktilapia]

I understand the purpose, which is a good one, of having some of the Anatolian civilizations' capitals in the desert steppe area between the Aral and Caspian Sea is for historical effect (culture flip)- BUT by having the map missing the land between the seas, besides civilizations that are not historically in that area THERE- it seems counter productive... how much do we gain by having a couple instances of historical inheritance (culture flips) by adding absurd possibilites?

While I personally agree with you (I hate adding stuff if it means using complicate tricks), I had the impression this had been more or less agreed a while ago. Let's try it in-game before making a final call.

My opinion is that the area should be redrawn and have the useless desert that started originally on the map, because it looks so artificial otherwise with a HUGE Capsian Sea and I think if anything, Bithynia, Pergamum and Nabatea should be thrown out and consolodated into existing powers like the Seleucids and Ptolemies.

You are right , if we keep the three cities there, I will redraw the land geographically correct. Meanwhile, I will not merge these civ with others. This would remove a lot of flavour. I actually would love to see Galatia as well.

Pink, what is the purpose of those cities in Germania and Scythia, which have grassland as their base, but ancestral forest all around? Shouldn't it have ancestral forest for a base too, or did you want it conquerable by some unwheeled unit?

I actually didn't give it many thoughts. It is a point unwheeled units will always be able to conquer these cities whatever the terrain below (which is unlikely since Germania and Scythia are in a locked alliance without much HN units left) while wheeled units can't now access these since a nearby road will not connect the city anymore thanks to the belt of ancestral forest.

A merchant or transport ship could be called navis oneraria or just oneraria

I don't have much time to test for the next couple of months but I look forward to reading everyone's comments.

I think I called it something very similar to that

NOTES:
With current patch (0.91), the graphics for the transport ship are not yet final (I wait for a multiunit from Jobiwan), it currently use the... corvus unit graphic... don't ask why . I have also a city graphic missing for the port spawning these transports, but this doesn't crash the game.

 

[pinktilapia]

Concerning the movement problem, I suggested a while ago to use an air transport to move the units faster. It can cross both water and land, gets trashed with every unit in it if attacked and you can select which unit can or cannot be transported by using the transport foot unit ability.

That might be an option if current changes doesn't do it right. A land transport, as suggested before could make sense as well ... since the AI don't have to use these units anyway.

 

[Gunner]

I think if anything, Bithynia, Pergamum and Nabatea should be thrown out and consolodated into existing powers like the Seleucids and Ptolemies.

Please please please do not do that. It would be so incredibly unrealistic and dectract from the fun of the scenario.

 

[jobiwan7]

Pink, here's the transport fleet you asked for. Sorry it's a little late, I haven't been home for a few days.

Download here.

 

[pinktilapia]

Thanks Jobiwan, that was pretty fast anyway! I will give it a try this weekend.

 

[blitzkrieg80]

If you enjoy the minor Anatolian civilizations, Gunner, they're worth keeping, I'm glad you believe strongly about that... they just end up not doing much of anything in my games... morso Nabatea and ilk too small to act...

I'm inclined to agree with Gringoesteban about the benefit of some Imperial Road... why not place just a strip of RR from Pisae to Rome to Capua... which could signify the heart of Roman strength and generally speed up regular movement in Italy... and that's it.

I think the pic for Imperial Road has got to go... it looks better just as the regular road- cobbled, more natural than the slick gray stream of the default Imperial Road which it is now... anyways, just my opinion...

 

[pinktilapia]

Ok. The main (pitiful) reason why I didn't give a go to imperial roads (in Italy) in 0.91 is because I didn't found a good graphic for these. Someone will have to rework the railroad.pcx into something looking more antique: that's a lot of copy-paste.

 

[blitzkrieg80]

Wow, beautiful graphics for the Bellator unit and Corvus, fantastic job, whoever did those!
So far I like the changes in the early economy and how moena cost maintenance now.

 

[pinktilapia]

That would be utahjazz7 and Orthanc respectively

 

[Carthago]

Seems like ballistas cant be Shipped?

Why only can only 1 unit/turn be shipped from a port?

What does Portus Grecus do? What do you think of adding the shipping feature to its attributes?

Once I get fine timber I cant turn my triremes in corvus anymore? What about taking summa triremes away from rome?

great mod

 

[gringoesteban]

Once I get fine timber I cant turn my triremes in corvus anymore? What about taking summa triremes away from rome?

The corvus unit is only available at the beginning of the game, and upgrades to Triremes Summae, which require the Timber resource to be built. To paraphrase Wikipedia,

A corvus was basically a drawbridge attached to a ship, and underneath the bridge, was a heavy spike. The spike was designed to crush the planking in the enemy ship's deck, when the corvus was lowered from the Roman side. The system allowed a firm grip between the vessels and the boarding route for the legionaries. Legionares’ skills were perfected for land battles and Rome's greatest assets were the discipline and courage of Roman soldiers. The corvus at sea allowed the Republic to make use of this superiority against the more efficient Carthaginian fleet.

Despite all its qualities, the corvus had serious drawbacks, compromising navigability. This was probably the reason for the abandonment of the corvus in ship design at the end of the First Punic war. As Roman naval tactics improved and the crews became more experienced, the advantage of the corvus in battle lost ground to the risk involved in using them.

 

[blitzkrieg80]

Shouldn't the defense values of the Fortress and Fortifications be switched? Since Limes take 75 turns to complete, shouldn't they have 50 defense bonus, while the 25 turn regular fortress have only 25? I think this would motivate the building of Limes over just a fortress, otherwise, the Limes isn't that great for its expensive cost.

 

[Decimation]

Just finished Macedonian Wars and the game crashed b/c there was no entry for WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Cargo

Egypt very aggressive in my game, tried to take Sicily unprovoked and is sending camels thru the Desert to attack my gains in North Africa

 

[pinktilapia]

Seems like ballistas cant be Shipped?

Why only can only 1 unit/turn be shipped from a port?

What does Portus Grecus do? What do you think of adding the shipping feature to its attributes?

Once I get fine timber I cant turn my triremes in corvus anymore? What about taking summa triremes away from rome?

great mod

Airport are hardcoded to 1 unit per turn; I can't change that, alas. Portus Grecus is an improvement for the Greek only, helping them at building a navy. It get obsolete when the Roman capture it, thus it wouldn't help in shipping. The Corvus equipped unit originally wasn't as good as it is now. The triremis summa doesn't look too good anymore in comparison. The idea was that corvus ships being vulnerable in defense and slow, they would be only good at hopping between harbours, and raiding enemy ships before getting back to port in the same turn. They wouldn't help much to secure open seas, while the superior trireme is more polyvalent.

Just finished Macedonian Wars and the game crashed b/c there was no entry for WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Cargo

Egypt very aggressive in my game, tried to take Sicily unprovoked and is sending camels thru the Desert to attack my gains in North Africa

Crap. Did I add a wonder? And forgot the splash? Yes indeed. Did your game crashed when you completed the wonder, or just when you got the four portus naves required to build the shipping wonder? As a temporary measure, go in RFRE\Art\Wonder Splash and add there the following file. I hope that with this you can continue your game by reloading a save. Otherwise, I will have to upload an update again, meaning everyone will have to restart yet another game Apologies for having overlooked that.

Shouldn't the defense values of the Fortress and Fortifications be switched? Since Limes take 75 turns to complete, shouldn't they have 50 defense bonus, while the 25 turn regular fortress have only 25? I think this would motivate the building of Limes over just a fortress, otherwise, the Limes isn't that great for its expensive cost.

Hi Blitz, defensive bonus for fortifications and barricades are always the same as the editor does not allow different settings (here now in RFRE, 50%, as set under fortress in the general settings tab). The fortification bonus (25%) on the same tab is for units you have fortified pressing F.