civIV Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (RFRE)

[gringoesteban]

I found some maps of the Roman Empire at various points throughout its history, and based on those maps, I recommend that the city of Franks be conquerable rather than having a homeland fortress.

I also found a fairly detailed map showing the cities and tribes in Gaul. After looking at the map, it seems like the RFRE map needs to be updated to give Gaul one additional city halfway between Gallia Belgica and Franks, in the middle of that big forested area. Various tribes inhabited that region.

I uploaded the maps to http://www.filefront.com/14305447/maps.rar

I have a few more maps that I could upload too if anyone is interested.

>> If there is anything I can do to help with this mod, just tell me. I can't python, but I'm familiar with XML and Roman Empire.<<

Clearly bug finding is necessary! p9 is bug fixes and balance. Lots of both!.

I'm in the same situation. I can work XML and I know a little about Rome but I have never tried doing anything in Python, but I will certainly volunteer to beta test p9 once it is released. The sooner the better!

 

[primordial stew]

I didn't play the 275BC map further then the second Punic war, because it didn't work and I didn't want to mess with wordbuilder or python so I wouldn't broke any other events. It worked fine up to it.

The code for handling Carthage is much more complex. I think it's good now

I did play the 200AD map to around 312AD when I crushed the revolts.

Plymerian revolt was were weak, because I puled all my troops from the border in to cities that don't revolt. The Parthians attacked my and conquerer most of areas that should revolt. When the revolt finally occurred I crushed it and then defeated entire Parthian army in Tire. The AI was keeping its entire cavalry in Tire when they gained -25% bonus and so lost the war because of that.

When the Goths arrived I sunk their boats with their entire army on board, so only there quinquereme Summas remained (where did they get them anyway, shouldn't they have more boats).

Yeah, if the Persians took many of the cities that would have revolted then not much would happen. It makes sense though. They were rebelling against the Romans, and were friendly with the Persians. It's not what actually happened, but I think it's ok.

For p9 there are 2 changes concerning the Gothic raiders. Their boat gets a strength of 7 instead of 5. This gives them a good advantage till Greek Fire becomes available.

The other change I still need to test out to see if it works. There is an exploitable hole in all of the civ4 games where if the path is blocked then the AI will simply wait for it become unblocked. Playing RoM I bottled up a civ to just 2 cities into the middle ages by blocking the peninsula with a single unit. Effectively it crippled their research so they couldn't get boats, or strong enough units to easily kill my unit. They had plenty of units to mob my unit, but didn't. Anyway, I'll see if I can find a way to get them out of this deadlock.

 

[primordial stew]

>Huns
There was some lonely rider who told they didn't want any war...

Bummer.

Yesterday the first 3 Vandal "campaigns" were added. I'll add something similar for the Visigoths. That should do a lot to ravage Italia, Gaul, Hispania, and Africa.

 

[Jakob Safa]

>Map
If you want to make the map more historical accurate then you will need to make many changes. I have a book with some good maps of the roman empire (cities, natural resources, religions and the fall of the empire) so I can help.

>Blocked path
Maybe if you script movement tile by tile you can also get them to attack if the path is blocked.

>Rivers
Maybe making a special limes fort that can only be build near Rhine and Danube that give 75% bonus (normal limes fort should be made buildable anywhere). It would be the easiest way, but it wouldn't interfere with initial conquest.

 

[primordial stew]

> If you want to make the map more historical accurate then you will need to make many changes. I have a book with some good maps of the roman empire (cities, natural resources, religions and the fall of the empire) so I can help.

Cities must be abstracted due to the scale. Maybe if civ5 is created to scale up much higher a more accurate map can be made, but with the current scale it's somewhere between provinces and cities.

Resources could be improved. If you want to provide some lists that will work, or add them to the 275BC map. I've modified the 200AD one. If you edit the wbs file, be sure to do it at the very start before anything else. There still might be some things to repair, but I can do that.

>Blocked path
Maybe if you script movement tile by tile you can also get them to attack if the path is blocked.

A brilliant idea Painful to put together, but that may very well work for some cases, like Hannibal.

A more generic way is needed too. Right now Hannibal, the Thervingi raiders, the Helvetti, and the 3 Vandal migrations are implemented. The Visigoths, and probably more need to be added. The Vandal and Visigoth migrations are pretty long, so they get more of way points then just a list of cities to attack like Hannibal does.

The overall objective is to have a "migration" AI behavior that the regular AI would never do.


> Maybe making a special limes fort that can only be build near Rhine and Danube that give 75% bonus (normal limes fort should be made buildable anywhere). It would be the easiest way, but it wouldn't interfere with initial conquest.

The only way would be to have a list of the candidate plots and check the units plot before allowing work to begin. Pretty sure that can be done, but I don't know exactly how to do it.


And I do have 1 question for everyone. Should everyone have the "commando" promotion? It allows the road movement rate in enemy territory.

 

[primordial stew]

I uploaded the maps to http://www.filefront.com/14305447/maps.rar

Pretty big change between 400 and 500AD hey? Is there more resolution in the dates? The whole Crisis is missed since it didn't start before the 200AD, and was over before the 300AD snapshot.


> 5. The vassalage of the Franks never ended. They got the city Gallia Belgica,

I see now, freeVassal isn't working. No error, and the civ is right since the city is given.... Hmm.....

 

[Ultimate Genera]

>"commando" promotion

I would say no. In enemy territory, armies have to be more careful and so they cannot march as fast as in their own territory, even if the road network was equal. On the other hand, an army definitely travels faster along road than without one even in enemy territory. I guess an optimal solution would be if unit would travel along via rusticae in enemy territory e.g. 2 tiles pt and via publica e.g. 4 tiles pt. I'm afraid though that it might be hard/impossible to do?

 

[Ajidica]

I would say remove the commando promotion except to migration age barbs. The roads in Gaul weren't good enough to use, and in the east, both Rome and Persia employed 'akritai' (I can't recall the latin name so I'm using the Greek one) who were state supported insurgents. For the migration age barbarians commando would work well, perhaps even double movement rates for them would be justified. The promotion is removed once they 'settle down'. During the Rhine invisions of the 410's for example, the main reason Rome couldn't counter them in that they moved way to fast. It makes sense as the barbarians though, when your entire tribe is with you, the last thing you want is for them to be sent through a Comitatenses meat grinder.

 

[primordial stew]

> I guess an optimal solution would be if unit would travel along via rusticae in enemy territory e.g. 2 tiles pt and via publica e.g. 4 tiles pt. I'm afraid though that it might be hard/impossible to do?

It sounds possible, but if it were done the SDK would be the best place to avoid slowing down the turns too much. Possibly later, lets see how things work for now.

> The promotion is removed once they 'settle down'

Also can be done, and quick and easy too! But it doesn't have the same effect as the reduced speed in enemy territory modification does. I've considered this many times for Hannibal as well. It takes too long to reach southern Italia at less than 1 plot/turn. Maybe they can just get a +1 movement promo to help them along some?

Right now all of the Vandal units created in python are getting commando. I suppose something should be added to take it away once they reach Carthage.

For the Visigoths I'm not bothering with migration. They just have a tech that will settle them as is done with the Franks.

Another details is that the (Ostro)Goths will go from being your vassal, to a vassal of the Huns. That should keep them from being obliterated as can easily be done now. I'm not sure exactly of the historical timing, but it did go something like that.

So overall a ton of much needed progress on the 4th and 5th centuries. No longer will the WRE be appealing!

I'm going to finish up coding all those items very soon. The only showstopper at the moment is figuring out how to free a vassal when their service has been completed.... And then I might take a first pass at a 500AD scenario. It will very likely be pretty rough though.

 

[Ajidica]

Visigoths>Awww, no Rhine Invaders? So do the Goths still sack Rome?
If you do include the Rhine Invaders of 410, perhaps have them spawn with some Skuda. The Alans/Sarmatians did join up with them to avoid being obliterated by the Huns.

 

[primordial stew]

Errr... I was thinking the Goths would do that, but it was the visigoths.... damn! The Goths do take over Italia, but not till around 500.

freeVassal doesn't give any errors, but the Franks are still vassals after. Not even declaring war will end the vassalship!!! Is there something baked into the game, not even available in the SDK, to force a minimum vassal duration so ending it after 2 turns will never work?

I tried setting a really skewed vassalpower too, but no apparent effect. Maybe all freeVassal does is give the vassal the option to bail out?? Or maybe vassal is wrong and signDefensivePact is the way to go?

 

[Jakob Safa]

>Map change
I was more thinking about moving some cities for example many of the cities near Rhine and Danube are on the wrong side of it. They should be moved so they can be incorporated into limes.

I have a map of barbarian invasions during the crisis of the 3rd century if it helps.

>Commando promotion
A halved speed on enemy roads is the best way, but for now you can use it for some special units.

 

[Ajidica]

Pstew, Goths are Goths at this time in the game. Despite there being a few large groups (tervingi, greuthingi, and a few others) there were no unified 'supergroups' such as The Visigoths. They were named Visigoths because they were the ones who later settled in Spain. The goths at this time were a confederation of tribes under a really powerful warlord such as Alaric.

 

[jcb]

Carthage has 810% defence and is the only city left in their empire.

It's impregnable, How to take it? It a python thing?

 

[Ajidica]

I believe that python is supposed to make Carthage your vassal, but apparently there have been some problems with the python working correctly.

 

[primordial stew]

Carthage has 810% defence and is the only city left in their empire.

It's impregnable, How to take it? It a python thing?

Yeah, it's borked. It's possible to get around, but p9 should be out Sunday.

I threw together a 500AD (Byzantine reconquest) map last night. The armies + buildings need some TLC. A 400AD (fall of the WRE) map is far more interesting, and that might get created too. At least as far as setting the civs + cities. At this point I just want to have all of the infrastructure in place for what they need. We can tweak them later.

 

[Ajidica]

I'll be happy to help with the Justinian map, but be forewarned that I might offer a few too many suggestions. The 400 AD will be fun too.

 

[jcb]

Justinian map sounds awesome.

It will run from the RFRE engine as well? Sort of carry on where the 300AD map leaves off?

 

[primordial stew]

The 400AD actually went really quick too since the map wasn't very different than the 200AD one. The sequence in vim to do this is just:
/plot info
ma
/tarentum
mb
:'a,'b s/owner=0/Owner=46

And then copy the rome entry in the civ definition section into slot 46 and make a few adjustments.. BAM, empire is split in 2!!

The Scythians get replaced by the Huns, the Armenians mostly go to Persia, and Dacia to the Ostrogoths. Add in some Visigoths, Franks, and then adjust the Germanic border some and then replace units with later ones, eg)
:%s/berserk/INFANTRY/g
:%s/UNIT_MILES_AUX/UNIT_ROME_LIMITANEI/g

There are more changes, but the replacements above got most of it done.


> I'll be happy to help with the Justinian map,

Great!

The 500AD map is about right border wise, but that's about all. My plan is to not make it playable, but to have all of the support in place so you can. What more needs to be added?

The Burgundians are invading p9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundians
The dll holds 48 civs, but 47 is barb, and it seems 18 is as well, though it's not supposed to be. After adding the Burgundians, slots 44,45, and 33 will still be available.

The techs run really low by now, but what to add? The Burgundians will actually get 2 techs it looks like. More techs are still need to fill in the tree. Pink just had "Roman Decadence" filler, but I'd like to have more detail than that.

The Romans no longer have a barracks, but the Theocracy civic is available that gives +3XP.

 

[jcb]

Also, did you all ever consider adding more turns (maybe double?) to the time pre-50bc?

I've consistently found it difficult to conquer the historical Roman Provincial territories in the time allotted. This is especially so when you take into consideration the python events (Lusitania, Social War, etc).