civIV Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

primordial stew

Emperor
Joined
Sep 1, 2005
Messages
1,219
Location
a puddle
Civ4:Warlords version of Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

After 4 years of development, finally time to move into the "completed" forum ;)

Downloads:
1. the mod: https://www.gamefront.com/games/civilization-4/file/rfre-release1-7z
2. soundtrack add-on: http://www.filefront.com/17771039/civ4RFRE-BRG.7z This is Ajidica's soundtrack add-on. It is far superior to the stock soundtrack. If you already have appropriate soundtracks (eg Gladiator, Troy..) this might be extraneous. Being only music it can be added anytime, no need to re-start.
3. SDK files: attached

FAQ:
Spoiler :

Q. What is a historical mod?

It does a reasonable job following history. Yay, it's educational :)

Q. What is special about RFRE?
1. non semper erit aestas (it will not always be summer)
Most significant historical events are represented in game. From Hannibal invading Italia, to Illyrian auxiliaries revolting, and even splitting the WRE and ERE late in the 4th century. The AI even has some events, such as the mercenary uprising following the end of the Punic Wars. Significant plagues (eg Plague of Cyprian, boubonic plague, Antonine Plague) will ravage the plebs. Petra will be buried in an earthquake, and the Jews will repeatedly revolt. King Attalus will bequeath his kingdom. Sertorius will revolt, Queen Zenobia will secede, the Gallic Empire will secede, Spartacus will rise up, and Armenia will be the 1st state to adopt Christianity. Goths will invade, Pictii will invade, Cimbri will invade, Moors will invade, Saxons will invade, Vandals and Huns will tear across your empire...
2. Details such as army composition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_military_structure. The Romans fielded very few foot or horse archers, so it is in the game. Pre-Marius legions were composed only of citizens, so for a city to be able to build a legion it must have civitas (citizenship). Civitas is achieved either through grant (such as to end the Social War), or through sufficient accumulation of Roman culture. Another detail on legions is that since the early legions were only part time soldiers, they have low XP gains. Later legions were professionals so can gain XP faster. Legions cost more upkeep than auxillaries do.
3. Reasonably historic scenarios. As far as documentation is available, and translating into game terms can be done.
4. Pirates are a problem.
5. Religion is represented. Judaism is present throughout the game in some cities, but most of the pagan religions will be abandoned when Christianity is adopted.
6. The famous Roman road network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads) can be built. Legions are expensive to maintain, but if there are idle periods you might as well put them to work!
7. Significant Roman generals are represented by promotions which have a fixed lifetime. No more seeing Scipio in 50BC! Scipio is different than the others in that he must be "forged in battle". Only if Hannibal reaches the south of Italia will he become the man he finally was.
8. Roman leaderheads change during the game. While Hadrian is in charge it is a good time to build wonders. While Augustus is in charge it is good to build the military.
9. Regional recruiting (including Barbarian Civ units)
10. Alliances with barbarians (Alans, Goths, Franks, Burgundians..). de duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum (of two evils, the lesser is always to be chosen
11. Select national units. You won't see a Carthaginian army composed solely of elephants. Similarly, Praetorians can only make up a small fraction of the field army. The Romans considered the units raised in Illyria to be their best infantry (there is a special promotion available in Illyrian cities).
12. The concept of a field army. There are many static garrison units available. They keep the peace, and defend the city, but that is all. They are cheap to maintain.
13. Hero unit strategy. Only hero units (eg Consular armies, Mithradites, Hannibal, etc..) get medic promotions. This represents their recruiting ability rather than inherent medical capability. So there is a choice sometimes of using the powerful hero to attack and possibly lose them, or to keep them safe to quickly rebuild a damaged army. Additionally, Rome can always field 2 Consular Legions. Do you keep them together for max capability, or spread them apart as was typically done?
14. Roman unit names are either historical (eg Legio XII Fulminata, Equites Scutarii Aureliaci, Cohors V Delmatarum c.R.), or historical sounding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_legions
15. Proscription is available twice if you run low on gold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription
16. Enslaving similar to civIII.


Q. Please explain research!

There are 2 tracks, the "timer" track, and the Roman's track. All civs are given the timer techs (via python) every 25 turns. While the AI is doing research, the cost is too high for them to actually discover the tech in this way.

The Roman track you have some influence over, but for the most part your future is fixed. It's best you move with the time line!

Q. Please explain the Social War.
In 91BC many of the Italian cities revolted against Roma.

In game terms, to bring the cities back under control 3 things need to happen (in no particular order):
  1. research the Agrarian (land) Reforms tech, this is available immediately after the revolt
  2. build Lex Agraria in Roma
  3. capture 2 Italian cities

Upon completing these 3 tasks the Italians will once again be part of the Empire.


Q. Please explain the Roman army

The Romans relied on heavy infantry (legions) for too long. Early on they did great, but against opponent using large amounts of cavalry, like the Persians, it almost always turned out bad for the Romans.

Legions were always composed of citizens. A city must have "civitas" (see explanation in the pedia) in order to build a legion, otherwise they can only build auxiliaries. In 8BC the Roman army consisted of 28 legion and 28 auxiliary regiments. The proportion of auxiliaries would grow over time.

It wasn't until maybe the 3rd century when the Romans finally fielded independent cavalry units. Until then the units were a mix. For example a legion was ~5000 heavy infantry, and 200 horses. In some of the auxiliaries the ratio was better (2:1), however the units were smaller (500-1000 soldiers). In game terms auxiliaries are cheaper to maintain (no extra cost), however they are not as powerful (again, the smaller size of the unit).

Auxiliaries will account for much of your army. Recruiting is done locally, so conquered lands usually bring new troop options.

Q. Please explain how great Roman generals such as Caesar, and Scipio are represented.

Scipio, Caesar, Trajan, and Belisarius are special promotions to the Consular armies. Please see Mods\RFRE\releaseNotes.txt for specifics.


Q. What is with all these pirate ships?

Pirates were quite active until Pompey cleared them out, but they increased again following the 2nd century as order decayed.

In game terms the number of pirates spawned will depend on how many of the pirate creating civs have been wiped out (eg Illyria, Piratea).


Q. When is the BtS port coming?

Never! Though a civ5 will be created in 2011. Ok, no civ5 version either. Parts were easy to port over (eg map), but I could never figure out how to get the scenario bootstrapping to work (over the base map, set units/religion/ownership...). It just always crashes and I never figured out why. If that could get fixed (I can upload the project), then next is porting the huge mass of python to Lua so that all the customization's (eg civitas) work. Too much work!! Civ5 is great for simple modding, but for something as detailed as this it's a disaster.

The focus is different, but check out:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=342350 Imperium Romanum
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352646 Pie's Ancient Europe


Q. Why doesn't gold make my people happy?

Your citizens are impressed by conquest. Specifically conquest of Gaul, Greece, Egypt, Nabatae, Britania, and some of Germany. Gold instead adds +4% taxes from a market.

Q. Why is the worker rate so slow?

The time period of the game is rather short in Civilization terms.

Also worth noting is that some tasks will consume the worker (eg building a mine).


Q. How is a Castra building created?

A slave must be consumed to create this building.


Q. My citizens are unhappy, and production is too low!

Have slaves join cities that have access to lots of food. Slaves consume only 1 food, and produce 2 hammers. This is especially important in Roma! Portus Ostia provides +10 food, and +25% food!!!! At times 1/3 of Roma's population were slaves.


Q. I added too many slaves, and now the city is starving!

Excess slaves will be automatically killed off if a city starves (no, they didn't eat the slaves).

A granaria gives +2 food, but access to wheat is required to build it.


Q. Hannibal's army is smashing through Italia, is looks hopeless! Should I give up?

The Romans utilized 2 strategies against him in Italia. First was the typical Roman approach, raise a really large army and seek battle. After 3 major defeats a new strategy was utilized, the Fabian strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy.

While this was happening they sent troops to Hispania to capture the Carthaginian holdings there (Carthage captured a good part of Hispania between the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars). Following this Scipio (the surviving one) invaded Africa. To counter this Carthage recalled Hannibal to defend the motherland.

In game terms it is set to work similar to this. Specifically, if you capture Carthago Nova this will impress Numidia. Then, if you capture Utica they will ally with you as you are obviously the superior force. Also, Hannibal will be recalled, though his army will remain in Italia.

Also worth mentioning is that Carthage will be fully disarmed when the 2nd Punic War ends. It will take too long if you try to fight every Carthaginian unit, just stick to the major objectives!


Q. I'm playing the 200AD scenario and things look really bad for the Romans!

The Empire nearly went away during this period. The economy crashed, 2 major revolts took place, and there were barbarian migrations. For full details start here and follow all the links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century Most of the events described will happen, along with some other minor details from Gibbons book.

The Roman army is based on a 60AD legion location map, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_auxiliary_regiments. The auxiliary regiments in the game are the miliara type, so smaller units were combined for game purposes.

To re-subjugate the Gallic Empire territories 11 net cities need to be captured.

To re-subjugate the Palmyrene territories, Queen Zenobia's capital of Palmyrene must be captured.



Q. In the 200/400/500AD scenario, how come there are still buildings to be built?

Civ doesn't provide much in the way of wbs, python, or XML mechanisms to set initial conditions. Actually the only one it provide is GameTurn in the wbs file, but it doesn't work like one would expect. Setting the game turn in python works better, but still not like it needs to. Consider trade routes. Trade routes increase in value over time (but I've not found anyone who knows how to control this), and so does inflation. Neither of these are set the same as if one had played starting in 275BC! So to try to compensate for this the economic buildings are not fully developed as they would be if played from the start. Another issue with trade routes is that almost all cities in the game have the same start time, and trade duration, so they all change on the same turn! This is no good, no good at all :(

Great people points (GPPs) are also in the same situation.

It may be possible through the SDK to set these things right, but I don't have the skill to accomplish this, nor have heard of anyone attempting this sort of thing. It would certainly be the best solution.


Q. The Romans had many vassals/client kings at times. How is this in the game?

The implementation still needs work. For example, the Germanics should never offer capitulation, but currently they could though it is highly unlikely.

As is there are 2 methods. The first is the regular vassal state that Warlords provides. This is available with Philosophy and Poetry tech. The reason it is here is that around this point (Augustus) the empire had grown so much that there was no capacity to annex new territories. Time was needed to absorb the existing territory before adding any more. In game terms this is desired to be an economic decision. There is a small penalty for number of cities, and a high penalty for having too big of an army. So the hope is to take vassals (eg Thrace, Judea, Pontus, Galatia, Armenia) while economic buildings are created in Hispania and Gaul.

The other vassal type is done via python. Pergamum is handled this way. When the King of Pergamum died he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. They will become your vassal, and then some turns later will be merged. Aegyptus is handled similarly, but to get Aegyptus to merge Mark Antony must be defeated first.

Q. Please give an economic overview
During the early Republican times your economy is in pretty good shape, however the need to keep the military large to enable expansion will consume most of the surplus. Still, with conquest the treasury will improve. Expectation is to run somewhere between 1000 - 2000 gold, but there will be dips, and if necessary proscription will be used (only 2 times though). Much of the time you will have a negative gold rate, but so long as the rate is not too high city conquest gold will keep things moving.

Trade routes have a fixed yield of 3. In typical Civ these values will increase over time, but not so here. Only the number of routes will change.

Many buildings directly increase the base commerce in a city (eg lupinaria/brothel), but only 3 increase the rate. The market can be built anywhere. With civitas (citizenship) the emporium and census can be built. The emporium provides bonuses from conquest (ie an additional 1-2% income for each conquered region), and the census provides +15% gold, but with 1 unhappy citizen. The emporium will become obsolete in 215AD.

Combat will yield slaves (all legions till the Merc legion might create slaves), and slaves will create most of the tile improvements. This works great while slaves are readily available, but over time there will be fewer available as slaves are consumed, revolt, or are captured. This will make it difficult to recover from any plundering. In normal Civ you could just create new workers, but in RFRE the worker is a nation unit and only 1 is allowed.

For the decline period, this article ("To what extent were economic factors to blame for the deterioration of the Roman Empire in the Third Century A.D?" by Julian Fenner ) is pretty good: http://www.roman-empire.net/articles/article-018.html


Q. What is left to do?

Some sort of way to win the game needs to be created!

Problems: Warlords starts, but then nothing happens

Make sure Quickstart = 0 in CivilizationIV.ini


The screenshots show the Pictii piercing Hadrian's Wall, The Battle of Zama, Mithradites invading Greece, and the Vandal's sacking Carthago!
 

Attachments

  • rfre_CvGameCoreDLL.7z
    433.7 KB · Views: 484
  • pictii.jpg
    pictii.jpg
    113 KB · Views: 3,447
  • zama.jpg
    zama.jpg
    164.1 KB · Views: 2,978
  • vandals.jpg
    vandals.jpg
    281.2 KB · Views: 2,606
  • mithradites_invades.jpg
    mithradites_invades.jpg
    210.5 KB · Views: 2,822
Last edited:
Congrats!
Dling right now ;)
 
Is there a scenario you would recommend? I see the earliest is a 110BC one, so none with Carthage. That's a bummer. =(

Edit: Oh...nvm...I just saw the 275 BC lol.


Will the game work with a random map?
 
This mod is made to recreate the history of the roman republic/empire, its not made for nothing outside the scenarios given with them.

Another question, is there a BTS version planned?
 
One of the best mods ever made in the history of Civ.

Keep up the good work!
 
So I'm playing with the Carthaginians...I'm a little confused by the way the tech tree works.

I'm in 211 BC now, events and such are working great. Caught me by surprise!!!

But as for my research, it just progresses through the 25-year time blocks. In the tech tree, there are a bunch of different techs to be researched, but I can't choose any of those, nor do I seem to be getting any of them as time progresses. Can only the Romans research techs?


I've run across a few typos:


Carthaginian hero "Hasdrubal." I think you have it "Hasbrudal."
Seleucid ruler "Antiochus." You have it as "Antoichus."

Unless these are some Latin variations of the spelling...seems like your latin's pretty good, so I figure that's possible. :lol:

Another suggestion:

The Italian city of "Samnites" should be changed to "Samnium." ;)

Having a blast!


Edit: WHOA! Mercenary revolt caught me off guard there...lol. I should've known.
 
So I'm playing with the Carthaginians...I'm a little confused by the way the tech tree works.

:lol: never tried them myself.

For the AI research is a straight path. For the Romans there are some choices, but not too many. This mechanism is a cheat of sorts to keep things lined up. Typically in civ* a civ gets big, so produces lots of research and gets advanced unit, so can only be countered by another similarly sized civ. Here though, after some time no one is close and that would be very dull without compensating. This is one of the reasons most mods will have both a rise and a fall scenario, but here you can play the whole stretch. Don't worry about being bored, there is plenty to do :mischief: It'll probably take a few plays to get things down. Reading the FAQ and having an idea of the history will help quite a bit ;)

It's only meant to be played as the Romans. You can choose some of the others, but this is for debugging. Mainly this is just to see what the build queues and economy look like. The exception being the Western Roman Empire, but this is only in the 400AD scenario. For limited stretches it might be ok, but the AI is terrible as the Romans. As you noticed some of the other civs do have events coded in ;) The Mercenary revolt is minor compared with disarmament following the 2nd Punic War.




I've run across a few typos:


Carthaginian hero "Hasdrubal." I think you have it "Hasbrudal."
Seleucid ruler "Antiochus." You have it as "Antoichus."

Unless these are some Latin variations of the spelling...seems like your latin's pretty good, so I figure that's possible. :lol:

Another suggestion:

The Italian city of "Samnites" should be changed to "Samnium." ;)

Having a blast!


Edit: WHOA! Mercenary revolt caught me off guard there...lol. I should've known.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of them about :/
 
I think I see the way you intended to have the tech tree work, but as the Carthaginians, I wasn't getting any new technologies. The only thing that was happening for me was the little 25-year blocks moving from one to the next. lol. I don't know if you meant to have this happen.

But good to know it was meant to be played as the Romans. I'll try them as soon as this darned exam week is over!!!
 
Carthago gets all his techs at the beginning or with some tech timers near the start. Think that in 150 BC should not be Carthago any more.

As primordial says, this is meant to play with the romans only. Try it , and tell us how its going, you will like it.
 
I'll have to be sure to download it, but I'm working on my own Civ5 mod.
That said, I can hearily reccomend this mod to anyone who it at all interested in the Roman Empire. Pstew does a very good job with the Fall of Rome.

I wonder, is the media pack I made still up and does it work with this version?
EDIT: I should probably finish reading the OP first before posting........
 
I can't declare war on capitulated vassals. Is it supposed to be like that?
 
It works that way in vanilla civ, so I suppose the answer is a yes here too
 
I tried out the Romans yesterday and got til 195BC. Great fun! And I don't even like Romans! ><

Hannibal was a toughie. Took a lot of Consular Legions, Legions, and those Italian Allies whose names I can't quite remember...Soci and something with "m." :p

What I really like is what you did with skirmishers, including the "funditores" (slingers), archers, ballista, etc. In ancient battles they were imperative for providing cover and screening for the main force, and with this mod it's almost impossible to win battles without skirmishers.
 
Hello - bit of a noob question - what do I do with the SDK files - ie where do they need to go ?
Thanks
 
Great - thanks - thought it must be something like that - trying out 275 BC - going well so far.
 
EEK - got a CTD, end of turn 433 (389 AD), researching Alliance with the Visigoths. PythonErr.log message states:

Traceback (most recent call last)

File "CvEventInterface", line 30 in onEvent
File "CvCustomEventManager", line 180, in handleEvent
File "CvCustomEventManager", line 191, in _handleDefaultEvent
File "rfre", line 897, in onTechAcquired
File "rfreUtils", line 382, in pal2lim

RuntimeError : unidentifiable C++ exception
ERR: Python function onEvent failed, module CvEventInterface

Like the change with Mauretania !

Regards - have a great Christmas etc ...
 
This mod is for Warlords, not for Beyond the Sword
Not sure if this is your issue, but when I first tried to install the mod I accidentally put it in the BtS folder :)
 
Top Bottom