Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

[Keroro]

So many posts, so little time...

So, if I understand, we need to make the following unit :

Requires Roma resource, available to Persia, Germania, Gothia, Galla, Scythia, Transalpinii, has a 99at and is impossible to build because it requires the forbidden advance tech ?

Is that correct ?

Almost, but set it to not require any tech.

I'm all for the fewer, but meaner invaders.

Furthermore, how about adding 2 uber-units (25A, 12D, 20HP, 2 moves but no blitz) to the Germanics for the late game rush? Unlike Hannibal charging off alone, these guys should have plenty of support around to keep them from getting bombarded to death. The idea is they can kill any Roman unit. So long as they stick to the West then it will fall. They can be named Incursio Francii. They should spawn from the west-most unconquerable city.

Fewer but meaner sounds the way to go, noone likes unit spam. Would make the battles more meaningful. Definitely make sure the uber-units are not blitz though...

@ captain beaver - I love the No. 6 and 7 ideas (and 4 if it can be made to work). Not sure how the AI will get on with No.5 though (invisible units). The financial shenanigans you describe for the crisis sound interesting and may well work. I'm of the opinion that it might be easier to just get rid of some of the base commerce. We can then control the amount of income more closely with buildings like the census etc..

 

[Christophoros]

While I really like CB's idea about economical failure, like Pink said, it might be a little too complex to correctly implement. And while I am aware of the 3 patches needed to really make one work, this change could be so massive that it would be indeed hard to fine tune.

However, I have an idea that could make it "simpler" : Make the "economical crisis" wonder and the created "local economical crisis" buildings require the Principate government. Also, make the "economical crisis" wonder a prerequisite of the wonder "Crisis of the 3rd century". Now, assign a 0 shield cost to the "Crisis3rdCentury" and a truly high shield cost to the "Opus Imperator-Soldati" to ensure that, when built by the best city shield wise (normally Mediolanum, no?) it lasts as long as possible. (is there a cap on the shield cost of wonders ?)

Now the "local economical crisis" will spawn impossible to disband units that will cost support and will be able to upgrade to a new servus unit unlocked with the "Diocletian's Reform" tech. So that will really make for a rocking 225-275 ad period.

After Diocletian, the player will go into civil war and choose Absolute Principate as his government, thus making the "economical crisis" and "local economical crisis" disappear.

The player would then recover from 275 to 425 and then, we could repeat the whole process with a new wonder and exactly the same scheme, having the new wonder require Absolute Principate and thus forcing the player to Change to Christian Principate later on. We would then make the Christian Principate useful and mandatory (but we would need to change the Christian Principate parameters to make it more viable)

 

[captain beaver]

I also like that idea of a uber-invader unit per invasion wave. It would make things a bit more personnal as with Hannibal.
However, we probably should lower the bombard value of the catapulta then. Make a stack of 20 catapulta, wait for the uber unit to seprate from the main stack because of his possibly increased speed, bombard at will. Reducing the bombard strenght could be usefull.

@Keroro
I'll admit creating an additionnal ressource similar to the overused land one but that only gives a penalty of -100 gold on the square such that the end commerce is definitly 0 on that tile would be easier than implementing my little scheme. It could be also more easily localised to Britannia, Gallia and Hispania. However, I'm not sure that would be enough by itself. What you do is only reduce to 0 the income of some far away cities. It might go sligtly negative if there are buildings requiring upkeep in the city. But it cannot be as string an effect as my plan. Most players report having huge treasury by the 200AD which allows them to go through the different crisis while running huge deficits. But if we can make a persistant huge deficit for about 80 turn, they'll hit bottom at some point.

What could be also considered is a ressource with negative gold revealed somewhere around the Crisis of the Third Century tech but placed on water tiles. If I remember correctly, from the third century onward, piracy was a recruding problem. So removing commerce from water tiles for all of the Western Med and most of the Eastern Med would also go a long way toward reducing overall income.

However, I fear that by adding more bad ressources to techs the player is supposed to reasearch we might just remove the incentives for the player to research it. Maybe making revealed with timer techs would work better.

 

[captain beaver]

While I really like CB's idea about economical failure, like Pink said, it might be a little too complex to correctly implement. And while I am aware of the 3 patches needed to really make one work, this change could be so massive that it would be indeed hard to fine tune.

However, I have an idea that could make it "simpler" : Make the "economical crisis" wonder and the created "local economical crisis" buildings require the Principate government. Also, make the "economical crisis" wonder a prerequisite of the wonder "Crisis of the 3rd century". Now, assign a 0 shield cost to the "Crisis3rdCentury" and a truly high shield cost to the "Opus Imperator-Soldati" to ensure that, when built by the best city shield wise (normally Mediolanum, no?) it lasts as long as possible. (is there a cap on the shield cost of wonders ?)

Now the "local economical crisis" will spawn impossible to disband units that will cost support and will be able to upgrade to a new servus unit unlocked with the "Diocletian's Reform" tech. So that will really make for a rocking 225-275 ad period.

After Diocletian, the player will go into civil war and choose Absolute Principate as his government, thus making the "economical crisis" and "local economical crisis" disappear.

The player would then recover from 275 to 425 and then, we could repeat the whole process with a new wonder and exactly the same scheme, having the new wonder require Absolute Principate and thus forcing the player to Change to Christian Principate later on. We would then make the Christian Principate useful and mandatory (but we would need to change the Christian Principate parameters to make it more viable)

Cross posts!

Rapid small points:
There is a limit on the cost of all buildings.
Changing gov doesn't make wonders disappear. They just stop doing what they were doing. But upkeep stays
I'm not sure I understand correctly your idea. Instead of having the wonder "Economic Crisis" require Crisis of the Third Century and the wonder "Political Crisis" require "Economic Crisis", you want to have Crisis of the Third Century require "Economic Crisis" (EC as of now)? Why would the player build EC in the first place? I suppose we keep the "Africa&Hispania" part require that building to be built?
Also, shouldn't I just change immediatly to Republic or Triumvirate gov to avoid the bad effects? Remember that a lot of players find it more usefull to stay in triumvirate all game long.
I'm not sure how we could force the player to change to Christian Principate. There are really no benefits at all. And only so many spaceship parts.

Think like a player and try to destroy your own conceptions! If you were faced with this problem, how could you avoid it? If you can't, that's RFRE grade ! I'm not trying to be mean BTW, there is just probably not enough details.

 

[Christophoros]

Cross posts!

Rapid small points:
There is a limit on the cost of all buildings.
Changing gov doesn't make wonders disappear. They just stop doing what they were doing. But upkeep stays
I'm not sure I understand correctly your idea. Instead of having the wonder "Economic Crisis" require Crisis of the Third Century and the wonder "Political Crisis" require "Economic Crisis", you want to have Crisis of the Third Century require "Economic Crisis" (EC as of now)? Why would the player build EC in the first place? I suppose we keep the "Africa&Hispania" part require that building to be built?
Also, shouldn't I just change immediatly to Republic or Triumvirate gov to avoid the bad effects? Remember that a lot of players find it more usefull to stay in triumvirate all game long.
I'm not sure how we could force the player to change to Christian Principate. There are really no benefits at all. And only so many spaceship parts.

Think like a player and try to destroy your own conceptions! If you were faced with this problem, how could you avoid it? If you can't, that's RFRE grade ! I'm not trying to be mean BTW, there is just probably not enough details.

Yes, of course some clarifications : In my conception, the EC will be built because the Crisis3rdCentury will be required to build one of the spaceship parts, whichever one you want, aside from Italia. And the player will NOT be able to change government to avoid the bad effects because (sorry I forgot to mention it in the previous post) Crisis3rdCentury will now also require the Principate government. Since it will be a prerequisite to build the spaceship part, the player will be forced to have the principate government, thus solving another problem with this scheme.

After the forced switch to Absolute Principate (to avoid the bad effects and to build Opus Imperator-Soldati) and the respite provided from 275 to 425, we create another wonder, let's call it X. That wonder will have the same effect as EC, but it will require the Absolute Principate and the units spawned by the local EC will be upgradable with Justinian tech. X will be a prerequisite of Moenia Theodosii, which is a prerequisite for Hagia Sophia which will be a prerequisite of a spaceship part. Plus, we change the required Government for Hagia Sophia from Absolute principate to Christian principate (is it not a church, after all). Thus, the player will build X, then Moenia Theodosii, will go into civil war and after the end of the civil war, will choose Christian Principate in order to be able to build Hagia Sophia, which will be required to build the spaceship part required to win.

So, the player will have no choice but to go from principate to absolute principate to christian principate (which will be revamped to make it playable), thus emulating history in an interesting way.

 

[Keroro]

I also like that idea of a uber-invader unit per invasion wave. It would make things a bit more personnal as with Hannibal.
However, we probably should lower the bombard value of the catapulta then. Make a stack of 20 catapulta, wait for the uber unit to seprate from the main stack because of his possibly increased speed, bombard at will. Reducing the bombard strenght could be usefull.

@Keroro
I'll admit creating an additionnal ressource similar to the overused land one but that only gives a penalty of -100 gold on the square such that the end commerce is definitly 0 on that tile would be easier than implementing my little scheme. It could be also more easily localised to Britannia, Gallia and Hispania. However, I'm not sure that would be enough by itself. What you do is only reduce to 0 the income of some far away cities. It might go sligtly negative if there are buildings requiring upkeep in the city. But it cannot be as string an effect as my plan. Most players report having huge treasury by the 200AD which allows them to go through the different crisis while running huge deficits. But if we can make a persistant huge deficit for about 80 turn, they'll hit bottom at some point.

What could be also considered is a ressource with negative gold revealed somewhere around the Crisis of the Third Century tech but placed on water tiles. If I remember correctly, from the third century onward, piracy was a recruding problem. So removing commerce from water tiles for all of the Western Med and most of the Eastern Med would also go a long way toward reducing overall income.

However, I fear that by adding more bad ressources to techs the player is supposed to reasearch we might just remove the incentives for the player to research it. Maybe making revealed with timer techs would work better.

I was thinking more about lowering the base resource values of the terrain itself, rather than having more resources pop up. I also find that limiting the amount of terrains you can build roads on can stop quite as much gold from racking up. An additional benefit of this is that it makes bonus resources that give a commerce bonus more strategically important, makes commerce multiplying buildings more valuable and raises the value of specialists. That in turn discourages the player from building so many units that require population. There are a load of other factors that would come into play with such a fundamental change though, perhaps I could experiment on implementing this in the 'Hard' biq and see how it goes.

 

[jlvfr]

I still say we need more luxuries... at least wine and jewels... get everyone drunk and shniny

 

[First]

Btw, can it be made so that atleast servi can traverse mountains and then only be able to remove slave unrest from them because getting slave unrest on terrain that is impassable is terribly annoying.

 

[König Markus]

Btw, can it be made so that atleast servi can traverse mountains and then only be able to remove slave unrest from them because getting slave unrest on terrain that is impassable is terribly annoying.

When the slave can move on mountains, he could be roads.
It is basic factor in that mod that mountains are impassable. Which is good, since in reality the mountains weren't populated in Roman Times, only the low passes like the Brenner Pass or San Bernardino Pass.

For the unrest on mountains problem: just reload the game.

 

[Christophoros]

When the slave can move on mountains, he could be roads.
It is basic factor in that mod that mountains are impassable. Which is good, since in reality the mountains weren't populated in Roman Times, only the low passes like the Brenner Pass or San Bernardino Pass.

For the unrest on mountains problem: just reload the game.

I remember someone posting in the Age of Imperialism thread that you could make mountains passable without allowing roads to be built on them by assigning a negative value to commerce created by roads on a given terrain type. If we used that trick and flagged the mountains as "impassable by wheeled units" and then unflagged the "wheeled" from servus, would any unforeseen bad side effect happen ? I suggest this idea because I am really annoyed when I have to attentively watch the screen between turns and reload whenever a mountain becomes polluted. And if I am distracted and miss a pollution, I am stuck with it for the rest of the game, which can be really bad. Ideas ?

 

[Anglophile]

All of these ideas are excellent. If I could do anything more clever than mod the biq file, then I would be trying some of them.

I am also very irritated by slave unrest on impassable terrain (I 'inherited' two such tiles when I captured Alexandria). The problem is that impassible terrain is a critical way of ensuring that one arrives at the end game with intact opponents to spawn the barbarian hordes. The only idea I have is to generate a Roman unit with 0 A, 0 D, 'no wheels' and no engineering capabilities except clean up. So it can't conquer anything or build roads across impassable terrain.

I had a look at the 325 AD scenario and felt very much like Augustus did, i.e. 'give me back my legions'. Just wasn't quite ready to go from my wealthy, happy, powerful Empire to one in quite that bad shape. So have decided to go with the 100 BC or 125 BC scenarios - which will at least give me a chance to be in better shape than Rome was by 325 AD. My first question is why two scenarios that essentially start at the same time? I am in the Singapore Airlines Lounge in Singapore with almost 13 hours of playing opportunity to Frankfurt. I am going to start one or the other (leaning to 100 BC with all those units I haven't seen before threatening bits of the Republic) but would appreciate any informed feedback on this. Thanks.

 

[Christophoros]

All of these ideas are excellent. If I could do anything more clever than mod the biq file, then I would be trying some of them.

I am also very irritated by slave unrest on impassable terrain (I 'inherited' two such tiles when I captured Alexandria). The problem is that impassible terrain is a critical way of ensuring that one arrives at the end game with intact opponents to spawn the barbarian hordes. The only idea I have is to generate a Roman unit with 0 A, 0 D, 'no wheels' and no engineering capabilities except clean up. So it can't conquer anything or build roads across impassable terrain.

I had a look at the 325 AD scenario and felt very much like Augustus did, i.e. 'give me back my legions'. Just wasn't quite ready to go from my wealthy, happy, powerful Empire to one in quite that bad shape. So have decided to go with the 100 BC or 125 BC scenarios - which will at least give me a chance to be in better shape than Rome was by 325 AD. My first question is why two scenarios that essentially start at the same time? I am in the Singapore Airlines Lounge in Singapore with almost 13 hours of playing opportunity to Frankfurt. I am going to start one or the other (leaning to 100 BC with all those units I haven't seen before threatening bits of the Republic) but would appreciate any informed feedback on this. Thanks.

Play the 100bc. The 125 is a very old outdated mode. The 100 bc scenario is pretty standard in terms of game play, just don't forget to go into civil war for the lex agraria. Enjoy !

 

[Anglophile]

Thanks, that is what I wanted confirmed. And I had remembered the civil war for lex agraria. It seemed to me that I spent most of the game between Lex Agraria and Age of Augustus in Civil War - and I had to keep reading the Guide as it is very easy not to know that one HAS to be in Civil War (which is bad) to build a wonder that is bad (bad by definition) in order to build something else that counters all (or most of) that bad and keeps one historically in line. The true brilliance of this mod lies in how you are forced to do that, undergo the difficulties to come out stronger at the other end. The downside is that it is really easy to miss some of those must do's.

And I only tweaked the biq a tiny bit (about 10% of what I did for 275 BC, which worked for the early game brilliantly - still very hard (on Emperor) but possible - and failed equally spectacularly once the Empire was peaking post Augustus. I really did have 600 Legions and 200 Equites Legionarii). I've saved my final turn and will post some screenies once I get on my home computer which doesn't have the 18 layers of security that my possibly paranoid company demands (e.g. I can't log onto this site). And I'm going to play on Dictator. One shouldn't make testosterone driven decisions at my age - but one does.

Off to read the Guide before boarding for Frankfurt. Ah business class and plugs for computers. One of the perks of doing 200,000 airmiles per year.

 

[König Markus]

I remember someone posting in the Age of Imperialism thread that you could make mountains passable without allowing roads to be built on them by assigning a negative value to commerce created by roads on a given terrain type. If we used that trick and flagged the mountains as "impassable by wheeled units" and then unflagged the "wheeled" from servus, would any unforeseen bad side effect happen ? I suggest this idea because I am really annoyed when I have to attentively watch the screen between turns and reload whenever a mountain becomes polluted. And if I am distracted and miss a pollution, I am stuck with it for the rest of the game, which can be really bad. Ideas ?

Oh, I didn't know that.

Can we do that in the next patch, please?
Pollutions on mountains are indeed really annoying.

 

[captain beaver]

Small problem with the servus: if you uncheck the wheeled unit ability from it and make mountains unpassable only to wheeled units, that means every barb unit (which are not wheeled by default) will be able to go through mountains. That means the Huns will be able to invade Asia Minor and Mesopotamia through the Causasus Mountains. The Gauls or Germania will be able to invade Italia by going through the Alps. Meanwhile, Roman units will have to sit down and wait until those units are off the mountains to attack them. A whole lot of other problems will arise because the delicate balance between wheeled units and not wheeled ones will have changed. The pollution on mountain/marsh is a recurrent problem of RFRE and we have never found any other solution than reloading the turn. Personally, I think we should focus on other issues.

@Christophoros
That probably could work. I'm concerned with the constant governement changing though. You're saying that the player will need to change to absolute principate to build Opus Imperator-Soldati, but Opus Imperator-Soldati comes 1 tech before Absolute Principate. Hence, you cannot counter the immediate effect of C3C until 2 tech later, with Diocletian's reform. 24 turns of 9 unhappyness in every city is problematic. Personnally, given this problem, I wouldn't build anything until right before the tech Diocletian's reform is discovered. Then you suddenly build EC and C3C, Change gov and build Opus Imperator-Soldati. There will probably not enough turns for the EC to spawn anything.
Moreover, for the Hagia Sophia, if you require the Christian Principate to build it, you kinda hurt the player a whole lot. The Imperium Belissarii needs the Absolute Principate to work. Hence, if you change to Christian P, even if you built it before hand, it won't spawn the armies. And if you build Hagia Sophia first, then change gov to Absolute P to build Imperium Belisarii, the Hagia Sophia won't work anymore.
It could work if you revamped the end tech tree such that everything at then end requires the Christian P.

For my part, the more I think about it, the more I believe we could simulate the fall eaiser with bad ressources. We already introduced the Overused land ressource who removes 1 food and a couple of gold on every tile it appears. But we could do more of a gradual approach by creating multiple ressources like those appearing with certain timer techs. Say with the timer tech 175-225AD, the first overused land appears in most of Hispania/Gallia/Britannia. Then with 225-275AD, make it a sea ressource which appears pretty much everywhere in the Medditerranean to simulate the recrudescence of piracy and trade disruption. Then with 325AD-375AD, make a second wave of bad ressource in Gallia/Hispania/Britannia, the Danube Limes and eastern Mesopotamia. With 375-425AD, another wave of sea ressource combined with one land ressource in Africa. With 425AD-475AD, one in Italia and another wave in Africa.

@Anglophile
Come on! Try the 325AD scenario! That's the real test of an Emperor. Can you stop the fall? I designed it and can personnaly garantee you that if you declare war on any barb civs, your defense will be overwhelmed with barb units. Which is why you need to declare war on Germania, on the first turn, to recover Sumulocenna....

 

[Christophoros]

Captain Beaver : Not that I am fanatical about my idea, but let's try to tune it further : I didn't mention everything : Hagia Sophia and all the other wonders would require Christian Principate (Justinian Code, Imperium Belisarii). As for the other problem, I am still working on it.

However, I do think a change in the resources and a tweak in the obsolescence and shield costs of certain improvements could help us keep the Roman treasury in check. It would certainly be easier to implement. But I'll be back with ideas...

For the Mountains/wheeled : Yes, there seems to be no way out : if we make the mountains passable by "unwheeled" units, the Barbs will be all over the map and if we change the Barbs to "wheeled", then they will be unable to cross deserts and other important terrains. Dead end ! Sorry about the false hopes, but it seems there is nothing we can do about it.

 

[jlvfr]

Am now also playing the other "old world mob" and, in there, there are "imperial roads", (ie: railroads). It got me thinking: roads were one of the strong points of the Roman empire. They allowed the legions and messengers to move at far greater speed than over regular terrain.

Why not implement them here? But only legions and fabers could do them, not servus...

 

[Christophoros]

Am now also playing the other "old world mob" and, in there, there are "imperial roads", (ie: railroads). It got me thinking: roads were one of the strong points of the Roman empire. They allowed the legions and messengers to move at far greater speed than over regular terrain.

Why not implement them here? But only legions and fabers could do them, not servus...

Even then it would be, I think, too powerful. The only way I would consider using them (they are already modded in btw) is if only Faber could build them and only if it took time. The player would then have to dedicate a large amount of cash (unit support) to build them and it would become a strategic choice for the player, which is good as balanced options are to be valued. Opinions ?

 

[Anglophile]

I aim to try the 325 AD mod, I just need to work into it more gently. I am having enough trouble with 100 BC to indicate that I was wise to put off the real test for awhile.

I am now in 60 BC and about to fall way behind the timeline (I am also typing on one of those Gerrmania keyboards - which aren't the same as English), well as far as one can in only 20 turns. At 8/2/0 I am barely positive on income and 18 turnsresearch - and there is no luxury setting below 0. No way I am ready to tackle Gaul, just about to start the last Iberian campaign, should have enough to take out Byzantine in a few turns but with constant barbarian incursions and at least 1 slave uprising per turn (currently there are 9 spread through the republic), I have no army left for conquest and no money to raise anymore. Still, a challenge is what I sought.

Now I have a question about Lex Agraria and civitas et al - it doesn't seem to work as advertiyed. Not all cities get it immediately nor do they get the opportunity later. Explanations appreciated as the Guide is fuzzy on this.

 

[Stazro]

Now I have a question about Lex Agraria and civitas et al - it doesn't seem to work as advertiyed. Not all cities get it immediately nor do they get the opportunity later. Explanations appreciated as the Guide is fuzzy on this.

This is how it should work:

1. Enter Civil War.
2. Build Lex Agraria. Lex Agraria puts a "Municipium" in every City.
3. Build Civitas (which requires Municipium).
4. Leave Civil War.

The Municipii will vanish after you leave the civil war, but if you have build Civitas they are not needed anymore and later conquered cities will still be able to build Municipium, which takes some time though (and needs a temple as prerequisite, iirc). Lex Agraria will go obsolete soon, so you mustn't wait to long.