Suggestion: Unique Victory Conditions / Achivements

[Blasphemous]

Because that does nothing to reflect the empire-building effect of the Roman road system. What the road system did was keep commerce and travel flowing in a way that benefited the empire. It did not, per-se, create extra commerce for each Roman city or outpost. The reason this effect should be mirrored in maintenance is that maintenance, unlike simple lack of commerce, is intended to reflect trade and political power going in a way that does not lend itself to empire-building. The money is there, it's just not going to you. Reducing maintenance is exactly the right thing to do. I'm not out-right against making it conditional to having some roads around, but it seems almost pointless. If, however, it is conditional, the reduction should be greater. I would say without the road requirement it can be reduced to 25% of normal, with the road requirement to 15%.

On a not-so-related note, I noticed two out of three German UHV goals are basically different versions of "complete Hitler's vision of a New World Order in Europe". I'm not at all against having one goal represent this German attempt at domination, because it still is a significant part of German history, but making two of those goals seems a bit unimaginative, harsh, and most importantly, boring to play. But I'm not just whining. I have a better goal to replace one of the Hitler goals. "Get at least two Golden Ages by 1950CE." This will drive Germany to do more than just try and take over the world, since Germany did indeed do more than just that.

 

[kairob]

If you want to increase trade with them, then why not an increase in trade routes?
p.s. should I stop trying to help?

 

[Blasphemous]

It's good that you're suggesting different implementations, but I don't quite understand why you seem to be looking for workarounds to avoid using a perfectly doable and exceptionally representative and realistic implementation.
Do you understand why I support the "low distance maintenance" implementation so strongly? Do you agree with me?

 

[kairob]

Kinda but I always thought that the roman empire was corrupt, especially near the end, and that maintenance is like a replacment for corruption, so it shouldn't be reduced. Anyways correct if I am wrong like, and I always thought they traded alot...
...my argument is not very good, but I think we should look at lots of posabilities before we decide...

 

[McA123]

Well, it happens to also be the title of the paper I linked to.

Ha, I didn't notice you had linked it, that was just the first thing that popped into my head after reading your post.

 

[Blasphemous]

Kinda but I always thought that the roman empire was corrupt, especially near the end, and that maintenance is like a replacment for corruption, so it shouldn't be reduced. Anyways correct if I am wrong like, and I always thought they traded alot...
...my argument is not very good, but I think we should look at lots of posabilities before we decide...

Look, we're talking about unique powers here (in the unique victory conditions thread of course). Most big polities in history were extremely corrupt. What was unique about the Roman empire, among other things, was the way the road system served to centralize power and keep the empire in one piece. This was such a powerful force in the cohesion of the Roman empire that I think it's only fair to represent it with a huge reduction in distance maintenance. You still have number of cities maintenance and the rest of the distance maintenance to both keep the empire's size in check and represent the money that doesn't serve the empire as a centralized political entity.

 

[kairob]

so basically it is a weak version of "state property" then? Ok.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Kairob, you gave me an idea. Maybe we could lower state property bonuses and give Rome state property when they start. That way the would have more money= more pretorians.

 

[Blasphemous]

Umm, why break the Civics system when you can just give a similar, weaker effect as the UP itself? Don't change State Property, it's very appropriate the way it is right now. If you give the Romans State Property they'll stay as they are for a long, long time. If you give them a UP similar to the Civic instead, the UP will just become unspecial later on when empire-building gets addressed by Civics. This is very realistic because it took a long time for other empires to show up that subsidized centralization like the Romans did. And the viae are still around today; many main roads in Italy and England run the same ways the Roman viae ran. They're just not so important for centralization since the advent of Nationalism.
This gives me an idea. Maybe Nationalism should lower distance maintenance in all cities (to 75% or 50%) for whoever has the tech? It makes sense because Nationalism really did have an effect of centralizing empires and keeping the capital important (it being a national symbol) and relevant across the land. This will also work with a Roman "Viae" UP to make Rome much less special in its empire-building in the late game.

 

[Phallus]

I must apologise for the following because I haven't really thought it through at all. I'm just typing away in the vain hope something good will come out the other end and I can't make any promises.

I like Blas's idea a lot but Rome had quite a few maintenance problems towards the end of the western empire. Would a power involving "bureaucracy enabled from the start" be any good?