Slitherine

I think this is now the game Achille Heel. Diplomacy and AI behiavour need an adjustment so we can have less tedious repetitive games . Some Adjustment on how countries and AI behave:

- A colonialism mechanism should be introduced to stop bobbing by time and other nations. So when you have a empty province near your territory you need to colonize it to be able to assimilated . You can colonize a limited number of provinces and need to be ajencent to a develloped enough cities . Armies passing through wilderness provinces should suffer heavy attrition. This should slow down the ability of countries to blob .

- tribes need to be changed how to behave . Most barbarians are more interested in loot and pillage more then conquest and didn't technology to siege large enough fortified settlment so just ravaged the surroundings . Tribe should be able to control a limited number of cities until they civilized.

- AI behaviour on how accept offers should be changed . A lot of nation refuse to be my client because :" my cheap goods will flood their market." What are we in a 19 century protectionism area ? Being powerful , having a lot goods to offer and wealthy ( specially for leaders should be counted as a plus). Having a high culture and powerful military should encourage weaker tribes or nation to seek my protection. Say your Macedonia, you should be able to offer client state to other nations with same Hellenic and religious background.

- so also I would like to add client state the ability to slowly integrate them into the realm without decadence penalty.

- we should have more options for peace deals. If you are invaded or raided by a tribe , you get option to do punitive expedition . So essentially destroy their army and exterminate tribe or subjugate thenm without taking their territory. I would ability to liberate nations and get decadence reduction as a reward and also gold reparations.

- the objectif to conquer as put now is almost a curse . A lot of time objectif is put in ally or subject nation. So if it is in a subject it should be considered in your hand. I would like the ability to change objectives or renounce some with a cooldown before getting a new one.

- AI should put in consideration development and army power before declaring war on you. I can't name the number of time AI declared a suicidal war against me because I have some objectif they should get. Lesser nations should try appease stronger neibgour.

- you should have the ability to choose from a bunch of casus belli that allow to reduce decadence from conquest. Say successor states should claim on each other lands because they were figthing to reunite Alexander empire. Casus belli can be fabricated or cause by political events and reduce decadence from conquest. Liberating nations allow you to even reduce decadence . Defensive wars should generate a lot less decadence if you have been declared war on.

Lots of good ideas above.

There are two related mechanisms that I've thought about, that might also be nice to see:
- Client / Patron states receive some benefit from objectives held by their counterpart. This is turn might be reflected in easier diplomacy to get someone to agree to become a client state.
- In large battles, the winner takes some of the legacy of the loser. This provides a possible points catch up mechanism, and makes sense thematically.

Bivox wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:08 pm - tribes need to be changed how to behave . Most barbarians are more interested in loot and pillage more then conquest and didn't technology to siege large enough fortified settlment so just ravaged the surroundings . Tribe should be able to control a limited number of cities until they civilized.

Some good stuff here, but this point needs to be pushed back on a bit. "Barbarians" weren't any more interested in loot and plunder than civilized nations. Take Rome for example. Roman governors during the late Republic were heavily incentivized to undertake military action against nearby polities provided doing so gained them a large share of loot. The reason for this is that - becoming - governor of a province required a lot of investment.......much like politics in America, to be honest. Roman politicians could go into serious debt securing a governorship........so they needed a big payoff to survive. Caesar and Gaul is a great example of this. All nations engaged in war were focused on gaining money from the other party so as to pay for the cost of the war itself. Antigonus the One Eyed invaded Nabatea SOLELY for the purpose of stealing their spice treasure stores. He made multiple attempts that failed for a variety of reasons. But the plunder, not the territory, was the goal.

There really needs to be the Sack and Loot option that Total War has........

Currently, one shortcoming is that invasion loot is calculated based on the enemy's treasury......but this isn't all that would be looted. Temple offerings, grave goods, all sorts of "stored" wealth would be up for grabs. The treasury the player uses in the game is only part of the actual wealth that would be within that geographic boundary. There needs to be more emphasis on pillage rewards and amounts for all factions.

Size of a polity had much more to do with its ability to lay siege to a place, because you need a lot of supplies, time, and wealth to make the siege work. Sieges were uncommon in Classical Greece for that very reason. Civilization had very little to do with it. As such, there should be no limit to sieges other than the cost of time/dedication/army/wealth that already exists.

I don't understand the point about colonialism. There were a few colonies founded in antiquity, such as Massalia, Carthago Nova, etc. but for the most part, the whole area was populated and already had population, even if scarce. So I don't think a colonialism mechanism would be appropriate. It also has nothing to do with diplomacy.

I think one should be able to demand an objective region from a client state or force annexation. Currently, if they are on an island, you'll never be able to absorb them. I don't think counting the objective automatically yours when it's in a client state is a good idea.

The most important thing diplomacy requires is the ability to trade regions in peace deals and with allies, such as laying claims on this or that region, so if either ally conquers it, the one who claimed will get the region, not the one who conquers. Also making peace and for example giving back some territory in exchange for becoming a client-state.

Not exacly colonialism. But something like settling unclaimed region should take time . Rome or Macedonia or Carthage shouldn't roll over entire regions like entire Africa, Germany and Balkans. So setting settlement in unclaimed area should need time devellop and you should have limits on how many unclaimed you can devellop at once.

And it more or less true Carthage usually kept on coast except for Hispania and Romans kept bored on Danube and Rhine because Germany was mostly forested while Gauls had cities and infrastructure so presented a more lucrative target.

Settlement were used also in conquered areas to introduce your own people in the province. So maybe a migration system from heavily populated areas to new lands .

This is just a little solution I suggest to stop excessive expansion early one in-game in unclaimed territory.

So I agree buying or trading territory or forcing enemy in peace deal to return territory or liberate nation. For client state , you can take a province but you get a relianship hit or you can give them something they lost from enemy.

I've been playing as Rome and it does have a decision in Padus that is akin to what you are asking for.
Would also like to see diplomatic options expanded a bit.

Bivox wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:08 pm So when you have a empty province near your territory you need to colonize it to be able to assimilated . You can colonize a limited number of provinces and need to be ajencent to a develloped enough cities . Armies passing through wilderness provinces should suffer heavy attrition. This should slow down the ability of countries to blob .

This already happens - it takes up to ten turns before a region is pacified and stops producing excess decadence. Armies passing through regions that have been raided do suffer significant attrition if they can't get supplies from an adjacent province. The same thing can happen in an under developed province or one that has had too many armies pass through it, or one that has been besieged, as the food supply there gets eaten up (or just not enough is produced there). Armies can't replace losses in newly conquered regions as the loyalty is generally too low.


Otherwise some good ideas here, my main change would be to allow you to ally with nations far away instead of making it more difficult to do so.

As far as colonies are concerned I think you should be allowed to exchange soldiers for population and leave them behind to form a military colony. This was done by Alexander and the Romans. The restrictions would be:
1. only veteran or wounded soldiers can be left behind - so troops with 3 stars or more
2. wounded soldiers ie damaged units count as half the number of population
3. Mercenaries left behind (even if they are veteran mercenaries) have a lower loyalty level, say that of the second population cohort
4. Don't know what ratio would be reasonable - one population for each two military units, or one for three if they are light infantry or light cavalry?
5, you can't use special units like scythed chariots or elephants
6. They can't be changed back again
7. Converting a certain number of units would increase the defence/garrison level by 1.

The advantages would not only that the town's population would be kick-started but that (no matter how many people are already in the town) these troops would have the loyalty of the first group of people in a town, and they would also be of your own ethnicity.

vakarr wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 1:08 am As far as colonies are concerned I think you should be allowed to exchange soldiers for population and leave them behind to form a military colony. This was done by Alexander and the Romans. The restrictions would be:
1. only veteran or wounded soldiers can be left behind - so troops with 3 stars or more
2. wounded soldiers ie damaged units count as half the number of population
3. Mercenaries left behind (even if they are veteran mercenaries) have a lower loyalty level, say that of the second population cohort
4. Don't know what ratio would be reasonable - one population for each two military units, or one for three if they are light infantry or light cavalry?
5, you can't use special units like scythed chariots or elephants
6. They can't be changed back again
7. Converting a certain number of units would increase the defence/garrison level by 1.

The advantages would not only that the town's population would be kick-started but that (no matter how many people are already in the town) these troops would have the loyalty of the first group of people in a town, and they would also be of your own ethnicity.

Wow that would be a really cool and immersive feature ! However, it should be balanced in a way that prevents players from abusing it and spamming light troops in order to settle a region without efforts. Making it only possible for 3 stars veterans as you proposed would be a good thing in my opinion. Perhaps that it could create unrest too, because of the difference between the soldiers and the locals ethnicity ? And because of the forced réquisition of lands to settle the soldiers ?

I think that the conversion ratio should be high enough (like 4 or 3 Roman Legio to create 1 citizen pop) but it’s just my own feeling.

Perhaps that recruiting units in a region could also be tied to the population system, so that the player doesn’t feel like he’s « creating » people by spamming military units and settling them, but more like displacing the population or returning soldiers to civil life using the « settling troops » option.

For example : you recruit 4 legions in Roma, costing you 1 citizen pop. You fight a long war against the sennones, and then decide to return your soldiers to Rome and settle them back there : your town regains the 1 missing citizen pop (and gains a temporary unrest/loyalty malus, because of the « land grant » given to veteran soldiers).

It would make big casualties in a war devastating, because you’d actually be loosing people, and it wouldn’t just be a temporary loss of manpower/money ressource.
And it would represent citizen soldiers in a more authentic way.
But maybe that I’m going too far there

I hope that the dev will see your post, it would be amazing to implement in game !

To note also Roman gave veterans lands as reward for their service specially in conquered land.

vakarr wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 1:08 am As far as colonies are concerned I think you should be allowed to exchange soldiers for population and leave them behind to form a military colony. This was done by Alexander and the Romans. The restrictions would be:
1. only veteran or wounded soldiers can be left behind - so troops with 3 stars or more
2. wounded soldiers ie damaged units count as half the number of population
3. Mercenaries left behind (even if they are veteran mercenaries) have a lower loyalty level, say that of the second population cohort
4. Don't know what ratio would be reasonable - one population for each two military units, or one for three if they are light infantry or light cavalry?
5, you can't use special units like scythed chariots or elephants
6. They can't be changed back again
7. Converting a certain number of units would increase the defence/garrison level by 1.

The advantages would not only that the town's population would be kick-started but that (no matter how many people are already in the town) these troops would have the loyalty of the first group of people in a town, and they would also be of your own ethnicity.

This sounds like really interesting idea. Pops would become much more valuable due to this. Also citizen/slave distribution would need to be managed more closely since I presume only citizen pops would be able to become soldiers, maybe with a few country exceptions. Finally food producing buildings would be spammed slightly more, which is a good thing because they are for the most part secondary tier buildings.

Bivox wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 7:17 pm Not exacly colonialism. But something like settling unclaimed region should take time . Rome or Macedonia or Carthage shouldn't roll over entire regions like entire Africa, Germany and Balkans. So setting settlement in unclaimed area should need time devellop and you should have limits on how many unclaimed you can devellop at once.

And it more or less true Carthage usually kept on coast except for Hispania and Romans kept bored on Danube and Rhine because Germany was mostly forested while Gauls had cities and infrastructure so presented a more lucrative target.

Settlement were used also in conquered areas to introduce your own people in the province. So maybe a migration system from heavily populated areas to new lands .

This is just a little solution I suggest to stop excessive expansion early one in-game in unclaimed territory.

So I agree buying or trading territory or forcing enemy in peace deal to return territory or liberate nation. For client state , you can take a province but you get a relianship hit or you can give them something they lost from enemy.

This is a solution to a problem I don't see.
If you expand too fast, your realm will fall down. You simply can't sustain large expansion without stopping, otherwise you're going to become decadent, get usurpers and civil wars.

And as already noted, Rome gets events where they found colonia where veterans retire. Having more relations between units and population, other than the abstracted manpower, would be cool, though.

It is for player and AI. I am playing a full game as Rome and I ve seen several nation blob until they explode like Seuleucid , Macedonia , Mauya( Indian nation ) , Carthage , then Persia and several tribes who keep eating independent provinces until they explode.

It is for player and AI. I am playing a full game as Rome and I ve seen several nation blob until they explode like Seuleucid , Macedonia , Mauya( Indian nation ) , Carthage , then Persia and several tribes who keep eating independent provinces until they explode.

It seems we need a bit more mechanisms to control Decadence like appointing laws and governers and maybe a tech trees that give you less decadence ability. Some military building should reduce decadence . And maybe some wonders hat reduce it too.

Bivox wrote: ↑Sat Aug 17, 2019 4:50 am It is for player and AI. I am playing a full game as Rome and I ve seen several nation blob until they explode like Seuleucid , Macedonia , Mauya( Indian nation ) , Carthage , then Persia and several tribes who keep eating independent provinces until they explode.

It seems we need a bit more mechanisms to control Decadence like appointing laws and governers and maybe a tech trees that give you less decadence ability. Some military building should reduce decadence . And maybe some wonders hat reduce it too.

No?
It's working as designed that seuleucids and other diadochi explode. Same for Persians so that Parthians can appear. Same for Rome with civil wars. I still fail to see a problem.
You can manage decadence by increasing your culture, by increasing your loyalty. In addition, military were not really the best way to handle internal strife. Consider how many legion commanders tried to become emperors.

I am saying that should improve the AI to maintain a stable country and not just blob and explode every time. Seuleucid empire and polemic Egypt lasted long time.

In my games, Ptolemaids, Macedonians, Carthaginians, Romans, Maurya tend to blob and remain quite stable if left alone. I've seen the occasional Aethiopia taking over Carthage and then exploding for Carthage to rise as a Phoenix. So if there's an issue, it could be Seleucid-specific. They have specific rules for being diadochi, thus high decadence and losing their capital can cause the nation to go poof. It sound ok for lysimachids and antigonids, but less so for seleucids maybe.