Your View on 1.03 update and what to improve ?

[Bivox]

so i played 3 major factions Rome , Carthage And Seleucid. Seleucid tend to eat half the map and then explode leaving chaos after it's collapse. their is a lot of map gore i wish countries where more consistent. Seleucid never run out of money with the Scota building i could recruit entire armies of mercenaries. About mercenaries they need a buff since most were veteran soldiers and Carthage mercenary roster need expansion a be able to be upgraded too.

Rome tend to try to eat the entire map too and just sweep through Italy in a few turns while Romans were tough they had a lot more problems uniting Italy . as Carthage i had real problem destroying Rome since they moved to Germany and Balkans. they should some collapse event when i take the enemy capital specially powerful one like Rome. Rome did not have a unit called the legion the time of the republic they had the triari (hipolite unite) and Hastai. so an idea to stop Carthage from taking whole Africa in few turns and rome getting most Germany is to add colonization system . so if you have a province near unclaimed one or a connection by sea you can colonize a nearby territory but it would take time and resources to turn to a city and you can only develop empty provinces if you have high enough developed cities near them. just an idea to slow down expansion and make it more historical.

Health structures should be more important specially aqueducts and bathhouse it was the difference between the Greek and Romens and barbarians who thought them as unclean. so bathhouses should generate more culture and happiness. Army building should generate manpower to make them more worthwhile.

siege should be more complicated and garrison more powerful so high end fortress should be beyond the means of raiding barbarians . maybe add a tech tree where countries can develop siege engines.

Edited : I noticed something Rome doesn't have a lot buildings special to it like the Forum and temples for Jupiter , Mars Vulcan or Minerva. I really like some few options to boost loyalty without getting too much decadence. Legion fort should not bring decadence but infrastructure and reduce decadence.


this is just a few notes from my three play-thought with 1.03. what do you have to add ?

[Nithus]

Rome seems to expand in Germany in my games too. This is weird since they don't have objectives there and their regions are generally poor and underdeveloped (and German ethnicity cause highest level of unrest as far as I know) and of course, historically they never wished to conquer those regions. I would expect more Carthage/Greek expansionism from them, but it rarely happens for some reason (but maybe Im just unlucky to witness it in my games).

As of improvements, I would like battle system to be slightly reworked. Right now it feels unfinished. you cant retreat for example, which is very weird. Especially units like cavalry should have this option if the enemy is slower. You dont know where enemy is going next turn, which can be deadly or super annoying if he is near your regions where you have connected roads (he can literally take 5 to 6 regions and catching him is mission impossible, so the only solution here is save scumming, which is sub-optimal solution). You have limited control over which units will be deployed which again is a factor that can win-lose decisive battles if you have more diverse unit groups. Assaulting fortified cities are incredibly easy and there is no point of besieging even lvl 2 forts (personally I've never lost battle against garrisoned units there). Level 3 forts I have no idea, because AI never builds them, maybe there is real challenge, but who knows.. maybe there should be movement impediment for enemy forces if you have forts built in the region, that way it would partially solve unknown movement of enemy units and there would be real reason to start paying attention to them.

Other minor improvements that cross my mind
- possibility to change province capital. There is no real reason not to be able to do that imo.
- Add some kind of timer to region which is your objective if it was recently taken by somebody. Sometimes it happens that your forces and enemy forces ping-pong one province which can ruin your progress tokens if it happens to be your objective. In one of my games I went from glorious tribal chiefdom with 4 progress tokens to -4 tokens stable tribal chiefdom because my country was in a war with rome and we fought over 1 alpine region. I know its RNG but still, it can be handled differently.
- Slow down Rome progress slightly - at the start of the campaign Rome wasn't steamrolling anyone like they do now. I think the struggle for dominance in Italic Peninsula isn't expressed correctly in this game, maybe add some real possibility for Senones/Etruscans to fend off early assaults? Add at least 1 strong national idea for them so that there is reason to pick and play as them? Things like Epirus fighting in southern Italy (and winning battles even though costly) is pure science fiction, since at the time 280 BC they already own anyone that cross their path without blink of an eye.
- More in-depth diplomacy. This is the weakest part of the game. You dont even have an option to reject call to arms from your ally and everything is chance based.
- Don't take regions you conquered automatically. I think player should be given possibility to take region he fought over and not automatically take it with the (not always present) option to abandon region afterwards (with penalty).

Other than that, not much to improve.

[devoncop]

Not all of the above points are valid in my opinion.

If you don't want to allow the enemy to capture multiple regions in one turn build fortifications.

Problem solved.

[LDiCesare]

Top priority would be better diplomacy.

Rome should indeed expand southwards a bit. Right now, it tends to go into Gaul very early, and even Germany, without touching Africa at all or even Sicily.

Food & health should be reviewed. Population should starve and die en masse when there are no food production, no health buildings and no dedicated farmers in the province. They should revolt, too.

Combat may still need a better placement of units. Never put urban militia preventing skirmishers to support, for example. And buffing militia or city walls would be worthwhile.

Production interface needs some streamlining, there is too much window opening/closing, checking the map, opening windows again, etc. and a lack of queue for buildings inside a region and more importantly inside a province.

I hate the idea of timers on objectives. That's completely against the way I play the game, which is waiting sometimes 40 years till the opponent who owns my objectives is weak and then I attack. I think this makes a lot of sense and would hate having to rush.

[Bivox]

In Europe universalis 4 , you have a mission tree. So as Byzantium you have to conquer Greece first then push back Ottomans for Balkan then conquer Syria and Italia. And also estates ( clergy , nobility ) could give you missions for rewards and loyalty points.

So make historical objectives or objectives that can triggered by events . So Rome first objectify take estrucia and Naple. Then carthage and Sicily should start at peace if Sicily call for Roman help and you accept you get objectives like Sardinia and Carthage.

[devoncop]

In Europe universalis 4 , you have a mission tree. So as Byzantium you have to conquer Greece first then push back Ottomans for Balkan then conquer Syria and Italia. And also estates ( clergy , nobility ) could give you missions for rewards and loyalty points.

So make historical objectives or objectives that can triggered by events . So Rome first objectify take estrucia and Naple. Then carthage and Sicily should start at peace if Sicily call for Roman help and you accept you get objectives like Sardinia and Carthage.

And if you do that every game is railroaded down the same path. Not for me thanks.

The beauty of this game is the variety in the playthrough's.

Objectives are to an extent historically based but they are not totally rigid.

[Soar]

The announcement for 1.0.3 claimed it made the AI smarter about declarations of war, but it isn't mentioned in the detailed changelog and if something was done, I don't think it went far enough - AIs declaring war on you if you hold their objectives still seems to be a matter of when, not if, irrespective of whether they're in a reasonable position to actually make gains in such a war. All it does is force me to raise extra armies to either sit around twiddling their thumbs until the war has lasted long enough for the negative modifier to peace chance that counteracts the modifiers they get from being at disadvantage in the war to expire, or wipe them off the map and gain a bunch of shitty territory, decadence and new neighbours that will probably just send me new pointless declarations of war, and it's really getting old.

Assaulting fortified cities are incredibly easy and there is no point of besieging even lvl 2 forts (personally I've never lost battle against garrisoned units there). Level 3 forts I have no idea, because AI never builds them, maybe there is real challenge, but who knows.. maybe there should be movement impediment for enemy forces if you have forts built in the region, that way it would partially solve unknown movement of enemy units and there would be real reason to start paying attention to them.

The main problem with fortifications (and garrisons in general) is the unit deployment priority system. Urban militia with their shitty support value takes priority for support spots over troops with better support bonuses. Meanwhile, if there's medium infantry present, they'll take frontline spots from the urban militia even though they're actually worse at defending the walls. Since the entire defending army is instantly wiped out if they lose even one combat round, it really hurts to have most of the bonus they should be getting from the walls negated by the bad deployment logic.

Assaults are also influenced by the top end of the game's unit roster being weighted towards being better on the offense than defense. Heavy Infantry, the best of the universally available units in assaults, is Attack 5 Defense 4, and although not readily available to all factions, there's still a lot more access to Attack 6 non-Phalanx infantry than units with a comparable Defense stat, so quite often, another part of the defensive advantage in assaults is inherently negated when defending against (non-Phalanx) non-junk armies. Before getting the heavy infantry upgrade (which I assume gives them +1 Attack/Defense to put them up to par with early Roman Legions since from what I've read from other players it's usually supposed to turn them into imitation legionnaires), it's actually difficult for a lot of factions to find units that have a higher duel value in defense against assaults than the basic Urban Militia, which makes melee infantry not too useful for defending against assaults.

[moose99]

I'm with devoncop here.
Making the expansion routes more historic would railroad the gameplay - like it is in so many other games.
It's nice to see a game try something else.
I guess its' a question of temperament, but I definitely like the (sort of) new take on the expansion that Pocus has tried here.

[Nithus]

I'm with devoncop here.
Making the expansion routes more historic would railroad the gameplay - like it is in so many other games.
It's nice to see a game try something else.
I guess its' a question of temperament, but I definitely like the (sort of) new take on the expansion that Pocus has tried here.

But the point is, that right now gameplay from AI Rome is already "reailroaded" towards Germany conquest (and partially Gaul), so there already is minimal variation in our games. If I have to chose between ahistoric Germany grab and historic Hispania-Carthage-Greece grab I'll chose to latter.

If you don't want to allow the enemy to capture multiple regions in one turn build fortifications.

Problem solved.

That would be great advice only when you realize that you're not able to immidiately build what you wish in this game. You have very limited option what to build even when you have open slots, so its not that easy following this advice.

I hate the idea of timers on objectives. That's completely against the way I play the game, which is waiting sometimes 40 years till the opponent who owns my objectives is weak and then I attack. I think this makes a lot of sense and would hate having to rush.

I was thinking more in the lines of progress token gains and not changing objective location. If you for example recently gain and objective region and then losing it the same turn and then retaking it again there shouldn't be random combination of +1 -1 +1 token change in one turn. (This isn't big deal for me, just a nuisance because I tend to get only regressive tokens from these scenarios)

[LDiCesare]

I'm with devoncop here.
Making the expansion routes more historic would railroad the gameplay - like it is in so many other games.
It's nice to see a game try something else.
I guess its' a question of temperament, but I definitely like the (sort of) new take on the expansion that Pocus has tried here.

But the point is, that right now gameplay from AI Rome is already "reailroaded" towards Germany conquest (and partially Gaul), so there already is minimal variation in our games. If I have to chose between ahistoric Germany grab and historic Hispania-Carthage-Greece grab I'll chose to latter.

The missions don't go into Germany for Rome. As far as I saw, they tend to ask you to go into Italy, Sicily, Tunes, Gaul, Greece. I don't remember objectives in Egypt or Germany. So, no, the missions don't railroad toward Germany. The ai tends to go there indeed, but that's not because of the objectives.
And I wouldn't want more railroading. I really disliked that move in EU4. It was made to remove hidden objectives and give more control to minmaxers at the expense of those who want to experience some kind of discovery.

If you don't want to allow the enemy to capture multiple regions in one turn build fortifications.

Problem solved.

That would be great advice only when you realize that you're not able to immidiately build what you wish in this game. You have very limited option what to build even when you have open slots, so its not that easy following this advice.

If you play Rome, you can always build fortifications. Dacia has a few more options than most, but in general, yes, it may take a few turns before you get the option.

I hate the idea of timers on objectives. That's completely against the way I play the game, which is waiting sometimes 40 years till the opponent who owns my objectives is weak and then I attack. I think this makes a lot of sense and would hate having to rush.

I was thinking more in the lines of progress token gains and not changing objective location. If you for example recently gain and objective region and then losing it the same turn and then retaking it again there shouldn't be random combination of +1 -1 +1 token change in one turn. (This isn't big deal for me, just a nuisance because I tend to get only regressive tokens from these scenarios)

This point is valid. In fact, the problem is not so much the token change but the related age change, as +20% followed by -20% is not 0 (you get x1.2x0.8 = x0.96 = -4% government age change when that happens if I understand the mechanics correctly). Tokens could be computed only once at the end of the turn rather than at each change to begin with.

[Morbio]

Nithus: You dont know where enemy is going next turn, which can be deadly or super annoying if he is near your regions where you have connected roads (he can literally take 5 to 6 regions and catching him is mission impossible, so the only solution here is save scumming, which is sub-optimal solution).
Devoncop: If you don't want to allow the enemy to capture multiple regions in one turn build fortifications. Problem solved.
Nithus: That would be great advice only when you realize that you're not able to immidiately build what you wish in this game. You have very limited option what to build even when you have open slots, so its not that easy following this advice.
LDiCesare: If you play Rome, you can always build fortifications. Dacia has a few more options than most, but in general, yes, it may take a few turns before you get the option.

Morbio: The other option is to station some troops in the border regions to stop the enemy racing into the heartland. This is what would happen historically and should be a fundamental playing principle.

[Nithus]

I'm with devoncop here.
Making the expansion routes more historic would railroad the gameplay - like it is in so many other games.
It's nice to see a game try something else.
I guess its' a question of temperament, but I definitely like the (sort of) new take on the expansion that Pocus has tried here.

But the point is, that right now gameplay from AI Rome is already "reailroaded" towards Germany conquest (and partially Gaul), so there already is minimal variation in our games. If I have to chose between ahistoric Germany grab and historic Hispania-Carthage-Greece grab I'll chose to latter.

The missions don't go into Germany for Rome. As far as I saw, they tend to ask you to go into Italy, Sicily, Tunes, Gaul, Greece. I don't remember objectives in Egypt or Germany. So, no, the missions don't railroad toward Germany. The ai tends to go there indeed, but that's not because of the objectives.
And I wouldn't want more railroading. I really disliked that move in EU4. It was made to remove hidden objectives and give more control to minmaxers at the expense of those who want to experience some kind of discovery.

There is slight misunderstanding here. I wasn't saying that Rome has an objectives to the Germanic region, merely saying that AI Rome is always expanding there if possible. This creates 0 variations in our games regardless of its (I think correctly placed) objective locations. Player at least attempts to take region where he has objectives, but AI is either ignoring it completely or is very bad at claiming objectives through naval invasion. So if the argument here is variation (and I agree that it should be there, otherwise it gets boring after awhile), current state of the game is not supporting the premise.

[Lysimachos]

I'm definetely with Nithus here.
The Rome controlled AI tends invariably to expand towards the North, in a manner that's not only unhistorical but also tedious for his repetitiveness.

I don't say that nations should be strictly railroaded toward a single, specific objective but, at least, it would be nice to have these objectives enforced in a more stricter way giving Rome, for example, a 50% probabilities x turn of expanding south (vs Carthage), 30% east (vs Greece and then Seleucids and Ptolemaics) and 20% north (vs Germany and Gaul). And the same could be done for the other nations.
This would seem much more historical and not so predictable, not to say that putting Rome vs the other great powers would, at the same time, preserve the chances of Celtic and Germanic nations to expand a bit and, at the same time, make for a really fun play in the Mediterranean between great nations battling each other rather than expanding towards the edge of the map and then turtling in order to maximize the legacy already gained.

[LDiCesare]

I agree Rome expands towards North instead of South way too much. It also seems to not use corvus ships half as much as I do when I can build them. So maybe the AI has trouble landing its troops in Africa and not getting them wiped out? I never really watched what it did on the southern front.

[Pocus]

The Rome goes north trend is not something new and several things were added to fight off that with mixed results. I think in the end it is caused by the AI having the choice either to expand against weak independents or tough fortified civilized nations. Being an AI, it goes to the short term available goal whereas a player would probably build up to go against the strongly defended southern regions.

The improvements on Empires will continue anyway.

[Bivox]

It might be also the problem of when reaching north Italy Rome get declared war by some tribes and the only way to deal with them now is conquer them. We may need to add extra diplomacy option for wars like monetary reparations , subjugation ( client state ) or just raze the tribe territory. Or even buy off the tribe.

[Nithus]

It might be also the problem of when reaching north Italy Rome get declared war by some tribes and the only way to deal with them now is conquer them. We may need to add extra diplomacy option for wars like monetary reparations , subjugation ( client state ) or just raze the tribe territory. Or even buy off the tribe.

This.

It is super annoying for player also. The only way how to stop hostilities reliably (not just temporarily with the peace deal) between the parties is to completely take all of their territories, which a lot of times I don't want. End result is expansion in the direction player may not want to go..

[Lysimachos]

The Rome goes north trend is not something new and several things were added to fight off that with mixed results. I think in the end it is caused by the AI having the choice either to expand against weak independents or tough fortified civilized nations. Being an AI, it goes to the short term available goal whereas a player would probably build up to go against the strongly defended southern regions.

The improvements on Empires will continue anyway.

Thanks for the commitment!
This is a really great game and lacks only few things to become outstanding.
Besides the diplomatic asset, on which many other players have already spoken, I would like to point out another feature that IMHO could be improved.
It is the situation in the East.
There, we have only two great powers (Seleucids and Maurya), destined to conquer that whole portion of the map, being that Bactria, Saka and the newly indipendent nations emerging from the collapse of one of them (generally the Seleucids) aren't powerful enough to stop the remaining great power to swallow the biggest part of the provinces in this area.
So I ask, where are the Parthians?
I know that, historically, they emerged only with the conquest of the namesake Seleucid satrapy in 250 BC.
But it is also true that the Parni (the original name of the tribes that later became known as Parthians) already inhabited the adjacent regions in the past centuries.
So why not having them from the beginning of the game in five regions like Gorgana, Karakum, Ashor, Parthia and Sarmys, with some distinct trait or decisions that could help them spring up as an emerging power from the end of the third century BC?
This would be historical and at the same time would add much fun when gaming in the east.

[jhornborg]

And if you do that every game is railroaded down the same path. Not for me thanks.

The beauty of this game is the variety in the playthrough's.

Objectives are to an extent historically based but they are not totally rigid.

Objective cities are railroady by their very nature; they're crucial to winning the game. I would rather be railroaded by historical considerations than some randomly-generated formula that constantly changes. Even better, scrap the objective system altogether or replace it with a province control system for Legacy points.