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1. I prefer realism but still think its ok. Living in a so called Mediterranean climate myself, I feel that the temperate climates are a lot more lush and capable of generating more crops and population. I have no facts for this though. Anyone else have an opinion?.

For centuries the province Africa was the corn chamber of Rome. They had forests and fertile soil back then. In contrast nearly all sceletons of Germanic people of that period are known for their deficiency symptoms (it is hard to have a good harvest in a dense and cold forest :rofl:).

Besides Africa Egypt was the other corn chamber of the Roman Empire.
 
I like what you did with the new map. I hopee you add arabian tribes, like in gaul or spain. Whenever provinces are left open, the Seleucids unhistorically colonize up to the egyptian border.
 
1. Temperate is treated as being richer land than Mediterranean, which seems backwards to me. I can accept this as a balancing factor designed to boost the Gallic tribes relative to the Romans, if that is in fact the intent. If realism is the intent, then reversing the modifiers (no modifier for Temperate, +10% tax value for Mediterranean) should be more accurate.

2. I'm not convinced that the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamian provinces are correct to be assigned Semi-Arid. That's about right for that region today, but had they already been that badly damaged 2300 years ago? If not, Mediterranean would probably be appropriate (certainly for 5-6000 years ago; perhaps a middle ground of a no-modifier version of Temperate as in point 1 would work for this time period?). Damascus, Susa, and Persepolis being Arid seems odd as well. All three were hugely important cities during or very shortly before this era, so it seems strange that they'd be in what amount to desert provinces. If Arid is actually correct for those regions in this time period, perhaps an even more extreme "Desert" climate tag should be added to differentiate these cities from places like Libya province?

3. Some provinces are simply wrong. Gallia Cisalpina (capital: Milan) is assigned Highland climate, presumably because the province includes part of the Alps. The province also includes a hefty chunk of the highly valuable and productive Po valley, so one of Temperate or Mediterranean would be correct (wikipedia says Temperate for North Italy's inland plains like this). The same logic in reverse indicates that Helvetii should be Highland not Temperate. IIRC, Caesar noted that it was a poor land whose inhabitants tried and failed to take better land in Gaul in the Gallic Wars. And really, if the heart of modern Switzerland isn't Highland, what is? :)

Ditto for parts of Armenia - there have to be Highland provinces in there though I don't know the region well enough to say which ones for certain. Again I believe it was Caesar who remarked on the extreme harshness of the terrain, and Continental doesn't do justice to that.

Just checked, Pictii is also currently Temperate not Highland.

First of all, climate modifiers are simply pasted from RIMP. Whether to change them or not is a matter of discussion. However, climate types in provinces are based on temperature/humidity/overall climate maps. It's only a matter of modifiers tied to each climate type.

1) Problem here is a small number of avaliable trigerred effects in EUR (compared i.e. to EU). As RIMP description says temerate climate with +10% tax bonus is supposed to reflect that such lands were more fertile than mediterranean. And in terms of growing crops - he's right. In many ancient sources or contemporary books about ancient world you'll read that i.e. Gaul lands were very fertile as well as you'll read about many cases of disastrous droughts in mediterranean regions. The question is wheter tax bonus is best to represent this.

2) Again, arid/semi-arid ect. - these are types of climate, not terrain (both usually match, but not always). I had a luck to be there (Damascus, Persepolis ruins, so on). At best they're semi-arid (in terms of flora formation it's steppe) and were such in the past. Persepolis was practically build in the middle of nowhere. They were rich because of trade (or - in Persepolis case - because they were made seasonal capitals of the rulers), attracting many people from poorer regions, not because they were fertile. Good conditions had to be made there (irrigation ect.) - they were not found at place. Such cases should be reflected by base tax value - then you could keep a properly historical, harsh climate but represent richness of a city with a high tax base. Unfortunately, EUR fails here again - god knows why such a simple thing as tax base modifier is not set in history files, but somehow calculated automately.

3) Again, you confuse climate with terrain types. Moreover, though I thought it's obvious, you can't represent in such game local variations to overall conditions. Po Valley and so on - OK, of course, but look how big are the provinces in EUR, how badly they are drawn in many cases. Going this way will mean there will be soon practically no Alps in a sense of harsh, hardly traversable (at least in winter season) region. And this will led to known occurrence of Rome behind the Alps in first 20 years of gameplay or so. Helvetii? Originally majority of them lived not exactly in the same place as "heart of modern Switzerland", rather - in a sense of terrain type - in foothills than high mountains. Pictii? Again, climate of these region is temperate - it means it can change a lot, but these changes are not extreme (and this is what RIMP descriptions indicate). Yes, in mountainous region (terrain) climate can be temperate (climate type). But even in terms of terrain formation, comparing Pictii (today's north Scotland) with Alps or Carpathians would be a bit absurdal (Ben Nevis is a hill compared to most of well known mountains in these ranges).
 
Until someone makes a terrain mod to separate out terrain effects from climate effects, this climate mod has to cover both together.

Regarding Temperate vs. Mediterranean, some sort of adjustment of modifiers seems like a sensible solution. Maybe Temperate gets +1% pop growth, Med gets +10% tax bonus. Actually pop growth has been a minor peeve of mine in almost all Paradox games, so Temp. having no growth mod and everything else having -1% or worse seems OK to me...

The remark about droughts and famines in the ancient world makes me think some sort of provincial random event removing X% (X=10?) of the province population. Mtth increased by a large factor for provinces benefiting from grain; if it's possible perhaps Mediterranean, Semi-Arid, and Arid climates decrease the mtth by various factors. Stability should also affect the mtth of course, probably ruler finesse as well. I've never done much modding so I don't know if this is practical or not. If such an event already exists the mtth is way too high since I've never seen it. :)

Tax modifiers could be done the same way as this climate system (or a hypothetical terrain system), assign each province a tag, say rich, normal, poor, and may-as-well-be-PTI, with modifiers that would bear a striking resemblance to the climate mod's Temperate, Mediterranean, Semi-Arid or Alpine, and Arid. A second set of modifiers would allow places like Persepolis to be Arid while still being enormously superior provinces compared to useless stretches of desert like Libya province (for example). Of course someone would have to find time to do this, which seems unlikely.

Regarding the Milan issue, exactly, you can't represent local variations in conditions, so you have to decide what best represents the province as a whole. Which is why I strongly disagree with assigning Gallia Cisalpina the Alpine modifier because of the Alps along the north edge of the province despite the major city and rich farmland in the center and southern part of the province. The Alpine attrition barrier is not a problem in Epigoni 1.32b now that Hardradi added Maritime Alps and Salassi. Add Alpine modifiers in Helvetii, Vindelicia, and Raetia and that's not a region you want to march large armies through. Helvetii is weird, it looks like it's drawn to include a chunk of Lorraine which is where the little settlement icon is placed, but it definitely includes the heart of Switzerland (Bern, Zurich, Luzern, Basel). It's a nice place but not an area that deserves a positive modifier to the province the way someplace like Sicily or central France does. And it's a terrible place to try to march an army through, so it needs to have an attrition modifier...

Regarding Scotland, the question is are the Highlands as productive and valuable as even Lowland Scotland, let alone the rest of Britain or France. Even with the Alpine modifier the Picts are marginally better off than the Volcae in Tolosa (same population, same modifier, same civilization, but Pictii has a slightly less uneven distribution of the population). That's another nice example of a place where a second set of modifiers would be handy, and a rich vs. poor modifier would probably work better than separating out a terrain effect from the current climate modifier.
 
Jhhowell, exactly, like I said, it'a a matter of setting modifiers right. I pointed to Hardradi that I didn't touch original RIMP modifiers. Myself, I also think that fertility o temperate climate should be better represented by boni to popoulation growth, not tax. I'm not sure why RIMP took such way. Maybe because fiddling with population is risky - you add 1% here or there and after several hundred years of gameplay you can end with abnormal levels of population. I don't know.

Still, having climates is nice 'cause you can attatch to them some modifiers i.e. attrition.

As for the tax modifiers, it would be the best solution, but indeed very time consuming to implement. I really don't understand why we can't just set base tax values in history files. It would resolve all problems.

In general, this game badly needs more variety of triggers/effects.
 
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As RIMP description says temerate climate with +10% tax bonus is supposed to reflect that such lands were more fertile than mediterranean. And in terms of growing crops - he's right. In many ancient sources or contemporary books about ancient world you'll read that i.e. Gaul lands were very fertile as well as you'll read about many cases of disastrous droughts in mediterranean regions.

Waht are the sources for your assumption?

Around 250 BC Rome imported crop from Campania, Gallia Cisalpina and Sicilia. With the end of the second Punic War, Rome started the import of grain from North Africa. In the 1st century AD Egypt became another exporter of grain to Rome.

Gallia, Britannia and Germania were never important producer of agricultural products (except hides, swines, wool and similiar things).

Btw, a draught has nothing to do with the fertility of the land as a draught by definition an anormality. An short-term weather anormality is always a big problem for the agriculture sector (i.e. the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or the year without summer 1816).
 
Waht are the sources for your assumption?

Around 250 BC Rome imported crop from Campania, Gallia Cisalpina and Sicilia. With the end of the second Punic War, Rome started the import of grain from North Africa. In the 1st century AD Egypt became another exporter of grain to Rome.

Gallia, Britannia and Germania were never important producer of agricultural products (except hides, swines, wool and similiar things).

Btw, a draught has nothing to do with the fertility of the land as a draught by definition an anormality. An short-term weather anormality is always a big problem for the agriculture sector (i.e. the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or the year without summer 1816).

Anthony King's "Roman Gaul and Germany" just for example.

Egypt became exporter of grain much earlier and was firmly established in such role already in Ceasar times (1 BC not AD) - after all it was one of the main reasons to go there at all and get involved in a civil war.

"Gallia, Britannia and Germania were never important producer of agricultural products" - and what's the source for this? It's not about if Celts were efficient farmers, but if lands and climate they lived in allowed such possibility. Conditions and ability to make use of them are two different things (otherwise why would Romans - not bad farmers at all - would need to import grain from Egypt or North Africa?). It was not until Roman conquest that many new crops or agriculural techniques were introduced in Galia, but it doesn't mean land there was less fertile before. We simply don't know details about Celtic agriculture production, because of lack of original written sources. You can't measure their skills or fertility of their lands by saying if they didn't export grain to Rome in great amounts as Egypt or North Africa they were not important producer of agricultural products. Market-oriented agricultural production is not only a matter of natural conditions (frankly, they're less important here) but also of social and political system. Even in case of Rome it took a specific political/social conditions and hundreds of years before small land owners were replaced by big latifundists operating not on a local, but much broader market. North Africa became important grain supplier after conquest and ammasing by Romans huge latifundiums there. In Egypt you have a case of strongly centralised country with state control over many aspects of life, agriculture included (in simple words, as a ruler you have to care about internal grain supply only as long as commoners won't start to gather in front of palace trying to kill you - the rest you can sell abroad :)). Obviously, Gaul or Germanic tribes were not alike, having a highly decentralised political/social organization and in consequence - locally focused agriculture. It only means they did not export much, but it does not mean they produced little.

What's the point about abnormality exactly? Is it an argument for adding bonuses to mediterranean climate and reducing them in case of temperate one or something else? I have no problem with changing original RIMP values however.
 
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"Gallia, Britannia and Germania were never important producer of agricultural products" - and what's the source for this? It's not about if Celts were efficient farmers, but if lands and climate they lived in allowed such possibility. [...] Obviously, Gaul or Germanic tribes were not alike, having a highly decentralised political/social organization and in consequence - locally focused agriculture. It only means they did not export much, but it does not mean they produced little.

i.e. a great deal Germanic sceletons have signs of denutrition. The book, were this is written, lies unfortunatly 200 km away and I do not know the title by heart. I only asked for a book to convince me of your position, not to give offense.

What's the point about abnormality exactly? Is it an argument for adding bonuses to mediterranean climate and reducing them in case of temperate one or something else? I have no problem with changing original RIMP values however.

It is an argument for adding bonuses to mediterranean climate and reduce them sometimes through events in many provinces at the same time.
 
i.e. a great deal Germanic sceletons have signs of denutrition. The book, were this is written, lies unfortunatly 200 km away and I do not know the title by heart. I only asked for a book to convince me of your position, not to give offense.

It is an argument for adding bonuses to mediterranean climate and reduce them sometimes through events in many provinces at the same time.

No offence taken, God forbid :) Always good to learn something new.

So, what should be changed? Pictii to highlands - OK. Provinces in Euphrates/Tigris region to mediterranean? Sounds more controversial. In case of Syria it could be however.

And what about modifiers tied to climates. As far as I know we have such local effects avaliable:

local_revolt_risk =
minimum_revolt_risk =
local_tax_modifier =
local_regiment_recruit_speed =
local_ship_recruit_speed =
local_trade_routes =
supply_limit =
local_research_points_modifier =
barbarian_spawn_chance =
local_research_points_modifier =
local_manpower_modifier =
attrition =
max_attrition =
garrison_growth =
local_population_growth =
local_religious_prestige =
local_start_experience
fort_level =
movement_cost =
 
Map expansion sounds nice (especially as that might perhaps mean the end of the current events recreating barbarian presence in the southernmost provinces in Africa?), as I said my primary reason for wanting more stuff for Carthage is that I tend to play them. I haven't really got a clue about Carthaginian history (apart from what's on Wikipedia).



Exactly. The current decision increases tech costs by 6% for all techs while "naval_tech_cost_modifier" will just increase the cost for naval techs. If used localization will have to be added however as the modifier is accepted by the game (and works) but as it's unused by the base game there is no existing localization for it.

I'm not that knowledgeable about eu:r modding either. I'm much more used to modding EU3 (and that's also a historical period I know more about).
I wasn't able to find a list of usable modifiers for EU:R so I tested one from EU3 that worked.



This was exactly what I was suggesting :) Perhaps a higher organization for navies as well (as the mercenary decision lowers it for land troops)?

Carthage:

- Two new laws added (Punic Naval Law and Punic Tophet Sacrifice :eek:)

- I tried out the modifier "naval_tech_cost_modifier" and it appear in game ok, without the localisation entry. Shall I up it to 10%? Not sure how to test if it works.

- Map expansion: Yes I think I have got the hang of it and it can be done. I cant wait to colonise the Canaries and jostle with the Garamantes. :D Also there will be another Carthaginian staring province on the coast (currently off map).

I like what you did with the new map. I hopee you add arabian tribes, like in gaul or spain. Whenever provinces are left open, the Seleucids unhistorically colonize up to the egyptian border.

There will be two new Arabian tribes, big three or four province tribes/kingdoms, Lihyan and Gerrha. You need to get your Maccabean Mod operational or the framework done and I will see if I can implement it for you. :)

this mod looks so good, i think it's time to try it when i find some time. i like the fact that it looks very polished

Thanks for the compliments luca.
 
There will be two new Arabian tribes, big three or four province tribes/kingdoms, Lihyan and Gerrha. You need to get your Maccabean Mod operational or the framework done and I will see if I can implement it for you. :)

Sure thing. I am starting to work on it again today. :D
 
Carthage:

- Two new laws added (Punic Naval Law and Punic Tophet Sacrifice :eek:)

Nice :) Though I wonder if I will be able to use the second one ;)

- I tried out the modifier "naval_tech_cost_modifier" and it appear in game ok, without the localisation entry. Shall I up it to 10%? Not sure how to test if it works.

In order to test if it works you can compare tech costs for naval tech with that of the other techs by using the tooltip for the tech progress bars. When I tried this all techs had the same cost except for naval tech (which was more expensive).
Not sure about 10%, a human player could probably handle that no problem but testing would have to determine if it works for the AI. Personally I always thought a tech malus was a bit wrong in the first place. I can see how standardization would mean less innovation. But on the other hand standardization also means it's a lot easier to switch out old components across the board so to speak.
Imo it's also a bit counter intuitive to give Carthage a naval tech malus compared to Rome. On the other hand I don't know any better malus and it does seem to me most decisions should have both good and bad consequences. I know too few of the modifiers for eu:rome to be able suggest a more fitting penalty (though I think it might be worth it to try out more modifiers from eu3 as some of them evidently work in rome as well).
Wikipedia has articles about the punic military that seems good enough for inspiration but I'm not able to determine anything about it's validity due to my lacking general knowledge of the time and/or place ;)
 
The lower fertility in the Mediterranean zone might have to do with the fact that there are two growing seasons here, even three for some crops with irrigation and such.

I think the yearly output is probably higher down here while the individual yield per harvest might be slightly lower due to the higher strain on the farmland.
 
I've been tinkering with a few ideas for provinces. First, how does one get one of those setup decision files (climate_setup, wonders_setup, etc.) to work? I've made a very rough quality_setup file to set a few provinces as rich or poor (20% tax mod either direction) to reflect that certain provinces should be better or worse than counterparts that are otherwise equivalent in the game. I just don't know enough about modding to get the game to apply this file in a new game... Province quality is partially degenerate with population in EU:R, so I'm only giving a few provinces rich or poor modifiers.

A simple idea to reflect droughts and famines is to add RR to the dry climate tags. Right now I have +2/4/6 RR for Med/Semi-Arid/Arid in my game, which results in modest RR in such provinces at zero stability. Up to +10 for those dry wrong-culture wrong-religion Seleucid provinces in the far east of the current map - which seems perfectly fine to me, since the Seleucids should have problems over there anyway. As a small counterbalance I've set wine to -2 RR and grain to +2% pop growth/-1 RR. One could do something similar with fish and game on the same reasoning that RR representing famine/drought food riots would be reduced by trading for food-related goods.

Hardradi, do you have a Wonder or some other modifier to reflect the Oracle of Ammon? I didn't see anything when I loaded as the Ptolemies. I figure if it's important enough for Alexander to go so far out of his way to visit, it's important enough to show up in the mod. :)
 
Interesting discussion about climate.

I will pose this question: is there really enough hard evidence to determine the relative fertility of, say, Gallic provinces versus Mediterranean provinces? Excluding relative civilization levels? I doubt it.
 
Interesting discussion about climate.

I will pose this question: is there really enough hard evidence to determine the relative fertility of, say, Gallic provinces versus Mediterranean provinces? Excluding relative civilization levels? I doubt it.

Vice versa it's exactly the same. Given the number of original sources, ancient history as we know it is like a Swiss cheese - full of holes filled up with historians' imagination and suppositions. Moreover, these few scraps we have present, obviously, only one point of view - conquerors' one.
 
No matter which stance one takes on this I'd argue the modifiers themselves are actually too high. +10% can be a huge increase and does seem a bit unfair to me (and makes the provinces that gets the modifier more strategically important than they should be).
I'd rather use pop growth modifiers (which I see as people actually moving in and settling down rather than just increased birth rate) for climate and/or terrain differences. Tax modifiers seem to me to be better left for administrative or technical differences.
I'm also of the opinion that most existing growth modifiers are too high. EU3 accepts lower pop growth modifiers than 1 percent and I think Rome might also benefit from using lower numbers if possible.
 
No matter which stance one takes on this I'd argue the modifiers themselves are actually too high. +10% can be a huge increase and does seem a bit unfair to me (and makes the provinces that gets the modifier more strategically important than they should be).
I'd rather use pop growth modifiers (which I see as people actually moving in and settling down rather than just increased birth rate) for climate and/or terrain differences. Tax modifiers seem to me to be better left for administrative or technical differences.

Seconded this, makes more sense to me.
 
Can the cost of ships be lowered to 5? Right now, it is almost impossible for a small state to build a navy. There are several historical precendts for small states being able to build a large navy (Athens, Aetolian League).

Second, I read on wikipedia that Acarnania was part of Epirus, until the Epirote confederacy was set up, at which time it asserted it's independence. Aetolia also claimed the eastern portion of it, so perhaps Aetolia should be given a core on it?
 
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