No long introduction, just a list of suggestions based on my experience with the game.
That is it for now, I think
- Inspire disloyalty tracker inspire disloyalty is a fun feature, just a bit difficult to use. Right now you can only inspire disloyalty in one character, but you first have to cancel inspiring disloyalty before you can move on to a new target. This means going finding the original character you were inspiring disloyalty in and cancelling you action. This can be quite difficult if you forget to favourite this character... Two solutions:
- Show the inspire disloyalty action in the active diplomacy screen in the outliner
- Allow players to start inspiring disloyalty anyway which will automatically canceling the older action. Include a warning that it will cancel the old action (and include a go to character button here).
- A general/governor/admiral overview. I prefer to check on my character's loyalty a lot. But there is no overview generals/governors/admirals in the character menu only a filter for 'employed = yes' It would be great if we could get a filter for just generals, just governors and just admirals
- Show starving provinces at the area level. Right now all provinces with starving pops are shows in the alert, and clicking it will cycle you through the individual provinces. This makes it hard to get a quick view of who is starving. Since food is calculated on the area level, can this alert be changed to show and cycle through the areas? This would make it a lot more user friendly
- The hellenic (?) anabasis ability is a fun little feature, but really micro intensive with having to sent your leader to a province, active ability, move to next province, activate ability, move to next province, activate ability, etc. Is it possible to que this ability up (i.e. shift click the destinations you want to visit).
- Also, to enchance flavour, there could be a small little event pop up when your leader arrives at the destination (e.g. 'the villagers gather to see' 'on the agora of blah blah the citizens assembled') with a few variations in the flavour text. This would add a little flavour to the game, but also give the player a bit of feed back of what is going on.
- The effect also seems really small for the amount of effort you need to put into it. I believe the effect lasts 2 years? Perhaps this can be boosted to 10 years?
- In similar vein the 'found military colony' ability is a bit micro intensive. It can be improved in similar vein (with flavour events as well). I am also unsure of its utility considering its position in the tech tree and the fact it can only be used in provinces with =< 5 pops
I love the impassible terrain feature. It makes for interesting tactical maneuvering and pretty much. Sometimes the province layout generates some undesirable results with territories remaining uncoloured when they really should be. I created a minor fix for a number of these issues. I've included an overlay for the provinces.bmp file with all the fixes.
(see attachment "adjusted_provinces_overlay.png")
To visualise the effect:
Egypt:
Fix the gap Dodekaschoines and along the gulf of Suez, coloured the Sinai into colours of Nabatea tip of the Sinai will not properly take on the colour of who owns the Sinai (not in picture due to split ownership). I made the borders with the Sahara a bit more pleasent desert IMO.
Switching Ain Hudera (prov_id: 1648) to Nabatae would make the borders look even better.
Anatolia:
Adjusted the Epirus mountains a bit so the colour in a aesthetically pleasing fashion (imo).
Made the mountain rages in the south of cappacodia take on appropriate colours. Flipping the mountain rage in the north of Commagene would require a more thorough rework of the map, so I left it.
Seleukid Empire:
Fixed the desert between the Seleukids and parthia not colouring.
Made the mountains between Armenia and Seleukids take on Armenia's colours. I deliberatly left a small part of the mountains uncoloured. Coloured a part of the mountains in Ariabene's colours because I think it looks good.
Fixed the odd Seleukid mountains protruding into Atropatene along the Caspian Sea.
Flipped a few provinces on the Seleukid-Bactrian border.
Fixed the protruding blank province in the west of Maka.
Flipped the barbarian area south of the Mesopotamian marshes to the Seleukids to create a smooth transition with the Gulf coast.
I can't flip the mountains south of Atropatene without significant rework, so left it.
Switching the Parthian Gate (prov_id 5327) to Parthia fixes the blank border between Parthia and Bactria. Switching Baghdis (prov_id 7223) to Bactria prevents border gore from the Mauryan peace treaty event.
I have been unable to fix the border gore in Baluchistan. That would require a major rework.
Since Daroida (prov_id 6631) is seceded to the Mauryas no matter what, switching that one doesn't work to prevent Bactrian-Maurya border gore. It has to be Baghdis.
I adjusted the border of Maka a bit so that dismembering it looks more aesthetically pleasing:
The adjustments are minor border adjustments. There is no gameplay effect in that there are no new adjacencies between provinces (there are new adjecencies in the inaccessible terrain). In some case elegant, in other cases not so much. The result is rather good though:
(see attachment "adjusted_provinces_overlay.png")
To visualise the effect:
Egypt:
Fix the gap Dodekaschoines and along the gulf of Suez, coloured the Sinai into colours of Nabatea tip of the Sinai will not properly take on the colour of who owns the Sinai (not in picture due to split ownership). I made the borders with the Sahara a bit more pleasent desert IMO.
Switching Ain Hudera (prov_id: 1648) to Nabatae would make the borders look even better.
Anatolia:
Adjusted the Epirus mountains a bit so the colour in a aesthetically pleasing fashion (imo).
Made the mountain rages in the south of cappacodia take on appropriate colours. Flipping the mountain rage in the north of Commagene would require a more thorough rework of the map, so I left it.
Seleukid Empire:
Fixed the desert between the Seleukids and parthia not colouring.
Made the mountains between Armenia and Seleukids take on Armenia's colours. I deliberatly left a small part of the mountains uncoloured. Coloured a part of the mountains in Ariabene's colours because I think it looks good.
Fixed the odd Seleukid mountains protruding into Atropatene along the Caspian Sea.
Flipped a few provinces on the Seleukid-Bactrian border.
Fixed the protruding blank province in the west of Maka.
Flipped the barbarian area south of the Mesopotamian marshes to the Seleukids to create a smooth transition with the Gulf coast.
I can't flip the mountains south of Atropatene without significant rework, so left it.
Switching the Parthian Gate (prov_id 5327) to Parthia fixes the blank border between Parthia and Bactria. Switching Baghdis (prov_id 7223) to Bactria prevents border gore from the Mauryan peace treaty event.
I have been unable to fix the border gore in Baluchistan. That would require a major rework.
Since Daroida (prov_id 6631) is seceded to the Mauryas no matter what, switching that one doesn't work to prevent Bactrian-Maurya border gore. It has to be Baghdis.
I adjusted the border of Maka a bit so that dismembering it looks more aesthetically pleasing:
The adjustments are minor border adjustments. There is no gameplay effect in that there are no new adjacencies between provinces (there are new adjecencies in the inaccessible terrain). In some case elegant, in other cases not so much. The result is rather good though:
So an overabundance of manpower is currently a bit of an issue. Here is a solution I would like to see. Not (just) to fix an overabundance of manpower, but to give some more dept to the culture/pop mechanics:
It also creates the possiblity for interesting choices for the player. You could for example have a decision for Egypt to start recruiting Machimoi, allowing them to recruit citizen units from allied manpower, but at the cost of quality of citizen troops. This could go further if the manpower system were to be extended to ships. Do you crew your ships with valuable citizens for better quality ships, or do you crew them with allied manpower to preserve your manpower? The military tradition tree could include military reforms to allow certain unit types to be recruited from the other manpower pool.
It also creates a situation where a player might want to balance culture conversion as to preserve access to certain valuable auxilia ([horse] archers or elephants for example)
You could choose to only extend this system to 'civilised' nations so there exists and inherent difference between playing them or playing a tribe.
Historically this also makes sense. There are plenty of cases where the problem wasn't as much manpower shortage, as it was citizen manpower shortages. See for example Egypt (and perhaps to a lesser extend the Seleukids), but also Carthage. It would also explain why Rome could just throw away armies where others could not: they had a large pool of heavy (citizen) infantry manpower and could thus afford to loose an army now and then.
- Split manpower in two categories: Citizen manpower and allied manpower, and switch the distinction between light/heavy infantry/cavalry to citizen (heavy) infantry and cavalry and allied (light) infantry and cavalry.
- Let pops of your primary culture produce citizens manpower, while pops of other cultures (and tribesmen of your own culture) produce allied manpower.
- Let tributaries/clients produce allied manpower, but let Rome's/Carthage's feudatory produce citizen manpower.
- Limit what military types you can use your citizen/allied manpower for based on culture. For example:
- Horse archers can only be recruited from allied manpower, except for the steppe factions which can recruit them from their citizen manpower (if they get this distinction in the first place, this mechanic could remain limited to 'civilised' states)
- Rome and Carthage can only recruit archers from allied manpower, while Rhodes and Crete can from their citizen manpower.
- Rome cannot recruit heavy/citizen cavalry from its citizen manpower, but only from allied manpower (perhaps after an event/reform).
It also creates the possiblity for interesting choices for the player. You could for example have a decision for Egypt to start recruiting Machimoi, allowing them to recruit citizen units from allied manpower, but at the cost of quality of citizen troops. This could go further if the manpower system were to be extended to ships. Do you crew your ships with valuable citizens for better quality ships, or do you crew them with allied manpower to preserve your manpower? The military tradition tree could include military reforms to allow certain unit types to be recruited from the other manpower pool.
It also creates a situation where a player might want to balance culture conversion as to preserve access to certain valuable auxilia ([horse] archers or elephants for example)
You could choose to only extend this system to 'civilised' nations so there exists and inherent difference between playing them or playing a tribe.
Historically this also makes sense. There are plenty of cases where the problem wasn't as much manpower shortage, as it was citizen manpower shortages. See for example Egypt (and perhaps to a lesser extend the Seleukids), but also Carthage. It would also explain why Rome could just throw away armies where others could not: they had a large pool of heavy (citizen) infantry manpower and could thus afford to loose an army now and then.
Inspired by Rome Total War Barbarian invasion:
- If you destroy/conquer a barbarian tribe, give it a chance that faction will form a migratory tribe.
- If you destroy a barbarian tribe who is adjacent to an impassible territory, give that impassible territory a chance to gain a barbarian stronghold in that territory.
- Don't trigger this if a tribe is diplo annexed
Not sure if hegemon is the right word, but what I envision is a sort of defense league plus being formable by major powers. Major powers can create a hegemony over local powers or city states or tribes. This functions as a defensive league in that the hegemon will protect its subjects from outside powers, but will let them fight amongst themselves. The subjects could perhaps pay tribute for their 'protection' and the hegemon could have a special option to settle disputes.
Why? Because I feel that the 'limited diplomacy' option and 'overlord will join wars' make the game too static. As soon as a relationship is established, that is it, nothing changes anymore. By allowing countries who have the same overlord to fight amonst themselves, the game could become more dynamic.
Why? Because I feel that the 'limited diplomacy' option and 'overlord will join wars' make the game too static. As soon as a relationship is established, that is it, nothing changes anymore. By allowing countries who have the same overlord to fight amonst themselves, the game could become more dynamic.
I feel the senate is an amazing feature in game, but also kind of useless. I don't usually pay much attention to it in game as I either can't get what I want, or it is a tyranny generator (which I never have an issue with). I feel that to make the senate more relevant to the game, two things need to happen
Right now parties are all more or less the same and allow for the same things. Just with a minor bonus or mallus here and there. As such it doesn't really matter what party is in power, as you can get what you want anyway. This limits the effect of the senate in game as you can safely ignore it most of the time. To change this parties need to get objectives: They need to want to achieve something, and will only vote in line with what they want. That way it matters who is in power and you need to maneuver to get what you want.
As a concrete example: I am working on my own little mod to implement this for Carthage: An African faction which will vote for expansion in Africa, but against in Sicily, an Sicilian faction which will vote for expansion in Magna Graecia, but against expansion in Iberia, and an Iberian faction which will vote for expansion in Iberia, but against expansion in Africa, while the merchant faction will only vote for war if it benefits trade, and a populist faction which votes against wars, period. Then you are constraint in your actions by what party is in power and you need to work within the system to get put power in the hands of the party which will give you what you want.
I am experimenting with a system of missions you can fullfil to gain temporary support from a faction (for example build 3 markets to get a boost of support from the merchant party), but doing so will also strengthen their powerbase and give them more support in the future (increase party attraction), so it might not be a good idea to rely on support of a faction in the long term.
At the same time, to make the senate more relevant, it needs to play a bigger role. It needs to vote on more issues. Let them not just vote on law changes in general, but let them vote on particular laws. You could also let them vote, not just on declaring war, but also on the peace deal and what province you gain (e.g. mercantile parties will only vote for port provinces). It would also be good to structure the missions in such a way as to limit your options by what party is in power (as is done now in the 'aftermath of the revolutions' mission).
You could even let them vote on event options in an effort to make them more relevant.
- Parties need objectives
- The senate needs to get more powers and vote on more issues.
Right now parties are all more or less the same and allow for the same things. Just with a minor bonus or mallus here and there. As such it doesn't really matter what party is in power, as you can get what you want anyway. This limits the effect of the senate in game as you can safely ignore it most of the time. To change this parties need to get objectives: They need to want to achieve something, and will only vote in line with what they want. That way it matters who is in power and you need to maneuver to get what you want.
As a concrete example: I am working on my own little mod to implement this for Carthage: An African faction which will vote for expansion in Africa, but against in Sicily, an Sicilian faction which will vote for expansion in Magna Graecia, but against expansion in Iberia, and an Iberian faction which will vote for expansion in Iberia, but against expansion in Africa, while the merchant faction will only vote for war if it benefits trade, and a populist faction which votes against wars, period. Then you are constraint in your actions by what party is in power and you need to work within the system to get put power in the hands of the party which will give you what you want.
I am experimenting with a system of missions you can fullfil to gain temporary support from a faction (for example build 3 markets to get a boost of support from the merchant party), but doing so will also strengthen their powerbase and give them more support in the future (increase party attraction), so it might not be a good idea to rely on support of a faction in the long term.
At the same time, to make the senate more relevant, it needs to play a bigger role. It needs to vote on more issues. Let them not just vote on law changes in general, but let them vote on particular laws. You could also let them vote, not just on declaring war, but also on the peace deal and what province you gain (e.g. mercantile parties will only vote for port provinces). It would also be good to structure the missions in such a way as to limit your options by what party is in power (as is done now in the 'aftermath of the revolutions' mission).
You could even let them vote on event options in an effort to make them more relevant.
That is it for now, I think
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