Rome 2 Suggestions

[gotnill]

I have some general ideas of how Rome 2 could be designed. Feel free to critique any of it or add suggestions yourself.

The basis of this game would be Crusader Kings with the personal aspect of controlling a family one person at a time.

Overview
The map will be split between many nations controlling provinces each nation having a capital province. Think of provinces like a county but slightly bigger. Each province has a governor.

Points
The game will play just like Crusader Kings in the aspect that there is prestige piety and 5 skills everyone has, diplomacy, militancy, stewardship, intrigue, and learning. Also will be a decadence type feature called Tribal favor that will be expanded on later.

Cities and Villas
Each non-capital province will have cities, think of these like baronies for each county, but with an added layer. Each city has multiple villas. Villas are the property everyone owns to be a playable character.
Each province will have up to 8 cities but most will have just a Major/Capital city of the province, a minor city and then either an agriculture/resource city (which is a city that has a trade resource), temple city or legion camp.
The city type dictates what kind of villas can be built. There are 3 general types of villas as well, urban, trade, and rural.

Most provinces won't start out fully developed and cities can be built by establishing a colony which costs lots of money and time.

Types of Cities

• Major/Capital- one in each province, urban area that grants more prestige to live in than a minor or lower city, second highest trade in province only losing to a trade city.
• Minor- up to 3 in each province, has urban villas and good trade location while lower than Major and trade cities they would bring in more trade revenue than agriculture or legion camp.
• Trade-Any historically notable province known for its inland trade or ones on the water will have a trade city. Trade cities are great places to put trade villas as they will bring in the most money in all the province.
• Agricultural/Resource-Each province either has an agriculture city or a resource city. This depends on if the province has a trade good, lumber, iron, olive oil. Rural villas placed in one of these cities will bring in minor income but are cheapest to build. Acquiring a lot of control of resources though could prove quite rewarding.
• Temple-one in each province.These cities are a great way to increase your piety you would be building rural villas but they would be temples you can choose if it is a Field of Mars, Temple of Athena.
• Legion Camp-one in each province placing rural villas here will give you a place to build your own legions to control, like a retinue and can be very important if one decides to seize control or scare away the barbarian neighbors.

Types of Villas
Urban
Trade
Rural

What Cities Support what Villas
Major City-Urban and Trade
Minor City-Urban and Trade
Trade City-Trade
Agriculture/Resource-Rural
Temple City- Rural
Legion Camp- Rural

Capital Provinces
For Capital Provinces Hills will replace all cities except the one trade city.
Hills would only allow construction of Urban Villas.
The province of Rome would have 7 Hills, and one trade city.
gaining an urban villa on one of Rome's seven hills is a great prestigious award and should be a goal for and plebeian family hoping to become important. This is where all the senators and consuls will live.

Elections
Rome was a Republic and as such there were elections done by the people every year for magistrate positions. This will function much the same like republic elections in CK2 with some minor changes

1. Each elected position has requirements. Age is the main one and positions higher up also required that you held a lower position, you must meet these before you can announce yourself as a candidate.
2. Announcing yourself as a candidate. Doing this costs money for the paperwork and cost increases the higher the position.
3. Can't hold the same office twice in 10 years.
4. (optional just idea) Must live in Rome, no one won consulship out in Upper Gaul.

Winning Elections
Once the election starts you can see where everyone stands point wise. Many positions are available for each elected magistrate, Military tribune for example has 24 elected people for that spot. You don't need to be the best but just a top contender.
Your score is decided based on an accumulation of Tribal Favor, prestige, debates and campaigning. The main way to gain points is Tribal Favor.

Tribal Favor
New feature working like decadence in reverse. In CK2 you wanted lower decadence but in Rome Tribal Favor is something you will want as close to 100% as possible and that will prove very hard and very costly. This measures how happy the people voting for magistrate positions (consulship) are will you. It will be important that it is difficult for you to gain Tribal Favor. Also gaining tribal favor should come at the cost of noble relations and prestige, or large sums of money.

Debates
These occur during elections. Debates use your diplomacy and learning skill, you can challenge, or be challenged by, anyone running for the same position as you and winning a debate gives you more points towards elections and losing a debate makes you lose points towards election.

Campaigning
You can spend money to gain election points. Think of it as spreading flyers and telling people you are right for the job. Money can be spent two ways, legitimately or via bribes. Legitimately costs much more money than bribes do but isn't illegal whereas bribes gives you much more bang for your buck but creates a secret (explained later).
You can also call in favors from friends to help campaigning. If the consul says he thinks you are right for the job you will win some serious election points, assuming he has high tribal favor.


Companions
Not the sexual ones but Comites, or companions. This is your council from CK2. All filling the same positions, your best diplomat, martial expert, steward, spy, and priest/learned man.
Three types of Comites, Ward, Slave, Hired Expert.

• Ward- young son from another family typically worst stats of all three but taking him in gives you good political relations with that family. Taking in a merchants son can help back your campaign for next election
• Slave-costs money to acquire at beginning but you don't pay them afterwards these men are better than wards stats wise but not as good as hired experts but they are completely loyal, so long as there is no slave rebellion.
• Hired Expert-Very expensive but are the best men in the nation and can help you run the most efficient operation. You must pay them a salary, like an adviser fee from EU4, and their loyalty isn't absolute. They can be bribed and if you anger your spymaster and another family bribes them he can leave your company with all your secrets.

Secrets
New feature I would love to see in CK2 as well. If you do something illegal such as bribing to win an election or assassinating a rival merchant it becomes a secret. These can also be domestic issues as well, such as you giving your neighbors wife a good tumble all the time. There are two types of secrets, One time secrets and continuous secrets

• One time secret is the bribery or the murder of someone, you did it once and now you must hide it. These types of secrets will not be discovered until someone is investigating them. Once someone is investigating them they have a chance of discovering the secret many things can start an investigation, discovery of body, rival diplomat wondered how he lost election. The chance of discovery is based on the type of secret, bribe is easier to hide than body, skill of spymaster investigating and the size of the secret. Bribing one man 10 coins once is very easy to hide but a mountain of gold outside every electors house is very hard to hide.
• Continuous secrets are things you keep doing, mainly affairs and extortion rings. These have a base chance of being discovered, the chance increases when it is investigated like one time secrets. You can stop your actions and these secrets turn into one time secrets with no chance of discovery, though watch out a bitter lover or angered ex-partner in crime may turn you in for stopping your actions.

All secrets can be covered up. This makes the secrets disappear and cannot be discovered. You would have to assign your spymaster to cover it up. A bad spymaster, like a ward, may actually be so bad at covering it up he causes someone to start an investigation.

Magistrates
Military Tribune- 24 of them each year and you must be 20 years old, doesn't qualify for Senate seat
Quaestor- 20 of them each year must be 30 and you qualify for senate seat
Aedile- 4 of them must be 36 and you qualify for senate seat, CAN SKIP
Praetor-6(later expanded to 8) must be 39 qualify for senate seat, gain governorship after retirement
Consul-2 must be 42 qualify for senate seat, gain governorship after retirement.

Governors
You become a governor after serving your term as a Praetor or Consul and are governor for a year, any provinces conquered while a governor fall under your control as well.

Diplomacy
Each nation will have an opinion of every other nation. These opinions are decided by the senate of each nation. There are 7 opinions

Rivals-War encouraged by senate until one is destroyed or subjugated, no trade is available
Openly Hostile-War is supported by senate but not necessary, no trade is available
Distrusting-While war is an option most likely just avoid each other, trade efficiency is reduced.
Neutral-War can happen but senate will not approve, trade gets no benefits or harm.
Trusting-War allowed but severe opinion hit to senate, trade gets benefit
Friendly-War not allowed, can be called into wars at discretion of their senate, trade gets better boost
Allies-War not allowed, when either nation is in war other automatically joins, trade gets major boost.

Civilized vs Uncivilized
Barbarian nations will be considered uncivilized and all nations have a distrusting opinion of them at the start, so that any civilized nation can declare war against them without senate getting mad. Nations can become civilized by researching enough technology and finding a sponsor nation to share their technology with. Any nation that becomes civilized would become allied with the sponsor nation automatically.

Technology
Functions like CK2 with advisers giving you research points that accumulate and you spend on one technology in one of 3 paths, to become civilized you would spend those points to unlock each path once all three are unlocked and you are sponsored you gain their technology and their culture technology, ie Rome gets legion military tech vs Greece Phalanx technology so any nation they sponsor gets their technology type.

Senate
After being elected Quaestor and becoming a senator for life a new tab will become available giving you options for bills. There would be a diplomacy tab giving you the ability to vote on the opinion of other nations, commerce tab giving you bills to present or vote for trade power control or established routes between nations, a military tab giving you bills that expand military power or train soldiers better, finally there would be civil bills these would improve infrastructure for Rome, via aqueducts and the like, also could expand road network for provinces.

Military
Every person has private retinue gained from Legion Camp villas. Each person can declare private war against uncivilized nations and use private army. Each nation has "Legions of Rome", a army that works like mercenary group from CK2. Can't be used against other Romans and cost upkeep unless used in defensive war. Consul has full control over Legions of Rome and can be raised at any time and used in any war he wishes. Private citizens can gain access to Legions of Rome by bribing Senators or calling favors to have them approve usage for you. The strength of the Legion can be expanded by military bills or each new province. Each province under Rome adds 1000 base units to the Legion. Balancing should be made so Legion camps provide equal amount for private army when maxed out so if you own more maxed out legion camps than Rome owns provinces you are stronger than Rome.

Civil Wars
Spending all that money to gain massive legion camps can be useful for expanding your territory into barbarian lands and also causing a civil war where you can establish either a monarchy and destroy the senate or an Empire and weaken the senate severely or roll back senate reforms and clean out the senate if you want. The senate will notice you expanding your power though and can take steps to weaken you, take your legion camps, or outright kill you so make friends to stave off the interventions.

Plebeian Reforms
There will be a fifth section of bills the senate has access to that are Plebeian reforms. The struggle between Plebeians and Patricians were an ongoing ordeal throughout the Republics life span and a few years before the start date suggested there was a Social War that ended with Plebeians gaining ability to be Consul and enforcing that one of two consuls were plebeian. The urge for a reform will be a score that ranges from 0 to 100, at 100 the plebeians will revolt and have a war, at 50 unrest is beginning to stir and the Senate can pass bills at that point. The Senates willingness to give a new reform will increase the higher the unrest becomes. Also at 50 unrest the revolt can be supported by someone and turn into a civil war. This gains you more soldiers to your private army with the condition you enforce the reform when you win. You can betray the plebeians though and enforce a monarchy or empire or destroy the current senate but this will lead to the plebeian armies revolting against you and you will have to destroy them. The Plebeian armies will draw from Legions of Rome with certain events bolstering their ranks giving them more troops.

Thanks for reading please give me suggestions I know this formatting isn't the best but just wanted to share my ideas.

 

[gotnill]

Reserved

 

[takedown47]

I good game to model Rome 2 game off is a little known title called Pax Romana by Phil Thibaut about 10 years ago

 

[postm00v]

I've been trying to get a hold of Pax Romana for so long now. Do you know where I can get it?

 

[SAS]

Man I remember that game!

 

[SAS]

I just looked on Amazon and it was there for 9 dollars.

 

[nizarus]

I love your suggestions gotnill. Still, they seem to apply to Rome alone. I suggest a kind of civilization or culture regional division. The forms of governments that are possible are many. You spoke of republics. I want to speak about eastern monarchies. Egypt should be different from the other eastern monarchies. I love the fact that you may play as a senator, legion commander with the ability to create private forces. Companions are also great. So for Egypt, social mobility is a bit tougher than Rome or carthage. The start may be from the palace or from the temple. Gender is no hindrance as a princess may easily aspire to the throne. So you can have P or P start. Prince (ss) or priest (ess). They follow two paths because a priest may not aspire to the throne. Yet, a priest may become the most powerful person in Egypt. You may commission the building of temples for the gods you serve everywhere. Spread the cult of that god. The more followers you get the more piety. The more piety, the more influence. So if your prestige as a priest becomes higher than that of the king or queen, it becomes possible for you to enforce your will on them. A king and Queen may declare war on another nation with your blessing. They may be obliged to abandon a project because the gods are against it. You appoint candidates to government posts in the temple. They may grow in power. Some will remain loyal. Some will stub you in the back. The king or Queen may conspire against your rising power or your life. The palace start seems easier. The Egyptian succession system has a male and a female share the throne. Who will be more powerful? Filling government positions with your people, earning the respect of the populace and their love, the favor of the gods (or their servants) determine everything. The Greeco-Egyptian government system is composed of a number of ministers. I would suggest five government positions:
Grand vizir
Chief treasurer (like a steward)
Chief Eunuch (like a spymaster yet also responsible for the household)
Commander in Chief of the army (like the marshal)
palace priest(ess)
In the temple there are also five positions
Master of ceremony
Sacrifice minister
Fertility rituals priestess
Commander of the temple guards
Preacher
The chief eunuch should be a eunuch. He and the fertility rites priestess may have special sexual importance. They rely on seduction. The priestess has sex with strangers like the rituals that were common at the time in the east. This helps her recruit spies or gather information about different countries. The chief eunuch caters for his master/mistress desires but also has good connections with the other people at court. He is a great spymaster. Eastern monarchs are more into internal spying than external spying. yet, they also had great ability to use sexual seduction to make alliances and to gather information about other nations. A temple priest may become a palace priest. The king and queen are co-rulers so as king or queen you may not be able to do anything without your co-ruler. The same in rome where there are two consuls. The experience of a government where you have to manoeuvre is quite interesting.

 

[nizarus]

Carthage is different from Rome. Both are republics but in Carthage, the military realm and the civil realm are separated. This should be taken into account. As Shufet, you have to cooperate with a co-ruler, but as a military commander, you have a free hand. You can even start a war (like Hannibal).

 

[Daser von Wulf]

I like some of these ideas

 

[wthomas]

The OP has some good idea, but it's very Rome-centric, which is one of the problems with EU Rome as it stands.

I think most of the core features should remain the more or less the same, taking lessons learned from CK2 and EUIV - applying them to a game that has elements of both, but it it's own platform.

I would be happy if they took EU Rome and added more minors which would overhaul and change the colonization feature and added early start dates back to the founding of Rome. EU Rome is a great game, it just needs a wider time-frame and more options for the player to control that aren't so micromanagey.

 

[Irockz]

I think the time span should be wider - Perhaps 509 BCE, the foundation of the Roman Republic, to 117 CE, when the Empire was at it's peak.

 

[diegosimeone]

First of, I don't believe the game should be CK-focused. Some minor elements from CK and more from EU are 'necessary' for this.

Timeline doesn't matter that much as long as it's before 250BCE so that as Rome you try to conquer the Mediterranean area (vs Carthage or Greeks) or move to Gaul and as any other you can either repel Rome or try to gain strength (be it a Greek state or a Celtic tribe).

I like the attempt to add more to the game with the types of cities etc. I think this could be enhanced in a different way since PDS games are province based. So essentially what we could do is add more cities, trade outposts or simple defensive outposts within the provinces. I'm sure Pardox can figure out how to make this work and I think it's a great idea that adds diversification to the game.

I like what you said about the Roman save, but I think like the others said, it's too Rome-centered. Surely, if the game is going to be called Rome again, then it'd probably be essential and DLCs may be available to have a different system for Celtic, Greek, Phoenician or Persian states (or Indian/Chinese etc, depends on map depth). It just has to be done in such a way, that Rome is not the only playable 'state'.

Now, I'll try and add a couple of foreign diplomacy stuff:
a) Supremacy. This means that a minor state will cede its sovereignty towards a larger state. Autonomy will be high (using EU4's autonomy system). If a state has 3-4+ of these types of "alliances", a trigger for an event to create a -insert state's name- League to form, which automatically puts everyone into one alliance. Consider this an ancient 'sphere of influence' type of thing.
b) Force migration. What this means? Basically, if a barbarian state from an adjacent province invades(declares war) and you repel them from your borders and manage to control their provinces, you force migrate their people to another province (could choose which by driving them that way through an 'event' or could be down to luck) and you get to keep the province without having to change its culture. You can also choose to leave the province 'empty' at the hands of the locals(assuming the barbarians are of different culture). Migration system from EU4 native Americas can be used here and we can get more ideas for a propsed Dark Ages expansion. How this fits historically? Basically whenever Rome attacked barbarians or vice-versa, those people ended up in the northern side of the Rhine.
c) Following b- If you control a Gaulish or Germanic tribe, you may 'absorb' this defeated tribe if it moves towards an adjacent province to yours and gain its technology/military units etc. This is pretty much how some of the Germanic tribes formed.

I could add more stuff but I maybe another time

 

[exenter]

I don't like the character focused game CK. I hope Rome 2, if it ever comes out, will be more like EU4.

 

[Ionelslk]

EU: Rome 2 Yeah i need that, should be great improvement like EU IV why not

 

[Demarque]

I would actually like it to be character based, because if it wasn't, many significant political events would be skipped because they involve characters deeply - such as marriage. I was recently thinking of a Europa Universalis based game featuring Alexander the Great, and how boring it would be. Every single person around Alexander was of vital importance for the events of his history, and I don't see that being represented very well in a EU like game.

Also, a thing that some of you would consider unnecessary or weird is that I want to really "feel" the world being modified by my actions. I don't want to go through an extensive game of world conquest as Rome, only to look back as say "Well, I conquered lots of land. The only noticeable thing here is that now they are under my control and I collect taxes from them to build more troops and conquer more things. Meh". Instead, I want to think of how my actions would change history and the lives of the peoples I conquered. I want to see my culture spreading across the land. If I'm an Hellenistic king who is a patron of the sciences, then I want to see my nation to flourish in the fields of technology and scientific discoveries, and even making it gain the fame for being a center of knowledge and science, which would give me a nice prestige bonus, besides increasing the research rate even more because my fame is attracting great minds from all around the know world. This would also contribute to immersion a lot. And talking of immersion...

The UI and ambience. I would like each culture (Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Punic, Persian etc) to have its own music set and UI aesthetics, reflecting its architecture and art. This is a minor thing, but one that matters a lot for me.

 

[WingedLion14]

The way I always envisioned a potential Rome 2 was that you would play a family within Rome, but not like the Merchant Republics of CK2. The Republic (and, by implementing different government types, like Greek monarchies, Greek republics, Pharaoh-ship, etc.) would operate on its own, where the "heads" of the families would control anything controlled by the player's family. Sounds complicated, but should be easier understood with examples.

Say, for instance, that you are the leader of House of Julia, and a man by the name of Gaius Julius Caesar was assigned by the consul to lead the Legio IX. Now, Rome ends up in a war with Carthage. The consul orders Caesar to attack Carthaginian holdings in Spain - but the player must execute those orders, and is free to do what is necessary (including, if mechanics allow in a way that makes sense, possibly winning over locals as allies); likewise, if you are the consul, you must trust that your generals will execute your orders properly. The same system could be extended to government positions, where you can choose how things are done based on your certain authority.

Now, to get a little more complicated...you are not playing the "guiding hand" of the family, although at times that appears the case; you are playing the family head. Thus, while you can encourage a family member to, say, run for praetor, or become a merchant, but you cannot force him. This could put you in a bind, like if a son decides to march on Rome...do you support him in the Civil War, or do you condemn him as a traitor and stay loyal to the Republic.

While this system isn't completely developed (for example, exactly how to abstract Rome's complex governing bodies and the power of the plebians), but you get the idea I hope - basically, whereas CK2 focuses on medieval intrigue, focus R2 on ancient intrigue.

And, as I think I said somewhere once before, have the game start with only a highlyfleshed out Rome playable. While I'm sure many will likely condemn it, I'd rather them get it right and create personalized governments and playstyles for all factions, so Rome and Carthage and Sparta and Athens and Egypt and the Gauls all feel likely truly unique experiences and not Rome Lite. Plus, like early-development CK2, it provides an easy way to split paid and free content. Once all factions are playable, then expand the start dates back to Alexander/forward to the fall of Rome, or whatever extent people want. But I think creating a strong core to build on is the most important thing - and a core that is unique to the game and not just a copy of CK2 or EU4 or EU:Rome.

Just my two cents.

 

[Demarque]

I have an idea regarding technology in Rome 2. It is rather simple: technology would be divided into military technology and civic technology.

Military tech would be divided in two branches: Military organization (includes things like formation, discipline etc) and military engineering (equipment and siege engines). The development of these technologies could be improved by the skills of your military leaders, military buildings (like barracks) and traits that each nation would have (I will cover more of this later).

Civic tech would be more complex, and would have four branches: Engineering, natural sciences, administration and philosophy (all of them are self explanatory). Their research could be improved by the skills or traits of your governors, philosophers and scientists at your court, or by buildings like libraries, schools, academies or Musaeums, as well as the traits of your nation.

I talk about traits because history shows that certain civilizations had an exclusively high quality regarding certain fields. Rome, for example, was a military machine, they exceeded at developing their military tactics. On the other hand, the Hellenistic or Greek nations, specially the Alexandrian Ptolemies, were excellent in the fields of mathematics and science, so much that Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the Earth's circumference, Heron of Alexandria developed what could be considered the first steam engine (although other Greeks might have done this before him, and Heron only copied them in a smaller scale), and Archimedes, well... I don't even have to explain Archimedes. Rome however never had any great scientist. And I think Paradox should represent this in Rome II through certain traits/affinites distributed to the factions, were Rome would be great on military techs, while the Greeks would be great on civic/scientific techs.

In most strategy games, both military and civic technologies are in the same tree, and their research could be speeded up by building libraries or other intelectual centers. But how would libraries speed up the development of military tactics? That's why I think this system does a great job of spltiting those two very different fields in a reasonable manner.

But wait, there's more! The development of certain civic technologies of the civic engineering branch could unlock special military technologies on the military engineering tree. This would represent the application of scientific knowledge in the strength of one's military. For example, researching the technology "Advanced machinery" on the civic engineering tree would unlock the research of the "Advanced siege engines" technology on the military tree, which would unlock bigger and better ballistas for you to use in battles and sieges.

So an empire focusing on scientific development rather than militarism would still be able to compete with a militaristic society like Rome.

What do you guys think of these ideas? Is there anything that could be improved?

 

[MrBurunduk]

1) The CKII character system (with focuses, ambitions, marriage, naming children, etc.)
2) TWO ROMAN CONSULS, not one!
3) Better civil war system.
4) Better colonization (Roman army colonies)

 

[AndreiTLC]

Rome ,had some uber cool features like legion loyalities , Senate and actual hordes.I wish they will retain these , in the upcoming Rome II

 

[yunusemrecan]

I hope we can see Rome 2, maybe Sengoku.
I don't what you guys think but I like small, specific time and location focused games like these two. They feel like out dated that is why don't play them recently.