The features post has now been updated for Reign of the Ancients 2
Reign of the Ancients introduces many new features to Rome, as well as tweaks to nearly every major aspect of the game to make it more fun, challenging and above all balanced. In this post is a list of many of the major features in the mod.
Victory Conditions
Upon starting the game, you will be presented with a choice of victory conditions. You will be able to continue playing even after you've won or lost.
80+ new provinces
RoA expands the map with more than 80 new provinces that fit seamlessly into the world.
Hundreds of new countries
No more colonization! The world comes alive with hundreds of new tribes, kingdoms and republics that fill out the previously grey spots of the map, all fully playable.
Balanced National Ideas
The national ideas have been rebalanced to make all ideas a viable choice without changing the original flavor of the ideas. Furthermore, the tech requirements of the ideas have been lowered to give players a wider selection of ideas from the start of the game.
Balanced Economy
Expenses for armies, buildings and sacrifices have been vastly increased, so that you will no longer be able to maintain an army twice your forcelimit or find yourself sitting on vast piles of money with nothing to spend it on. Balancing your budget will be an actual challenge if you want a large army and fleet.
Balanced Omens
Base omen chance and laws and ideas altering omen chance and omen power have been balanced to make omen chance no longer the only worthwhile thing to invest in.
Reworked Civilization
Who said civilization was all good? While it will increase your supply limit and tax income, civilization will also reduce manpower supply and increase stability costs, as city-dwellers become complacent and demanding.
Reworked Trade
RoA features 8 new tradegoods as well as reworked effects from all existing tradegoods to make them more versatile and useful adds a new dimension to the trading game. Additionally, you can now draw an unlimited amount of trade routes over land from the onset of the game, allowing even landlocked countries to participate in trade and finally allowing a use for 'request trade access'.
Reworked Diplomacy
Diplomacy has been changed so that you no longer start the game with 90% of the world hating your guts, allowing for far more options for alliances and trade.
Women in the Workplace
Women can now hold a limited number of offices by default in a Monarchy or Tribe, while a Republic can pass a law to gain the same benefit. Additionally, though it is difficult, you can pass laws that give women full gender equality.
Balanced Traits
Most traits are no longer all good or all bad, but have both benefits and drawbacks. Traits are no longer so random, but rather characters are given a personality in childhood and then develop traits based on choices in events, similar to the way Crusader Kings works.
New Character Events
Reign of the Ancients features its very own character event system with 250 unique character events replacing the poorly balanced vanilla events. Traits are now much more important and the friendships and rivalries of your characters can make or break your state.
Reworked Loyalty and Popularity
Instead of being fixed modifiers going up or down at a predictable rate, loyalty and popularity are now mainly affected by events and ambitions. Characters have their own lives and goals, and it may not always be easy to tell who is going to be your loyal servant and who will raise the banner of rebellion. Fulfilling character ambitions is now crucial to keep them loyal, and characters will big dreams may become resentful if those dreams are not realized.
Cultural Colonization
Instead of occuring by random event, you now build colony buildings to change a province to your primary culture and religion. The amount of money and time it takes to fully colonize a province depends on how densely populated it is, but a province's colony level will mitigate the penalties from wrong culture, gaining you some immediate benefits even in heavily populated provinces.
Power System
All countries are ranked on a power scale from Minor Power to Great Power, depending on their size, economy, manpower, army, navy and so on. Small powers will gain a bonus to their economy but penalties to tribute income, religious prestige and civilization spread, while larger powers gain considerable bonuses to their diplomatic and technological abilities. A special 'Hegemony' power status exists for countries that have grown powerful enough to be unchallenged rulers of the Mediterranean.
New Research System
Instead of gaining invisible and opaque benefits from technology levels and the occasional useless invention, all your technology benefits come from inventions, which have been made much more powerful and significant. Additionally, there are four schools of warfare inventions (Roman, Hellenic, Punic and Parthian) and which technology group you belong to determines what military inventions you get.
Reworked Warfare
Warfare is now more difficult, with lower supply limits, higher attrition and no assaults, meaning that you will not be able to wage war and take provinces without losing large numbers of men.
New Forcelimits System
Forcelimits are now much more dynamic and based on your total population size instead of just the number of slaves. Your naval forcelimits will vary greatly depending on how much coast you control, and your land forcelimits will double in times in war, allowing you to recruit mercenaries to bolster your standing army. The AI will save up money for war to take advantage of the war forcelimits system to recruit mercenaries of their own.
Land Grabs
By occupying a province for several years, you can now uniliterally seize it without having to sue for peace, making it easier to take land from a stubborn AI. However, doing so comes at a steep cost in infamy, so use it sparingly.
War Captives
Waging war will now gain you slaves, as some of the population of provinces you capture is enslaved and sent to your country to boost your tax base.
Republics
Republics have been made a more distinct form of government by having most offices be elected rather than appointed, removing among other things the micromanagement of minor titles. The player can veto appointments for major offices and Generals/Admirals are appointed by the player to give him or her full control over warfare. What's more, the political attraction of the parties have been balanced so that you no longer have mercantilist and religious parties dominating through the entire game.
Useful Governor Stats
Your governor's stats are no longer pointless, but have an effect on everything from revolt risk to tax collection to fort defense. Appoint high martial governors to defend your border provinces, high charisma governors to lower revolt risk in new conquests and high finesse governors to maximize income from wealthy regions.
Laws
Many new laws have been added for Republics and Monarchies, allowing you to shape the religious and civic policies of your country.
Dangerous Rebellions
Rebellions and civil wars wars are no longer a joke even to an experienced player, as rebels and civil war factions will muster armies capable of challenging their former masters!
New Regions
Dozens of new regions have been added to the game based on historical regions and provinces of the empires of the era. Players will be rewarded for controlling all provinces in a region with tax bonuses across the entire region.
Barbarians
Colonization may be gone, but barbarians are not! When you conquer a tribal province as a civilized state, you will gain an instant core (and thus no nationalism) but some of the population will turn into barbarian power, which will continue to provide a threat to your state until you civilize the province. Additionally, civilized states bordering tribes can be attacked by migrating hordes, and massive hordes of nomads can invade from beyond the borders of the map.
Tributaries
Managing your tributaries is now a challenge, as you have to keep up appearances of strength or risk souring relations with your tributaries, making them break off payments or even declare war! On the other hand, if you keep relations high, you will have a chance to inherit your tributaries, gaining cores on all their core lands in the process.
And more!
This is only a selection of the many ways in which RoA expands upon Rome while preserving and improving its core features, allowing you to experience a vastly more fleshed out and fulfilling game.
Reign of the Ancients introduces many new features to Rome, as well as tweaks to nearly every major aspect of the game to make it more fun, challenging and above all balanced. In this post is a list of many of the major features in the mod.
Victory Conditions
Upon starting the game, you will be presented with a choice of victory conditions. You will be able to continue playing even after you've won or lost.
80+ new provinces
RoA expands the map with more than 80 new provinces that fit seamlessly into the world.
Hundreds of new countries
No more colonization! The world comes alive with hundreds of new tribes, kingdoms and republics that fill out the previously grey spots of the map, all fully playable.
Balanced National Ideas
The national ideas have been rebalanced to make all ideas a viable choice without changing the original flavor of the ideas. Furthermore, the tech requirements of the ideas have been lowered to give players a wider selection of ideas from the start of the game.
Balanced Economy
Expenses for armies, buildings and sacrifices have been vastly increased, so that you will no longer be able to maintain an army twice your forcelimit or find yourself sitting on vast piles of money with nothing to spend it on. Balancing your budget will be an actual challenge if you want a large army and fleet.
Balanced Omens
Base omen chance and laws and ideas altering omen chance and omen power have been balanced to make omen chance no longer the only worthwhile thing to invest in.
Reworked Civilization
Who said civilization was all good? While it will increase your supply limit and tax income, civilization will also reduce manpower supply and increase stability costs, as city-dwellers become complacent and demanding.
Reworked Trade
RoA features 8 new tradegoods as well as reworked effects from all existing tradegoods to make them more versatile and useful adds a new dimension to the trading game. Additionally, you can now draw an unlimited amount of trade routes over land from the onset of the game, allowing even landlocked countries to participate in trade and finally allowing a use for 'request trade access'.
Reworked Diplomacy
Diplomacy has been changed so that you no longer start the game with 90% of the world hating your guts, allowing for far more options for alliances and trade.
Women in the Workplace
Women can now hold a limited number of offices by default in a Monarchy or Tribe, while a Republic can pass a law to gain the same benefit. Additionally, though it is difficult, you can pass laws that give women full gender equality.
Balanced Traits
Most traits are no longer all good or all bad, but have both benefits and drawbacks. Traits are no longer so random, but rather characters are given a personality in childhood and then develop traits based on choices in events, similar to the way Crusader Kings works.
New Character Events
Reign of the Ancients features its very own character event system with 250 unique character events replacing the poorly balanced vanilla events. Traits are now much more important and the friendships and rivalries of your characters can make or break your state.
Reworked Loyalty and Popularity
Instead of being fixed modifiers going up or down at a predictable rate, loyalty and popularity are now mainly affected by events and ambitions. Characters have their own lives and goals, and it may not always be easy to tell who is going to be your loyal servant and who will raise the banner of rebellion. Fulfilling character ambitions is now crucial to keep them loyal, and characters will big dreams may become resentful if those dreams are not realized.
Cultural Colonization
Instead of occuring by random event, you now build colony buildings to change a province to your primary culture and religion. The amount of money and time it takes to fully colonize a province depends on how densely populated it is, but a province's colony level will mitigate the penalties from wrong culture, gaining you some immediate benefits even in heavily populated provinces.
Power System
All countries are ranked on a power scale from Minor Power to Great Power, depending on their size, economy, manpower, army, navy and so on. Small powers will gain a bonus to their economy but penalties to tribute income, religious prestige and civilization spread, while larger powers gain considerable bonuses to their diplomatic and technological abilities. A special 'Hegemony' power status exists for countries that have grown powerful enough to be unchallenged rulers of the Mediterranean.
New Research System
Instead of gaining invisible and opaque benefits from technology levels and the occasional useless invention, all your technology benefits come from inventions, which have been made much more powerful and significant. Additionally, there are four schools of warfare inventions (Roman, Hellenic, Punic and Parthian) and which technology group you belong to determines what military inventions you get.
Reworked Warfare
Warfare is now more difficult, with lower supply limits, higher attrition and no assaults, meaning that you will not be able to wage war and take provinces without losing large numbers of men.
New Forcelimits System
Forcelimits are now much more dynamic and based on your total population size instead of just the number of slaves. Your naval forcelimits will vary greatly depending on how much coast you control, and your land forcelimits will double in times in war, allowing you to recruit mercenaries to bolster your standing army. The AI will save up money for war to take advantage of the war forcelimits system to recruit mercenaries of their own.
Land Grabs
By occupying a province for several years, you can now uniliterally seize it without having to sue for peace, making it easier to take land from a stubborn AI. However, doing so comes at a steep cost in infamy, so use it sparingly.
War Captives
Waging war will now gain you slaves, as some of the population of provinces you capture is enslaved and sent to your country to boost your tax base.
Republics
Republics have been made a more distinct form of government by having most offices be elected rather than appointed, removing among other things the micromanagement of minor titles. The player can veto appointments for major offices and Generals/Admirals are appointed by the player to give him or her full control over warfare. What's more, the political attraction of the parties have been balanced so that you no longer have mercantilist and religious parties dominating through the entire game.
Useful Governor Stats
Your governor's stats are no longer pointless, but have an effect on everything from revolt risk to tax collection to fort defense. Appoint high martial governors to defend your border provinces, high charisma governors to lower revolt risk in new conquests and high finesse governors to maximize income from wealthy regions.
Laws
Many new laws have been added for Republics and Monarchies, allowing you to shape the religious and civic policies of your country.
Dangerous Rebellions
Rebellions and civil wars wars are no longer a joke even to an experienced player, as rebels and civil war factions will muster armies capable of challenging their former masters!
New Regions
Dozens of new regions have been added to the game based on historical regions and provinces of the empires of the era. Players will be rewarded for controlling all provinces in a region with tax bonuses across the entire region.
Barbarians
Colonization may be gone, but barbarians are not! When you conquer a tribal province as a civilized state, you will gain an instant core (and thus no nationalism) but some of the population will turn into barbarian power, which will continue to provide a threat to your state until you civilize the province. Additionally, civilized states bordering tribes can be attacked by migrating hordes, and massive hordes of nomads can invade from beyond the borders of the map.
Tributaries
Managing your tributaries is now a challenge, as you have to keep up appearances of strength or risk souring relations with your tributaries, making them break off payments or even declare war! On the other hand, if you keep relations high, you will have a chance to inherit your tributaries, gaining cores on all their core lands in the process.
And more!
This is only a selection of the many ways in which RoA expands upon Rome while preserving and improving its core features, allowing you to experience a vastly more fleshed out and fulfilling game.
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Awesome job Wiz!
