Let´s try constructive criticism

[hideko]

I just sougth that some other people threads about how much they dislike the game...sorry if I´m repeating everything here.

1-Character system:
I don´t get the point. I almost can´t interact with the characters. They just get appointed as governors/generals and then die and make me click continuosly on events and replace governors.
At the beginnig I checked every trait before choosing someone for a charge, but they are really too many, I can´t wait for every over mouse-help. Finally I picked no-matter-who.
I can´t make nice political marriages with my neighbours like in Crusader Kings.
And for minors, they are too many random events for characters. I mean, you can´t rely on your characters to grow up.

2-Diplomacy:
Well, VERY limited actions. The only way to improve relations is paying huge amounts of gold. Diplomacy is no character-related. No rivals/friends abroad, no marriages... We need some diplomacy for the peace times!
I can´t annex countries with more than 1 province. WHY? WHAT´S THE POINT WITH THAT?
...
If you take a look at some roman chronicles, you will find that they were other ways of submission besides paying some gold every month.
Can´t trade provinces.Nor units. They are mercenary units, right, but they are the same units that I can recruit. No difference between colonies and cities (miss Vicky).
On the other hand, the trade system is very handy. I like, but maybe it´s too simple for a Paradox game.
...
Now, the most annoying point: while playing with Rome, I got bad reputation, and then some cunning people from VERY DISTANT kingdoms with whom I had almost no relation at all, managed to kill a HUGE number of my generals, governors, and even admirals. While at sea. LOTS of them. Completely nonsense. I mean; ancient times, they don´t even know who they want to kill, they haven´t heard of everyone inside my kingdom, Or if they had, they dont know how they look like. And for God´s shake, they are poor almost-naked people, are they really SO cunning?

Civil wars are great now, no more rebels everywhere. Now you know who you are killing. Cool feature.

It´s unfair to kill all the barbarians. I´d prefer some kind of colonies in the old Vicky style. Trade with them, be nice, stablish in their homelands, and then make them pay taxes. Or found client states in their own land. Far away.

3-Military:
As said in other threads:
PING-PONG combat. AWFUL. PAINFUL.
Few casualties. Really, I think there should be a lot of people dying (close combat, no medicine...)
Limited and no country/culture-related units. In EU2 it´s was similar, but in EU3 you managed to solve this in a really AWESOME way. Try it again.
Another nice feature from EU that should come back is the Looting capability. Burn down the enemy provinces! And what about enslaving people and then run away?


4-Historical events:
Didn´t get any. The historical flavour relies on the 3d models...Sad.

5-Management.
Governors are...confusing. Too much micromanagement for almost nothing. As I said before, you get random characters, so, un less you get some awesome people, you only can choose the "lesser evil" for your province in order to lose the standar -X% taxation for un-governed provinces.
Can´t manage laws. I don´t know how can I change my government type.
About Charisma, well, the troops loyalty is another nice feature. Aside that, I think Charisma isn´t really relevant for governors (I got all my revolts because
some guy from the far side of the world told my people how bad was I) and the same goes for the ruler. Maybe if he is not a nice guy, all the generals will turn against me? They won´t have the time, people dies all the time...
I can´t trade inland products overseas. Why? It looks like a tricky way to avoid elephants outside Africa. If it´s so, the trade system should be changed. Really.

"Senate/local nobility gives a warning on you/tells you whatever" "rival family blahblahblah" "foreing merchants blahblahblah" "peasents love your general more than they love you" I want nicer events! Based on the characters attributes! Yargh!


The research points related to the number of citizens is another great idea. Could it be great thinkers/support for phillosophy schools or something else to let us put our dirty hands on the research? Any way of management?

Tax regulation?
Paying angry people throwing out festivals/games/orgys?

The buildings systems now looks like Total War (bad, Paradox games have been always better ) but they don´t let you get new units! (worse! they got a better feature!)


That´s it, crappy English, long speeches and almost no good news.
Ahah! I hope you can make something out of this.

 

[unmerged(56754)]

I agree with most of these points, I do love Rome at the moment, but the features you have highlighted do spoil it.

However, saying whats wrong with something is easy, offering an alternative is much harder.

 

[hideko]

However, saying whats wrong with something is easy, offering an alternative is much harder.

Yeah. I would be glad to discuss ideas about those features, let´s open particular threads so we can stop doing the crying-baby thing.

 

[Theevillord]

I must say i find this game to be awfull, just awfull.

I'm a extremly big fan of eu3 and after playing the demo of eu:rome i was shocked to see so many bad changes.

Especially the characters are a true pain in the ass. They need to get more usefull and less numberd.

No royal marriages.

a complete absense of historical flavour events. why not make historical events happen if the player manages to get a certain set of conditions?

I have a overall complaint over the eu series as well, the a.i is way to aggresive in many cases, as a minor your in alot of cases practically dead becouse some big bully shows up and cuts your head off. Though i haven't saw this in rome

Some modders deliver an ai and events that makes you wonder why didnt the paradox guys came up with it.

Next time: less new feature's crap but perfection the game you got now, as its far from complete to make a step ahead.

 

[unmerged(56754)]

a complete absense of historical flavour events. why not make historical events happen if the player manages to get a certain set of conditions?
.

YES! One of the reasons people say historical events are abscent is that 'its not fair that a one province Russia, vassel or the ottoman Empire should get a free university, or move capital or fantastic leader etc.

However, i just thought that could always been solved by adding in triggers, alot of triggers. I put this down to lazyness. NO not of the paradox programmers, the brave soles they are, i meen it would take WAY too long to dd in all thos triggers.

 

[Secret Master]

Can´t manage laws. I don´t know how can I change my government type.
About Charisma, well, the troops loyalty is another nice feature. Aside that, I think Charisma isn´t really relevant for governors (I got all my revolts because
some guy from the far side of the world told my people how bad was

Hmmm, you might want to browse the event files. If you do, you'll notice that the various attributes of characters, both stats and traits, influence a great many events. Governors with high Charisma have a better chance of converting a province to your culture. That, in and of itself, makes it well worth your time to micromanage governors, especially if you conquer lands with lots of Freeman but the wrong culture (wrong culture means no manpower!).

Government types can change under some limited conditions at the moment; republics, with the right kind of ruler and the right conditions, can become dictatorships.

As for setting laws, what do you think national ideas are? Those are far reaching policy decisions. And that's also why you lose stability for changing them, and why when your government type changes, you get to select new ones.

As for new units, part of the problem here is that there is no need for "new" units or "different" units if technological inventions give you new options for older units. For example, there is no cataphract unit in the game. But the game does have cavalry. And you can select a national idea, called cataphracts, that gives you a massive bonus to cavalry offensive. If you haven't tried it out in a game as Parthia, do so. You'll find that Parthia's "cataphract" cavalry play different than the cavalry of other factions (unless they take the same national idea, in which case they have cataphracts, too). As for technology, archers that get upgrades from the "Roman" style of warfare are different from archers that get upgrades from the "Hellenistic" style of warfare.

Check out the appendix of the strategy guide to see just how complicated the interactions are with what you think are just a few units.

 

[Piggy]

It´s unfair to kill all the barbarians. I´d prefer some kind of colonies in the old Vicky style. Trade with them, be nice, stablish in their homelands, and then make them pay taxes. Or found client states in their own land. Far away.

I never played vicky much so I cant remember what you're reffering to. But, you can get barbarians to settle down in your lands, Ive done it, you dont have to kill them all.

As secret master pointed out there is tons stuff going on behind the scenes that alot of people dont seem to be noticing, or arent bothering to notice or look into before making a complaint. IE: The units may be the same "type" but they are different for each country depending on your tech and your national ideas.

I didnt know about the governers thing he pointed out, now I do.

 

[unmerged(70481)]

Lack of

Over all I think the game is great but does have a few minor problems. I think one of the problems we have now, is that people are complaining about a game that they "don't" have any experince with or very little experince. A few playing will not bring everything out.

Plus people(some) want the game to change to meet their need(To win).

Tec moving slow-remember this is 2000 years ago. Not many changes overnight(some want it overnight).

Characters dieing: They should people didn't live as long back then. Anything else would be A-Historical.

Combat results are not as bad as some have said. If you read - you'll find that more often than not the results are about right- and the army sizes are about right.

Just my thoughts

 

[MJAnderson]

I never played vicky much so I cant remember what you're reffering to. But, you can get barbarians to settle down in your lands, Ive done it, you dont have to kill them all.

As secret master pointed out there is tons stuff going on behind the scenes that alot of people dont seem to be noticing, or arent bothering to notice or look into before making a complaint. IE: The units may be the same "type" but they are different for each country depending on your tech and your national ideas.

I didnt know about the governers thing he pointed out, now I do.

I agree there is a ton of micromanagement you can do to tweak your country, but I think it's aimed at the wrong thing. You really need to stop the game monthly and review every appointment in your country. Yet you can go 40 years without a new discovery or item to build. Sitting there waiting for civ score to hit 50 so you can colonize can take years, yet your people need constant management to stay optimal.

 

[unmerged(96477)]

i agree on the most points,and indeed long waiting for microtinywiny things,pausing for nothing.blah blah...i still like the game but i dont want to pay for something that SHOULD be in the game in the first place(i probably will)..But if i do it will be the last time(i hope)..Paradox shouldnt be like this.

Why make a europe map with black spots? İ can see expansion coming,well who cant...

Same hapenned with EU and same with Rome as it seems now..İts a shame,i start losing my trust in paradox..İ rather wait 3-6months and pay 50Euros then this...an battle with 29k vs 25k with 4-5k death ppl(if you are lucky) come on!!it must be slaughter in tat time..

 

[Secret Master]

It´s unfair to kill all the barbarians. I´d prefer some kind of colonies in the old Vicky style. Trade with them, be nice, stablish in their homelands, and then make them pay taxes. Or found client states in their own land. Far away.

To add to what others have said, there are plenty of diplomatic options when it comes to barbarian hordes.

In my recent game as Rome, I deliberately colonized some provinces in the interior that I really didn't want. Then, when barbarian hordes showed up, offered to make them client states, which they accepted. I had a nice northern border with barbarian client states with which I conducted trade and from which I hired auxiliaries. By the end of the game, I never even worried about barbarian hordes, because my client states dealt with the problem.

They had some nice flags, too.

 

[Harle]

Over all I think the game is great but does have a few minor problems. I think one of the problems we have now, is that people are complaining about a game that they "don't" have any experince with or very little experince. A few playing will not bring everything out.

Certainly true. But the more people talk about things, the more people understand those complexities, so I don't really see it as a problem.

Plus people(some) want the game to change to meet their need(To win).

The phrasing of this makes it sound as though these desires are based purely on unreasonable personal preferences, but they often aren't. People tend to want the game to support plausible playing options, as well as a variety of playing styles. Which, I think, is a totally reasonable request, seeing as many of the things that people want are things freely available in EU3.

Tec moving slow-remember this is 2000 years ago. Not many changes overnight(some want it overnight).

Now this just shows that you haven't been reading the posts about this! A) People are having problems with the 'balance' of tech progress, where player-owned nations are advancing much slower than the AI. And B) Paradox themselves are looking at research speed as a problem, and considering they don't even seem to consider the civil war madness to be a problem, I doubt they'd be looking at research speeds if they were performing as intended.

Characters dieing: They should people didn't live as long back then. Anything else would be A-Historical.

This just kind of proves the first point you made; people making assumptions without playing the game enough. I've had characters live past their 80s, I saw a picture involving a guy who died at 100. Characters can live for a very long time. The point is that people die seemingly at random. It makes sense when they're unhealthy, plagued, have pneumonia, are injured, maimed, whatever. But sometimes perfectly healthy people die at 16 or 24 or whenever for no reason. Which is frustrating, because they give no explanation.

Combat results are not as bad as some have said. If you read - you'll find that more often than not the results are about right- and the army sizes are about right.

I haven't had as much problem with combat as some have. The results are sometimes okay, but I have had incredibly annoying ping-pong battles here and there. My 28k Roman army(actually about a stack of 50 units) had to chase an 18k Macedonian army(actually about a stack of 48 units) back and forth between the same two provinces for about four years before finally the attrition brought my army down to practically nothing, and I settled for a white peace when I -absolutely should have destroyed them.-

So yes, while there are definitely complaints without overmuch merit, and some misperceptions about the depth of the game because of a streamlined interface for dealing with it, I'm not sure you've pointed any out yet.

 

[thezirk]

I think I would add impossible peace settlements to this list. You shouldn't have to take Carthage to get them to give up Sicily.

I've fought the Seleucid Empire for about 10 years, getting my warscore up to 30(+25 from battles), sinking their entire navy, and reducing their manpower to 0. They won't accept anything but a white peace. Maybe if warscore from battles wasn't limited to +25 maximum, this would help. But because their Empire is so large, taking a province only gives a warscore value of about 2, and all I want is Macedon.

 

[Grumpyoldman]

Yeah. I would be glad to discuss ideas about those features, let´s open particular threads so we can stop doing the crying-baby thing.

Yeah I agree with this stop the cry babying thing.

 

[unmerged(92421)]

I think there need to be more pops. What about no citizenship outside Latium as Rome? There should be a upper citizen class which your generals are taken out of as this would make the game a lot more interesting. Especially concidering at the moment its a matter of "oh look I'm down to 3 skill finesse governers" and 2 months later I have tons and tons of generals/governers again. The Seleucid Empire probably wouldn't recruit generals/governers outside Seleucia/Asia Minor (anywhere Greek/macedonian[Seleucia should be macedonian culture btw]). Fair enough if all the governers aren't immedietly avaliable to see and the game generates them. However what should happen is you get the pool of upper citizens who are allowed/want to be governers... and you can only see the people with the higher stats at first and then when you run out of those people with lower stats are generated (ofcourse this replenishes over time etc). So we don't have this situation of oh look I ran out of decent governers... poof wow tons more came. It'd be an interesting situation where if you were running out of eligable citizens you might have to let some Persian nobility in... which may eventually lead the Seleucid Empire to having a Persian/Zoroastrian King.

Also... I'm fairly certain Pezhetaroi weren't recruited from persian "freemen" they were only recruited from families with macedonian heritage (neither did the Ptolomies and the macedonians probably wouldn't have either). I believe Rome didn't recruit legions out of a certain area (until some reforms were had) also.

Also the spread of religion is overpowered. Fair enough Rome is converting the odd Gallic province to Roman or a lot of German Provinces to Roman but after about 100 years half the Seleucid's Persian lands are Greek? I'm not sure that has any historical backing... (at least from looking at the ingame history files). Some religions should be a lot harder to convert than others certainly (rather than Judea being like after other province after a MTTH of 30 years or whatever it is). Luckily this can be helped with mods though.

The AI is very nice though... and so is the peace system.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Characters dieing: They should people didn't live as long back then. Anything else would be A-Historical.

Character deaths are quite rare. Play CK and then you'll see.

 

[espana33]

AI does not do anything on the strat map. I played a game as RHX where i conquered all the way to illyria fairly uncontested over 300 years or so. Rome took syracuse, a few provinces in gaul, but did not go into spain, or carthage whatsoever. Rather frustrating... Maybe its due to the faction, but I never had one faction ever declare war on me during the game, even though i held their cores, had very bad relations and so on.. how do you make the ai more competent?


As for the battles... I agree that they are annoying (this would be modded best by changing how morale decreases during battle) but ancient world casualty rates werent that high, populations werent very high frankly to support large losses like that and more often than not, armies would just be routed and disband rather than decimated (there are a few examples like with carthage, but otherwise in gaul, greece, and asia minor, such was the case)

 

[PSYCHO V]

The Gaul

Gaul needs work

Playing a Gallic faction turns out to just be an exercise in seeing how long one can hold out against the Massaliote / Roman juggenaut.

Best I've done so far is lasting until around 200BC.

Anyone had better luck?

Something needs to done about the Gauls. The games starts in what 270? Yet we have these emaciated little Gallic states being constantly assaulted by tribes that were actually their dependants and clients in historical reality. Surrounded by these “barbarian” hordes and not able to achieve the magic 50% civ, they are hemmed in, preventing the chance of them ever replicating the significant trade routs they had down the Rhone, Garonne and Loire centuries before the game's start..routes that feed their historic development.

The Massaliotes on the other hand tend to become an imperialistic monster.


my2bob

 

[SimuLord]

AI does not do anything on the strat map. I played a game as RHX where i conquered all the way to illyria fairly uncontested over 300 years or so. Rome took syracuse, a few provinces in gaul, but did not go into spain, or carthage whatsoever. Rather frustrating... Maybe its due to the faction, but I never had one faction ever declare war on me during the game, even though i held their cores, had very bad relations and so on.. how do you make the ai more competent?


As for the battles... I agree that they are annoying (this would be modded best by changing how morale decreases during battle) but ancient world casualty rates werent that high, populations werent very high frankly to support large losses like that and more often than not, armies would just be routed and disband rather than decimated (there are a few examples like with carthage, but otherwise in gaul, greece, and asia minor, such was the case)

The battle pingponging is more or less completely fixed by changing the land damage modifier from .1 to .3. Because of the nature of the game, death and desertion and other forms of loss all fall under the blanket of "casualties" in order to make it work within the engine's system (it's really been that way since EU2 at least). In my latest game I had TREMENDOUSLY satisfying results with the .3 damage modifier (along with the 2.4 civ-to-research tweak).