Reign of the Ancients: 2.0 previews

[Wizzington]

While working on Reign of the Ancients, I've been slowly compiling a list of major things about the game (traits, politics events, forcelimits, balance of power, etc etc etc) that I've wanted to address but which have been too big to tackle at the time.

2.0 is my aim at tackling all these things. It will be a major revamp of nearly every area of gameplay, an attempt to make Rome's character system more like CKs, and a serious effort to improve the performance of RoA all in one. It will be a big project and will take time to finish, so in the meanwhile I'm gonna toss out the occasional preview.

First up is the revamps to Regions, Force Limits, Traits and Tradegoods.

In 2.0, your capital region will be extremely important. The area controlled by your ruler will get 50% more research, tax and manpower, faster pop growth, better fort defense and an extra trade route, while simultaneously base tax income, manpower and rp production have been reduced everywhere else. By making the capital region a larger part of your income, RoA gives small and medium powers a fighting chance and simulates the historical difficulties with tax collection that large empires tended to suffer from.

Along with this change, regions have been resized and standardized, so that most regions are now between 2 and 5 provinces and a number of new regions have been added (along with their region tags).

Rome has a really lazy forcelimit calc (number of slaves / 2) and uses the exact same calc for naval as land forcelimits. Forcelimits are completely detached from manpower or the actual tax yield of a province and thus have a tendency to end up with a completely nonsensical number. RoA 2.0 has a completely reworked forcelimits system. Instead of just slaves, all your pops contribute to forcelimits, and number of ports factors in heavily for naval forcelimits. Additionally, wrong culture provinces (which lower manpower) also lower your forcelimits, so that manpower and forcelimits scale to each other. A high base forcelimit allows small countries to field a respectable force, further improving their ability to fight back against the blobs.

Traits is one of the areas that will receive the most work. Vanilla rome has an absurd number of traits, many of which are pretty damn redundant (do you really need pious, zealous AND devout?) or end up fairly ridiculous when coupled together (he's vengeful, cold, arrogant and good natured!). I've gotten rid of about half the traits, resulting in a manageable number of traits and much more unique and significant effects per trait. Traits will also be given far more importance in events and the general flow of the game - you will not be able to cruise along with a schizophrenic king and appointing a cruel and hostile finance minister might result in some undesired side effects. As an additional bonus, I've added hidden maintenance to clean up the large number of health and combat traits that Rome loves to throw at new characters - your 18-year old wife will no longer be a great conqueror and your court will no longer resemble a leper colony.

Traits are no longer assigned in a vacuum via random events wherein your character suddenly decides that he is silver tongued. Instead, traits will be given by your choices in events, so a ruler that acts like a despot will get approptiately despotic traits. To give characters something to start with, each child will be given one of 25 personalities that assigns them a base set of traits upon turning 10.

Trade has been heavily reworked with 11 new tradegoods (for a total of 26) cutting down on micromanagement by making it easier to find viable trading partners. Land trade has also received a rework, with the buggy transit capacity mechanics done away with altogether, allowing you to trade unlimited amounts over land.

The new resources are:
- Precious Metals
- Olive Oil
- Cattle
- Leather
- Steppe Horses
- Wax
- Dyes
- Fur
- Marble
- Wool
- Pottery

Precious Metals are unique among the resources in that they actually increase the number of trade routes in the province, effectively counting as a "free" route if you trade for them.

To get away from the silliness that is Gallic Horse Archers, horses have been split into War Horses and Steppe Horses, with War Horses allowing Cavalry and Steppe Horses allowing Horse Archers. Note that acquiring Steppe Horses will be fairly difficult if you don't have Scythians or Parthians for a neighbour.

 

[Wizzington]

This looks great! Do we have an expected release date for this round two version of an already fantastic mod? I am thinking of starting a narrative AAR that uses this mod, and I wondered if I should wait, or keep going with 1.16?

And I agree with Emperor Apple, a combo mod with Magna Terra would be incredible. However, I wonder if the amount of countries would break the game...

I don't think combining with Magna Terra is plausible at this point since I've focused on adding provinces inside Europe and Magna Terra adds the whole rest of the world. Not to mention that the crazy amount of tags would probably lag the game to death.

As for ETA, this is a major project, so it's probably going to be a month+. I wouldn't wait.

 

[Wizzington]

Here's a bonus preview on Relations.

Tired of staring at the diplomatic screen and seeing only red numbers? Tired of being viewed with fear and distrust all the time?

Well, no more! RoA 2.0 completely redoes starting relations from scratch. You will start with at least +10 relations with every country you do not have a war or a strategic rivalry with, and at higher relations if you have governmental, cultural, religious, tributary or alliance ties. Furthermore, if your relations with a country are below 10, said relations will trend upwards slowly, offsetting the penalty for different religion. In other words, unless your badboy is high, negative relations will slowly normalize and open up a whole new world of diplomatic possibilities. Ally with Carthage as Rome? Completely possible! Ally with tribes and play them off against each other? Now doable! Trade with AI countries of a different religion without having them say no 9 times out of 10? You bet!

RoA 2.0 lets you discover the hidden world of diplomatic advisor messages that don't involve telling you how much all those funny tribes in Gaul hate you despite barely knowing you exist!

 

[Wizzington]

So, hands up everyone, who's actually ever used Desecrate Holy Site? And no, using it once on Judea because you were jealous of their religious power doesn't count.

Now, who's had a mission to get access to iron/horses and discovered that every single trade route is taken and there is nothing you can do save hope for a war?

With the safe knowledge that the second group is much larger than the first, I introduce a new intrigue option in RoA 2.0, replacing desecrating: Disrupt Trade.

Disrupt Trade lowers the number of trade routes a province can support temporarily. What's the use of that, you might ask? Is cutting a couple routes' worth of income really worth the chance for BB? Maybe, maybe not, but that's not what it's really about. Here, I'll show you:

I'm playing as the Kingdom of Palmyra, and I have a mission to get access to iron. Unfortunately, given my strategic situation, my options for trading for iron are limited, and my options for getting it through warfare non-existant. About the only province I can trade with is Adiabene, and it's already using its only route to trade with Seleucia.

And this is where Disrupt Trade comes it. By targeting Seleucia I cut off its route with Adiabene.

And just like that, the route is now open and I have a shot at getting that damn iron that my population seems to crave.

Of course, it works best if you cut off routes in countries you aren't trying to trade with so to avoid say, having the Seleucids get mad at you and annex you, but the end result is that it gives you an option for influencing foreign trade where previously there was none (short of war).

 

[Wizzington]

Another bonus tidbit I'm throwing into RoA 2.0 is the shattered world alt scenario. If you've ever wondered what Rome would be like in a sandbox setting this is the scenario for you. It breaks up all the blobs into independent regions/tags so that there are no great powers at game start. 100% ahistorical, but very fun. Note that shattered world is completely self contained and in no way affects the historical campaign.

Shattered world map:

 

[Wizzington]

I've never liked Rome's character events much. Entirely aside from the fact that they are riddled with bugs, typos and repetetive events, there's just something about them that feels lifeless. It wasn't until I did a direct comparison to Crusader Kings that I realized why: The way they are presented. The events in Crusader Kings are short, concise and most importantly in first person. The fact that character events in EU:R are written in third person make you, the player, detached from your characters, and you really don't need a paragraph of text to tell the player that a character got sick. For this reason, I've decided to change the character events for RoA 2.0 to be like Crusader Kings events.

As I previously said, I have taken out some 90% of vanilla's character events and am in the process of replacing them with new ones So far I have fully completed childhood events and created a brand new set of romance events, both for married couples and their respective lovers on the side. Your characters will fall in love, get jealous and spark new rivalries and friendships that's sure to add more life to your game. One thing that's consistent about all the new events is that they are way more affected by traits, and will much more commonly add/remove traits from your characters, to further flesh out your choices.

Childhood has been expanded with the addition of education. When a child in a non-tribal country reaches the age of six, the parents will be prompted to pay for an education (if they have the money). A child that gets an education will have a chance at getting a bonus to their attributes when they graduate, as well as a chance for some special beneficial traits (such as Orator or Inventor). The more you shell out on the education, the higher the chance of beneficial effects. Of course there is also a number of friendship, rivalry and general drama events related to education.

That's all for now.

 

[Wizzington]

I wanted to ask, what are your guys' opinion of minor offices in monarchies and tribes. Do you enjoy being able to assign them? I've been thinking about removing the ability to grant offices altogether and just assign offices via events akin to the way I do in Republics, as personally I find shuffling minor offices to be annoying at best.

 

[Wizzington]

Technology in Rome is a bit dull, don't you think? Sure, the invisible bonuses are okay, but the inventions are frequently near-useless (+2% militia offensive? Really?) and in fact quite a few people I've spoken to aren't even aware that the invisible tech bonuses exist. So I've decided to scrap them, and instead seriously power up inventions. No more hidden factors to tech - what you see is what you get, and what you get is now quite respectable. I've boosted most of the existing techs and added a number of new ones, especially to land tech.

Additionally, I've scrapped the existing infantry/cavalry/auxilaries warfare in RoA and replaced it with four invention trees: Roman, Hellenistic, Punic and Parthian. You automatically get the appropriate inventions based on your culture, so Carthage and Numidia will get Punic inventions while Macedonia and Seleucids get Hellenistic.

Roman warfare offers very powerful heavy infantry and defensively strong archers, for the ultimate infantry warfare type.

Hellenistic warfare techs offer defensively strong heavy infantry combined with offensive archers and disciplined cavalry, giving you an all-round strong army that can meet any situation.

Punic warfare techs focus gives you cavalry and archers with high morale, powerful war elephants and additional focus on naval supremacy, perfect for strategic warfare.

Parthian warfare techs focus completely on cavalry and horse archers at the expense of all other unit types, giving you a highly mobile army.

 

[Wizzington]

I don't want Rome to trounce Carthage every game, as it's not meant to be a perfect history simulator every time, but I have added a system of aggressive missions for them so they will blob. The problem is that the AI is bad at conquering non-neighbours, so giving them missions on Carthage without having them expand into Spain first doesn't work so well.

 

[Wizzington]

I am looking forward to the great things that this update will bring!!


I was wondering. Is there a way to reduce the manpower pool max based on the size of the standing army? If the standing army for Rome at the beginning of the game is 33k, then maybe reduce the manpower pool max by 8-11k to reflect that manpower is needed just to maintain the standing army.

It's possible, but only by using a complicated set of modifiers that I'd rather avoid.

 

[Wizzington]

I've decided not to scrap the minor offices, but instead make it so you can give them to anyone but the ruler and revoke them at will, so they become a useful tool for loyalty without being too much of a pain to manage.

 

[Wizzington]

What about Barbarians? Will they choose their warfare tech when they civilize?

And will there be option to change warfare tech, for example, Illyrians go from Hellenistic to Roman warfare techs.

Tribals get their own set of techs that are lost when they civilize. They get a tech type based on their culture once they do.

There is no option to change warfare techs atm since its tied to culture.

 

[Wizzington]

Do you have an e.t.a on when RoA 2.0 will be released?

Right now pretty much all the mechanics are done but I still have a lot of character events to write. Loose guess january.

 

[Wizzington]

In RoA 2.0, the experience of conquering tribal territories will be vastly different. Where previously there was little difference between annexing tribal (defined as civ value < 50) and non-tribal land, there is now a number of important differences. For an example, let's take Carthage conquering the Cynetes tribe.

The warfare part is done as per normal. The Cynetes are smashed and their province annexed.

The difference comes in with the conquered province. First of all, when you conquer a tribal province as a civilized country, you will gain an instant core on the province. This removes all nationalism and also makes it much faster to culturally and religiously assimilate tribes, giving you an actual reason to want to conquer tribal territory.

It's not all good news, however. Instead of nationalism, when a civilized country conquers a tribal province, a portion of the population are converted into barbarian power. These barbarians will lower tax income and manpower in addition to the threat of a barbarian rising. The barbarians remain permanently until the province is either civilized or conquered by a tribe, at which point they assimilate back into the general population.

Since barbarian power grows over time, this creates a problem area in your empire that has to be garrisoned and watched over, lest you be the target of a massive barbarian uprising...

In addition to the rework of barbarian provinces, cultural absorption has also been redone. Instead of provinces just changing culture, cultural absorption is done through the founding of colonies in your wrong-culture provinces, giving you some free population and increasing the colony size in the province.

Once a province's colony size grows large enough in proportion to its population, the province will change culture and religion to the state religion/culture. This means that it is fairly easy to absorb sparsely populated provinces, but nigh-impossible to change the culture of a highly developed and populated province like Alexandria or Rome. As a final footnote, the penalties for wrong culture have been reduced, especially for provinces of the same culture group.

 

[Wizzington]

Who needs the code when I have my 44000 line script to invisibly handle province conquest?

 

[Wizzington]

It things like the above that made me ask about linking available manpower to the size of active forces.

It's not a bad idea, its just that any execution would end up really clumsy due to lack of engine support.

And yeah, I find it really strange that ships use no manpower too. Apparently they're ghost ships.

 

[Wizzington]

I don't think that's a good idea - it would be frustrating and un-fun to force the player to play suboptimially for 'historical' reasons.

In my view, the important thing is that what happens ingame is A) fun B) challenging and C) historically plausible (in that order). Rome doesn't have to beat Carthage for the exact same reason they did IRL, they just have to beat them in most games since it did happen historically. The challenge should come from the AI being a tough opponent to beat and internal politics, not forcing the player to use crappy generals.

 

[Wizzington]

That's a vanilla typo, believe it or not. Vanilla is chock full of typos, especially in the inventions. I usually fix them as I spot them.

 

[Wizzington]

No exact date, but I'm making progress. Hopefully shouldn't be too long.

 

[Wizzington]

Removing someone from office will give +1 tyranny unless their term is up, to represent the backlash against the ruler arbitrarily dismissing people from high posts.

Tyranny is a static modifier on loyalty, so a character that has 80 loyalty will only have 78 if tyranny is 2, but will go back up to 80 if tyranny drops to 0. It is not a monthly change.