Rome II

[TheDungen]

I think I agree with you for a centralised nation like Rome or Carthage. A different approacht might be an option for a tribal confederacy or a league of Greek cities. There internal dynamics based on geographically different provinces or 'holdings' might be a the right way to go opposed for internal dynamics based on factions based in the capital. I guess also the seleuced empire or parthians after that ruled with the help of satraps with regional based power I guess.

I agree for the tribes, but again they should be more like the nomads in ck2 than like the feudals in ck2. And the satraps should be more like the governors of Rome, people from the court appointed for administer a rather large area for a certain time shouldn't they? The satrapies of this era were much bigger than those of the later eras. Egypt for an example was one satrapy.

 

[Rhaegar1]

I agree for the tribes, but again they should be more like the nomads in ck2 than like the feudals in ck2. And the satraps should be more like the governors of Rome, people from the court appointed for administer a rather large area for a certain time shouldn't they? The satrapies of this era were much bigger than those of the later eras. Egypt for an example was one satrapy.

Agreed allthough the satrapies in the east wielded more independent power then the Roman Governors I believe. For example (unless I'm wrong, I'm no history student) Roman governors could direct armies that where placed under their command. They where placed under their command however by the Roman senate and the legions consisted not of local soldiers but of Roman soldiers first and foremost. The satrapies of the east however raised their own armies and their overlords where for a large part of the military force dependend on troops raised by the satrapies. In that sense their relationship had much more in common with feudalism then the Roman governor / senate relationship.

However that is rather beside my point. As you state correctly as far as there is a somewhat Feudal relationship between governors/satrapies and their overlord the scale is much larger then holding level.

My Original point mostly is that I would like to see multiple cities per province that can be held by multiple factions and that could have different main cultures. This would allow building colonies of greeks and romans in allready populated provinces. Armies fo all factions could walk through the province as long as there is no war or hostile attitude between them and the way they behave towards eachother in case of hostile relations could be connected to an army stance. I'd also like it if armies that are in the same province wouldn't allways immidieatly engage (thats where the stances come in). The chance of actually engaging in battle could depend on a daily diceroll and be modified by what kind of troops they have (scouts and skirmishers) what kind of general the army has, terrain, and the stance an army has. I think this would be a much better fit on the period then the solutions we see in other PDS games. For example this way you could replicate the way Hannibal dominated the field in central Italy during the second punic war but couldn't deliver the killing blow because he lacked the tools, supplies and local support to siege cities. Meanwhile with this system the Romans could just use thier armies to garrison cities. Just like in reality they could ungarrison and march on possible additional armies before they can merge with Hannibal.

- defensive would have them garrisoning the cities,
- raiding could have them pillage and burn the countryside and increase attrition of enemy armies in the province, while increasing the chance they encounter an enemy army in the province that is raiding or aggrassive,
- aggrassive could have them actively seeking hout enemy forces in the province further increasing the chance to hit it out with an enemy armie,
- sieging stance would make them start sieging the enemy cities.).

Adding skirmish units to your army could this way increase the damage done to the other army before they actually engage (for example because one army is raiding). Adding light cavalry could increase the chance.

 

[PerseusSpartacus]

I strongly agree with what Rhaegar1 just said. I'm imagining a CK2-style hierarchy (e.g. Barons, Counts, Dukes, Kings, etc.) applied not to individuals, but to political entities (e.g. Tribes, City-States, Satrapies/Provinces, Nations, Kingdoms, Empires, etc.), which would help dictate the abilities of players and their position in the overall political makeup of the game. Oh what fun that could be...

I also like the idea behind the army stances; it reminds me a little of how sea units operate in the Hearts of Iron series. One could also imagine a stronger focus in this game compared to EU or CK on doing damage to your enemy's economy, infrastructure, population, etc. - e.g. completely destroying, and not merely besieging, an enemy city. The advantage of this would be severely weakening a potential future rival and maybe even allowing you to lessen the risk of revolts once you take over the place, but the downside is that you'd have to rebuild a lot of the local infrastructure and repopulate the place if you want it to be of any value once annexed.

 

[Kliwarrior]

I have to disagree with this hierarchical approach.
Let's start with city-states. As the name suggests, they were exactly that: a full state, with a government, laws, army, economy, just limited to a single city and a her surrounding territory. Beyond some rural communities and very small towns, there was nothing in Attica but Athens (or in Beotia but Thebes etc.)
With "nothing" I mean "nothing different from administrative municipalities".
A city may have the hegemony upon other cities (see the Delian League for example) but this is more similar to have subsidiary or "forced-allied" states, and not the count-duke-king relationship.
Let's jump to the opposite range: large empire (Rome, or the Achaemenids) . Of course there were satraps or provincial governors, but again all the political decisions were handled at higher level than a single Province: their main duty was collect taxes and tributes, handling the public safety, eventually handle with local revolts.

Instead I would like to have a stronger focus upon the cultural and ethnic aspect of the population. Why Sparta (or any other greek city) didn't forged a true kingdom as, later, the Macedons did ? Because in Sparta there were just and handful (some thousands) of Spartiati.
Rome, on the opposite followed a policy of building colonies and "romanizing" the italic populations, and granting more and more political and civil rights.
But this take no less than three centuries (since the early sannitic wars up to the social war of 91 BC)

This kind of challenges I would like to have in a forecoming game.

 

[TheDungen]

I have to disagree with this hierarchical approach.
Let's start with city-states. As the name suggests, they were exactly that: a full state, with a government, laws, army, economy, just limited to a single city and a her surrounding territory. Beyond some rural communities and very small towns, there was nothing in Attica but Athens (or in Beotia but Thebes etc.)
With "nothing" I mean "nothing different from administrative municipalities".
A city may have the hegemony upon other cities (see the Delian League for example) but this is more similar to have subsidiary or "forced-allied" states, and not the count-duke-king relationship.
Let's jump to the opposite range: large empire (Rome, or the Achaemenids) . Of course there were satraps or provincial governors, but again all the political decisions were handled at higher level than a single Province: their main duty was collect taxes and tributes, handling the public safety, eventually handle with local revolts.

Instead I would like to have a stronger focus upon the cultural and ethnic aspect of the population. Why Sparta (or any other greek city) didn't forged a true kingdom as, later, the Macedons did ? Because in Sparta there were just and handful (some thousands) of Spartiati.
Rome, on the opposite followed a policy of building colonies and "romanizing" the italic populations, and granting more and more political and civil rights.
But this take no less than three centuries (since the early sannitic wars up to the social war of 91 BC)

This kind of challenges I would like to have in a forecoming game.

I think that a state should have a similiar government size regardless if it's a city state or the roman empire. It still works the same way, unlike in ck where your numbers of characters is depending on the number of vassals and the realm size. City states and empires alike have a few important families vying for power.

Also if the game streatches back enough into time you'll need to consider the fact that before Darius there was no such thing as empires. The earlier empires was just one city state paying another one tribute. the idea that a king could force laws on another one was groundbreaking.

Egypt had obviously done a centralisation before persia, but one based in religion not in legal structures.

 

[luitzen]

I was thinking more of a Victoria 2 style pop system. Provinces could have pops with different loyalties different from the owner of the province. A system that is a mix between CK2 and Victoria 2 would probably be best.

 

[Buttons12345]

I would actually want to extend the game downwards, to the Greek city states and their affairs.

EDIT: And maybe the Germanic tribes.

Honestly I would say my favourite time period is the early dark ages (as much as modern historians seem to loath the term). I would love any game with a start date set in say 476 A.D. and ending in say 632 with the beginning of Islamic expansion outside of Europe and the soon to follow collapse of the Sassanid Empire and crippling of the Eastern Roman Empire. Take control of say the Ostrogoths and try to form an actual kingdom out of your former migrating tribes, take control of the Saxons and conquer Britain, or the Welsh and try and drive the Saxons into the sea, play as the Sassanids and try to assert your supremacy over the Eastern Roman Empire or play as the ERE and try and restore the empire. I feel like the early dark ages are such a great time because unlike EU's, Victoria's, or Rome's timeframe nobody had too much of an edge, after all the Sassanids would suddenly collapse in the face of Islam while the Franks, a relatively minor Germanic tribe ended up having a future king of their's crowned emperor.

If you want to include early Islam without too many issues you could always grey out the Arabian peninsula, "unlocking" it after Muhammad dies with the Rashidun Caliphate effectively being like the hordes of CK2 with a massive army with great generals and good morale to curb stomp surrounding empires.

 

[TheDungen]

Well obviously asny game that deals with ancient antiquity would have to have city states. That's the only thing that existed before Cyrus created the first centralized empire (Any empries before that was city states that forced each other to pay tribute, they had no real power in any cities but their capitals). Some scholars use this rather than alexander to mark the turning point from ancient to classical antiquity. Though some say egypt was the first state before Cyrus, but most egyptian centralization as built on top of the religious structure where as for all Cyrus called himself religious titles his power derived from his ability to subjugate his enemies.

It probably really had to do with advancement in infrastructure, better boats and increased availablity of riding horses meant that keeping an actual centralized empire together became possible and so it happened.

 

[Dysydent]

There's another important question here - will Rome II be more like CKII or EUIV? I doubt that they will make a complex system like in Victoria 2 - it would be really hard to balance pop demographics across the centuries in similar detail.

In EU:Rome, they've tried to implement a character system similar to the one in CK series, but very crude and lacking. Also, such a system doesn't work that great if you are playing as a country, not as a dynasty or in this case, a powerful family. Personally, I love the idea of controlling characters at the same time you're controlling the whole country, but it won't make it nearly as good of a family simulation as CKII - especially with Roman system of elections. Ruling a country for a year and then waiting for a next chance in the future would not be fun at all. On the other hand, ruling despite rulers changing, you can't really identify well with your characters. Some sort of a party system could work better - such as you're controlling some family and their supporters, in a Godfather kinda style - real Ancient Rome worked in a large part as a system of different families that all had their clients, who in turn had their clients as well, with all those propositions you can't refuse and . But then again - what about the time when your family is not in charge? Won't work that well either.

So I guess it will be more like EUIV. It is easier to make it fun that way, and I don't think that Paradox would like to experiment again the same way they did with EU:Rome.

 

[performer]

I think it would be better if it's closer to CK 2. Also, the focus should be much more on religion. The omen system in Rome 1 was way too weak. Intrigues in the temples, sacrifices for the masses ... would be awesome!

 

[Gurkhal]

Instead I would like to have a stronger focus upon the cultural and ethnic aspect of the population. Why Sparta (or any other greek city) didn't forged a true kingdom as, later, the Macedons did ? Because in Sparta there were just and handful (some thousands) of Spartiati.
Rome, on the opposite followed a policy of building colonies and "romanizing" the italic populations, and granting more and more political and civil rights.
But this take no less than three centuries (since the early sannitic wars up to the social war of 91 BC)

This kind of challenges I would like to have in a forecoming game.

Totally agree with this and I think it would be of great importance for the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east who built upon, to my knowledge, a fairly limited Greek and Macedonian population for their rule. That challenge should be there as well as the oppertunity to tackle the problem but not without letting Greek supremacy feelings provide some problems to finding a solution. As in that they don't want the "barbarians" to get an equal part on the stage.

I think that a state should have a similiar government size regardless if it's a city state or the roman empire. It still works the same way, unlike in ck where your numbers of characters is depending on the number of vassals and the realm size. City states and empires alike have a few important families vying for power.

Also if the game streatches back enough into time you'll need to consider the fact that before Darius there was no such thing as empires. The earlier empires was just one city state paying another one tribute. the idea that a king could force laws on another one was groundbreaking.

Egypt had obviously done a centralisation before persia, but one based in religion not in legal structures.

I must say that I dare say that you are mistaken in this. While the earliest empires were indeed nothing more than a city-state ruling others by the time of the Neo-Assyrian empire that approach had been abandoned. Hell, there were rebellions against the Assyrian king because the old cities of Assyria felt they weren't treated better than the provices and conquered lands outside of the core lands. You'd find the neo-Assyrian empire to be very much an empire and much more than just a dominating city state.

I think it would be better if it's closer to CK 2. Also, the focus should be much more on religion. The omen system in Rome 1 was way too weak. Intrigues in the temples, sacrifices for the masses ... would be awesome!

I support both a CK2 approach and a greater focus on religion. It would be really cool if the mystery cults were also added so that we could spin the Isis cult or the Mithras cult in a similar way that Romans took Christianity and shaped it to the empire's needs, even while he empire was shaped by the new religion.

 

[Don Wilhelm]

Actually there was quite a lot of contact between Han China and the Roman empire. It has been suggested even that there was a military confrontation between some Roman units and the Han Chinese in the Central Asia.
I don't think that a Rome game can be properly made without implementing the silk road. Trade between China and Europe was immense during that time. Mostly it was handled by a lot of middle-men in Central Asia and India but Romans sent envoys to Han court in order to establish more direct trade routes. Rich Romans craved after Chinese silk to the extent that the government tried to curtail the usage of silk fabrics because so much of silver was transported out of the Empire and into China. Immense amounts of Roman artifacts and coins have been found in Chinese archaeological sites. The most direct routes between China and Rome ran from modern day Guangzhou to Roman Red Sea ports in Egypt, thus circumventing the hostile Persians.
India was also a major trading destination and a milestone on the route to China. There was quite a few Roman settlements in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

 

[TheDungen]

Actually there was quite a lot of contact between Han China and the Roman empire. It has been suggested even that there was a military contact between some Roman units and the Han Chinese in the Central Asia.
I don't think that a Rome game can be properly made without implementing the silk road. Trade between China and Europe was immense during that time. Mostly it was handled by a lot of middle-men in Central Asia and India but Romans sent envoys to Han court in order to establish more direct trade routes. Rich Romans craved after Chinese silk to the extent that the government tried to curtail the usage of silk fabrics because so much of silver was transported out of the Empire and into China. Immense amounts of Roman artifacts and coins have been found in Chinese archaeological sites. The most direct routes between China and Rome ran from modern day Guangzhou to Roman Red Sea ports in Egypt, thus circumventing the hostile Persians.
India was also a major trading destination and a milestone on the route to China. There was quite a few Roman settlements in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

Funny thing its probably going to be easier adding china to a rome game than to crusader kings. Becuase a rome game will probably have much fewer characters. Especially for large realm.

 

[Gurkhal]

Here's something that I came to think when I played an entirely other game as Baktria during the Hellenistic period.

That is that when looking at the Seleucid empire its clear that keeping the eastern parts of that vast empire into line with the king's wishes seems to have been a somewhat hard thing and from time to time these eastern satraps would more or less slide away from central control to go in their own direction until a military expedition by the king could get them back into line. Now the reason I bring this is that perhaps there could be something similar to the autonomy mechanic in EU4 so that a huge empire without the right civic ideas, and some actions by the players, might slowly see distant parts of it fade away from political control and become indepedent. And I think that this could both well represent what it would mean to attempt to run a huge empire without advancing the social and political structures to be dealing with a huge empire as opposed to a league of cities or a smaller kingdom. As your state or "state" expands and becomes something different from what it used to be, then you also need to shape it to face the new issues coming to face it.

A counter example to this may be the Roman empire which to my knowledge did spread the privilages and built solid infrastructure to keep the empire together and was generally not plauged by this kind of separation problems, where as the Seleucids never did either of these two things, and thus struggled with this problem in their extended empire.

 

[Woifee]

They should add China just for the reason that the Forum won't be spammed with "we want china" Threads like we have in CK2.

Also I don't want a copy of CK2 or EU4 in roman times. It should have it's own mechanics. It should feel like it's own game and not as a mod of another.

Also, if tribes (celtic, germanic iberian...) are in, they also should feel different. I hate it that in Rome 2 TW the Suebi are pretty much the same as rome just with different units and buildings.

 

[TheDungen]

They should add China just for the reason that the Forum won't be spammed with "we want china" Threads like we have in CK2.

Also I don't want a copy of CK2 or EU4 in roman times. It should have it's own mechanics. It should feel like it's own game and not as a mod of another.

Also, if tribes (celtic, germanic iberian...) are in, they also should feel different. I hate it that in Rome 2 TW the Suebi are pretty much the same as rome just with different units and buildings.

No they should ad china because china is interesting in the period and also had dealing with rome.

 

[Rhaegar1]

In my opinion China could be left out without it having any impact on the rest of the world. The silk road could easily be potraited as some provincial bonus which is a bit more realistic then having some agreed upon trade agreemen between China and Rome directly.

China itself would add some nice diversity between different campaigns and holds some fine potential of having an interesting warring state period to play in but direct contact between Rome and China is in my opinion a rubbish argument to want them included. Sources of contact between the two ar sketchy at best and even if there was the idea that this contact was extensive or had a lot of impact on the two empires is ridiculous.

That being said I don't like limited maps (big downside of EU:R) and I hope they will add China and the asian steppes. At least that way I'll be able to play some steppe horde (Xiongnu or Yuezhi or something like that) and build an empire like Atilla's from Asia to Germany, decide to conquor China or reproduce the indo-scythians migrations and conquests).

I don't want a Rome 2, I want an antiquity 1. China is a vital part of that, especially since a interesting starting date of the campaign in Europe aligns pretty well with the warring state period which should deliver a nice Chinese campaign as well.

 

[Gurkhal]

Another reason to expand the map all the way to India is also that both the Selecuids can come into their right with their vast eastern expanse as well as that Bactria and the Indo-Greek kingdoms can also be introduced and given a fair treatment in how India is very likely to be added if the map goes all the way to China.

 

[TheDungen]

In my opinion China could be left out without it having any impact on the rest of the world. The silk road could easily be potraited as some provincial bonus which is a bit more realistic then having some agreed upon trade agreemen between China and Rome directly.

China itself would add some nice diversity between different campaigns and holds some fine potential of having an interesting warring state period to play in but direct contact between Rome and China is in my opinion a rubbish argument to want them included. Sources of contact between the two ar sketchy at best and even if there was the idea that this contact was extensive or had a lot of impact on the two empires is ridiculous.

That being said I don't like limited maps (big downside of EU:R) and I hope they will add China and the asian steppes. At least that way I'll be able to play some steppe horde (Xiongnu or Yuezhi or something like that) and build an empire like Atilla's from Asia to Germany, decide to conquor China or reproduce the indo-scythians migrations and conquests).

I don't want a Rome 2, I want an antiquity 1. China is a vital part of that, especially since a interesting starting date of the campaign in Europe aligns pretty well with the warring state period which should deliver a nice Chinese campaign as well.

A rome game would be classic era not ancient, ancient is before Alexander (though myself I prefer thinking of ancient as before Cyrus whom I feel is a much greater influence on history than alexander).
There's also the pre bronze age collapse era to consider.

 

[Kliwarrior]

As I previously said, I'd like to have a broader scope both in time and space.
509.bc could be a very good start, not just because it's the first year or the Res Publica in Rome, but also because in a few years the Persian Wars will start.
For the map, I always say that "Better is the enemy or Good" . Without any special rule/mechanism for India and China , those parts or the world should be left out for a future expansion/DLC .