How many of you are fighting the majority of battles via FOG2?
only the big ones.
Anything with less than 10 units I just auto.
I don’t even own FOG2. For me, lengthy battles would be really jarring to the pace of this game.
From a gameplay perspective you have a point.
Fighting every battle is tiring.
I look at them as being narratively like the battle of Cannae.
Big fight, great time to end your play session.
Fighting nothing in FOG2 (although I own it). I like the combat system in the game fine, and the lengthy procedure to mesh the two games is enough that I’m not even tempted to try this. The game is already time-consuming enough as is.
Rome, balanced, turn 90 or something, year 215 BC.
I understand that Rome is supposed to be introductory but I’m little underwhelmed. I only got Italy, provinces before Gaul, that province near Illyria. Recently conquered Transalpine province and Corsica. Marian reform upgraded my legions but they were beasts even before that. I rarely lose battles, usually to some tribe in the mountains. Glorious empire is 1st place in legacy chart, Carthage is second. Had no civil wars or even really hard wars. I’ve expanded slowly and made sure there’s a lot of culture and loyalty everywhere.
I’m only getting ready to attack Carthage - it seems inevitable as it will allow me to win by double score. This war will probably be harder than previous ones and I play in preparation to it. Another reason for boredom might be I can’t see Rome’s uniqueness as it’s my first big game. Legion building roads and forts sure feels useful, but how does it feel to manage an empire without this ability? How would proper archers work? Maybe some of my buildings like monument or school really help with culture and decadence?
Diplomatic limitations irritate me the most. I’d like to not just sign peace, but peace out by making them clients. Or to pay some people to leave me alone. Or to give provinces to people.
I think this would elevate the game to the next level.
That and a proper political system, e.g. Senate for Rome, complete with families and backstabbing etc.
It feels very odd when the Greeks send me (the player) a diplomatic message and it says “Hello Optimates party, you suck” or whatever.
Yeah, some polish is needed there.
I can see some sort of expansion with a more complex political system but it’s fine as it is, I think. Simple but working system is always better than broken complex one. It’s strange to me how internally stable my Rome is even though the game said it’s supposed to have more internal problems. I also might have been lucky cause it seems that Carthage doesn’t care about me at all and there’s no one else.
I also don’t like percentage based diplomacy. 14% chance that someone agrees to be my client means years of sending the request. And I imagine many people don’t play iron man and will resort to savescumming.
My current game saw a civil.war start with 2 usurpers.
It’s annoying!!!
But in a good way if that makes sense.
But I am really missing the option to declare an area a protectorate or similar.
And wouldn’t such an option be true to history?
Well, historically it’s hard to define what ownership meant back then. Republican Rome and early empire were in some ways less domineering than, say, European Union today or Holy Roman Empire in middle ages. And you have totalitarian control over citizens.
Force client should be a thing, but any tighter grip would be indistinguishable from how real annexation worked back then.
Fair point.
I think I will restart and focus on super slow expansion.
I got to about the same point when a weird bug hit my game.
My sense of it is that I’ll want to adjust difficulty level to the faction I am playing. Rome, after the initial deluge of threats, is quite easy, at least if you have the self control not to take over endless raiders from the north. I think next time I need to go one or probably two notches higher.
But I think a lot of other factions would be quite exciting enough at balanced.
However, by the time the bug messed up my game, I was starting to see some loyalty problems, and I had kind of anticipated that they might precipitate real trouble.
Well, this is getting ridiculous. That Boii general is still alive.
You have to wonder how a 79 year old general can be so effective. This guy is a legend. I’ve conquered all of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica over the past 20 years and he keeps right on ticking along. So annoying.
However, I just got the Marian Reforms so we’ll see how my upgraded legions do now against them.
I also just got offered an alliance by the nation north of the Celtici. I’m a bit hesitant to accept because I don’t want to get pulled into any wars up there.
I have to say I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this game but it certainly has been a very pleasant surprise. It really has that one-more-turn quality.
How far have people made it through a game?
How long have turn times been taking people once they get past turn 100?
Between the movement screen and computing the end of term summaries it starts to add up and with the 500 turn horizon It could be serval hours.
I really like the systems but I wish things move quicker and more changed along the way. I am turn 200 now. 20,000 legacy, Rome has 10,000 and had a civil war, the Asia Minor power -finally- Crumbled when I took of their provinces ( I had hoped ptolemy or Carthage Would help to speed that up) and Carthage is invading Rome and May end up in second. If I slowly expand and invest tons in culture I think I can keep oscillaring between glorious and golden glorious and eventually win, But I don’t think I can speed things up by sweeping them out without crumbling. So I play 10 or 15 turns and stop out of boredom and then come back many hours later
It seems that technology and unit types are constant over the whole course of a game, is that right? How much technological change was there during this time. Historically?
So far at turn 100 I’ve gotten upgrades to 3 roman units (Cataphract, Corvus, Marian legions).
I’ve been able to upgrade the standard unit types through a decision, This added attack and defense points but didn’t really change the feel of what’s going on. So not as much progress as I would enjoy given how long the game takes. That said I’m still playing
Historically there was social and economic progress, sorta, not so much technological one. 300 BC had all the technology you get in 190 AD, more or less. I guess there are some marginal improvements with metallurgy, architecture, artillery, and shipbuilding but those are probably reflected by buildings. Stirrups is your go-to technological innovation in a pre-modern era but it got to the region slightly later. Crossbows too. Anyway, the game operates on high enough scope that it can get away with ignoring those changes.
Rome has social/economic change reflected in Marian reforms that just turn Legions into Legions 2. You also get new units from buildings, like Cataphracts. Not sure if other factions get similar reform decision. Do you imply they do?
Thanks for the information!
I don’t know how big a step up cataphtacts are, I got an option to spend gold to upgrade to “improved heavy cavalry” and have also had them for light and medium cavalry and regular and heavy infantry.
The main unit diversity I have is in provincial troops, some are good in mountains, others in forests, some places get actual archers etc.
I wish there was a decision to sped gold to be able to recruit all of them in the same place.
The pause between my turns is up to a minute now. I have a 3yr old i7 machine, 4 cores. Would a newer machine be much faster?