Aeterna Civitas

[Jerec]

x20

WHY in the world does it take 2 or even 3 VET Cohort units to beat a lousy NONE VET Hellenic PHALANX!! I repeat, PLEASE fix this! I've griped about this very point in a prior post. Please understand that by the time there were Roman cohorts, the Roman army was a highly trained, elite army. THEY SHOULD HAVE SUPERIOR INFANTRY. Not all Roman units should (hastati, for example), just at least give the Cohort a better attack. You have to realize that the Romans carved a huge empire in Gaul, Greece, and Carthage because of their superior infantry tactics. Quite simply, they had the best in the ancient world. The only defeats they had were due to carelessness, like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. In only two campaigns was there an exception to this: Hannibal, who used all different troop types brilliantly (infantry, ranged troops, cavalry), and the Parthians, who used fast horse archers and powerful composite bows to slaughter the legions at a distance. If the Romans just used Gaulish tactics (huge amounts of troops wildly charging) they would have gotten NOWHERE.

Now that I've finished blowing my stack, I'll mention a few other things...

1) Carthage always used mercs except for a small, highly trained and well equipped group of Carthaginian nobles. IMHO the African foot shouldn't look like Greeks, but turbaned blacks.

2) Carthage was built on trade, making it hugely rich. Would it be possible to increase the Carthaginian income? Or just increase the initial bank account?

3) Thank you so much for making the temple 0 maint! I absolutely love that!

4) I checked each civ's economy. All perfect! (Except for Carthage IMHO of course.)

5) Love the new units pics, especially the Celt Cavalry! And forts too, allright!

6) Was it your intention to have the whole map revealed for all the civs?

7) The chariot as it is simply won't be used with a build cost of 80, expecially with its one-time use. If you do want it built and used, please at least raise the attack significantly to make it worth it.

8) Thanks again for putting all the units in the cyclopedia.

9) Red roads? Is that to make it easy to see them?

10) Killing the villages and getting slaves works perfectly for every civ, but its name is RICH village. I was thinking money and slaves...

More to follow...if I can possibly find anything else to comment on!

[Jerec]

Hmph. I always have to forget something...

All the other civs have unresearched units being built, EXCEPT for the Celts! I hate discrimination...

[Jerec]

News flash! A Celtic chariot just badly damaged a fortified Gaulish Warrior in a barbarian city! This means that the attack number is just fine, but I still won't build that unit if its build cost is 80. Sorry about that, McMonkey.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Jerec
x20

.....Quite simply, they had the best in the ancient world. The only defeats they had were due to carelessness, like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. In only two campaigns was there an exception to this: Hannibal, who used all different troop types brilliantly (infantry, ranged troops, cavalry), and the Parthians, who used fast horse archers and powerful composite bows to slaughter the legions at a distance..

Only partially true. It's a bit of a myth that Rome's legions were by default superior to a well trained and ordered Successor phalanx. If the phalanx was drawn up on a level field without obstacles, and providing their flanks were not turned, Roman legions had severe difficulty defeating a Successor army. Even if the ground wasn't flat but the phalanx held a good defensive position, as at Cynoscephalae, manipular tactics struggled to defeat the phalanx. It was the initiative of a Roman officer who redirected troops to attack the flanks of Philip's position that led to the eventual rout of the Macedonians at Cynoscephalae; the Romans had taken a severe beating up to this point.

It goes without saying that the very much more mobile and better led phalanx of Alexander would have been an infinitely more formidable opponent than the slow and unwieldy later Successor amies.

1) ... IMHO the African foot shouldn't look like Greeks, but turbaned blacks.

No, they were neither black nor turbaned. The Carthaginian phalanx was formed from the Phoenician and Liby-Phoenician population; they were middle eastern or N. African in appearance and dressed and armed in much the same way as the Successor armies. The general Libyan population who fomed the light troops in Carthage's army looked much the same as they do today and were Caucasian.

The Numidian, Celtic and Iberian mercenaries in Carthage's armies were also caucasian and non-be-turbaned (is that a word? )

[McMonkey]

Excellent stuff, keep it coming!

To be completely honest I have not had time to test out the unit stats yet, I have just given them stats based on their category for now (IE Warband, Blades, Psiloi etc...). I will definitely tweaking to get the balance right. At the moment the Marian Auxiliary and Cohort still have the same stats as the early Auxiliary and Blade. It was my intention to make them superior. I was trying to get a playable version for you to test and I forgot to do this. Has been added to the TO DO list!

In answer to the other points:

1) I think Fairline has answered this one for me

2) Good point. I may give Carthage Trade earlier than the other nations as well as a cash boost. I need to look at the finances for each nation more closely, again I did not have time before sending the test version.

I wanted each nation to have a unique advantage, be it commercial, military or technological. Added to the list!

3) I am going to take a look at all the Improvement costs to get it right. I have already decided to cut barracks so that units must gain veteran status through battle (except Germanics with Sun Tzu!). The improvement maintenance cost is something I have overlooked in all my scenarios, a few minor alterations really makes balancing the books much easier!

4) The Economies work but I will have a proper look at them!

5) Units. I was quite keen on Fairlines OLD Romans but decided to use the ToT versions and I am very happy with the look now my eyes have grown accustomed to them.

6) Revealed map. I have not made my mind up about this yet but I think I may leave the whole map revealed. Both ways there are pros and cons. What do other people think about this?

7) Chariot cost will come down and or effectiveness will increase. Again this is on the list to look at and test out.

8) Civlopedia. Again, something I may have overlooked in previous scenarios, thanks for the heads up!

9) Red roads. I liked the look of these in Brown Mans Burden and thought they looked good. I'm bored of brown roads anyway. Roman roads should be paved but I don't think grey would look so good. This is a case of aesthetic preference!

10) Rich Villages. The event should provide a slave AND +100 gold. I will test it works. I know that minus gold does not show up until the end of the turn, plus gold may work the same way!?! I may make the payout a bit better too.

11) Celt Units. Now I am using CivCity I will check what every city is building. I will probably re-think this too!

Good stuff. I will fix all these issues, keep the suggestions coming, I know you must have more
I already have a big list of things!

I have been reading through Tanelorn's comments on page one as well as some books and have started adding a few more cities to Egypt. Still lots of things to add. So long as I can get a working version all I need to do is add and polish!

[McMonkey]

Just checked the Rich Village event. You do get the slave and the 100 gold immediately! Better than a slap around the face with a wet fish!

Something has just occurred to me. I have designed the game using MGE. I believe Jerec owns a copy of FW. Will the game function properly?

If not would the MGE patch fix the problem?

If it does fix the problem will it create a new one by preventing him using the FW scenario editor?

For the answer to these and many other exciting questions stay tuned

[Jerec]

My apologies, McMonkey. I do not have a version of FW, only MGE. And the gold reward does work; I just didn't notice. When you kill a village, the slave text pops up, and then a text that says, "Barbarian leader has been captured and ransomed for 0 gold." I assumed that no gold was added, and was stupid enough to not bother looking at the bank account. Sorry McMonkey!

[Jerec]

Only partially true. It's a bit of a myth that Rome's legions were by default superior to a well trained and ordered Successor phalanx.

Fairline

Did I really say that the troops making up the legion was superior to the phalanx by default? Sorry, I meant superior TACTICS, not to mention formation and training. The phalanx was no less than immovable or extremely slow, excepting Alexander's elite troops. If I remember correctly, (after pointing out my mistakes I can't trust myself anymore ) the Roman battle line was elastic, allowing 18,000 of Julius Caesar's legionaries to withstand the shock of 80,000 screaming Gaulish warriors ramming them, and after absorbing the blow actually pushing the Gauls back.

providing their flanks were not turned

Is it just me, or did you just agree with me there?

No, they were neither black nor turbaned. The Carthaginian phalanx was formed from the Phoenician and Liby-Phoenician population; they were middle eastern or N. African in appearance and dressed and armed in much the same way as the Successor armies. The general Libyan population who fomed the light troops in Carthage's army looked much the same as they do today and were Caucasian.

My bad. I said, "IMHO." I wasn't really sure of this. Thank you for catching that Fairline! I'd better start digging up info on the battle at Cynoscephalae.

McMonkey

I would think that a few barracks carefully sprinkled in Roman cities would be advisable. There was some general (can't remember the name) who saved Rome from being overrun by the Germans/Gauls, and in the process started the tradition of professional (translated into well trained) armies, not just levies handed swords and told to fight hard. Barracks would show this routine training that all Roman armies had since the anonymous's general's time.

That's it for now....

[Exile]

Disappearing Barbarian boats

Have you noticed this or fixed it?

Seems like I sent a copy of one of my own to Aggy to take a look at the hex situation; was the mobile warfare-ends-piracy thing togled? This one could use the same fix.

Aggy?

[Jerec]

Hah! I looked up the Battle of Cynoscephalae and the Greek historian Polybius of Megalopolis agrees with me!

Alright, the Romans DID get repulsed by the Macedonian phalanx in the first charge, but only because that Roman leader Flamininus was foolish enought to actually order a head-on charge against a ready and waiting phalanx.

In the end, though, Polybius agrees with me that the Romans demonstrated their superiority through flexibility by being able to flank the static, and partly broken phalanx on a rocky slope.

Also, in the first battle between a phalanx and a legion, the Battle of Heraclea, the phalanx was actually able to drive the Romans away, but suffered catastrophic losses as a result of the flexibility of the Roman line to absorb the impact of the pikes, and the ability of the Romans to replace the soldiers in the front line, allowing the Romans to fight until the pikemen dropped from sheer exhaustion.

All in all, I figure that considering the scale of the units in Civ 2, the Roman Cohort should be able to beat the phalanx on the first try since the Roman armies would win sooner or later (maybe even by attrition through the strengths of the legion's formation outlined above.

I love debating over tactics and warfare!

[Jerec]

Trying to figure out if I can actually get the hang of posting a pic...

[Jerec]

I don't think that worked...here it is again...

[Jerec]

Hmph. And again.

[Jerec]

Success!!

[Jerec]

Almost forgot to mention. I got an event text after a barb chariot attacked Adeuii. "Vercingetorix attacks near Adeuii." What in the world is that for? It's definitely not in the history books...