Campaign, and Economy balance thread.

Here I will outline my ideas for improving the balance, and flow of improving the campaign, and ask you for ideas on how on earth I could further improve this outline for the next version of Tuskmod, 1.5.3.

The first issue I want to address for the campaign balance is how easily the Roman Empires collapse. Which most would argue that it does happen a little to quickly.

Obviously dynamic garrisons gives their cities a considerable bonus when it comes to serving as serious speedbumps against the barbarian invasion, but I want to do something a little more interesting when it comes to giving them more... Depressing-fierceness when it comes to how they get to defend themselves.

The idea that I am pursuing for this is pretty simple: Add new components to the roman faction trait, Namely, provinces that have roman influence in them will have a greatly increased replenishment rate of local mercenaries, and make it so the Romans are slightly better at handling mercenary armies then others.

There are a few reasons I like this.

1. Increased local mercenary counts is a double edged sword. Sure, it gives you a better chance to quickly patch gaping holes in ones army, but it also grants attackers better staying power as they recruit troops that were supposed to be yours.
2. It makes it so roman armies will have that element of unpredictability when it comes to what will actually be in them.
3. It should cause the Roman factions to have a surprisingly interesting degree of evolving balance. Sure, the mercenaries are pretty good as starting troops (Just compare mercenary Germanic warband to Germanic band,) but once advanced troop types become readily Available throughout Europe, things start getting a lot more bleak for the Romans.
4. It also is pretty historical, if I understand correctly. The Romans had a hard time maintaining troop quality throughout this era, but they were pretty good at throwing money around to get the foreign soldiers to "Join" onto their cause.

Why I thought of this was in part due to my studying of the Sassanid survival strategy: One of the key elements to why the Sassanids are so hard to kill, from what I have seen, is because of the power of Mercenary Savran cavalry, which autoresolves extremely well, but also is one of the few units capable of Parthian shot with a crossbow.

As for the economy... I will likely exaggerate certain trends:

Industry gives very little squalor, Commerce gives very little public disorder (except spice/amber/gems, which will be the exception to the rule,) and farming causes a little less of both, but gets very weak in the later years.

At the same time, I will probably make the amount of money available from one building something that is in general.... Less.

Additionally, I am thinking of moving fertility to a 8 point system, where the most fertile land will loose a little more then 60% of its fertility.


That is all I will type up this morning....
But I am eager to see what the rest of you think.

Just had to get on here to say thanks for the awesome mod, and the hard work you put into for all our enjoyment. After trying each of the major mods I think yours finds the best ground between being fun and having balanced battles.

These changes all sound wonderful and I can't wait to try them in a fresh campaign as one of the Barbarians. It'll be nice to have the Romans actually put up a decent fight instead of collapsing right off the start. The fertility change sounds great since i think a lot of people want to play with the +1 fertility mod, but cant mix it with other startpos mods.

My mod actually isn't a startpos mod yet. There is a lot of features (That will be VERY labor intensive,) that will require me to eventually make it one, but those are going to drizzle in as I dump in the hours needed to make them work.

For now, you can use any startpos you want with tuskmod.