Support, Bug Reports and Hot Fixes

[Philadelphos]

- Thanks for signalling the missing placement text. I think I've found the error and will very soon make a corrected file available.
- Vandalia should have a settlement, maybe you are mistaken. Please note that this is a split region. You have a southern part with the capital Calisia and a smaller northern part with the port in modern East Prussia. There are a number of reasons why this was done, but the most important one is the hard coded limit of 199 regions. Another one is for trade reasons.
- I guess there is no mod so far where the battle AI could not be better. But we have recently changed the formations, implementing Sinuhet's AI formations version 7.0. These have usually a deeper and not so wide deployment. If there a more people who think that this is not the best option, let me know and maybe we will get back to the previous solution. Maybe you can start by describing what exactly is disturbing you?
- If you are playing as the Germans this is quite normal, because all your neighbors got a lot of trouble with their more southern neighbors. In fact, it wasn't before Caesar that foreign armies invaded Germany. So I guess you'll have to wait a while or move south by yourself, just like the Cimbri and Teutons did. If you want to get in real trouble, start a war with all your neighbors at the same time. Playing on a higher difficulty level might also help to pep it up.

[Krauser83]

- Your explanation of Vandalia makes sense, thanks.

- The battles are really easy. The AI does weird things. Sometimes moves some units forward while moving others back. In sieges a couple of units will attack/defend. The rest will sit in TC. Sometimes a unit will simply stand next to my unit and not attack. Sometimes my unit will stop attacking, ish. Kind of disobey orders. It's hard to explain.

- I failed to mention that both my battle and campaign difficulties are on very hard. There is a total lack of aggresion by the comp thus far. Sure, I could attack everyone at once, but that wouldn't be entirely realistic either. It's not strategically sensible. I can do it in this mod and get away with it, but ideally I would be attacked, things would go more according to the idea of non-pacification, etc. I wonder if this mod is designed to be less aggressive so as to be more realistic in some ways.

I'm not complaining. Again, I appreciate everything. Just trying to offer some constructive criticism.

[Philadelphos]

- Ok

- If you're an expert, everything becomes easy. There are some tricks I can always use as a last resort, because I know that the ai is programmed to act in a certain way. Sometimes it is really stupid, for example when they run around as targets for my archers. Other times they do very sneaky and/or seemingly intelligent things, and it may get really unpredictable. It would take a huge team and years of work to eliminate all stupid and predictable moves of the ai. And "predictable" may have many meanings here. Some behaviou patterns are easily understandable after 10 battles, others only after thousands. Yet once you got it, they become first an element of experience and finally of boredom. This is why new games tend to have a certain advantage, as long as the ai is at least decent. But you are new to this mod, so you should get enough fun from it, otherwise you'll stop playing.
At least, from what you mention, I can see that two elements are working exactly as they should. You write that the ai divides its forces during siege battles. This is intended, because one part is meant to defend/attack the walls and the other one is bound to defend the plaza/carry the final assault on the plaza. I guess this is even hard-coded.
Then you write that your units disobey orders and this is again a programmed behaviour, because your troops are Barbarians. If you had better trained and more civilized troops it would happen much less. In any case, you need to keep your eyes on them. Many times, when they stop fighting, it will be enough to repeat your orders and they'll start again.

- I think you have definitely chosen the wrong faction for what you ask. This game is arranged around the Mediterranean Sea and that's where most of the action takes place. If you played for example Epirus, you'd see attacks almost every turn. This is designed to be much more aggressive than vanilla. So is the entire mod, but in some cases it just won't work, because if we trigger a faction at war with three neighbors, the fourth is out of trouble. And since we take into account the historic situation of 280 BC, the Germans are quite safe, because nobody went to war with them for another 170 years.
Of course you can play those more periferic factions too, hoping to have fun, but don't expect them to be at the center of every war. The Germans are designed to do some slow expansion and harrass their neighbors, but they'll never be under attack in the early stages. That said, it may be true that they are still too strong compared to their neighbors and thus I'll try to weaken them some more in the next edition. The same may also apply to the Iberians, but this is more critical, because if I weaken them too much they'll soon be crushed between Carthage, Gaul and Rome. And again you need to understand that each time I weaken a faction, it makes the situation more comfortable for the neighbors.
Actually this game is designed to develop mostly along historic events and, as many test runs have shown, it largely does so. But this is only true as long as the ai is in charge of the central factions. A human player will always disrupt the equilibrium one way or another. And I think this is what really brings the fun. After all, who wouldn't like to change history, to see what would have happened if n.n. hadn't lost that decisive battle or siege?

[Philadelphos]

I'm not complaining. Again, I appreciate everything. Just trying to offer some constructive criticism.

I'm currently studying a viable solution for getting the Germans more involved. Since you played them, you might help me with some of your experience.
In reality I tried to make the game more interesting for them by adding a lot more rebels in the German forests. Now my question is how you were able to deal with this?

Were these rebels more of a challenge or just an annoyance for you? Did they sometimes go on the offensive? Or were they at least able to put up some serious resistance when you attacked? Did they sometimes bring you in trouble or were they all too easy to conquer? How are they doing now? Are they still around? How many of them are popping up in your area? Do you think that it's too much or not enough of them? What is their greatest weakness in battle?

Thanks, if you answer some of these questions, it would be very helpful.

[Krauser83]

I understand your explanation of the AI, but I really think that it's a problem. It somehow manages to be even easier than vanilla AI. I feel like something is wrong, even though your explanations seem logical. I understand about the campaign map AI, but...something is left to be desired.

I appreciate that you created lots of rebels to raise the difficulty. It would seem that here is where we reach an impasse. I always change the rebel spawn values to 999. I don't blame you in any way for this issue. This is about my personal preference. I just think it's silly that rebels can be made up of such impressive troops with such great gear and experience and that they can constantly respawn, when full-fledged nations can simultaneously be incredibly weak, despite having an entire economy and thousands of citizens providing support.

[Philadelphos]

Now I start to understand the problem: If you changed the rebel spawn value your German campaign is missing one decisive element.

Rebels are an important challenge for all factions, but for none as much as for the Germans.

I guess we could debate our definition of rebels. The game calls them brigands most of the time. But I see them, especially in the Barbarian area, more as small independent tribes. These can be serious trouble for the major players.
When you're talking about full-fledged nations you cannot seriously refer to Germany in the 3rd century BC. There were only small unorganized tribes then and we don't even know their names for that period. That's what I tried to represent when I gave them so many rebels. They need to rise from the deep of the forest to become a nation and that should cost some time and blood, as I programmed it.
Btw. in my current game (playing Epirus) the Germans haven't yet conquered one city.

My hope is that you have more luck with your next faction.

[Krauser83]

thx

[Tartaros]

Nice mod! Playing it on alex I've noticed the family don't die. They go past 100 and at some point their age resets to 0 at which point their portrait changes to the young version, then they just keep aging from 0.

[Lucius479]

I'm testing 1.8 version and the historical battles doesn't works, CTD problem or script error (example: RTH/data/world/maps/battle/custom/Syracuse/descr_battle.txt, at line 113, column 1 Trying to create a settlement with no name. This isn't allowed). Imperial campaign seems works well with "RomeTW.exe", but I find that with "RomeTW-BI.exe" or "RomeTW-ALX.exe" (I can't remember) when start the campaign the game crashed. I just wanted to share and report these failures. Greetings to RTH team and great job with this mod.

[Philadelphos]

Hi Lucius479,
thanks for reporting. I'm currently preparing version 2.0 for launch (in a week or so) and I will check and fix the problems you mention.

Stay in touch,
Philadelphos

[Lucius479]

Thanks to you, and thanks for ignore my bad English, I'm out of practice, and finally, thanks for all the work on this mod. I will follow this thread, Greetings.

[Kirra]

Running RTH v2.0 Everything running great had many battles no drama....except in the faction summary window when i click on senate tab it CTD,all other tabs are fine
Not sure if this is important but only installed RTW v1.5 no Barbarian,no Alexander.(Like it said in the instructions for installing Non-Steam Version).If you need more info let me know.

OK upgraded to Barbarian 1.6 still CTD even when starting new campaign.....upgraded to Alexander 1.9 same thing still CTD
I temp deleted RTH folder & tried Vanilla version runs OK...placed RTH folder back getting CTD again.
Also when clicking senators office list under any overview tab it crashes.....Hope this was any Help because part of the reason not playing RTW2 was the Diplomacy aspect.

BTW its great to be going backwards (thanks CA)...to be able to play this amazing mod ,also love the loading screens.

[Philadelphos]

Don't click the Senate tab. It is disabled and will always crash to desktop. We already put that warning in some places, but it's never enough.

Thanks for appreciating the mod. I hope you enjoy it for a long time.

[Kirra]

Don't click the Senate tab. It is disabled and will always crash to desktop. We already put that warning in some places, but it's never enough.

Thanks for appreciating the mod. I hope you enjoy it for a long time.

Doh...thnx for clearing that up,probably would've taken me just as long to find the warning as it was to upgrade+test.Anyway no harm done.Cheers.

[Philadelphos]

It is the same for all mods that have only one Roman faction. The Senate is not working with any mod, except those that have kept the original three/four Roman factions: Julii, Scipii, Brutii, and Senate.

RTH has only one Roman faction, which allows us to include a number of additional factions you won't find in vanilla: Epirus, Hellenic Kingdoms, Eastern Kingdoms.

[mjsanta83]

JMJ -

I had a weird bug. Playing as Rome (pre-Marian) I had a bug when taking two cities. One was Massilia, year 262, taking it from the Greek cities. I waited for the city to surrender (it did without a fight) but then the game crashed no matter which option I picked (occupy, enslave, exterminate). When I reloaded the game and then attacked it worked fine. Two things I noticed after; there was a Greek general outside the city that took part in the battle (he survived), and the city had a Greek market and was showing a market in the build options that was greyed out. I destroyed the Greek market and rebuilt the Roman one.

The second city belonged to the Epirotes; I believe it is the other city they start with on the Greek mainland. Same problem, waited them out and then it crashes no matter what option I pick. Again, I reloaded and attacked the city.

Also; can you not retreat while besieging a city? At the beginning of the game there is a Roman general near Carthage. I hired some mercenaries and besieged rebel held Zama. But when the rebels attacked I wanted to retreat and attack somewhere else but instead my whole army was killed without a fight.

YBIC
Mike

[Philadelphos]

Hi Mike,

thanks for reporting in such detail. I never wait for a city to surrender, so I didn't notice that bug before.

Regarding your description, the Greek market and the greyed-out market in the build options should be no problem. This is due to the fact that Massilia at the start has both a trader and a market which is done to give it an extra trade bonus. If you destroy the market and rebuild it the trader will disappear.

The Greek general outside the city should be no problem neither.

My first suspects in this case fall on the ancillary system. When you capture Massilia you should get a specific ancillary which might be damaged somehow. But since you report the same thing for Ambrakia too, I think there must be another reason. I have to study the problem to find the cause and come up with a solution.

Regarding your other problem, there is no bug, but a vanilla RTW game mechanism: When you retreat from a battle, your army flees to a safe spot in the vicinity, usually a city or a fort. If there is none available, your whole army may also perish, especially if they stand deep in enemy territory. This is what happened to your army at Zama. Before risking a battle, your general Regulus should first secure a safe place for retreat.

[Alavaria]

Few things I noticed:
1. The Recruits' Morale Bonus on buildings doesn't work
2. The Population Loyalty Bonus on buildings doesn't work either
3. Pontus: The Phalanx Pikemen and the Bronze Shield Pikemen have different shield values (5 vs 2) which is interesting...

[Philadelphos]

Thanks for reporting. I'll check it before the next release.

[Alavaria]

FYI, Pontus can build paved roads but it has the placeholder SHOULD NOT APPEAR description.

Also, your port buildings line... actually RTW seems to ignore the Trade Fleet given in EDB. The Harbor (which should not have any) has 1 trade fleet. The port (which should have one) actually has two etc. Seems to be a hardcoded thing, RS2 tried to give 2,3,4 fleets but it was still 1,2,3...