Ancient Empires: 222 BC

[Name]

@Cernel said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

@Name Title looks good. Or it could be "Known World War 2".:face_with_tongue:

An idea similar to that, but no specific words was playing in my head

Since this map is Punic War 2, instead of Punic War 1, I assume Rome has the edge over Carthage, both productively and militarily (though I know Rome almost lost that war, due to Hannibal mad skills)? Or do you intend to balance Rome vs Carthage, so that either Republic will have about 50% chance to prevail?

I generally balance the map researching (or in lack of info/due to balance concerns making up in a reasonable way) what would each territory provide in terms of valid resources. For example Sparta currently gives 55 PUs, 11 manpower, 14 supplies and 8 iron.

That in theory means that this territory alone, after a long while and careful/lucky conservation of troops, could field 11 units, of which 8 heavy infantry, though it would be a rare case to reach that. Similarly it could support 2-5 mercenary units, depending on type, and 14 supplies means 7 effective foot units (7 for upkeep, 7 for movement).

It's a special case though. Sparta in 222 BC (battle of Sellasia) fielded about 6 native heavy foot (in game terms) after major reforms (soon before that would be less than 1, only 700 hoplite class spartans were left) and a total of 20 units, most of them mercenaries, mostly due to Ptolemaic funding (the Cleomenian War, besides an attempt at Spartan restoration, was Ptolemy's proxy war against Macedon). So Sparta starts with 19 units and PUs for an extra merc. Sparta also holds Argos, but the most reasonable play (AI does the same, Cleomenes did the same) is to retreat to Sparta and hope Macedon doesn't fully commit against you, since Macedon can do a naval landing there if it chooses so. Sparta + Argos (two rather good territories) allow for an army almost that size.

Similarly Carthage and Rome will be balanced around territory potential and armies fielded at that time. This will give army and navy advantage to Rome, and PU/merc advantage to Carthage. Overall, with equal skill Rome should win most of the time 1v1. But Macedon, while the weaker of the major players, will have to fight only minors at start. So if the minors, or a majority of them are AI, Macedon could attack Rome as well and shift the balance. As it historicly, rather unsuccefully did, since those minors cooparated with Rome and confined Macedon to the Greek/Illyrian front until Carthage was defeated.

I'm very curious how far the world of this map is going to go, for example with respect to the 270BC map (like, does it get to Iran in the east and Spain in the west?). I think it is very challenging to decide where the map should stop going east, but probably not into India.

It was challenging. After initially having it a bit larger, I've cut the map to cover from Iberia to Parthia and from northern Gaul to southern Egypt. So a little further to the north, east and south compared to 270BC. Not all regions will have the same density of territories you see in the pic, since most of them will have less players.

The East will be rather interesting imo. No Bactrians or Mauryans, but those didn't move west or got any lasting occupation from the west during the timeframe. Molon (Minor - Seleucid Revolt) will be holding Media & Persia, with Parthia (Minor) to his north, Achaios (Minor - Seleucid Revolt) holding much of Anatolia and "true" Seleucids (Antiochos III) holding Syria and Mesopotamia. So no Seleucid superpower able to blitz the West or Egypt at will. There will also be Pontus and Armenia as Minors, maybe a couple more.

I always found next to impossible to adopt the "mercenary" concept within TripleA. My issue is that if you have something like mercenaries, that has a higher upkeep than your regulars, then you would almost always take mercenaries as casualties first, which would be very far from realism, as it wasn't like all mercenaries would die before any non mercenary would get a scratch (also since mercenaries are, rather, the most careful not to die on the job, and are usually your auxiliary troops, rather than the ones that hold the main line). On the other hand, making mercenaries into infrastructures (just adding power, but unable to take hits), would be too extreme.

This is an issue indeed and on the other hand it seems the autoselection of casualties prefers normal units of similar strength over mercs. For now I've just looked the other way. Maybe I could scale down PU income and mercenary costs but that could lead to mostly mercenary armies. Or maybe increasing merc purchase costs and reducing upkeep would be better.

Do you have any plans on how to deal with the fact that TripleA lacks a desertion dynamic in case of insufficient resources? I mean, when having a upkeep system, you could manage it so to build up resources for a while, then doing a massive purchase of units, beyond what you can actually maintain, then just having this huge amount of troops, since, even if they push you down to 0 for some resource, and consume more than you get of it, that is not a problem itself, as whatever you cannot pay for is free to keep. I'm guessing in this map that strategy would be offset by fuel costs (everyone getting immobilized).

I was wondering if some trigger could check if you have 0 resource and still going nevative, and remove units or something. But to my tests so far, it's generally a bad idea to hold resources. It will be a long while till you can field too many at once, since PUs and especially Manpower are usually on shortage and 1 or 2 more units can often make a difference. Fuel is not working 100% as intended yet, since you can slowly stack it during times you aren't at full unit potential or don't move a lot.

Do you mean there is not a default terrain? I much suggest having a default terrain; it helps toning down complexity and avoid having a useless default for the battlecalculator. Maybe you can have a default (absent) terrain as a "Mixed" terrain, meaning all those regions that, for example, have none of the terrains covering at least 50% of the territory.

Does it have to be named default?

Are you sure you can have all units representing 1,000 soldiers (I would call them "warriors" or "fighters" or "miles", as "soldiers" is a late medieval definition)? I don't know about ancient times, but in medieval times a mounted sergeant would cost about 4 times one on foot, and, if we move to knights (talking about the low knights, that eventually disappeared in favour of men at arms, not the more expensive high knights), the cost is usually about 8 times a foot sergeant. For Napoleonic times, the ratios between infantry and cavalry costs per men were about the same. So, if matters were similar for Ancient Times, as well, and you keep the same manpower for both infantry and cavalry, I guess you'll have to price the cavalry units something like 4 times the infantry units, that would mean you would have to give them some enormous superiority in stats or abilities, to justify the cost (think in the regular WWII games if an infantry would cost 3 PUs and an armour 12 or more PUs, instead of the usual 5 or 6).

Cavalry will be slightly more expensive than heavy infantry, since it's not stronger, only faster/canBlitz. But I see no big deal. Horses will be generally more rare than iron, and most armies were levies providing their own equipment, so going by that a horseman would be a levied upper class person able to maintain his horse(s) at no additional cost to the state. Since 1000 cavalry would in most cases beat 1000 infantry, we could imagine some of the cavalry manpower are servants, animal handlers etc. Same for War Elephant units.

[Cernel]

@Name No, what I meant is whether or not you are planning to have any territories without effects, since it looks like you have all the main terrain types I can think of. Only for flavour, it is also possible naming a territory effect, but leaving it with no modifiers, instead of having the default as none.

[Name]

@Cernel I'm not sure yet, nor I completely understood you.

none is the default. Could I give it modifiers and/or rename it, while it still is the default on battle calculator?

[Cernel]

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

none is the default. Could I give it modifiers and/or rename it, while it still is the default on battle calculator?

No.

[RoiEX]

@redrum
Well there seems to be a "feature" like this for github (see), but unfortunately doesn't work here in the forum

[Name]

I'm working on the notification screens, but some images refuse to load, while another in that place, same size and format, could.

[Cernel]

@Name How is the image called? When I collaborated on the WAW update, I discovered that images will fail to load if you have full stops in them (like "B.Transport").

[Name]

@Cernel I've tried SocialWar.png and Social_War.png and neither worked.

[Cernel]

@Name That makes really no sense, or at least the problem is surely not in the name. No idea.

[Name]

@Cernel Found the issue.

SocialWar, Social_War not valid.
social_war, socialwar, Social_war valid.

So it seems it only accepts one capital letter, I guess as the first one.

[redrum]

@Name I would recommend avoiding capital letters in image and file names. The reason is different operating systems handle them differently and it can cause issues with your map if you say develop on Windows and someone on a Mac tries to download and play it.

[Name]

@redrum What about folder names?

[redrum]

@Name I would follow this structure: https://github.com/triplea-maps/the_pact_of_steel/tree/master/map

Personally, I don't like capital letters in the folder names either but that is the way it already is. Generally, spaces and capital letters can cause issues in folder/file names so ideally are avoided where possible.

[Cernel]

@redrum said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

@Name I would recommend avoiding capital letters in image and file names. The reason is different operating systems handle them differently and it can cause issues with your map if you say develop on Windows and someone on a Mac tries to download and play it.

How about the territory names, like "Heraclea_Pontica.png" in 270BC. And that one already swaps a space for an underscore, since it is "Heraclea Pontica", in the game. Also it is even a standard way to name units, in TripleA, putting a capital letter in the middle of the name, since you cannot have spaces, and underscores look really not good. Like, in the TripleA assets themselves you have "aaGun.png".

[Cernel]

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

@Cernel Found the issue.

SocialWar, Social_War not valid.
social_war, socialwar, Social_war valid.

So it seems it only accepts one capital letter, I guess as the first one.

Just out of curiosity, can you try a single capital letter, but not in first position. I wonder if the issue is having more than a capital letter or having it not in first position.

I guess you are not on Windows, as I've never met something like that.

[Name]

@Cernel tried socialWar, didn't work. Could in be specific to docs/images? I'm on windows 7.

[Cernel]

@Name So, how can you see the "aaGun.png" unit images, assuming you do.

EDIT: Nevermind. As I said, in WAW I could not see images with a full stop in the notes, but I was able to see them as unit images in the game. Seems like these strange issues happen only when you want to show images in game notes, or such. No idea why.

[Name]

@Cernel never had an issue with such. I tried something else, could be the case:

<img src="socialwar.png"/> in notifications
but socialWar in docs/images.

It worked this way.

[Cernel]

@Name Well, I believe in windows "socialWar" and "socialwar" are the same, in file names, so that works. However, it will not work in case sensitive systems and it may not work if you zip the map.

However, in Windows I believe that should work if you have socialwar and socialWar, associated in all 4 possible combinations. I never had this issue you are having.

[Hepps]

@Name Looks tantalizing. Can't wait to see more as you continue to progress.