As “Return to Rome” comes closer and there are the Rumors it will contain a Western Roman Civilisation I think it would be funny if we share our Ideas how we think this civ could be designed.
Rome
Naval and Infantry Civilisation
Civ Bonusses
Galley line Gold cost is replaced with Wood
Unique Building “Bakery” that can enhance Food production
Militia units can be converted to Villagers (cost 25 F and takes 30 s)
Skirmishers deal +50 % Bonus damage ind Castle age, +100 % Bonus damage in Imperial Age
All Siege Units cost -30 G, -30 W
Gain a trickle of 5 G / Minute
TB
Castles provide +2 maximum Population space
UU
Legion: All-purpose well armored Infantry unit. Available from Feudal in the Barracks. Can tank some arrow damage, soft-counters Cavalry. Countered by the militia line. Comparably high Gold ratio (around 50 %). Bonus damage against Unique Units.
UTs
Cultural Adaption: Allows to train the Castle Unique Unit of a currently enemy Faction
Pax Romana: Convertable Units and Buildings in Range will automatically converted whan Building a Castle
Tech Tree
Blacksmith: All melee Attack upgrades, only Fletching for Archers, Full Infantry Armor, no Plate Barding, Full Archer Armor
Barracks: All techs
Archery range: Archer line up to Xbow, Elite Skirm, Thumb Ring, no Cav Archers, no Ele Archers, no HC
Stable: No Bloodlines, Husbanfry, no Hussars, no Cavalier, no Elite SL, no Eles
Siege Workshop: Everything but Siege Ram, Siege Onager and BBC
Castle: Everything
Monastery: Everything except Heresy
Dock: Missing everything in Imperial Age except for Dry Dock
University: Everything but Bombard Tower
Market: Everything
Economy Techs: All but Crop Rotation
Bakery
The Bakery is a Unique Building of the Romans. Whilst you have food in your Stockpile, it automatically converts accordingly high numbers of Gold into even more Food at a ratio of 1:7. The effect is capped at .amountofbakeries. * 100 F. The Rate is 1 G / Minute => 7 F / Minute for each 100 F in your Stockpile.
Costs the same as a House and has comparable stats.
Gets 25 food for building an eco building (Including Market and Dock).
Unique Technologies
Scorpion +5 attack vs cavalry. (300f/250g, 40 sec)
Siege Workshop units regenerate 10 HP/min. (750f/500g, 50 sec)
Unique Units
Legion - Anti-siege Infantry (As we don’t have any other than Eagles which is not an UU)
Cost : 60f/30g
HP : 65, 75
Attack : 7, 8
Attack Bonus : vs siege +6, +8, vs ram +2
ROF : 2.0
Armor : 0/3, 1/4
Speed : 1.2
LOS : 5
Upgrade cost : 850f/650g, 45 sec
Dromon - Warship with high range
Cost : 80w/40g
HP : 125, 150
Attack : 7, 8
Attack Bonus : vs ship/fishing ship +9, +11, vs building +7, +8, vs ram +2
Range : 7, 8
ROF : 3.0
Armor : 0/6, 0/8
Speed : 1.43
LOS : 9, 10
Upgrade cost : 750f/475g, 60 sec
Sounds kinda bad. Scorpions are really bad in TG settings.
This looks also quite weak to me. Most bonusses come in quite late and are very special. Gold for Placing TCs is… meh. Doesn’t help for Booming.
Very specific bonus and expensive for a unit that doesn’t see much use. Ofc it reduces a major weakness of that unit, but for quite high cost.
Also rarely a facor. Siege unist usually get either annihilated, get barely away with their lives (and you want to bring them back to full health asap) or aren’t even touched at all.
With that armor it will be more of an anti-archer Unit tbh.
For anti siege it’s usually enough just to have high speed and not being a cavalry unit.
For me it looks like the whole civ is basically set up to be played only Legion + Spearmen. Scorpions added if the opponent goes heavily into militia to counter these. (and none of the UTs is really necessary)
But the civ is very slow (except for the drush potential) so I don’t even see how you get to such a ressource demanding castle age comp on maps where you don’t already start with walls.
I would prefer if the civ also has some more flexible bonusses and isn’t completely relying on a Castle Infatnry UU.
I didn’t even reveal their tech tree. How can you draw conclusion?
Yeah, I know this civ looks weak. They need one more bonus that starts in Feudal Age. Or else their mid game will be terrible. An eco mostly food bonus will be great. But nothing came in my mind that time. Changed the eco bonus now.
Without that armor they can’t dive into Castle to kill Trebs. I also wanted to be a bit anti-archer as I’m planning not to give them good horse nor good skirms. BTW after revisiting the unit, I think I made their HP too high. Reduced a bit.
You didn’t reveal ???
You know, it’s not strategically useful to hide a tech tree, cause the only thing you can possibly “hide” is missings. Meaning you can only cover up half of the critiquepoints and those are thise of “THAT IS OP”.
But I didn’t claimed anything would be OP, right the opposite actually.
Your civ just didn’t had any bonus that was useful for the standard archer, knight, or CA plays. So the only plausible explanation is that it’s designed around the UU and spear line (currently the only common Infantry unit that’s viable in the midgame).
I saw you changed the civ bonus:
I don’t know where this comes from, but ok. certainly a small eco bonus. Not the strongest, but at least something. Together with the cheaper barracks useful in basically all rush openers.
Castles have way higher pierce damage than regular ranged units. Ofc Armor helps, but it’s usually just having enough HP to survive one castle volley and enough speed so it’'s hard tor the opponent to bodyblock you. Not being a cavalry is also advantageous cause in most cases the trebs are protected by some halbs. And halbs do very little to other infantry.
Yeah I’m not a fan of anti-archer infantry TBH. I know there are already some in the game, but it was already enough before the addition of the Ghulam imo.
In my design the anti-archer role is taken by cheaper siege. Ofc you can argue that your Siege Workshop discount serves the same purpose. But I don’t think it’s comparable to a direct and meaningful siege bonus.
An idea for a new foundation for a roman civ design could be the bonus of: Men-at-Arms, Long Sordsman and Two-Handed Swordsman are available one age earlier
(This idea comes from the Thread that requests for a Champion buff)
Ofc Men-ar-Arms in Dark age sounds a bit sus at first. But it could be a slightly worse version of the MAA like we have with the automatically upgraded scout lines.
“Revealed” now. 11
Actually I was busy and a bit hesitant on their tech tree. Slavs and Celts (and Sicilians) already have same Rax+SW and repeating them will be boring. Also I don’t know how strong free siege engineering could be. So I didn’t give them SO.
[ Abbreviation of Siege Engineering is censored btw]
???
Where did anyone of us said it will be OP? Even I admitted my civ is weak and I changed it a bit for that reason.
Nice observation. Indeed they don’t. My inspiration was Celts after all. But was too weak initially. Now they are slightly stronger than my first design. I think their Drush potential is even stronger than Celts. Feudal is weaker but Castle age is almost on par I’d say as they have better xbow and monk. Also direct free food helps to make knight than saving wood to make farm (at least in low-mid elo). Imperial is weaker again as eco bonus is gone but Legion is more pop efficient that Woad Raider.
Fair enough. Unlike Huskarl and Ghulam, this one doesn’t have bonus against archer. So consider them as Eagle that costs a lot of food and also is locked behind a castle.
Really liked this. Wishing this becomes a thing for everyone. But at a slightly less powerful unit. 70 HP, maybe 11 attack.
Seems a bit random.
Sounds too strong on paper.
Why? This totally ruined the civ.
Overall looks even weaker than mine. They don’t have any eco after early game. Even late game eco is below average as they lack both farm and wood upgrades. I think extra HP of scorpions should be traded with an eco bonus.
They are considered a power unit for this civ design and not as just trash killers, so decided to keep the High Cost of the power Unit. Could be tweaked for balance.
Yeah, even though it does sound strong, it’s basically another conscription. But it will have a very high cost to compensate the strong bonus.
TBH this bonus was inspired by the Romae ad Bellum mod, where it gives this effect to skirms too. So decided to keep it that way.
This is kinda by design, as historically they didn’t exist very long into the Later age. They reach their prime in early Imperial Age with basically free Elite Upgrade for Centurion and One Tech Away powerful Legionaries. But then falls off, when enemies have better economy than them.
I was thinking of giving them another upgrade for Scorpions which would turn them into Ballistas, with better HP and Armor. But decided against it as the Civ already has three UUs 11
That’s kinda underwhealming. Imo to have an Impact it needs to be high enough Scorps can’t be one-shot by the onager line counterparts anymore.
I considered that aswell, but stepped away from it as it has the potential to be kinda broken.
How I interprete your civ design I also think the civ actually would need better scorps in Imp against other infantry civs. Cause it lacks the typical lategame Infantry counters.
Wouldn’t cut the deal for Scorps in TGs…
What’s the advantage over Knights? just saving 300 F 300 G in Imp isn’t that big of a deal. They even have 1 less pierce armor than Knights or Paladins. And as it still is mostly an Infantry civ they would actually need help against either Ranged Infantry counters and/or other Infantry.
Their Skirms still lack the last Armor. would be the first time we have a UT affecting a unit that’s then still strictly worse than the FU generic one.
Ofc extra armor for the Infantry is nice. Still not enough to make the militia line viable in castle age, especially when considering the investment to go for that upgrade.
This is undewhealming for me. At this stage faster production doesn’t make that much of a difference anymore. And when you can afford that tech it won’t make a difference anyways.
Wouldn’t miss that actually… I see you want to make their Infantry more quality>quantity, but the little +1/+1 armor from a UT and 5 more HP in imp in exchange for 1 atk isn’t really making their Infnatry like “oppressive”.
Romans also were famous for their very well organized military campaigns so I don’t see why this tech referring to that should actually be missing for them.
If I reflect that right your design is basically all about “early agression” and trying to snowball that in the continueation of the game.
If you want them to make more use of the scorps in the midgame you probably need to give stronger bonusses that apply directly (heavy scorpion is super expensive, ofc it’s also a very strong upgrade for castle age measures.
What I mean is: we always are super hype waiting for things only announced, then what we really get is… So I don’t expect new civilization from antiquity along with these from medieval era, I think that will not happen.
With the UT, my idea was making them a good alternative to archer. An almost multi purpose unit when it is massed. Pair them with UU to counter mango and BBC.
What about Heavy scrops for free? I don’t think that will be OP.
