Discuss Year of the six emperors (238) - Great battles of Late Antiquity [RoR]
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Creator here, since it seems the scenario won’t work in Ror no matter what I try, I’ll share here the files in case someone wanted to play it.
Unzip the content in *Age of Empires 2 DE/”a long number”/modes/Pompeii/resources/_common/campaign*. It’s a local folder so it should work, at least it works for me.
In the meanwhile if someone knows what I may did wrong I’m here (I asked in many servers but no luck for now). Also devs, please make this JSON thing a bit more intuitive and less repetitive/needlessly complicated… Idk make an interface maybe, like it’s 2026, instead of me having to put x and y coordinates for text/images in the slideshow like I know where (1340, 520) is on the screen or having to guess directories with trial and error?
Have you tried making the name shorter? I can’t even use the files you uploaded because the full name of the campaign is so long that the file path exceeds what my computer will allow. Even if that’s not the problem you’re facing…please make the name shorter 
It was shorter initially, I remade and renamed it during multiple attempts, I’m gonna try again today but my guess is that it’s something Ror related cause never an aoe2 scenario have given me these problems.
Maybe it works this time, it worked for me even without the file in the local folder, just simply downloading the mod.
lorenzomarina12 has just made this mod in RoR, and it works.
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Okay, I finally got around to playing this, and I’m gonna be honest…it’s a bit rough.
Now, I played as the Gordians. The biggest problem I encountered was that Rome’s AI stopped working the moment I defeated yellow. It continued to train Praetorians from a single academy and otherwise just sat there and allowed Maximinus to roll over it. Existing units only moved to react to direct attacks. They had an army in Africa that just sat there doing nothing while Rome was destroyed, including a loaded transport ship, and a few triremes in the harbor that ignored Maximinus’s navy attacking from the other side. Rome only resumed moving when Maximinus was defeated and Rome became an enemy again, by which point the entire city had already been flattened and I just needed to clean up the units in Africa.
The Gordian version of the town conquering mechanic had issues as well. Primarily that it largely rewards Iron Age tech unlocks but you can’t age up until you control ten towns. It made the entire mechanic feel unrewarding and pointless prior to then, and even after that point it felt more like a punishment for not being quick enough than a reward because enemy factions begin in Iron Age and don’t have to jump through the same hoops for techs. So you’re constantly being attacked by enemies with techs you flat out cannot research because you haven’t discovered which of 21 towns has it. I don’t understand the purpose of hamstringing the player like this. Frankly, fighting up an age is never a fun mechanic in the first place and locking techs behind random towns took that to another level. Not sure how different it is as other factions.
Donativums are mentioned multiple times but it’s never actually specified how or where to find them. The one northwest of Rome is also inaccessible due to the terrain, and there’s one on an island I only just realized was there while double checking things for my feedback because it’s so hidden behind the ruins there. It’s easily possible to miss your chance to choose an alliance because you aren’t aware they’re something scattered around the map and not something you build or earn through a side quest.
There’s no defined means of defeating each player. Even after leveling Maximinus’s base I had to waste a lot of time hunting down random units around the map; it would help if each enemy resigned when a specific and predefined objective is fulfilled just to avoid wasting time. It doesn’t need to be easy, just clear.
Then there were the auxiliaries which felt like an unnecessary complication included just for the sake of complexity:
-They’re not worth it. It’s a constant drain on your gold and even using the units tied to them runs the risk of losing them all if you somehow miss a payment by accident. Granted, you shouldn’t be missing payments by accident, by why run the risk when you can just ignore those units instead? And sure, you can reset the tribute price with one of the (limited number) of donitavums, but again, why not just use something else that’s less costly and risky?
-As Gordians I went all in on hoplites because it was safer and once I understood where the rebels spawn I walled it off and surrounded it with towers then never made a payment again. I didn’t even realize my auxiliaries might have special abilities because it’s never mentioned anywhere and I’d written them off before I could even view the tooltips in the Archery Range. Ironically, I actually picked them because I saw they had horse archers, but by the time I got Iron Age I’d already decided to just save my gold and invest in something I actually had access to.
-Maximinus doesn’t even get good units in exchange for his gold. Stripping armor and dodging projectiles do not make up for the fact that the units in question are Tool Age units with the stats to match. Though, this is in large part because the balancing between units in AOE was horrendous, with later units having absurd amounts of HP and attack that early ones can’t keep up with. And again, you’ll only know they can do these things if you think to check the barracks and stable descriptions of units that look identical to their generic counterparts.
-So, the only faction that should even have a reason to bother with this is Rome (given that Praetorians are their best unit and presumably spawn right on top of their two leaders if you miss a payment, but I haven’t tested that part.) And their payments are pretty high. I’m guessing the tax mechanic compensates for that, but I’ve only played Gordians.
Aside from that, there’s some other bugs:
-If you choose the Gordians, Gordianus II’s name actually reverts to Hadrian, which…made it kind of difficult to figure out who I was meant to keep alive and who I was meant to send to Rome/Maximinus as a hostage once the “younger” Gordian spawned in.
-The auxiliary tribute objectives initially auto-complete without actually requiring you to submit the gold, causing the price to go up more quickly since you can’t wait until the last minute. Which is a problem because it eventually stops doing that and you have to make the payments manually again having skipped the cheapest ones in rapid succession.
-I normally don’t harp on typos, but this one is actually important: the objective for tribute to auxiliaries says to send them “more than X gold” instead of “X more gold” even when the amount is a multiple of 100, which changes the meaning of the sentence to imply you must pay them an amount more than what is listed. So if they ask for 200, you would need to send them 300 to satisfy their request. I’m guessing this is because it increments upwards in values of 10 but tribute can only be made in increments of 100, so in nine times out of ten it’s technically accurate, but in that one time where it’s not it tricks you into wasting 100 gold.
-Regional units don’t have a proper tooltip. Your own have no description at all. Other players’ regional units have their generic description with no mention of their bonuses. I genuinely had no idea what was meant to be different about anything but the Praetorians until I noticed the others have proper descriptions at their training locations while writing this, as Praetorians actually got a description under hints. I don’t even know what Numidian Horse Archers do because they’re an Iron Age unit and I have no save to load to check their description in the Archery Range.
As far as advice goes, these are my suggestions:
-Give each enemy player a specified defeat condition under objectives that doesn’t require hunting down every military and civilian unit on the map. Killing their leaders, destroying specific buildings, etc. Anything works.
-Specify that Donitavums need to be located around the map.
-Rework the conquering mechanic. In its current state it’s just frustrating and feels like an arbitrary restriction on the player. I think it really needs to be reexamined to find a different way of paying off than granting Iron Age and unlocking technologies if the enemy is going to have access to both of those things from the start for free, particularly in the case of the Gordians who can be seriously screwed over depending on the order they conquer towns in. To my understanding Rome gets gold and Maximinus gets pop cap; those rewards are probably fine as is, but the Iron Age thing is is still kind of problematic.
-Buff auxiliaries and either cap the tribute or provide a means of permanently securing their allegiance. At least for Maximinus and the Gordians; the situation with the Praetorians makes sense from a historical and mechanical perspective and they’re actually a good unit. For the others, in their current state they are actively not worth using and become worse to maintain the longer the scenario continues, incentivizing the player to find a means of neutralizing the threat early and forgetting about them instead of paying and fielding them.
I see, so it’s all shit as always. Thank you for the feedback, when I feel like wasting my time I’ll implement these changes.
If I thought your scenarios are shit I wouldn’t keep playing them or giving such detailed feedback. You make some of the best scenarios on the workshop, comparable to the guys that’ve gotten hired by the actual team. I rarely even touch AOE scenarios because the balance is so different from AOE2 but I played this because you made it.
I’m not trying to bring you down. Look at it this way: you’re not releasing a finished product, you’re releasing a public beta, and those always have flaws and things that can be worked on. When I’m writing these discussion posts I’m giving feedback, not writing a review, so I tend to focus on the things that I believe could use work, but by the same token anything I don’t mention is something I think you did well and which doesn’t need further attention.
Maybe it’s a difference in mindset, but as a writer that’s what I expect from an editor going through my writing. I don’t need them glazing me; I need to know what I should improve on. It can be frustrating to read that type of feedback, I know, and I’ve certainly gotten heated reading some of the constructive criticism I’ve received. Ultimately, not all of it is going to be valid, either. I’ve made the call before that advice I received was mistaken or too biased and elected to ignore it at times, and you’re free to make that call with anything anyone tells you about your scenarios too.
But reading through it and making those judgements about what is and isn’t good advice will absolutely make you a better developer, even if you decide in the end that you were right from the start.
Yeah it wasn’t against you, it’s just that it’s a lot of work and it still doesn’t work in the end. I thought this was my most polished one but from what you said it basically seems like nothing works. I should redesign units, mechanics and balance. Basically only the map (?) is ok.
I don’t revisit Ror very often but the more I wait the more I forget about the scenario and it’s harder to fix it later since everything is buried in triggers and you often break more than what you fix by changing one of them.
Right now I’m polishing Dihya to be accessible to all players, on standard it will basically be a cruise but I’m sure something won’t work. And it’s not about feedback, it’s a standard I set for myself, but this game is very easy to break and hard to fix as Devs are showing.
It would be frustrating if I did this for money, go figure doing this under these conditions. Nowadays passion is the worst thing that can happen to you but if you’re a writer you’ll know that already.