field of glory EMPIRES

[BlackAdderBG]

Mediocre game with some potential that will never be realized.

 

[Axioms]

So apparently the AI for FOG2 doesn't know what to do without any skirmishers in their weird hardcoded skirmisher phase. I literally wiped 3500 guys with 0 losses by skirmishing their medium infantry to death.Never even engaged with my line troops. And if you take away my line troops it was a pretty even fight.

 

[Axioms]

Mediocre game with some potential that will never be realized.

Could be worse, could be total trash like Imperator. Hopefully Johan resigns in disgrace.

 

[Axioms]

So I a finally hit Empire on Turn 48 in my new third difficulty level game. I had a great start but Carthage was massively more powerful so the early boost I got from not getting dogpiled ended up not helping that much. I got "Nero" as a ruler and though I'd trade his +1 health trait or +2 diplomacy trait in an instant for a +2 admin trait his +3 mil trait is ungodly. I'm about to quickly grab 3 objectives right after hitting empire, though I'll likely continue to not take Illyricum. When is that ever a good choice lol? Maurya is leading heavily but once my full Empire bonus, including becoming glorious and entering a golden age kick in I'll be leading. I might not end up beating my campaign early win record as badly as I thought but probably on like turn 60 or 65 I'll win. Still a slight gain while having raised difficulty. The strong Carthage thing plus Maurya being stronger this time really hurts. Meanwhile Successor states continue to be weak trash. Do they ever do well lol?

 

[Axioms]

FoG2 knowledge.

So as a FoG2 person, can you explain why the AI just lets their generals sit around getting slaughtered by my slingers for like 7 turns? Is the AI confused by having mediocre skirmishers on its side thinking its doing something to fight me when its not?

 

[Inspectah]

FoG2 knowledge.

So as a FoG2 person, can you explain why the AI just lets their generals sit around getting slaughtered by my slingers for like 7 turns? Is the AI confused by having mediocre skirmishers on its side thinking its doing something to fight me when its not?

In my experience it's all about phases. The AI goes skirmsher vs skirmsher and avoids breaking formation. I haven't tried it on Empires yet but harassing a line till they decide to charge my troops in better position was always my jail-free card when a failing a campaign in FoG2

 

[Axioms]

FoG2 knowledge.

So as a FoG2 person, can you explain why the AI just lets their generals sit around getting slaughtered by my slingers for like 7 turns? Is the AI confused by having mediocre skirmishers on its side thinking its doing something to fight me when its not?

In my experience it's all about phases. The AI goes skirmsher vs skirmsher and avoids breaking formation. I haven't tried it on Empires yet but harassing a line till they decide to charge my troops in better position was always my jail-free card when a failing a campaign in FoG2

So it's intentional? Shouldn't the AI realize when it has little or no skirmish power and try to march to your line? Worst case they don't catch you but when moving it prevents skirmishers from getting the stationary bonus, greatly limiting casualties.

 

[Axioms]

One issue I've been having is that your leadership is such a massive modifier. If you get a good leadership you are vastly more powerful. I wish they'd have assigned leadership values for starting the campaign and not random ones. Rome for instance is totally random. The party names don't even mean anything, so you might think if you see such and such as your party your game will go one way or another but no, the modifiers are distinct from the parties in their randomness. And these modifiers are absolutely massive. In some cases you might for the same nation have a gulf, a void, an abyss even, of 3x in experience gain. +50% vs -50% is the scope of the military modifiers. The military modifiers have a similar gap of 3x in equipment values as well a difference of +4 or -4 in the force leader pool and +2 or -2 in army logistics.


For the Military trait at +3/-3:
+4/-4 Leaders
-50%/+50 experience needed
+50/-50% equipment bonus
+2/-2 army logistics

For the Admin trait at +3/-3:
+/-15 loyalty
-/+20% decadence
+/-15% taxation
+/-10% infrastructure

Imagine getting a leader with just the worst admin trait. Might as well just quit.
You can get as many as 3 traits, and they can all be positive.
There appears to be no easy way to mod a save or scenario to force certain things if you don't like the random stuff.

You can also get various other traits like frugal that has a food penalty but lowers decadence or charismatic which gives free +4 free units and 10 loyalty. 10 loyalty is a big deal. Reformer buffs progress token chance by 20% and increases legacy gain. Legacy gain doesn't help you win but it buffs your score.

Land Owner Commerce +3:
+10% decadence
+20% commerce
+10% food
+10% infrastructure

Okay I'm bored of this. I found the file with all the traits but its unreadable. When will developers learn to separate mechanics from localization? 100% cancer.

 

[Axioms]

I'm sort of listening to Tom Chick play this game on his stream, though he recorded a bit ago not today. Not only does he sound awful, his personality is terrible and his knowledge of anything related to Greece or Rome is cringeworthy. He literally knows *nothing* about either the game, despite insistent he read the manual, or history. Also he doesn't know what Belares is.

 

[Axioms]

I just legitimately broke the FoG2 AI. I suffered a whopping 3 casualties, unfortunate luck during the skirmish phase against the 2 lousy guys they had. I redid that part to to get 0 casualties in the skirmish phase even though I didn't realize the melee phase would break yet. I won on turn 7, because all I did, even after the low ammo penalties kicked in, was surround the AI medium infantry line 8 men on each end unit, ideally Velites over skirmisher cav for the higher damage, and grind down their entire main line including 4 generals. I accidentally broke the 4th general early triggering the win condition or I woulda got the 5th next turn. I killed 46% of their army, like 8000 men for, after the save scum for the Velites, no losses. The AI *literally* did nothing once its 2 skirmishers died. Reinforcements showed up 50% and 75% of the way through but after their initial move phase also did nothing. I churned through like 10 of their 11 main line units including the 4 generals. They took 0 actions every turn.

 

[razvedchiki]

The Stockholm syndrome of paradox is strong in this thread.

 

[Axioms]

So I finally played the game at D5 and then D7 after talking shit on the Matrix forums. While things slow down a bit because of the wild disparities in HCV/DEC ratio its still not that difficult. My major issues came from a commitment to not play battles out in FoG2. It speeds the game up dramatically but both army composition and and the costs of attrition vary intensely from manual battles. A bad roll can cost you a fucking top tier experienced legion. Meanwhile in FoG2 I rarely even get disordered legions much less fragmented or routed or stack wiped ones.

 

[Morkar Left]

Played yesterday as Markomannen (the guys who come with a historical trollface as banner) till 190 BC. I lost ultimately. I played without using FoG 2.

Fucking Cherusker and later Saxons brought me to fall. And revolts ofc. But mostly Cherusker. Couldn't get rid of them and they were always a pain in my ass. The cost of attrition was too much.

Rome was the strongest force basically holding Italy and a bit beyond. Karthago was still alive. Once Karthago was conquered by - I think numibia - and only present in Spain. Later on they got Karthago back - I suspect through rebellion.

It seems they patched diplomacy? Can't find anything about it in the patch-notes. It's now possible to become allies, cooperation and becoming vassals. Hadn't seen this before at my quick glance after installation. There's no tribute demands and I didn't encounter any unusual behaviour.

After your defeat you can still "play" along and eventually come back as a faction. I guess through rebellion.

Fun game so far!

 

[Axioms]

Auto-resolve makes the game significantly more difficult, or perhaps merely a lot slower. The real life per turn time drops drastically, though. So it's basically a trade. Also arguably ups the difficulty.

 

[Stone Dog]

It's now possible to become allies, cooperation and becoming vassals

It was already possible at launch. The big issue is not being able to "cede" land in any way whatsoever, followed by not being able to force a defeated enemy to become a client state (vassalization requires peace at this moment). Since expanding carelessly is really bad for your decadence, wars (especially defensive ones, since the AI is pretty aggressive even with no chance of even competing with me) are extremely annoying.

As a sidenote, how are you all dealing with the pop/building micro? It was manageable at the beginning, but having now 16+ provinces it's starting to get really bad.

 

[Axioms]

It's now possible to become allies, cooperation and becoming vassals

It was already possible at launch. The big issue is not being able to "cede" land in any way whatsoever, followed by not being able to force a defeated enemy to become a client state (vassalization requires peace at this moment). Since expanding carelessly is really bad for your decadence, wars (especially defensive ones, since the AI is pretty aggressive even with no chance of even competing with me) are extremely annoying.

As a sidenote, how are you all dealing with the pop/building micro? It was manageable at the beginning, but having now 16+ provinces it's starting to get really bad.

I never got so far into the game without hitting the early win condition that I had 16 provinces. I assume you really do mean provinces and not regions.

 

[Stone Dog]

Now that I'm checking, it's actually 23. I underestimated the need for culture buildings and was sort of gang-banged at the start by the AI. Also deciding to expand north because I was fed up with minor states declaring war on me wasn't particulary wise.

 

[Axioms]

I don't think I've ever played passed turn 50 more than once, the initial accidental win I had as Rome. Gonna work on a Rome game soon where I do. I paused to see if harder difficulties were any more intense. Very little except for the decadence penalties. Auto-resolve is also very inferior to FoG2 as far as conquest per turn. Takes way less time, though.

 

[Axioms]

For the first time I took a no FoG2 free win card campaign as Rome on D1 with a very strong ruling party. ADM3/MIL3/Arch. Arch is amazing with Rome. At least as good as Charismatic and better than Frugal for sure. I managed to take Italia Superior, Italia Inferior, and Aemilla. I'm in the year 301 and haven't moved yet but of course I'll just be running back north of Rome anyways probably so no more territory gains. I have a screenshot but I can't figure out how to upload. Do I have to link to an online source?

I turned Glorious just this turn for conquering Apulia and getting a tier 1 token gain. I'm thinking I might win by turn 40 but that I'll also play the game out to at least turn 100, 70 is previously the farthest I got when I accidentally won an early legacy victory.

Its much faster in real time but much slower in game turns to play the FoGE resolution. Using manual battles I've gotten all of Cisalpina, Corsica, and Sicily by turn 21 on top of Italy. I think I might be able to shave a turn or two off my current 9 turn record if I resolved battles myself. This is because you can use much cheaper skirmisher superiority based armies in FoG2 battles vs legion and Alae heavy armies required by the rules of FoGE battle resolution. So you can run something like 2 legions, 2 Alae, and then 4 Velites and 4 Skirmish Cavalry, and run 3 of those armies whereas currently I'm running 2 armies with 5 Legions and 4 Alae and that will go up in the next 10 turns. Also have 2 Italian foot which are trash in FoG2 battles because of their scaling cost. I actually typically rush Sardinia for the slingers, which have 2 range and possibly better damage vs Velites. Cost scales but as skirmish infantry it starts low. You can theoretically get 16 and practically get 11-12 slingers hitting a single target. Its ridiculous. That speeds up my conquest of Cisalpina, finishing off Tarentum/Bruttius, and then conquering Sicily.

I might be able to do a 5 turn rush for Cisalpina actually but I doubt I could then pick up Sicily and Sardinia in the remaining 7 turns. Also I think that 22 turn game was not super optimized so I could probably cut it down to 20 with FoG2 battles. Of course you roughly quadruple the total play time with manual resolution.

 

[razvedchiki]

Some questions

- does the ai create multiple stacks?
- general lvl of the ai?is it the usual lvl of retardeness as in total war games?
- does the conversion into fog2 translate to actual number of men or the abstraction mechanics continue its assault even here.

 

[Axioms]

Some questions

- does the ai create multiple stacks?
- general lvl of the ai?is it the usual lvl of retardeness as in total war games?
- does the conversion into fog2 translate to actual number of men or the abstraction mechanics continue its assault even here.

AI does have multiple stacks if its large enough to afford it.
AI in FoG2 is about the same as TW, but its hamstrung because FoGE and FoG2 combat is optimized for different army comps so if you play in FoG2 you are gonna win pretty easy cause you can make armies that are FoG2 effective and it can't.
Nah the conversion is good. Except the part where AI armies will be optimized for FoGE resolution.

 

[Hoggypare]

Some questions

- does the ai create multiple stacks?
- general lvl of the ai?is it the usual lvl of retardeness as in total war games?
- does the conversion into fog2 translate to actual number of men or the abstraction mechanics continue its assault even here.

1) Yes
2) I would say it is better than TW, or at least plays with similar logic to how a player would. It is opportunistic and actually likes to dogpile on You when You are overstretched with wars. When it is weaker than You, it will raid Your regions with armies and avoid confrontation. I would consider it above average for a strategy game. But it still does dumb things from time to time.
3) What do You mean? If a legion unit translates to 5000 men on the battlefield? Or if the number of troops stay constant between battles? No and No. But I would argue the conversion system is excellent still.

 

[razvedchiki]

I mean if 1 unit of phalanx translates into 1 taxis of 1500 men in field of glory 2.if not then its just lame.
Even in paradox map painters you have arithmetic based units.

 

[thesecret1]

My advice is to play without FoG2, if you are worried about the game being too easy. It seems to be more of an extra feature - the game is balanced for FoG:E battles

 

[Hoggypare]

I mean if 1 unit of phalanx translates into 1 taxis of 1500 men in field of glory 2.if not then its just lame.
Even in paradox map painters you have arithmetic based units.

1 unit of phalanx translates into 2 units of about 800-900 men in FoG2, 1 legion into 1 hastati, 1 principes and 1 triari, for greeks 1 regular infantry is translated into 1 unit of thureophoroi, but for example for italics that would make 2 medium italic infantries. This is made so, as to keep the relative strength between units similar to how they work in FoG:E autoresolve. In FoG:E there are just way less unit types, and different nations will have their units FoG:E translated differently to FoG2 battles, so in the battles You have Your specific national roster used and not the more generic, simplified FoG:E's one