devstream Possible Improvements and DLC

[Cannae04]

All in all, I really enjoyed this game. It's interesting, fun, and challenging. The graphics worked great and my choices in the game would change the course of actions and where I would end up. Somethings that I wish would happen though is the following:

After or while in Egypt you get a change to rename your legion. Everyone who is a fan of ancient Rome has that one legion they prefer, for me it's the II Augustus and the mighty X. 

Once Egypt is done and you are more or less a proconsul, you should have more than one legion. With that being said how about fixing the game play in Gaul, where rather than leading one legion to conquer a land the size of France and 5 million peoples, you have an Army split between you and the dictator. Then make the legion battles having in charge of other Legates or Tribunes that you recruit rather than Centurions.

You always see information about the Marian Reforms, this should be part of the game play somehow, as these reforms of the legions happened prior to Julius Caesars death I take it. This could also mean getting rid of the Velites and Hastati and perhaps introducing the cavalry dismounted of course to the game. Cavalary men could take the place of the Triarii and the hastati and principes would become legionaries. Make the Velites change in to optios, as any good leader knows you need some under officer with you. maybe introduge the Eagle Aquilifer as well since that person would go with the general in charge.

A big part of all this is that you as the player are replacing for good or ill the real-life Caesar. Some more events taht he affected should be in the game play, and places he went should show. Spain would be a nice DLC for all this as would becoming first man and more meeting with Crassus and Pompey.

Just my notes, would love to see if this was possible and to see where it can go.

 

[laphiel]

I  had a similar  experience. 

Regarding the classes: the game takes place well after Marius reforms, and by the time legions are standardized, and the manipulee system is long gone,  together with division between triarii, hastati and princeps.

The main focus of the reforms was to change from temporary mostly volunteer force into professional standing army with standardized  equipment. 

The role of specialized units was filled by auxiliary forces ( roman legion had 4800 romans in it, but there was always auxiliary force of 4000-5000 auxiliary troops, covering archers, skirmishers, artillery, cavalry and such) while the republican auxiliaries were raised for purpose of campaign and disbanded after it ended ( that changed after the civil war by reforms institute by Augustus but that's another story;) )  While i appreciate the ability of spear being able to attack from 2nd line, I found the classes to restrictive, especially in terms of equipment. Locking shield only for Princeps is what annoyed me the most. There is no reason why velites or triarii should not carry a shield, and there are historical evidence that they did use them. The limit kind of felt to force division between warrior, ranger, rogue and healer for 'familiarity purpose'. Considering that from act 2 there is a lot of ranged enemies who use poison and fire a lot, inability to use shield becomes really annoying ( especially singe game provides you with 2 equipment sets, this becomes useless for most past as second set has no real purpose with small exception ( I used it on my Principe main character, as I had a spear that had an attack that allowed to 'overflow' the shield damage to health after shield was destroyed, so I did have it in the second slot, but it was really the only time I used the second set, as I never after managed to get that particular attack on any other spear) Generally i would make away with class systems it felt bit forced. While it made sense for some characters (Syneros was not a legionnaire, so his skillset made perfect sense, Bestia as gladiator having different set was fine, and so on) but for rest off praetorians it felt bit weird and forced.

In relation to game story:

Act 1 was nice, I enjoyed it a lot, it felt like extended tutorial, in the beginning, but this felt natural and and not forced to 2 hours of "now press D to move left 10 times" The ship battle and the pacification of Lesbos, gave good introduction to basic mechanics, while first captures on mainland gave nice introduction to advanced ones. Story was also interesting and well done.

Act 2 made me feel like game is gaining steam. You get 2nd legion, there is more of politics involved, the game started to give a feeling that there is more at stake. Only negative was the final confrontation where game gives you a choice to either murder Lunja or Cleopathra for really no reason than to force you to make some choices. This felt too forced. But my feeling overall after Act 2 was, game is gaining moment, lets see what Gaul will bring me...

Act 3: and here is my main complain. Gaul feels like the studio run out of money and had to cut down to release the game. Only one legion. And the story felt rushed, without real thought in it. I still cannot understand the point of the cave ambush mission where Lurco saves your life (forgot the name, sorry). This felt like an ambush, but there is nothing you can do about it, you need to do it because... reasons? The Lurco comes and saves you because... reasons? I mean the whole point of getting you to Gaul is that Lurco wants to get you killed, the VIXI tries to murder you every turn, he manages to get the Gaul leaders to ambush you , then he saves you for no reason? Even his own NPCs were confused.  But story beside. Caesar took 10 years to conquer the Gaul, and it was series of pacifications, uprising, invading Germans, and more uprisings... The Helveti migration and massacre is included but kind of brushed off... And you can conquer whole Gaul in about a month. But, I though now I am done with the Gauls its time for civil war!

And here the story breaks. There is some city fighting ( no matter if you go peacefully or not), then either you murder Pompeii ( if you go not peacefully) or Syneros dies in dumbest way possible in the most stupid assassination attempt in history of gaming (if you go peacefully) and you're done ( the "Lurco's last stand" in paceful ending is also bad and poorly written, with simple aim of forcing player to make another 'dramatic choice').

 

The whole thing left me disappointed.

As someone who likes history, i looked forward to proper senate intrigue while you are in Gaul forcing you to act with a proper Ceasar's style civil war Against Lurco (I expected i could either go Ceasar and fight Lurco, Pompeii and rest of senate, in Caesarian style, or go with senate and fight the dictator Lurco , but in any way I expected a proper civil war.

And one more thing... Invisible ninja enemies. That was probably most immersion breaking thing in game. The final fight wit Corvinus ( or whatever hw was called) was exercise in frustration. Instead of challenging, the teleport-on-hit-and-disappear made it frustrating and tedious. ( I had no archers so i had to walk along the whole map in hopes to find him, hit, and repeat. Luckily I managed to knock him down before I decided to uninstall out of sheer boredom  after about an  hour of playing hide and seek which stropped him from teleporting so I could rush and finish him

For combat mechanics in general, besides the classes issue I mentioned earlier, I had a feeling that the combat relies too hard on tactical items as a 'resource sink' and in the end most time you spend between fights is standing next to camps as you wit for the free refills of your tactical slots to be ready

But overall the game kept me playing more, i enjoyed it, and even if the ending was a bit sour, i did enjoy it,

I do hope devs will make a 'Civil war DLC' that will change it one day.

For other improvements? get rid of the stealth mechanics for enemies, change the classes.

For legion side of the game? maybe instead of random attacks coming out of nowhere, add some standing enemy forces you would need to track, and face/counter this would make more legions under your control more useful and make whole experience more involving, instead just sending it out to attack, them send repetitively to conquer the resources, while sending it back to random province every now and then to wait for enemy attack. 

Salve, Legati.

[laphiel]

An Afterthought ( I could no longer edit so sadly have to doublepost) : 

something that would expand the game would be ability do met more people in Rome, maybe some randomly generated NPCs, or some premade the way the praetorians are done,  that would interact with you in some way to carve favors, or to make ties, that would be used to fill some of legion command roles ( instead 4 random centurions, you would get proper tribunes?) This could me made in conjunction  with more senate related content.  As Lucullus was your  patron, you would become patron to new generation of politicians and commanders. This is something I found lacking in the game too: the periods in Rome is bit of bloodshed and then "Few years later". Allowing for a bit of political intrigue, building alliances ( maybe reflecting some of roman factions and ability to join one of them, building some friendships ( and gaining more enemies)  would make the final civil war period more natural and give it all more impact? And would give your character a bit more motivation than " I conquered the world to kill one a$$hat"

[Sarmatian]

Yes, I found it weird that still after Marian reforms we're getting the old army system.

I honestly thought we would be able to use fighting styles from other nations and have them work as classes. Peltasts, slingers etc... not just be constrained to Roman fighting styles. At least a few Greek options should have existed.

[Claudia Cincinnata]

After nearly 100 hrs of playing, I would like to suggest the following improvements:

1. In the Mission Res Publica, allow the player to save Syneros if the legatus or Syneros is equipped with the tactic Mithridate.

2. Allow the player to skip the enemy's turn during combats.

3. In the Siege of Chalkedon, allow the player to block the escape route of Mithridate Megas and to acquire his Crown by knocking him out.

4. Despite being captured by the legatus, the head of VIXI, Felix Harianus, does not testify during the trial of Lurco. This is clearly a defect in the plot.

 

As for future DLCs, I think the following ideas should be taken into consideration:

1. The Expedition of Belisarius. The Byzantine general should be offered the chance to restore the Western Empire, or even the entire Roman Empire. A civil war between Belisarius and Justinian could be epic! The player could encounter the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Persians, the Berbers, the Aksumites, and of course the Byzantines.

2. The Adventures of Asterix (Asterix and Obelix are already in the game)

3. The Adventures of Pullo & Vonerus (They are already in the game)

4. Prequel of the Main Game (featuring Sulla, Lucullus, and the father of Legatus)

[Claudia Cincinnata]

Also, I notice that the plot of Act III deserves a rework.  Firstly, it did not create any urgency that would force the legatus to cross the Rubicon (well, the death of Lurco's Praetorians may count, but that problem is not big enough).  Secondly, it did not provide any information regarding the origin and purpose of VIXI as an organization. Last but not least, the plot of Act III created too many opportunities for the legatus to take out Lurco and his minions in private. For instance, the legatus could cut Lurco's throat at Ambiorix's cave, kill all witnesses and blame Lurco's death on Ambiorix. There would be no more Act IV. I can think of dozens of such instances.

 

Btw, though we know that Lurco ordered the murder of Lucullus, we did not know who stabbed the proconsul in the back. Maybe Corvinus killed the proconsul while Lurco was talking to him? There should be a Sherlock Holmes style mission for that.

[Sarmatian]

Act III is the weakest.

The whole story is a bit chaotic, with Lurco trying to kill the player's party, then helping them... Lurco's plan is pretty much known to us since the end of Act I and we can not really do anything about it, whether we might personally agree with it or not.

 

I like the ideas for DLC. Belisarius/Justinian would be immensely epic but I don't think there's a chance for that. Too much of a time difference, so everything would need to be done again, like classes, weapons, armours, tactics, enemies...

 

[laphiel]

For dlc/expansions we have quite a lot of possibilities :

1)  ( my fav) proper civil war with chasing opposition trough Italy, Spain, Greece,  and east ( like Cesar did) 

2) Revenge for Crassus - Pacify Parthia! take vengeance for Rome's worse defeat until Teutoburg Forest!

3) Sicilian war - Historically after defeating Cesar's murderers second triumvirate forces fought with the Pompeii's son - Sextus, and his pirate empire on Sicily. nice chance for some more ship fight, depending on choices this can be Sextus, or some relative of Lurco?

4) further civil war - if the Rome chapters get ever expanded to include more of politics, we might have chance to build second triumvirate, and then go down second triumvirate and fight between triumvirs like Octavian and Anthony;).

5) back to Gaul, Britain, Spain and Germania. - Cesar's campaign in Britain is sadly missing from Gaul chapter, and Rome still had ambitions about! there is still world to be conquered! Especially in Germania where Rome was stuck for few hundred years;)

[John25]

In following discussion threads that I have made:  My thoughts for the game along the lines of dlcs and expansions ideas. (

)

My thoughts for the game along the lines of multigeneration extreme detailed character gradual aging process age progression (

) I have provided more suggestions and ideas. For this particular game.

[John25]

I guess I would like further Expeditions Rome storyline Acts DLCs and Expansions beyond Act 4 and even possibly through out the other Acts individual choices before Act 4 within Acts 1-3. Epecially if you had chosen particular routes for rome that was called possible alternative endings routes although could reconfigured as storyline/storytelling alternative history gameplay choices trail options. Please strongly consider and what are the thoughts and comments of the game designers and the other Expeditions Rome players community members? It seems that this is being largely one way lecturing rather than multidirectional ping pong discussions.

Edited September 23, 2022 by John25

[John25]

On 3/30/2022 at 5:49 AM, laphiel said:

For dlc/expansions we have quite a lot of possibilities :

1)  ( my fav) proper civil war with chasing opposition trough Italy, Spain, Greece,  and east ( like Cesar did) 

2) Revenge for Crassus - Pacify Parthia! take vengeance for Rome's worse defeat until Teutoburg Forest!

3) Sicilian war - Historically after defeating Cesar's murderers second triumvirate forces fought with the Pompeii's son - Sextus, and his pirate empire on Sicily. nice chance for some more ship fight, depending on choices this can be Sextus, or some relative of Lurco?

4) further civil war - if the Rome chapters get ever expanded to include more of politics, we might have chance to build second triumvirate, and then go down second triumvirate and fight between triumvirs like Octavian and Anthony;).

5) back to Gaul, Britain, Spain and Germania. - Cesar's campaign in Britain is sadly missing from Gaul chapter, and Rome still had ambitions about! there is still world to be conquered! Especially in Germania where Rome was stuck for few hundred years;)

I had provided in my discussion threads more content, storyline/storytelling, graphics, DLC and expansions ideas through discussion threads to discussions that I attempted at starting. However since the last few days since I had both initially started/made the discussions and later on made the thread links in this particular discussion to those particular discussions of mine I haven't seemed to have had any contributors to those discussions other than that done by myself.