Announcement/Discussion: Faction List

[Mausolos of Caria]

Ptolemaios Keraunos: Pella, Thessalonica, Larissa

Antigonos Gonatas (playable Macedon): Chalcis, Corinth, Lesbos - and his army near Lysimacheia, which would be either Celtic (Tylis) or Ptolemaic and could be taken immediately

Athens was free after the flight of Demetrios Poliorketes from the city, but a Macedonian garrison remained in Piraios. I don't think there's a way to represent that, though.

[ahowl11]

Guys I am having some doubts about our current faction list and here is the reasoning:

The Greeks are going to be represented perfectly in my opinion but the eastern and barbarian civilizations won't be. Initially I thought a "Free People" faction would do the trick, but after a lot of research I have found out that it would not work right since we would end up with eastern looking settlements in Gaul or Barbarian looking settlements in Arabia.

Before you pot your opinion or thoughts, remember that EVERY faction will eventually be represented by mod foldered campaigns. The Imperial Campaign is just a BASE that we can use to easily include all of these swap factions. I suggest more 'super factions' to make things easier.

So I think we need to revise just a bit before I start switching all the factions up.

We have our concrete factions which are untouchable:

1. Rome
2. Carthage
3. Macedon
4. Seleucids
5. Ptolemies
6. Parthia
7. Pontus
8. Armenia
9. Numidia

You have your major barbarian cultures that can serve as super factions as well:
10. Gauls
11. Germans
12. Geto-Dacians
13. Iberians
14. Sarmatians

And then the proposed super factions:
15. Hellenic Kingdoms - {Brutii}
16. Greek Cities
17. Greek States - {Scipii}
18. Celts - Britons, Celt-Iberians, Noreia, Belgae, Galatians - {Britons}
19. Eastern Kingdoms - Cappadocia, Atropatene, Bithynia, Nabataeans, Saba, India {Senate}
20. Independent Peoples - Illyria, Thrace, Veneti, Luistani, Ligurians, Nuragic Tribes, Baltic Tribes {Thrace}

And then finally
21. Rebels

I feel most comfortable doing this going forward. Like I said, I did extensive research and I talked to dvk901. He said that faction lists need to be based on what the campaign is centered around. Our IMPERIAL CAMPAIGN is centered on the Big factions, the main players. We are not focused on the Greeks, we are not focused on the East, Barbarians, or even Punic Wars. We are focused on the whole map with favoritism towards the main factions that were around the longest and most notable in history.
Numbers 1-14 all played big and significant roles in the course of Roman history. 15-20 are super factions comprised of multiple factions that are related to each other by the cultures given to us in RTW.

For the Rebels, we can still make them interesting. There were many slave or native population revolts throughout the course of history and they can be scripted in. Also we can script in a Celtic invasion of Italy or a Scythian Raid as well as the usual brigands, pirates and other territories that are needed as filler.

I do not want to follow through with this if you guys disagree. Just remember though that every faction will have it's own playable campaign centered on THEM. This is just a BASE imperial campaign so we can simulate every faction.

[Tekowiāt]

As I see it, the main strength of having pseudo-factions is to not get cultures mixed up, right? If so, I suggest only four: Greeks, Celts, 'Eastern', 'Western'.

[ahowl11]

The main strength in my opinion is to be able to represent all of the relevant factions at the time through these pseudo-factions. That way when the Imperial Campaign is complete it will be easy for us to use the pseudo-factions to make swap faction campaigns such as Epirus or Nabataea.
However, I still want the Imperial Campaign to be enjoyable that is why I have set it up to resemble:

Greek - 2
Hellenic - 1
Eastern - 1
Celtic - 1
European/Barbarian - 1

If anything we can just test this method out first and if it is not working the way I think it should work we can go back to the drawing board.

[Tekowiāt]

Seems reasonable to me!

[Bercor]

I don't know about the Eastern Kingdoms. The problem with that massive superfactions is that they'll have to share the same culture, and, consequentially, the same UI and buildings. Saba and India are VERY different from the other factions, I don't think they would be well together. Plus, I'd rather have the Ardiae as a faction.

[ahowl11]

You make a good point and it is obvious but what could we do? We can't make a separate Arabian culture AND Indian culture. Even if we did, we already have the Nomad culture.
The Celts were a whole lot different than the Iberians who were different than the Germans who were different from the Thracians, yet they will all be sharing the same culture as well. I wish we could add more cultures but we just can't.

As far as Illyria goes, I know that I've always favored them but with the Rebel faction being so dumb and boring we need to find ways to simulate the lesser peoples. Thrace was just as important as Illyria, the Ligurians and Veneti were big players in Italy, the Luistani were powerful in Iberia. Then don't forget, how else can we simulate the Saka and Massagetae tribes and their raids and migrations against Bactria and India?

Like I said we can test the above list out, if it does not work well we can try other options.

[Alavaria]

Remember that the AI factions tend to be hesitant about declaring war on superfactions (or at least they treat them like normal factions) but everyone will fight the Rebels. So superfaction settlements tend not to change hands too often..

[Mausolos of Caria]

On RTR VII the AI didn't seem to care about that, from my campaign experience. Pergamon even attacked super factions it was allied with, and it did that in every campaign and always rolled them up completely.

[Bercor]

That's because Pergamum is a brave guy.

[Alavaria]

Actually, wait. That depends on if the AI borders you, actually.

Because the player faction is special. But regardless the AI loves to attack the Rebel faction.

[Mausolos of Caria]

Yeah but I'm speaking about the AI doing it on it's own. I played Carthage, for example, and was therefore on the other side of the map. Pergamon is surrounded by the ''Independent Cities'' faction holding Rhodes (with which it was allied) and the ''Independent Dynasties'' holding Caria and Lydia (among others). When I put ''toggle fow'' on, Pergamon had attacked both of them, taking 3 regions, even the allied Rhodes.

Perhaps there is a way to make the AI ''braver''? I can't say this happened every time exactly like this (albeit Pergamon always attacked one of the super factions) or everyone did it against the superfactions, but in RTR VII the superfactions always lose territories quite quickly, in every campaign.

[Alavaria]

Perhaps there is a way to make the AI ''braver''? I can't say this happened every time exactly like this (albeit Pergamon always attacked one of the super factions) or everyone did it against the superfactions, but in RTR VII the superfactions always lose territories quite quickly, in every campaign.

There is a trick. You can make an AI faction want to attack specific settlements, by editing a file so that it treats the settlement as belonging to it (and having been lost). It thus wants to "reclaim" that and will attack the factions holding it. Useful to help make the AI not do really wierd things.

As long as the player isn't nearby, that's a standard caveat. If you're bordering a faction it has a tendency to just forget everything but its hatred for you...

[Aquila]

Sorry that I only made two posts and disappeared.  Internet issue and beta testing trouble due to being new to this. 

Anyway, one problem that I noticed in BETA testing the Gauls for 0.5 (do you still want that report ahowl11?) is that it took the Julii nineteen turns to summon the guts to attack me.  Granted, I sort of blitzed northern Italy and they got no rebel cities there, but it was sheer passiveness that I didn't expect to happen from Rome. Do factions specifically like to pick on smaller/weaker ones?  If so, I have a possible solution to that if we don't want to make the AI attack certain settlements. 

If we wanted to be historically accurate, the Gauls didn't exist, they were a conglomeration of various tribes.  We could shrink Gaul's borders into a tribe or two, and have it become something Rome is more willing to take a stab at.  Europa Barbarorum uses the Aedui and Arveni, for example, competing for France while the Aedui have a foothold in Italy.

The problem with this is that I can't think of a tribe or confederation large enough to be something that plausibly controlled parts of Italy and France.  Confederations of tribes that I know of are Hevetii (border the Alps), Aedui (near the Rhone and Loire Rivers), and Nervii (in Belgium).  The Gauls were simply too fractured.  Vercingetorix did make an alliance with a lot of Gaulish tribes though.  If we do that we could theoretically make Gaul whatever size we want and call it the Gaul Alliance or a Gaulish confederacy of some sort.

[ahowl11]

I don't know, you make good points. In most play throughs the Julii expand well into Gaul. We won't really know for sure until we test the unified rome