Questions, questions...

A mix of deep gameplay and rich historical flavor, Aggressors: Ancient Rome lets you relive history as the ruler of one of the mighty civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean. Choose one of twenty available factions and conquer the world.
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Beorn
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Questions, questions...

Post by Beorn »

After many hours of gameplay -- which I have been enjoying very much-- I have gathered some questions:

1) Battle predictions: I like the design decision not to give percentage odds, but is there any chance you could list the predictions, in order, somewhere? Some of the meanings are very unclear to me -- "fair chances" and "short odds" for example.

2) Is there any way to see an enemy's area of supply? I have been very surprised by where my enemy can put its cavalry. I have no idea whether this is because he makes a strategic decision to accept damage from lack of supply, or whether he has supply in the tile his unit ended.

3) Text on my state screen says that my being a monarchy "increases production of natural resources like coal, stones, and iron but negatively affects innovation and population growth." Is that correct? When I switched to Monarchy, it appeared to be doing just the opposite.

4) Text on my state screen also says that my nation is not trustworthy. For a while it also described me as vengeful. I am surprised. I have not beseiged anyone nor broken the peace with anyone nor broken off any trade agreements. I have refused peace offers (conveniently offered the turn after they made a territory grab) but find it hard to believe this would have such an effect. (I doubt that I can offer peace repeatedly to opponents just to wreck their reputation, after all.) Are you willing to list factors which harm reputation?

5) The three unit per tile limit... Is it really intended that this prevent another unit from passing through that tile? (If so, that is an unusual enough rule for this type of game that the rule probably should be highlighted.)

6) Not sure why, but the "Topview" (which I much prefer) refuses to stay set. Various movements around the map undo it. Is there any setting which would make that the default?

7) What determines whether a conquered city leads to your being able to build their type of units. Playing as Rome, I took some independent cities in a forested area and find that I can build barbarian type units there. But when I took cities from Pontus, this was not the case despite the fact that he is throwing a ton of barbarian type troops at me, so he must have been training them in those cities.

8 I am very foggy on building units in a stable, as opposed to in a city. The population still comes from nearby cities, right? So is the advantage that you can build in the city and the stable simultaneously? I got a tooltip about "inside the city" building of a cavalry unit, but did not understand what that was telling me.

Thank you, and my apologies if I missed any of these things in the manual or tutorial.
gwgardner
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by gwgardner »

I can only answer 7), in that you gain the specialization that was already available in the conquered city. Hovering over a conquered city should show the specialization(s).

and 8) Higher cavalry types can only be built in stables, I believe.

[later] by the way, I didn't use an emoji! the eight) turned into one. ughh....
Beorn
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Beorn »

gwgardner wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 3:52 pm I can only answer 7), in that you gain the specialization that was already available in the conquered city. Hovering over a conquered city should show the specialization(s).

and 8) Higher cavalry types can only be built in stables, I believe.

[later] by the way, I didn't use an emoji! the eight) turned into one. ughh....
Thank you. (And that is why I left the parenthesis off my #8 :) )
Cablenexus
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Cablenexus »

Beorn wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:55 pm After many hours of gameplay -- which I have been enjoying very much-- I have gathered some questions:

1) Battle predictions: I like the design decision not to give percentage odds, but is there any chance you could list the predictions, in order, somewhere? Some of the meanings are very unclear to me -- "fair chances" and "short odds" for example.

2) Is there any way to see an enemy's area of supply? I have been very surprised by where my enemy can put its cavalry. I have no idea whether this is because he makes a strategic decision to accept damage from lack of supply, or whether he has supply in the tile his unit ended.

3) Text on my state screen says that my being a monarchy "increases production of natural resources like coal, stones, and iron but negatively affects innovation and population growth." Is that correct? When I switched to Monarchy, it appeared to be doing just the opposite.

4) Text on my state screen also says that my nation is not trustworthy. For a while it also described me as vengeful. I am surprised. I have not beseiged anyone nor broken the peace with anyone nor broken off any trade agreements. I have refused peace offers (conveniently offered the turn after they made a territory grab) but find it hard to believe this would have such an effect. (I doubt that I can offer peace repeatedly to opponents just to wreck their reputation, after all.) Are you willing to list factors which harm reputation?

5) The three unit per tile limit... Is it really intended that this prevent another unit from passing through that tile? (If so, that is an unusual enough rule for this type of game that the rule probably should be highlighted.)

6) Not sure why, but the "Topview" (which I much prefer) refuses to stay set. Various movements around the map undo it. Is there any setting which would make that the default?

7) What determines whether a conquered city leads to your being able to build their type of units. Playing as Rome, I took some independent cities in a forested area and find that I can build barbarian type units there. But when I took cities from Pontus, this was not the case despite the fact that he is throwing a ton of barbarian type troops at me, so he must have been training them in those cities.

8 I am very foggy on building units in a stable, as opposed to in a city. The population still comes from nearby cities, right? So is the advantage that you can build in the city and the stable simultaneously? I got a tooltip about "inside the city" building of a cavalry unit, but did not understand what that was telling me.

Thank you, and my apologies if I missed any of these things in the manual or tutorial.
1) NONE = 0,
EXTREMELY_RISKY = 1,
DICEY_SITUATION = 2,
DANGEROUS_POSITION = 3,
UNCERTAIN_OUTCOME = 4,
SHORT_ODDS = 5,
EQUAL_CHANCES = 6,
FAIR_CHANCES = 7,
GOOD_PROSPECTS = 8,
DEFINITE_ADVANTAGE = 9,
ABSOLUTE_SUPREMACY = 10

2) Enemy supply zones change evert turn with every move so it wouldn't make sense to see it.
You can sign a treaty however to share supply zones, in that case the enemy supply shows as yours.

3) That really depends from where you switching from. It makes a comparisson with the current goverment form.

5) No it cannot pass. Why should it be highlighted? 3 units per tile is max (this is easy to mod ingame editor btw) so there should be only an explanation if there was an exception. Imho.

6) Can you specify the occasions when this happens? I believe the game should be able to play in Topview if you do not use the scroll wheel to zoom in the map.

7) I think it's bound to the specialization of the specific city. If they were only able to build settlers/nomads before it will not change when you conquer them. (garry already answered that one :) )

I hope it answers some of your questions.
pavelk
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by pavelk »

Hi Beorn,
I am sorry for not getting to you earlier. Cablenexus already pretty well answered most of the questions (thank you;)) so I will just add few more points:

ad3) There is a period of two turns when the country "transforms" its economy/government and it leads to lower production. Currently this is set to two turns for all governments (can be changed by modders). After these two turns all should get back to normal and you should see the increased production.
Apart from this, there is one important point to add - if you look for information about government in the Aggressors library, it gives you only generic information (not compared to your current government). When you want to compare it with your current government, click in State Window on the "Change government" button and hover over each option. This will give you accurate information in tooltip comparing it to your current government.

ad4) The text in the State window is more like a quick hint to find out where you stand. Each AI player has its own "eyes" evaluating your behavior. You might be trustworthy for your ally and vengeful for another player.

ad6) I would be really happy if you can elaborate on this one. What exactly and when does this happen? Top view is fully featured view and you should be able to play the game entirely in this view (and it should not jump to the 3D view at all). There might be bug so if you would be able to help us finding it, it would be great!

ad7) It is based on the specialization which AI used before. Please do not forget that cities can have multiple specializations. On the other hand, there is also so called "degradation" of specialization for certain types when you conquer a city and you don't have specific technology required to build that type. In that case the specialization "degrades".

ad8) Citizens are taken from the nearby cities, correct. You can build basic cavalry units in city or stable, but it is much cheaper to build them in stables (even you have an option to build them also in city).
Can you please tell me where do you see the "inside the city" tooltip?
Beorn
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Beorn »

Thank you for the quick reply. I think you are the only game developer on the planet who would apologize for a 15 hour turnaround time. :)

That is very interesting about the temporary two turn effect from changing government, and it makes sense.

#6 - Cablenexus solved this one for me. I play with my finger on the mouse wheel, use it constantly. That is what is taking me out of Top View.

#7,8 - Very useful info, especially the fact that you can have two specializations in a city. I jumped to the conclusion that you had to pick one. Thank you! If I see that "inside the city" tooltip again I will take a screenshot. I saw DasTactic run into it too, and as I remember, he also did not understand what he was seeing. But I will be on the lookout.

Cablenexus's answers were extremely helpful also, especially #1. (A horse with long odds has very little chance of winning. It was unclear whether short odds was meant to be taken as the opposite of that. I never would have guessed it meant the middle of the scale.) However, I am not sold on his answer to #5. Understand, I do not dislike the rule -- three units per tile is a good solution to an ongoing problem in this type of game. And it's fine that other units cannot pass through a full tile. But in truth other games that have a unit limit, like Civ VI, do allow units to pass through a full tile, so that is what new players to Aggressors will assume to be the case. It seems to me that this is a rule that should be stated directly.

The other thing which continues to trouble me (which led to question #2) is that enemy cavalry is able to travel far out into my territory and end their turn there. I am trying to understand. Are they in supply at the end of their turn? Or are they simply choosing to take the hit for being out of supply? In my experience, my units suffer very serious damage for ending the turn out of supply, so I would be surprised if the AI is doing this on purpose. But I try to learn from what the AI does, and in this case, i do not understand what it is they are doing.

Thanks again!
Cablenexus
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Cablenexus »

5) Can be probably added as an extra note in the manual?, I have nothing against it to make it more clear.

6) I experienced this as well with playing in Top view. I'm not sure if the developer want and /or can do something about this in topview (extra disable mouse for zoom in topview button or so?) or you or dev have better idea.

I don't know if you plan to delve much deeper in the game, but that list what I gave you is easy to find yourself in the Aggressors SDK that comes with the game for modding and scripting.
Let me know in the modding forum if you want to know more about that.
uncajerf
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by uncajerf »

Cablenexus wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:07 am 5) Can be probably added as an extra note in the manual?, I have nothing against it to make it more clear.
Done (for next version of manual)! Second and third paragraph of Section 8.2:

"As mentioned, up to three units can be stationed on a tile at a time; this is known as the “stacking limit”, which can however be modified in the Game Editor. Note that this limit not only precludes another unit moving into such a tile but through it. In other words, the stacking limit blocks unit movement – friendly or not – that would otherwise be able to move into/through that tile.

"When more than one unit is on a tile, only one will be visible, while others are hidden. The number of hidden units is indicated by a small helmet(s) above the banner of the visible unit. For example, in the above screenshot (on the right) one military unit is visible. The red shield next to it indicates a resource mine on the same tile. The helmets above the banner indicate that another unit stands on the same tile. Thus, three map items are located on that tile."


Let me know if that clarifies it (or doesn't)! :)
uncajerf

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helimadora
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by helimadora »

Hi uncajerf,
thank you for correcting the sentences. I think it makes perfect sense. I added it to the last version of the manual.
Beorn
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Beorn »

Cablenexus wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:07 am 6) I experienced this as well with playing in Top view. I'm not sure if the developer want and /or can do something about this in topview (extra disable mouse for zoom in topview button or so?) or you or dev have better idea.

I don't know if you plan to delve much deeper in the game, but that list what I gave you is easy to find yourself in the Aggressors SDK that comes with the game for modding and scripting.
Let me know in the modding forum if you want to know more about that.
Now that I know what is causing it to flip out of Top View, I can work around it fine. I had thought it was a random thing.

I may eventually look into the SDK, but first I am just going to play the game a while and enjoy it. Thanks!
Beorn
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by Beorn »

uncajerf wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 3:21 pm "As mentioned, up to three units can be stationed on a tile at a time; this is known as the “stacking limit”, which can however be modified in the Game Editor. Note that this limit not only precludes another unit moving into such a tile but through it. In other words, the stacking limit blocks unit movement – friendly or not – that would otherwise be able to move into/through that tile.

Let me know if that clarifies it (or doesn't)! :)
I think that that is great!
uncajerf
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by uncajerf »

Beorn wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:39 pm I think that that is great!
Thanx!
uncajerf

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sarah.collins
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by sarah.collins »

What makes this game different than Total War: Rome and the newest Total War games set in this same time period?
Because it looks an awful lot like an indie version of those games and that doesn't really do much for me.
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gwgardner
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by gwgardner »

There's a good discussion of this question on the Steam forum for Aggressors.

Briefly, there is very little similar between Aggressors and Total War:Rome. The strategic game in Total War is just there to provide context for the tactical battles. Aggressors is just the opposite: the empire building aspects are paramount. Combat is still a big part of the game, but the 'expand and eploit' components of 4x games is also crucial in Aggressors. The economy, trade, and diplomatic parts of the game are very deep, lots to do and lots going on. By the way there is a developer stream today on the combat system in the game, and there are other very good dev diaries also. Check them out, links in this forum and the Steam forum.
pavelk
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by pavelk »

Hi sara.collins,
we dont want to speak on behalf of any players. I just attach the link to the thread gwgardner is talking about.
TheGrayMouser
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Re: Questions, questions...

Post by TheGrayMouser »

I didn’t realize until I read this thread that there is unit stacking. Yaaa!! For me makes a huge difference for immersion.
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