Requests/Suggestions Thread

[76mm]

I thought it might be helpful to set up a requests/suggestions thread to give Pavel more to do! He can thank me later...

Anyway, my first suggestion would be to introduce some random events relating to food--in particular "drought" and "plague of locusts". Not sure how those would work, but right now after the initial turns food has never been an issue, which does not seem right...

[76mm]

It would also be super, incredibly useful to have an "Undo" button.

[gwgardner]

Those random event suggestions are good, if rarely seen.

The undo has been nixed by Pavel in several different threads. I don't miss the undo. I figure in real life mistakes were made, and couldn't be undone. Troops don't always follow orders, administrators sometimes make less than wise decisions.

[pavelk]

It would also be super, incredibly useful to have an "Undo" button.

I have to disappoint you in this. There will never be an "undo" button. Here is the explanation.

[anguille]

I would like to have a screen with all my cities, could be like the one in Oriental Empires: what are they producing, how is the happiness etc.

Also i would like to see options to raise the happiness in cities. It's not clear to me right now what i can do to increase happiness.

[pavelk]

I would like to have a screen with all my cities, could be like the one in Oriental Empires: what are they producing, how is the happiness etc.

Hi anguille,
this is already in our tracking system and we will hopefully get to this pretty soon.

Also i would like to see options to raise the happiness in cities. It's not clear to me right now what i can do to increase happiness.

The main point here is to see what are the negative happiness affectors for that city. You can open the happiness window (just click on the happiness resource in the resource panel) and once you hover over a city, it will tell you all negative (and also positive) affectors. If there are no negative affectors, the problem is in base happiness (aka the overall happiness of your people) and you need to act according to it (increase/decrease army size, change government, have enough resources, not trade slaves or start a victorious military campaign).

[anguille]

Hi Pavelk,

Nice. I am playing as Carthage right now and this will really help. Will check for the happiness ressource. The game is a little rough around the edges but nice. Keep it up.

Cheers

[pavelk]

Hi anguille,
thank you. If you have any other suggestions, please share them with us. We appreciate all feedback and try to implement what is doable for us.
Pavel

[Morbio]

I'd like to be able to cycle through the cities in the same method that one can cycle through the units. Maybe a button with a building icon that does similar to the helmet icon in the lower right window?

[pavelk]

Hello Morbio,
please read this at the end of the first post.

[Morbio]

Hello Morbio,
please read this at the end of the first post.

Haha, you are so fast to respond! I was just about to reply to myself as I'd just found that article as it was one of the next unread items in the forum!

Thanks again!

[dejvid2]

With a city like Ephesus that is on a peninsular it is impossible to attack it without putting it under siege - and getting the hit from dishonourable actions. Would I be possible to only trigger the dishonourable actions if you actually capture the city using siege or at least besiege it for several moves?

[stormbringer3]

The diplomacy AI is one area that could be looked at. There so many times the AI civilizations declare war when it makes no sense at all.

[dejvid2]

I assume you know that if you hover the mouse over attitude you get a list of reasons they like/dislike you. Often this will give you a good idea of what went wrong. But not always.
What really doesn't make sense is when the AI decides to fight a war against you when you are fighting their enemy.

[Morbio]

I assume you know that if you hover the mouse over attitude you get a list of reasons they like/dislike you. Often this will give you a good idea of what went wrong. But not always.
What really doesn't make sense is when the AI decides to fight a war against you when you are fighting their enemy.

It would depend on the situation, in many respects an ideal time to fight a country is when it is already engaged in other wars and it's troops are already committed elsewhere.

[dejvid2]

I assume you know that if you hover the mouse over attitude you get a list of reasons they like/dislike you. Often this will give you a good idea of what went wrong. But not always.
What really doesn't make sense is when the AI decides to fight a war against you when you are fighting their enemy.

It would depend on the situation, in many respects an ideal time to fight a country is when it is already engaged in other wars and it's troops are already committed elsewhere.

Current game I'm playing as Pergamum. Even though Ptolemy and the Seleucids are fighting a bitter war both have declared war against me. Unprovoked. Both are saying "There shall be war" when I offer peace. For the moment I am not doing too badly as they are too busy fighting each other to send more than token forces against me. No human would act this way. I am the lesser threat to both of them.

Also from the same game I have had Massilia demand I cancel peace with Macedonia. Massilia wasn't at war with Macedonia and was far far too far away to have any reason to be. Again not something that a human would ever do.

[pavelk]

Even though Ptolemy and the Seleucids are fighting a bitter war both have declared war against me. Unprovoked. Both are saying "There shall be war" when I offer peace. For the moment I am not doing too badly as they are too busy fighting each other to send more than token forces against me. No human would act this way.

Yes, you are right if you think about it only from the "game perspective", otherwise I would strongly disagree. It happened many times in history and it is actually quite usual that countries declare wars just "formally" to demonstrate on which side they are. It is basically a matter of "good will" to please your ally and formally declare war to his enemy. It was happening all the way from Second world war, first world war to ancient history.

[NKlein1553]

I was about to say something similar, Pavel. In many 4X games it is actually fairly common for AI players to declare war on other players, human players included, as a means to curry favor with another player. In Civ VI, for example, there is a significant and long lasting relationship bonus that is granted to two factions fighting on the same side of a war against another faction. This relationship bonus is hard coded into the game and has a large impact on AI behavior. I suspect a similar coding practice exists for Aggressors: Ancient Rome. Overuse of the "declare war to curry favor" strategy can be a bit annoying from the human player's perspective, though. From the human player's perspective, declaring war is a very high risk decision, as losing a war can have disasterous consequences. Most humans tend to be risk averse so declaring war for a potential attitude boost as a reward seems crazy, even if it is not from a game play perspective. Going back to the Civ VI example, the developers for Civ VI have vigorously defended the design choice for implimenting a serious and long lasting joint war relationship bonus, but I find it is a little overdone in Civ VI to the point of the game play design choice being immeraion breaking. In the real world, declaring war for the express purpose of raising your standing with another nation is quite cynical. Other forms of propoganda are generally used to justify war. I'm wondering if you have any plans, Pavel, to impliment some kind of a casus belli system for Aggressors: Ancient Rome at any point. I actually find the restrictions that are associated with casus belli systems to add interesting game play wrinkles to strategy games. Paradox does these systems particularly well. Adding a casus belli system of some sort to Aggressors: Ancient Rome may be one way to alleviate some the tendency of the AI to issue a lot of declarations of war / requests to cancel peace.

[Morbio]

Even though Ptolemy and the Seleucids are fighting a bitter war both have declared war against me. Unprovoked. Both are saying "There shall be war" when I offer peace. For the moment I am not doing too badly as they are too busy fighting each other to send more than token forces against me. No human would act this way.

Yes, you are right if you think about it only from the "game perspective", otherwise I would strongly disagree. It happened many times in history and it is actually quite usual that countries declare wars just "formally" to demonstrate on which side they are. It is basically a matter of "good will" to please your ally and formally declare war to his enemy. It was happening all the way from Second world war, first world war to ancient history.

Pavel, you are correct. a good example would be the last days of the second world war when most of South America declared war on Germany, which was no more than a political statement and I'm sure it convinced the allies that these countries 'had their backs' all along!

[dejvid2]

Even though Ptolemy and the Seleucids are fighting a bitter war both have declared war against me. Unprovoked. Both are saying "There shall be war" when I offer peace. For the moment I am not doing too badly as they are too busy fighting each other to send more than token forces against me. No human would act this way.

Yes, you are right if you think about it only from the "game perspective", otherwise I would strongly disagree. It happened many times in history and it is actually quite usual that countries declare wars just "formally" to demonstrate on which side they are. It is basically a matter of "good will" to please your ally and formally declare war to his enemy. It was happening all the way from Second world war, first world war to ancient history.

It is true that during the second world war most of South America declared war against Germany to please the USA even thought only a couple sent so much as a handful of troops to the front. But that is not the situations I described.

1) Massilla asks me to declare war against Macedonia even though Massilla was not at war with Macedonia. As it was early on in the game, there was not the remotest possibility of Macedonia attacking Massilia. Why should Massilla even care about something so far away?

2) Ptolemy attacks me with token forces. Egypt attacks me with a single hoplite. Though that is a token force it was not a symbolic war. Once I had eliminated that hoplite I took two cities from her. We are not talking about risk here. Given that Egypt had token forces in Caria, the loss of Caria was a pretty much inevitable outcome.

3) Seleucids attack me. I am fighting the common enemy. I don't know at this stage how the war is going between the Seleucids and Ptolemy but Ptolemy is the stronger power so it is unlikely they are having an easy time of it. Why waste forces fighting someone who is causing real damage to the main enemy. Again the token force was a single hoplite. I only have peltasts but when its 3 against one the hoplite is going to be killed. Hence all they achieved is allowing me to take territory from them up to Side. This was not a formal declaration that was going to cost nothing.

I suspect part of the problem is that the AI isn't able to distinguish between a real war in which there are real clashes and a phony war but, even allowing for that, the above makes no senses.