plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I've just started playing Rome and I like the game... the realism behind it. It takes years and years to get anywhere (colonize). Wars are fought mostly short and then peaced without actually gaining land, just money as tribute etc etc I can really imagine that thats how things where 2500 years ago. Research is slow, building buildings etc a REAL investment (years of saving). You also see generations of the ruling families pass by over the years each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

There is moral in armies and population etc, battles are also not directly controle like in DOM

I'd love to see this game combined with dominions (there seem to be mod options for rome but I've got no idea what you could do)

Rome with
- great fantasy nations
- a bit faster expansion
- magic weapons and magic
- pretender gods
- more type of units
would be so nice

Or vice versa
Dominions with
- a bit more realistic province management
- a bit more realistic war options (I know dom seems good already but what they are doing in rome seems very realistic)
(hmm what more to add, dom almost has it all..)

So can anyone of you programming guys do this for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

/ me wakes up

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Yeah I'll get right on that.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Note for the uninitiated: Sombre uses to joke from time to time.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

It would be nice, of course, but who here could do that? Europa Universalis series isn't Dominions, and Dominions isn't EU; some mods can help there, but those would happen in the Universalis end and people here aren't the best people to ask for that.
Total conversion mods would be very hard or perhaps even impossible to do. Even if it was technically possible, there's copyright to consider. If Shrapnel Games let anyone "borrow" the likeness of Dominions races, depending on copyright laws they might have to let everyone, including other publishers, do that.

It's easy to simplify a plot into few sentences, but to write the book or produce a movie - that's much harder.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Oh, it's not a hard problem. All it would take is access to the source code for both games and the folks who wrote them, a while to study the problem, and months to years of effort to merge all the pieces in a sensible way.

I'd do it myself, but I'm a little busy right now.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

The easiest way to fulfill your wish is to mod Rome, since it already has the engine required to handle all the gameplay mechanics that you want*. Of course, it would still take months.
*-At least since you said there is research in Rome. I don't remember any ability to research, but I've barely played the game, so I might be wrong.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

This one is easy, I'll start praying for a miracle right away...

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

IF somebody wonders, there is NO research in Rome TW. What it actually contains are pre-planned events notifying players about occurrences of inventions of watermill, compass, gunpowder, etc. Also, it contains some game-mechanics absent in Dominions, such as combat bonus in certain terrain, or fear caused to infantry/cavalry only (famous camels!). And it doesn't contain magic or, e.g. flight. And this is without mentioning such negligible fact that RTW uses 3D real-time tactical engine... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
There was an attempt at WarHammer Total War mod, but I'm not sure how close it came to modelling fantasy, as I personally couldn't make it work at all. And at the time of its disappearance from the Web its authors made only 3 WarHammer armies - Empire, some Chaos & High Elves.
As for Dominions mod - you would probably need to re-write main game engine to include provincial buildings..
hmm.. It was a joke, right?

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

There is research you need to put pplz on it else nothing happens... but it's slow (sort of a returning thing in that game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)

Wrana I see you say rome TW, which I guess is Rome: total war.. which probably is a nice game but I've not seen it.. I'm talking about Europa Universalis: Rome

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Europe Universalis: Rome looks like something I would enjoy playing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was playing around with ideas for a game that I wanted to design when I found Dominions. Dominions came so close to what I wanted to do that I found myself playing it instead of pursuing my own gaming project. There are still many elements that it seems will never come to Dom (like external, script-able AI) so I have begun picking at my old project again. My point is that this is a perfectly reasonable request. Who knows, there might be a programmer out there with skill (unlike myself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif ) who might be inspired.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Ballbarian:

EU:Rome is even worse than EU. Like EU3 could get like 3/4 out of 10 Rome would get 2/3 out of 10 max. Really, Europa Universalis is a game with good idea but poor design. Even historical accuracy is not there.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I think on this one, it is going to be a matter of opinion. The EU series is great. Not perfect, but great. Reminds me of another game that has some problems but is great none the less. Starts with a “D”…

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I enjoyed EU 2. It didn't have the most thrilling gameplay but it let you do things that no other games do.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I haven't played those older EU games, I read some reviews and heard you could conquer part of the world with most nations. In Rome you are somewhat limited (maybe a bit too much) to what could realisticly happen. a small nation (which starts with one province) won't grom much larger than a few provinces in a 100 years (and that is a few hours of playing)

yesterday I started playing a barbarian tribe.. lol.. basicly I could do nothing.. not enough civilization to colonize surrounding lands, not really able to gather enough military to conquer anything (it was a tribe in portugal, only neighbour: cartaghe (?) which started with about 20 provinces and high civilization compared to my 2.

Zeldor: rome seems historically accurate. you can start on any DAY you want to in the period between pyrric war and the first emperor and some reveiw checked a few things and those seemed to fit. but I admit the game is a bit slow which is why combining it would be nice..

but it is kewl that for example my general send otu to conquer far away lands (another weak country) suddenly decided to keep those far away lands for himself (I hadn't payed attention to his loyalty in a while.. then I noticed he wouldn't split his troops anymore (make a 2nd army) and later I got a message that he had started a rebellion...

hey sombre.. let me know when you are ready http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Aezeal:

Yeah, EU series is fun unless you are a Dominions player or someone that wants to spend more time on it. Dom3 of cousr is far from being balanced but in EU what do you have? In EU:Rome there are probably 2-3 playable nations. Remaining ones are pretty much useless. You need 1-2 hours on fastest game speed to be able to colonise one province.
EU3 has also only few playable nations. And there are some nations that have hidden 'lucky' tag. And France and England are always there. People would of course say that nations were not equal in history but EU is not historically accurate.
EU series pretends to be historical, but only people with quite limited knowledge can be fooled by that. Province names are fine as it concerns western europe. Where you need to spend at least 5 minutes to verify and look at historical atlas they tend to be really strange. Also you get science penalties for belonging to non-western tech group. And you also get weaker units if you are not that group. So it takes you more time to research weaker troops. And it is quite common knowledge that in eastern europe cavalry was really better than in west. And here west has everything better and faster.
And you can go on and on with interface, diplomatic system, peace signing mechanics etc etc. Dominions is far from perfect but still 3x better than EU series.

So the thing that you want is dominions with historical races, technological research, more resources and more buildings. So you'd need to replace magic sites with constructable things and magic gems with wood, iron etc. But doing normal research that would increase efficiency, upgrade weapons for units etc etc would be impossible with that engine.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I used to play EU2, and I did not like the cultural penalties. Sadly, in EU3, it is even worse, as they added units difference, wich increase the penalties if you don't play west european.
In the same time, they stripped off all the historical details and events of EU2, making of this game a sort of random pseudo-historical simulator.
The final touch, and what makes this game a total wreck, are the numerous bugs : I have played 5 EU3 games, and all of them ended with a fatal bug.
So, why would someone want to have dom 3 look like EU3 ?

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I started yesterday, it should be finished tomorrow.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Note that, if someone (with huge c++ knowledge) want to try, Paradox is now releasing the sourcecode of their old engine (the 2d one of eu2/ck/hoi etc) to members of their community who want to make their own versions and sell them on gamersgate.

But I rather doubt the engine is usable for a dom-like pausable real time game. Considering the years of patching Paradox needed just to make some of their games playable, I can't imagine how many a game of the complexity of dominions and using their kind of code would need.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

You should keep in mind that the nations in EU series weren't intended to be equal. The EU series have always been about setting up your own goals and if you are playing a weaker nation you just have to cope with it. And I like it. The game can be tiresome if you are playing it to long in one session though.However, I wouldn't want a mixture between Dom3 and EU. Dom3 is already tough as it is, adding more complexity would kill the game for me.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

theenemy:

Nah, it is way beyond that. Penalties for research, ahistorically weak troops for some nations, bad manpower, bad provinces.
And all that wouldn't be so bad if game was enjoyable. But most of the time you fight against interface and stupid game mechanics, not other nations. Especially when it comes to trying to sign peace and calculating war score. Any small border wars just don't work. You need total annihilation to take just 1 province. And if you are losing you can just offer white peace 100 times and it will randomly get through after some time.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I played the illyrians and got a decent empire after ~100 turns. I'd some problems on the start (against macedonia) but thats all. Colonisation wasn't a problem. I got all the land in the north very fast (grain growth bonus traded to border provinces)

Rome needs some patches to be good. Atm its just somehow boring and there are many bugs. While i do very well most of the other big nations like rome fight an endless civil war and failed to expand much.

But this is always a problem with wargames. They just need some time to be good!

I'm not sure what you mean here with playable nations? Its very easy to play the big once like france, england or castille. You get some challenge by playing a 1 province land but if you know the mechanism its not a big deal to make a great empire out of grenada for example.

I like the Magna Mundi Gold Mod which put in some difficults in the game.

Well the western tech groups reflect the fact that european countries did develope better than rest in the world in this timeframe. For example urbanizing was one factor, but there are more.
Eastern tech group aren't that much worse than western. The cavalry is even better! You just have to live with a 0.9 tech factor but you get manpower and much land to expand quite good.
And again I'm revering to the fabolous magna mundi mod where all the details better explained and you can modernize with every nation in the world.

Well they are 2 different games. I would never play dominions in SP mode as i play EU and viceversa for MP.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

calmon:

France and England get 'lucky' tag which is totally unnecessary. That would be like giving hidden Luck+3 scale to MA Pythium in Dominions.

In eastern tech group cavalry is worse than western. So they have everything worse. You can find tables with unit stats somewhere on EU3 forum.

Research groups - some countries are in bad groups, for example Poland was always latin culture with later parts conquered of eastern culture.

Research speed - in some cases it is of course true. But there were also different factors. I can understand that in EU2 with historical accuracy, but not in EU3. I will use example of Poland again. The thing that slowed down it's progress was acquiring a lot of land on east, really huge amounts. And that mechanism is present in EU already. And then they get additional punishement for different culture. Also China in old times was much more advanced than Europe. Not even mentioning huge superiority of Middle East during Dark Ages.

Manpower - I think someone picked it randomly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Russia got really nice manpower boost, but countries around didn't.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Well the 'lucky' tag give just some AI boost. Every competive player is still miles better than the AI so whats the problem with it?
AI got some bonus and uses some lines of very limited code and you got Trillions of brain cells, isn't THAT unfair? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

For the cavalry (taken from FAQ, maybe not the most actual version):
This is western Tech 5 Cav.
Unit Techgroup/Techlevel/Type/Maneouver/Morale Off./Morale Def./Fire Off./Fire Def./Shock Off./Shock Def.
Hungarian Hussar latin 5 cavalry 2 3 2 0 0 2 1

Eastern got 2:
Mongol Steppe eastern 5 cavalry 2 2 2 2 2 2 1
Ottoman Spahi eastern 5 cavalry 2 2 2 2 1 2 1

For me the east cavalry with aditional fire is better than the western. The next step for better better cav start with tech level 14 which happens later in the game where cav start losing importance and even there i can't see much difference.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

calmon:

Compare them at higher level, at 50% research, 75% and 100%.
Polish hussars were the best cavalry units that ever existed. Something like fear aura & mirror image heavy cavalry in dominions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

To be fair, i can't really say which cav was superior in the years 1600-1750 but if you don't like the polish hussars in vanilla play the MMG2 Mod for NA 1.2. Like i said its really good!

Compare the MMG2 version

# Polish Hussar

type = cavalry
technology_group = eastern
technology_group = eastern_europe

maneuver = 2
offensive_morale = 5
defensive_morale = 2
offensive_fire = 0
defensive_fire = 2
offensive_shock = 5
defensive_shock = 2

with the vanilla:

# Polish Hussar

type = cavalry
technology_group = eastern

maneuver = 2
offensive_morale = 4
defensive_morale = 2
offensive_fire = 0
defensive_fire = 0
offensive_shock = 2
defensive_shock = 2

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Maybe there are mods that help with that. I know that vanilla game really sucked when it comes to balance etc and I uninstalled that before serious mods came. Anyway EU3 caused really bad problems with my graphics drivers.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Well Being a historian, the joke is EU really isnt historical like people say but that is ok. One plays it for the potential to build the old empires or make your own.

The old EU games like EU2 were more historical with its historic events, now that they dont have those, sometimes I feel that Dom3 is more historic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif haha

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

For me, when playing Poland, it was easier to conquer whole China [Ming in eastern Europe on year 1470!] than getting one province from one of german states http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

That's what the Treaty of Westphalia is for. YOu can't conquer Germany, you just have to hack it up geo-politically.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I'm a fan of both EU and (unsurprisingly) Dominions 3. Both games have their high points...and their flaws.

The problem with making EU (or any linear game set in the real world) 'historical' is that once the player takes control and a random element is introduced into the equation (much less AI), anything that happens is going to be a-historical. And you know what? That's a -good- thing.

It's boring when the game does things to cleave closely to the timeline; the German example's a good one. With proper military force and political backing, you shouldn't need the Treaty of Westphalia to carve up Germany like a turkey.

I actually like the way that the oft-maligned Total War games do things; events are randomized across a reasonably plausible period, rather than set in stone. Given the general player-driven deviations, I think that gives a far more genuine experience than trying to hard code in 'historical' events happening.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

While I never played the original EU games, I tried EU Rome, and after examining several of the bigger mods, made my own mod to the game, and the battles and gameplay are now fair to decent. However, it's still somewhat dry. Which is a shame, because HOI2 with it's expansions (and some mods) was very enjoyable.

I suspect EU Rome will require a good three or four patches, an expansion, and maybe a year of modding to reach good/great.

Coincidentally, Rome Total War, required the same exact thing.

I miss the days when finished products were released on day one, and major bugs the exception. Now the reverse is true.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

I kinda like EU: rome though.. it's not really possible to win with a small nation though

as a one city state in small asia I first conquered the remains of iberia and armenia I got 4 other provinces there.

Then I took on egypt while they where at war with carthage and that large nation in asia (Seulucid)..

so when I have conquered half of egypts assets in turkey the other nations peace with egypt so I'm against egypt alone (when I declared egypt was about 20+ provinces)

So at a time I manage to take all his 8 provinces in turkey and cyprus.. a battle score of 58... the game says he should take the loss of a province or his stability will drop... and it did... 3x till -3 but refuses to surrender even a friggin single province.. and then it's a war of attrition and he sends all his armies.. about 3 times as much towards me and.... (I kept reloading here but no options)

The AI is right of course.. he WILL win in the end.. but WTF no way to win ANY province of a large nation like this..

ALSO why didn't any large nation want to ally with me at the start (I'm talkin a 180 or 190 positive relation here)

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

You're a small nation and wonder why no big nation ally with you? You know that every war you declare, your ally has at least an ethical bound to also declare war. Its just plain stupid to do that. Try to ally with small ones.

And it should be very hard to manage a 1 provincer to something like victory. And from my site you also should need very much luck to do this. I'm tired to only play the last asian bush tribe to get some challenge.

If you known to play the paradox titles and are more experienced you notice how easy the game is.

Re: plz combine europe universalis: Rome and dom 3
 

Each games modding commands allow flexability yet usually not enough to deliver a new game by which features from another game are modded.

Unfortunately many gamers, such as myself, have dreams of what variables would create the ultimate game. I have blueprints in my mind for the ultimate RTS game, ultimate RPG game and ultimate TBS game. The only realistic chance for any of these dreams to come true is if the gamer suddenly inherits lots of money or wins some multi-million lottery.