Rome II

[Nefaro]

Was there another patch this evening? 

I just logged into Steam and there's a 22.8MB update downloading.  Of course, it's estimated finish time is about 3.5 hours since the Steam client doesn't feel like downloading patches much lately.  >:(  Seriously?  A 22MB patch that won't finish downloading?  Shamefur Disrpray!

Yes, it was the hot fix for red skies.

Aww. 

Damn thing took 20 goddamn minutes to download.  >:(  *Insert Steam rant here*

[Gusington]

How are you all keeping your provinces happy? I am expanding my cities and giving bread and circuses but my unhappiness is still too high for me to feel comfortable.

[Bison]

How are you all keeping your provinces happy? I am expanding my cities and giving bread and circuses but my unhappiness is still too high for me to feel comfortable.

Remember that your city bonuses for buildings effect the ENTIRE province, so look at how many structures you are doubling up where a different building might add a different bonus.  Temples are very good at improving happiness, because they give bonus to both happiness and convert to culture.  Not knowing the city your discussing, but I'd look at the culture.  Also you can stop the province from being taxed for a few turns.

[Bison]

Well no more Carthage.  It turned out to be rather anti-climatic.  Now the Punic Rebels on the hand who are holed up in Corsica.  They are turning out to be a huge pain in the ass.  A 20 unit stack army holed up in a city as I lay siege with a smaller force that I'm going to have to pull back due to attrition and I'll also need to flex another legion over to give support for the siege battle.  I'm out numbered more than 3 to 1 at the moment.

[MengJiao]

I might have bitten off more than I can chew in my Roman campaign.  I'm in a full fledged war with Carthage and her allies.  Armies and Navies are moving all over the Mediterranean.  We are in a power struggle primarily over the Sardinia islands area.  The one upside for me is that Carthage has a major rebel problem right now, which is indirectly helping my war efforts.

I took an Easy Tour under blue skies.  I tried some barbarians.  Then I set out as Easy Egypt.  I was puttering around knocking out rebels and getting some trade when the Selucids and all their Satrapies and allies (about 6-7 kingdoms) declared war on me.  So the AI will get you.  Apparently especially if you are Egypt.  Even Easy Egypt.  Maybe I can beat them in detail or something.  we will see.

[Nefaro]

How are you all keeping your provinces happy? I am expanding my cities and giving bread and circuses but my unhappiness is still too high for me to feel comfortable.

Don't just automatically upgrade all your structures to the highest level possible.  The ones that jump from -4 Stability to -12 Stability can be nasty.  Just take your time, build up Stability (and Food) production buildings and only upgrade to those nasty bastards when you can take the hit in that province. 

Just remember that we're probably not meant to have a lot of those high-penalty high-level buildings so don't be building them all over the place.  Get the basics laid down and then slowly inch the other higher tier stuff up when you can.

I also tend to take my sweet time, after conquering new territory, before warring the next neighbor.  It takes about 9 turns for the Stability penalties from the recent conquest to drop off, and about that long to switch the culture over to my own (for further unrest reduction).  Make sure you're placing those administrator characters in these new acquisitions because they add some culture conversion bonus.  The first things to build/convert are temples and other structures that give positive stability.

[mikeck]

How are you all keeping your provinces happy? I am expanding my cities and giving bread and circuses but my unhappiness is still too high for me to feel comfortable.

I cheated... Used Radious' building mod that reduced food penalties to buildings and increased tax revenue and public order for others.

[Bison]

How are you all keeping your provinces happy? I am expanding my cities and giving bread and circuses but my unhappiness is still too high for me to feel comfortable.

I cheated... Used Radious' building mod that reduced food penalties to buildings and increased tax revenue and public order for others.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   ;D

I found once you learned to balance the buildings across your province and build up slowly; generally provinces quickly become profitable.  Especially if you take farming tech for the added economic boosts for having them.

[Nefaro]

There's scuttlebutt as to why performance suffers.  Evidentally CA has the textures and shadows being processed by the CPU and not the video card.  What is this, 1996?!  I can only guess that they had some video card overheating when everything was running through them, or some other issue, in order to move that stuff over.  ???

I had wondered why the turn resolution would be noticeably slower while my viewable area was in a spot that made my fps drop.  Even got a couple lock-ups while the turn was processing and it had been zoomed into a bunch of smoke and stuff on the campaign map.  Sure enough, the turn processes slower the lower my fps is when I end the turn.

That explains why some of the video performance sucks no matter what vid card you have, and long turn resolution times.  ;)

[Bison]

There's scuttlebutt as to why performance suffers.  Evidentally CA has the textures and shadows being processed by the CPU and not the video card.  What is this, 1996?!  I can only guess that they had some video card overheating when everything was running through them, or some other issue, in order to move that stuff over.  ???

OK.  That's an interestingly poor decision if it's true.  I'm not sure it that is something that can be reversed with a patch. 

[Bison]

OK.  The diplomacy and strategic map annoy me.  Who the hell decided not to allow the player to scroll the freaking map around?  Stupid.

[Nefaro]

OK.  The diplomacy and strategic map annoy me.  Who the hell decided not to allow the player to scroll the freaking map around?  Stupid.

You can.  Gotta Left-click, hold, and drag the mouse to move them.  You can also use the mouse wheel to zoom in & out.

[Bison]

OK.  The diplomacy and strategic map annoy me.  Who the hell decided not to allow the player to scroll the freaking map around?  Stupid.

You can.  Gotta Left-click, hold, and drag the mouse to move them.  You can also use the mouse wheel to zoom in & out.

I'll need to try this later, because this is some good news if true.

[undercovergeek]

loving it, captured Buxentium (the one on the coast) - the only thing im coming up against so far is the lack of knowledge - how i yearn for a glossy manual to read on the toilet, what buildings to build and why, what units to build and why with the little pics of the unit or building - sigh

anyway - i can only assume im ignorant of the complaints 'they' make - combat seems ok to me - unit morale is a little flaky im definitely going to get a mod just dont know which one yet - it usually takes a week or 2 for the cream to float to the top mod wise - front runners look like radious mod or the close combat one - research continues!

other than that id like to zoom way out of the campaign map just for a sense of scale - and despite the complaints, the little additions and add ons you can make to the generals - im finiding myself quite attached to the little fellas and rooting for them in battle

[mikeck]

OK.  The diplomacy and strategic map annoy me.  Who the hell decided not to allow the player to scroll the freaking map around?  Stupid.

You can.  Gotta Left-click, hold, and drag the mouse to move them.  You can also use the mouse wheel to zoom in & out.

I'll need to try this later, because this is some good news if true.

Yeah, left click and drag. I think you can also use the arrow keys