I presume it is deliberate that walled cities now have much lower defensive strengths, e.g. -

Aegae fully manned = 600

Cities w/ 30/35 = 400

Can't wait to try it out! Question: is it a problem if i installe the new one over the last one or should i better disinstall that first? I tried both over the last releases but saw no difference. And thanks for your great work ofcourse :)

Can't wait to try it out! Question: is it a problem if i installe the new one over the last one or should i better disinstall that first? I tried both over the last releases but saw no difference. And thanks for your great work ofcourse :)
I installed it over an older one without any problems.

Time for the first critics :P I like the idea of the fixed lower hitpoints for cities and forts, but maybe you should consider limiting the catapults damage on walls as well. I always bring 3 groups of catapults with me and with them i brought down Messenias 1000 hp in no time. And the Messenian army reacts in a strange way: they let me siege Messenia itself without moving a finger, but all peltasts they had attacked me from Korone when i captured a farm

Bonjour et compliments pour ce bijoux à propos duquel je ne taris pas d'éloges.
*N'ayant hélas pas encore atteint un niveau assez avancé du jeu, je voudrais savoir si il est possible de capturer les navires à l'accostage à l'aide de la cavalerie ou tout autre unité, voir même, de capturer ceux ci une fois mis en déroute lors d'affrontements navals ou d'abordage à l'aide des unités embarquées.

*D'autre part,
pourrait-on reconstituer les troupeaux de moutons entamés, en leur permettant par exemple de paître dans les champs dont les récoltes ne sont pas encore moissonnées ou dans les cités possédant des excédents de vivre?

*Une touche de chargement rapide de la dernière sauvegarde est-elle prévue?

*Les ruines des anciennes demeures des généraux ne pourraient-elles pas, une fois rebâties, apporter quelques bonus, comme celui d'augmenter la quantité de vivres transportables aux unités qui y sont rattachées, dans la mesure où celles ci se voient attribuer un nombre suffisant d'esclaves ou de travailleurs?

*Pourraient-on diviser les groupes d'esclaves de manière à combler la capacité des mines sans être obligé de les visiter l'un après l'autre?

*Et enfin,
est-il envisageable de voir un jour une inclinaison de camera permettant d'observer le ciel et pourquoi pas, un recul de zoom faisant apparaître les nuages et les détails de la tente de commandement, à la manière de celle employée par le fameux R.U.S.E d'Eugen Systems?

Désolée pour ma méconnaissance de la langue de Shakespeare.
J'espère ne pas vous avoir trop dérangé par l'emploie de celle de Molière.
Salutations,
Daniela.

Bonsoir Daniela,

Pour la première question: Non, trirèmes ne peut pas être capturé par des unités non-marine.

Pour la deuxième question: Oui, vous pouvez également augmenter le nombre de sauvegardes et de réduire le temps entre chaque sauvegarde.

Les développeurs doivent répondre à vos questions.

A votre service,

Erik

How mod friendly do you plan on making the game? I'd love to make the Persian controlled part of Ionia playable, but start the game allied with Persia if you play as Persia, but just with a truce with Persia if you play as Ionia, and take away Persia's ability to train hoplites away because in reality only the Ionian states would have had hoplites anyway.

For anyone who doesn't know too much about the Ionians they were the greeks on the other side of the Aegean. Aeolis, Ionia, Doris, Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, Naxos, Crete, Cyprus, Samos. I'd only make the Persian controlled ones separate so Athens could keep its empire and Crete would be independent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anatolia_Ancient_Regions_base.svg

Hello, is it fair to ask replies to be made in ENGLISH in order for everyone to have a chance of understanding? No offense, Daniela, but your questions seemed quite lengthy and initiated (and therefore, interesting!) and may be of interest to other people as well. Hope for your understanding.

Thanks for the update Rob. It's good to know you will improve a game that gave me tons of hours of fun already :) One thing i'd like to ask about this time is: is there a way to "disencourage" the AI to move its whole army into a town when i'm approacing? The reaction itself is an intelligent one, when it sees me coming, it moves all the available units to the town im closing in. The problem is that he doesn't fight me in the field, but run into the town instead, making it easier for me to siege with 2 battallions of hoplites and then start bombarding the walls with catapults. The AI often loses hundreds of men this way, and this way it often loses also neighboring towns, who it left defenseless and with no more recruits. Coming back to my initial question, is there a way to dinencourage the AI to fill the town, lets say if it reaches its garrison limit and attack me instead?
And a question about the overall AI and diplomacy. Do you plan to make all factions make war with eachother? Let me explain: they attack each others units when they meet, but i don't think they build up armies and siege each others towns unlike they do with mine :( . And do you plan to let them make peace or ally with other AI factions, for their own safety or to better kick my butt?
Just to make it clear again, the game is AWESOME even now :) THX a lot for it

More on the AI behavior:

Several times I've seen what rolzuc describes. I would add that after they're bottled up they start making sorties, but since they come out the gates slowly they just get slaughtered. I've taken a couple of cities where big armies were frittered away uselessly like that.

An interesting variant, I approached Larissa from the coast. The harassed me with peltasts for a bit, and eventually sent out a full army to meet me. But just as they got into position they chickened out and ran back into the city, where things happened as described above. (A field engagement would have gotten interesting, since the armies were about equally matched.)

Thanks for the explanation of the new siege mechanics.

Sorry for my english,
i have few questions about floks of sheeps.
How to use and reconstituate them.
Is'it possible to consomme them and find news or completes floks on our territory?
If i want mulitply floks in prevision of big invasion, how to do it?
A complete consumed flok can be respawning at the same place?
For the moment i'm totaly in the trouble about this problem of food.

@Daniela

Food does seem to be scarce now. To utilize sheep, you must first capture them like defeated troops, then send them to your city. When they come to your city, a new button will appear allowing you to either consume or unload them.

I think that they won't respawn unless you have already consumed the original sheep from that area. To save up multiple flocks for future campaigns, you can either just stockpile all of your sheep in one area, or you can risk trying to capture the enemy's sheep instead.

If you have a few Triremes, you can also target your enemy's merchant ships, and then pick up the small amounts of food that they drop in the water when sunk.

I'll use Google translate as well, just in case:

Les aliments ne semblent être rares désormais. Pour utiliser les moutons, vous devez d'abord les capturer comme troupes battues, puis de les envoyer à votre ville. Quand ils viennent à votre ville, un nouveau bouton apparaît, vous permettant de consommer ou les décharger.

Je pense qu'ils ne réapparaîtra pas à moins d'avoir déjà consommé les moutons d'origine de cette région. Pour économiser jusqu'à plusieurs troupeaux pour les campagnes futures, vous pouvez soit stocker tous vos moutons dans un domaine, ou vous pouvez le risque en essayant de capturer les moutons de l'ennemi au lieu.

Si vous avez un peu de trirèmes, vous pouvez également cibler les navires marchands de votre ennemi, puis ramasser les petites quantités de nourriture que leur chute dans l'eau quand coulé.

Hope that helps.

And a question about the overall AI and diplomacy. Do you plan to make all factions make war with eachother? Let me explain: they attack each others units when they meet, but i don't think they build up armies and siege each others towns unlike they do with mine :( . And do you plan to let them make peace or ally with other AI factions, for their own safety or to better kick my butt?
Just to make it clear again, the game is AWESOME even now :) THX a lot for it

I am interested in this too. I think it would be very interesting if the AI chose other AI targets to attack based on how hostile they are to specific factions (which I'm guessing would be simplest), or basing it on other factors like it seems to when it attacks the player (state of defences etc.).

I rue invading certain parts of the map. There are no internal threats, just constant shore raids. I'm forced to keep so many premiere military units on call in the region that I spend most of my time micro-managing these raids. Irritating. What makes the game fun is also going to make it very tedious very soon after expanding.

I'm having a very hard time even with manually delivering food in keeping my empire fed and profitable. I'm also new to triremes and finding the combat of them clunky and widly unpredictable. Still can't stop playing the game though. I just keep restarting, refining, restarting, refining, etc.

One of my biggest complaints with B11 is the odds of running into massed missile units. By the time the unit can carve its way in, the groups of missile enemies have killed my units off. Anything except first rank high-missile defense melee can really combat this. I sometimes keep roving groups of scout cavalry around and use pulling tactics to move groups apart so I can cut them down piecemeal.

Still not quite right.

A few economic suggestions, none of which are game-making or breaking. But had to offer anyway. :)

1. Trade roads are too costly to improve.

2. Villas used to provide additional income; this income isn't great, but noticeable.

3. With foreign cities now requiring a garrison, one would hope that the values can be raised in some manner. Ideally workers could be used to improve economic ratings of the cities over time.

4. Being able to increase the number of market/trade nodes would be a valuable piece of gameplay and strategy.

5. Trade routes are always +2 gold; as distance makes the transfer rate of food diminish, distance obviously has a gameplay aspect. Economically speaking, it would benefit a larger city's market to be able to trade with a far off city state. I would like to see this aspect of the game improved. At the very least, heavy market node cities should generate more income and should generate more trade income per route.

With recruitment and faction based population (and very few chances to Spear-Won the city) I end up with hundreds of unused population points and importing much cheaper friendly or Macedon garrison troops all over the map. This is consuming more and more of my time and energy. At 4200 gold and about 8 quests into Hegemony, only 15% of my time is roughly spent expanding - and I'm fast, efficient and seasoned.

Thanks for your answer,
even if that not seem fonctioned for my flocks.

Another questions, again :-)
why when we capture mines with slaves or workers, sometime we capture the mine with all their slaves and sometimes slaves are completly disapear?

Why when we capture a city full of troops, can't we capture all the troops and flocks inside in the same time?

Salutations from France,
Daniela de Montmartre.

@Daniela

If a mine has slaves inside it, you should be able to capture them. You could also try to capture the mine before you capture the nearby city it is linked to, just to be safe. If a mine has workers inside it though, the workers will disappear just like enemy combat units do when you capture them inside a city. I think this is because the worker bands are tied to the city, while slaves are not.

When we capture cities, I think the troops disappear for game-balance reasons.