Again, a lot of insightful answers, thanks =) I really like the slow flow of the game, whith its huge map, the logistics, convoying of troops... I really look forward to Rome and all those little improvements.

I'm currently marching on Autariatae, and I was realising that the historical aspect of the game is a bit overshadowed. The Glossary and the F1 button are here to tell us things, but for example, when I captures Olooson not long ago, I captured a physicit that allowed construction of Catapults. I don't remember his name, but the point is that some sort of pop-up (from the Glossary ?), with a portrait of him would've been a nice touch ^^ And maybe something when a city is captured - about its history ? - or when a whole region is conquered. It's really about putting the History a bit more forward (maybe a toggle option in the menu).

In the Assets list, things could be a nice addition, like :
- wether a general is attached to a company or not
- the number of nodes a city has, and how many are used

As for menus, it should be nice to make them floatable : for example, I made an inventory of my mines, and when I click to point on one, it would've been handy to see the map, without closing the window.

We'll keep your ideas in mind. Personally, I'm a big fan of the historical notes and given the time we've spent researching and writing some of that stuff I'm glad to hear ideas for ensuring people who are interested realize it's there.

The research is indeed extremely well done =) I've learned a lot, and that's something I like when playing. I remember when Age of Empires came out, the "in-game" history books was something that enchanted me : a game was suddenly becoming something really cultural, and that was improved in Age in Mythology with the nice build-in encyclopedia. That's why I'd love for Rome to make History even more available, be it History, or little trivia ^^ (I remember in Julius Caesar's book about the Gaul Wars, he cited two brave roman soldiers who made a stand at the foot of their camp's wall. It's the sort of things that would be funny to find again in Rome =P)

In the Assets list, things could be a nice addition, like :
- wether a general is attached to a company or not
- the number of nodes a city has, and how many are used

Thanks for the ideas. These are definitely doable and I'll take a look into it.

That's great ! Gold already offers a lot of tools to manage the empire, but the farther it spreads, the more tedious it becomes to keep track of all details ! But at the same time, it's something that adds a lot the pleasure of actually managing that empire ^^ Maybe also a bit more emphasis on mines that are not fully "slaved" (for example, putting'em in red ?)

Depending on how Rome will work about recruiting troops, do you think it could be an idea to creat automatic waypoints for new units created ? More like a comfort tool, but it might come in handy (would have, in Gold ^^)

If any autonomy is introduced could we get the option to set how much AI autonomy we want our units to have Rob? I might not want my units to flee if they come under arrow fire due to a strategic and tactical plan I have in operation, say I want to bait and pin the enemy in to a skirmish battle while I maneuver my other units to try and pull of a surprise flank attack. Unit autonomy raises the question as to where does it start and end, the unit AI may want to do one action while the player wants to do a reverse conflicting action. Perhaps it could be tied in to unit stances - so for example, units in the aggressive stance could autonomously attack nearby targets within a threat range while units in the Guard stance could largely do as units do now and stand their ground for better or worse on the defensive.

I agree though that idealistically it would be handy for at least some players if the AI could maybe take charge of an army, or a few, to allow the player to not feel too overwhelmed and better able to focus whatever task they have at hand. So idealistically you could assign an army to the AI, then assign the AI a theater to work within (say Southern Gaul), and within this theater the player could give the AI some strategic goals to accomplish (Example: Fending off any invasions). Then instead of ping-ponging between two potential battles the player can better focus on an important military action to do with their invasion of Northern Gaul. The most similar comparison I can think of is the Theater feature in Hearts of Iron III - For The Motherland. One of the complaints many more "casual" or less experienced players have about Total War games is the ability to get overwhelmed, and that is without even having to concentrate on multiple fronts and battles at the same time in real-time.

Anyhow, I am certainly looking forwards to the game and seeing Caesar's Germanic Bodyguards ;). I wait in anticipation to see how Hegemony: Rome will handle the more episodic nature of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, it reminds me some what of Napoleon: Total War in ways considering how both were broken in to smaller parts to be more accessible to some players and attempt to allow for a strong more cohesive cinematic and narrative approach. One of the things I loved about Philip of Macedon was how there was a freedom to do things your way while the game still managed to find ways to inject some narrative and perspective in to the campaign.

Sure there are a few ways we the community could help promote the game too, like writing AARs over on other gaming forums. Which I am certainly thinking of doing when I can, should be at least a few people who I might be able to arouse some interest in over at Heavengames, Relicnews, the Paradox Interactive forums, and so on.

If any autonomy is introduced could we get the option to set how much AI autonomy we want our units to have Rob? I might not want my units to flee if they come under arrow fire due to a strategic and tactical plan I have in operation, say I want to bait and pin the enemy in to a skirmish battle while I maneuver my other units to try and pull of a surprise flank attack. Unit autonomy raises the question as to where does it start and end, the unit AI may want to do one action while the player wants to do a reverse conflicting action. Perhaps it could be tied in to unit stances - so for example, units in the aggressive stance could autonomously attack nearby targets within a threat range while units in the Guard stance could largely do as units do now and stand their ground for better or worse on the defensive.

I agree though that idealistically it would be handy for at least some players if the AI could maybe take charge of an army, or a few, to allow the player to not feel too overwhelmed and better able to focus whatever task they have at hand. So idealistically you could assign an army to the AI, then assign the AI a theater to work within (say Southern Gaul), and within this theater the player could give the AI some strategic goals to accomplish (Example: Fending off any invasions). Then instead of ping-ponging between two potential battles the player can better focus on an important military action to do with their invasion of Northern Gaul. The most similar comparison I can think of is the Theater feature in Hearts of Iron III - For The Motherland. One of the complaints many more "casual" or less experienced players have about Total War games is the ability to get overwhelmed, and that is without even having to concentrate on multiple fronts and battles at the same time in real-time.

Anyhow, I am certainly looking forwards to the game and seeing Caesar's Germanic Bodyguards ;). I wait in anticipation to see how Hegemony: Rome will handle the more episodic nature of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, it reminds me some what of Napoleon: Total War in ways considering how both were broken in to smaller parts to be more accessible to some players and attempt to allow for a strong more cohesive cinematic and narrative approach. One of the things I loved about Philip of Macedon was how there was a freedom to do things your way while the game still managed to find ways to inject some narrative and perspective in to the campaign.

Sure there are a few ways we the community could help promote the game too, like writing AARs over on other gaming forums. Which I am certainly thinking of doing when I can, should be at least a few people who I might be able to arouse some interest in over at Heavengames, Relicnews, the Paradox Interactive forums, and so on.
That will be nice

I don't like the idea of unit stances;ex stand ground,agressive,passive,dose thing have a bad abite of forcing the player to chasse is unit around or have it destroy.<--Still this can work but lot of RTS fail in doing it to be effectif.

suggestion ,make a interception behavior but can only be use inside a city/fort,now the explanation,you have a cavalry unit in a city you select it and use the "interception" action now that cavalry unit will protect the surrounding of the city MAX view range NOT the city itself ex:a enemy skirmisher is spot,the cavalry exit the city and approach during that time the AI(player side)check the win chance + the estimate lost of is on men before attacking if the ords are good , will attack (enemy skirmisher) if bad or cannot (lack of man power) then the game pause and warne the player.multi units in "interception" in the same city will help ich outer.That a pure border defense so the player do not have to dealt whit small raids.(just a idea)

TO Malkael<--interesting post
One of the complaints many more "casual" or less experienced players have about Total War games is the ability to get overwhelmed, and that is without even having to concentrate on multiple fronts and battles at the same time in real-time.
the campaign AI cheat like hell;teleport army,instant build army etc...and for the real time part the ai is a joke.and am a totalwar vet

TOTALWAR is a TBRTS,turn base real time strategy and not a RTS (AGE OF EMPIRE is a RTS) my 2 cent

Yeah, though just about all games increase difficulty by not making the actual AI better but by making opponents tougher with health bonuses, resource bonuses, morale bonuses or whatever applicable statistic exists to provide a bonus to the AI. Or in the case of SC1, which I can't remember if it has AI bonuses beyond 'Normal' or not, after roughly four hours the AI's script runs out of ideas (fair enough I guess, it's an old game) making the game easier for the human player. So sadly AI bonuses for playing on harder difficulty levels seems like it will standard for a while at least. Annoyingly there isn't even an unmodded difficulty level which gives neither the AI nor the player any advantages, Normal difficulty still gives the AI some penalties and Hard gives the AI advantages.

No argument about that, heck Total War could probably be more correctly called a TBS-RTT. The point was more that if people newer to the strategy genre, of the RTS or TBS or any kind really, have trouble not getting overwhelmed in some of the easier strategy games out there then it is no wonder why they might get even more daunted and overwhelmed in Hegemony ;). If someone who finds Total War overwhelming becomes interested in Hegemony then they are only going to become even more overwhelmed due to the nature of Hegemony's core features. Which is basically my way of saying, "no wonder why some people have been asking for AI assistance if they find "easier" games overwhelming".

Not sure if I needed to reiterate that at all, but hey not like I got much else to do at the moment so might as well have a discussion.

I don't have to add much about AI. It's sometimes a bit frustrating in Gold to move some garrisoned units from a remote town and suddenly, that town is under heavey attack of like 2O units, though never ever did it have any previous attack or any ennemy unit approaching =P I wish I could send spies. Stances can be quite tricky to implement : as worp41 pointed out, few games manage them correctly. One of the craziest ones was Battle realms who, although an excellent game, just made you cry at how reactive your units were : like running across the whole map to protect a single unit, even though you wanted to prepare traps !

And now, something completely different. It was about music, an I had an idea concerning the main theme during play. The many ways the music changes according to events is a nice touch, and all those "booms" when clicking and giving orders are just priceless. But I thought "hey, it could vary sometimes" and then I remembered the old Sim City on SNES (yeah !) : what about changing the theme music depending on the size of the map we own ? A lighter tune at the start, and the more we conquer, the "heavier" the music.

To Malkael
Bonuses to the AI is need to help it fight but to some limit..i agreed whit the rest of your post.

TO Eawyne
If your city have a heavier garrison a the border the ai will not attck or aproche but if you replace the garrison ex; 4 hoplite whit 1 spearman don be surprise to be attck 160 man vs 30 man, use your math;)

for the music

no idea,but i love the song "HELL MARCH" from the game c&c red alert that song make you went to kill tings .

To the developer
do AI will build bridge,fort and use them.do the AI will understand that crossing a river or narrow pass to attack a player unit standing in front is a death sentence.need a bit of AI update.

One of the features that really needs to stand in Rome is the possibility to rearrange units in a bigger formation. It's a real pleasure to shift catapults between phalanxs, next to some cavalry, and then watch all the units order themselves in great discipline ^ ^ It it comes in conflict with stances, the possibility to choose some kind of advanced tactic mode could be an idea : possibly several modes to choose, like : Full tactic (formations, no AI autonomy...), Assisted tactics (possibility to choose which options are to be AI-controled), Stances (beginners friendly).

Some battle-options could be neat, like the possibility to order a unit to automatically chase fleeing ennemies, or to siege a (very) close city when no ennemy units are nearby.

One thing that could be possible, is the possibility to make a unit leave a city without taking some - if any - food with it. Not all units are marching to war when moved (at least, not in my game !). Maybe some sort of bar that can be adjusted ?

Oh, and is it possible to select unit of a same type at once ? Like double clicking on some catapults would select all catapults on-screen ?

Great discussion. Took me a while to catch up on everything.
:)

Generally, my goal with these autonomy ideas is not to provide an AI you can hand over the reigns of your empire to but rather to reduce some of the unit micromanagement in large battles where the player is paying attention and to give units a better chance of survival enemy and ideally the ability to deal with minor situations like fighting off raiders when the player is distracted elsewhere.
raids in most of me game i was force to chose, dealing wit the raid or my invasion outer side of the map,went you try to capture 5 city and you got raid by 16 unit XD that hurt.

Currently these ideas are taking the form of stances that replace the formation system in the original games. I'm still working on organizing all of these behaviours but they are generally much more nuanced then the standard passive/aggressive stances in other games and you'll definitely have the option to turn things off as I still hold the position that I'd rather your units wait for your orders than to do something really stupid.
that a good start keep going

This was one of the things I really wanted to avoid in Hegemony and I'm proud to say our AI does fight without any stat bonuses on the same terms as the player. However, to divulge a few secrets, one "cheat" the AI does do to control the difficulty is that each faction knows what attacks the other factions have planned, so on the easier levels some factions will hold back if the player is already under attack so the player isn't overwhelmed. Of course, this threshold is fuzzy so if the player provides a really tempting target like an unwalled and undefended city the AI might decide to pounce while it has the chance

Oh that explaint some funny AI assault :)

The AI is definitely getting an update for Rome to deal with some of the new mechanics and once we get into beta testing reports like this will be very useful in helping me program the AI to counter what you guys throw at it

the AI will no who the boss in town or not ...cannot wait to test it

We're definitely keeping the concept of linking units in the game although we've got some ideas on how to make it more useful. The question of whether there are several AI modes is one of the things we're experimenting with right now. Ideally we want as few AI parameters as possible while making sure the units do exactly what you want. There's a reason we haven't talked a lot about this stuff yet, there's no perfect formula out there to copy and, although I'm hopeful we'll get it all to work, we haven't proven it yet and there's a chance it may all get dropped in the end."Some battle-options could be neat, like the possibility to order a unit to automatically chase fleeing ennemies, or to siege a (very) close city when no ennemy units are nearby. "

Yep, those are some of the behaviours we're ideally hoping an AI can help with since they can be easily missed if you don't happen to be watching that part of the map when the opportunity arises.

difference parameter depending of unit type ex:heavy infantry do not chase rout enemy BUT cavalry do

I tried to address this issue in Hegemony Gold and actually implemented a second resupply method where units only refill 10% of their supplies when they exit a city but refill completely if they go far enough to leave the supply radius. The intention here was to prevent units from unnecessarily draining their cities supplies when they were only going outside to defend. Unfortunately we didn't get a lot of time to playtest this so I turned into an option that you had to enable in the options screen.In Rome, however, this will be the only way of resupplying and the resupply ranges are much bigger so your units should only be topping up when they go out on a campaign.

that good new,but the problem (in gold)is when the supply radius overlap the city at the end die on supply.also when a unit pass the radius i will dry the food of the city leaving the garrison to starve and city to revolt.

to address that, the city need a reserve food stock ex:the city need 6t of food a week for the garrison,the reserve stock need to be 2x or 3x food/wk (2x=12t) so when a unit pass the radius and get refill e will get the max food - the reserve stock ex: 1 unit max food is 100,the city have 100t and the garrison need 6t/w x2=12t....100t-12t=88t the unit will 88t of food and will not starve the city if the city have no garrison then the unit get 100t and the city is out of food.

opp you get it

Additionally, to mimic some of Caesar's logistical tactics, you'll have a few options for how your troops march which includes how many supplies they take. These include a light march where they can move quickly with fewer supplies like Caesar did to break the siege against Cicero and a heavier march like Caesar used when first moving into an area where units can carry extra supplies in order to setup a camp but will be at a disadvantage for fighting if they encounter the enemy on the way.
do this meaning that you will mimic camp mode numpad 9 in a entrench camp ?

to address that, the city need a reserve food stock ex:the city need 6t of food a week for the garrison,the reserve stock need to be 2x or 3x food/wk (2x=12t) so when a unit pass the radius and get refill e will get the max food - the reserve stock ex: 1 unit max food is 100,the city have 100t and the garrison need 6t/w x2=12t....100t-12t=88t the unit will 88t of food and will not starve the city if the city have no garrison then the unit get 100t and the city is out of food.


That would be great ^^ Especially in situations like a siege with many units all around, and when finally the city's captured, all those retreating units (sometimes to cities real close), are just ruining everything by tearing the stocks to nothing =P Or, as worp41 points out, if the unit is just passing by to join some formations ahead...

typical example of where such options could've been immensely helpful : I'm now fighting my way to capture the Theban cities. There's a lot of troups movements, as I lure some ennemy units around my city walls, make détours to pin them against cliffs or surround them. I've tried it several times, but now I'm gathering thousands of sheep from all around the map to feed my cities because otherwise, the will rebel during combat, with all those units constantly passing in the stock radius. In those narrow portions of the map, it's quite hectic ! =P

"to address that, the city need a reserve food stock ex:"

I'd want to playtest it to see if there are any repercussions but it's definitely possible to get units to reduce how much they fill up based on the needs of the garrison in a city.
i will wait for some report on that playtest ...can i playtest me to:)


"do this meaning that you will mimic camp mode numpad 9 in a entrench camp ?"

yes, hitting the '9' key now highlights all the possible camp/fort locations in the area and then you can simply select one or more of them to build an "entrenched" camp. These camps work pretty much like temporary cities except that they don't produce recruits

happy to read that,that will make the player feel like a true roman and is historical to.your dev are amazing am glade to have find your games and that site.

I think the Assets menu could use even more fine-tuned filters, like separating Siege engines from regular units, and even among those, the possibility to sort from ranged units to contact units, and things like that. The more extended the empire, the more precise this screen should be ^^

I think the Assets menu could use even more fine-tuned filters

You can sort by the unit class if you click the "Class, Name" column header which might help you out a bit but we'll keep in mind adding more filters in the future.

Yep, I used that. It's just that I like to be able to find things rather quicky, I tend the be rather quickly overburdened with those heavy games ^^'

If you guys haven't seen the post, there's a new update for Hegemony Gold that in addition to some bug fixes, has a couple minor updates based on your suggestions. These include new columns in the asset list for trade nodes and generals and a more intelligent camera jump that centres the target to the right of any open windows making it much easy to jump through multiple targets with the asset list.

That's amazing =D That's the kind of support we'd all love in all games. Keep up the good work, 'cuz it pays (and I'll do it gladly for Rome).

How about siege weapons and bridge building?
is there something u think about?

capture a ciy with a melee unit is possible but i think it should be harder without
a siege-weapon

i cap city after city with my comp-cav (play the gold version)

will this been harder in rome?

and what about uprisings? even if the city is taken...there could be rebellions in the woods or something ^^

the timeshift between here and toronto is awesome ^^