So I gave Hegemony Rome another shot today. Here's my feedback on chapter one:

Yeah, the graphics are pretty, the models are good, even though feel somewhat "static" in combat, the (hi-)storytelling is still good (even though German localization is making my ears bleed, but that's not something you guys can change and playing in English in not a problem for me). These things combined with the beautiful map, the ability to request things from your allies and the building and city upgrade systems made me love H:Rome. But I really have to say the controls, the AI and major changes upon save/load are things that also made me hate Rome.

For example, if you detached a unit from a formation in Gold, the formation "offset" from center caused by one unit leaving the formation would stick and let the units you did not give a move order stay where they are. If you have to give a unit in the middle of a formation an order in Rome, the whole formation changes and everybody loses their formation bonus. On the other hand, if your legions are set to stay in formation, the enemy cavalry can just ride through them to reach my archers and slingers.

The raiders are nothing more than a pain, but that's probably by design, and I understand their importance. What I find really frustrating though is that apparently your AI does something that you said has been very important for you to avoid in Gold: It cheats to get troops. At least the Salassi (the mountain tribes you have to pass to get the Italian legions to Gaul in the beginning) city of Salassorum is getting troops from nowhere, with its recruits depleted, and just waiting to be sieged up by my legions, they suddenly get a full stack of whatever unit they wish to have - spearmen, skirmishers, ranged troops. I found it good that you did not need such a mechanic in Gold, even though it means lowering the difficulty for the player. But in this case I don't see the benefit of it at all, other than making a city I could have captured easily when it didn't have any walls yet totally unsiegeable.

And thirdly in my list of complaints: AI raider units seem to be loaded at the position of their destination rather than the position they were actually stationed at when saving.

Overall, the game makes the impression of being unpolished, my last game with Gold (last week or so) just felt a lot smoother.

And on a side note, if you lose your first unit while it was stationed in a city this white "emphasis circle" is stuck on the screen, probably because it wants to either select the city you just lost or the unit that no longer exists (due to having become homeless).

Ok, it seems the Salassi units were mercenaries and I apologize for ranting about cheating AI, but there was really no clue for me what it could have been other than that. In all the cities I got up until that point, mercenary construction was disabled because there was no merc post and I just assumed they were totally disabled in the campaign because it is scripted and such. My other points still stand though. What also makes the game feel less smooth overall is this interruption when you zoom out with the mousewheel: I do have a computer that can handle the load, and if the camera zooms to a position it does so smoothly. If I use the mousewheel on the other hand, zooming out or in is suddenly interrupted on a medium zoom level I practically never use. So every time I switch between view distances, e.g. building a camp and zooming out to connect it with a city, the zoom is just stuck on the same level for about half a second or so.

Just bought the game (Winter Sale) and think it has massive potential, but still far too rough to be called anything but early access...

Honestly, the most annoying thing for me is that zooming isn't LERPed, it just snaps to the new zoom. That makes it feel like a cheap prototype. If zooming were smooth, I would enjoy the game FAR more.

Besides that, when I started my game, after the first little skirmish, the tutorial told me to move thing one guy into the cavalry, but he had been killed somehow and I see no way around that.

Just bought the game (Winter Sale) and think it has massive potential, but still far too rough to be called anything but early access...

Honestly, the most annoying thing for me is that zooming isn't LERPed, it just snaps to the new zoom. That makes it feel like a cheap prototype. If zooming were smooth, I would enjoy the game FAR more.

Besides that, when I started my game, after the first little skirmish, the tutorial told me to move thing one guy into the cavalry, but he had been killed somehow and I see no way around that.

The game does have smooth zooming but you have to click left and right mouse button together and hold them in order to zoom up and down without transitions.

It's not the sudden transitions I complain about, it's the fact that if you zoom out from a very close zoom level and scroll with your mousewheel constantly, the zoom level just gets stuck halfway through, and continues zooming out after a second or so. It seems like it would have to reload something / get stuck because of full load. It's clearly not working as designed.

Another thing: The quest First of the Fleet does not complete even though I have built three ships by now. Here's a savegame if you want it:

ch3-7.HegemonyRomeSaveGame

Already tried reloading and dismissing all my ships and rebuilding one.

Good to hear form you. I know you're currently in a stage where your time is really scarce.

Another thing worth considering: Could you make it so that units that are still within supply radius do not qualify for the automatic food distribution between units? Because right now, something like this happens to 2+ units:

1. Both are in supply radius, 0 food.
2. First unit leaves SR, max food.
3. Before the second unit can leave the radius, food is distributed evenly, giving the both units ~ half food capacity.
4. Second unit leaves SR, max food, but first one only has half left.
5. Both units continue marching with only ~ 3/4 of their food capacity.

Granted, with more units, this gets less ineffective (100% for 1, 75% for 2, 81% for 3 and rising), but if you could add a condition to food distribution without too much effort, it would make long sieges easier for the attacker.

The raiders were the "neutral" light grey raider units from Ch1. I did not see this behavior with other units. Quite sure it's not just individual guys since I saved with the raiders halfway to their destination on the strategic mapmode, which seems to always use the position of the brigade. On loading the save, the unit was directly in front of one of my farms/mines.

I have to add the logistics / streets overhaul in Rome is awesome, it gives a bit of space to optimize things while not being too restraining and being able to build through allies' but not enemies' territory makes a lot of sense and probably prevents cheesy tactics (cities surrendering to Philip in Gold come to mind) or the AI building through others' territory.

And to finally come to an end, do you think you could add an "AI refresh" for the two factions in question when signing a truce? So a target update for every unit that is not in a city to see if it can still do what it wanted to do? Right now, I always have to reload on truce to prevent the units of that faction sent to raid my farms from doing so.

Another issue in chapter 3:

Assaulting Cassivellaunus' fort results in a crash every time I try it. I have revealed it using the Prince and then proceeded to attack the fort with all the troops I got during the campaign (plus some cavalry). It seems that after having wiped the cavalry the game is stable as long as the units in the fort remain there. And knowing Rome's offensive-defensive AI, I would tend to say the crash happens at the moment the AI tries to sortie.

I also have no idea how to tell my Briton coastal city that it should try plotting a sea route to the fort at the initial landing site instead of a land route that is bound to be blocked by British spheres of influence. The usual H:Gold approach (setting a waypoint in the sea or on land first) does not seem to work any longer.

Chapter three just doesn't seem to like me particularly well...

EDIT: Save

Dumpfile

Oh, I'm sorry, I just saw the download site for the first time without an adblocker active. You probably clicked on one of those faux-download links... I'll write the e-mail shortly.

Possibly important things:

- I do not know for sure if it crashes the instant the troops leave the fort, but it doesn't seem to crash if I just wait some more time before triggering Caesar's "Oh, there's Cassivellaunus!" dialog or when I need more time defeating the charging cavalry. It really comes down to attacking the cavalry, marching on the fort and crashing the moment I think the AI would normally do an assault/sortie.
- Are my computer specs of any help (and not already included in the dump file)?
- As you can see from the savegame, I have conquered all of the cities I was allowed to reach. I took the escort to mainland mission to reveal Cassivellaunus' position. Could it be that the unit that is used to reveal the FOW from the fort can't exit without crashing my game? Perhaps if you told me which one it was and I deleted that specific unit, I could see if it was correlated to that?
- I used an exploit to "scout" unexplored (black) areas, where I just ordered my men (not yet gathered in a formation) to form a new formation by clicking into the black area, holding and rotating the mouse. As soon as the mouse button is released, some "formation dummy" or something like that reveals a small portion of the black area and discovers the land without any unit actually getting there. It couldn't be related to that, could it?

Okay, I could proceed with the save I sent you and I also tested with one of the earlier saves and it seems to be working fine now.

Chapter four though isn't working any better: I more or less need siege equipment or at least better units than skirmishers and slingers to breach the walls of Indutiomarus' city, but the capture of logging camps doesn't give me any wood because the logging camps seem to have stored -10000 wood upon capture. So I can use the 200 starting wood, the 150 from building 5 units (really have to be careful with my food here, without hostages and their food consumption reduction I would be hard-pressed to find enough food for mere five basic units with hunter upgrades, I like that) and whatever wood I get from capturing cities, as this -10000 only seems to apply on logging camps. So if I were able to transport all the wood to my starting city, I could build one upgrade building, but a workshop doesn't help at all (more wood!), so I wonder what my options are. I also wonder if you could change the -10000 wood - if even WAD - to a simpler or at least more intuitive 0 wood production in the logging camps?

I similarly started replaying and have come across a bug, that I cannot explain:
Had a longish session as a single play, for ~3 hours, saved with multiple save points. Loaded up this morning, and the Income (gold) is -1000. It always starts negative on load but then trundles back up as it re-calculates. Now this save point I actually used (before rage quitting last night) in a failed attempt to land in Briton (in chapter 3), didn't really do properly, and I know income was positive before I launched.

Fine, ill use previous quicksave...Also -ve income, Ok the one before that Also negative. Now I successfully assaulted ~5 cities between these two quicksaves, with no desertion, and I know the income was positive, and I have saves from AFTER it so I know that I did it!

Ive tried deleting trade routes\forts etc, emptying mines and re-filling...it stubbornly wont go back positive. The only thing I can speculate is that the 'gold rewards' from missions is not being added back in on load?


Income graph here, the peak was where I saved and went to bed :O Since loading its the downwards trend.

Any Ideas? I can attach the save files etc if its of help

I daresay providing the save cannot not help, and will probably be the only thing the devs will be able to work with.

File uploaded:
RAR file with most recent formal save and previous 2 quicksaves.
http://www.filedropper.com/hegemonyrome