New Game?

[mercenarius]

Well, the Huns have continued their wild ride. They have emerged in Syria after plundering the border city of Resafa. (That is one way for them to get there. Prior moves by the Eastern Empire will naturally have an effect on that).

In any case, when they emerge the Eastern Empire's field army in Syria has a chance to intercept. You have seen this type of dialog before, but here it is:

Huns Can Be Intercepted.png (870.51 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

I post this in part to show the details of the Hunnic army, which includes the plunder that it has gathered:

Hunnic Army Selected.png (981.25 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

If you right click on the Strongbox icon you can get an information report on it:

Plunder Details.png (746.2 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

BTW: "Cwt." is a hundred pounds. I'd rather use pounds as the unit of measure for this, but the values are easily going to get too large to show on the unit tile itself. So, 100 lbs. will have to be the common unit for this one purpose.

P.S. The value of the plunder is too high, but I will work on that this week. I figure that the city might actually pay a ransom of about 1/2 the usual value in a case like this, where the Huns wouldn't want to be slowed down - yet.

[mercenarius]

I had to attend to a couple of side issues while continuing work on the "Invasion of the Huns" and the AI.

Players have three choices when dealing with prisoners taken after a Pitched Battle. These are further characterized by a set of "Lenient" and "Harsh" choices. The lenient choices are used when the enemy army was Roman and the harsh choices are used in other cases. Now I have wanted to avoid the word slavery in the game when possible. So previously the three choices were:

Lenient - discharge prisoners, enroll in your armies, punish with "hard labor."

Harsh - resettle as agricultural workers, enroll in your armies, condemn in the arena.

The problem is that the second choice in both cases is the same, and it's kind of lame. And it doesn't give the player a chance to reward his own troops which Roman soldiers would expect when fighting "barbarians."

OK, so I have changed the second choice after taking some inspiration from Shakespeare:

[Caesar] hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.

Well, those captives weren't really "ransomed" but, OK.

Ransom Prisoners.png (926.8 KiB) Viewed 2592 times

The emperor gets his "cut" of the money as you can see, of course.

I'll try to post some more screenshots before next weekend.

[mercenarius]

I don't personally accept the notion that the Eastern Empire had "no field army" in the region when the Huns invaded. In the 395 scenario they have a field army, but it's understrength and largely untrained. And that means it cannot possibly fight the Huns in its current condition.

A solution, not necessarily the solution, is to accelerate the training of the army:

Exercise Army.png (659.07 KiB) Viewed 2499 times

The results are displayed in the Force Display Area, as you are accustomed to from "Hannibal":

Results Message.png (166.63 KiB) Viewed 2499 times

Of course, we cannot allow miracles to occur, so using command points to train the army only speeds up the process. I am tweaking the numbers, but my current calculation is 6 turns (18 months) for Roman infantry to go from Untrained to Fully Trained and "intensive" training will reduce that to one year. (4 turns). Battle experience will help, eventually. (I haven't coded that, yet).

The Eastern Empire will have to stall in one way or another while getting the field army up to battle worthiness. It will get there. If the player (human or AI) is lucky enough to draw a "Exercise Troops" card, that will help a lot.

I'll try to post more next week concerning the possible reactions to the Huns Invasion of 395.

[Nikel]

Hi, thanks for the updates

Found this just in case is useful, Kaldellis and Kruse, The Field Armies of the East Roman Empire, 361–630.

"In 395, an army of Huns crossed the Caucasus and launched
a devastating series of raids into the Roman and Persian empires. We
have only scanty notices about this on the Roman side, but there appears
to have been no serious reaction to the invasion on the part of the Roman
army. This was when Stilicho still had the easternfield armies with him,
and it appears that the MMO (Addaeus) was unable or unwilling to mount
an effective resistance, suggesting that he did not command significant
military forces. In fact, his men are said to have been mostly Gothic
auxiliaries (though the sources for this specific claim are poor)."


The Sassanians were also invaded and in fact defeated a part of the Hunnic army, is this intervention simulated in some way? In fact they liberated 18000 prisoners.

[mercenarius]

Thanks for the reference. I will try to look that up when I can.

...is this intervention simulated in some way?

Well, I will certainly try! It's a little hard to understand why the Huns, if they so successfully ravaged Roman territory, would travel all the way down to Ctesiphon in the hopes of getting more plunder. Perhaps it was just "barbarian thinking" or perhaps too much of a good thing is still not enough.

What I am trying to say is, yes, but I'd prefer not to simply script it. I'll come up with something.

In fact they liberated 18000 prisoners.

Yes, and what is interesting is that the Persians eventually repatriated the survivors of those 18,000 to the Roman Empire. That part may be a little hard to do in the game. But I will try.

[Nikel]

I sent you a pm.

[mercenarius]

I sent you a pm.

Thanks for that tidbit! I'll check it out.

In the meantime, I don't have too much to share today. I am implementing the option cards for Battles. I haven't done that yet. I may have shown what the cards looked like before. If so, I'll note that I have renamed "Ambush" to "Surprise" because it's really a more accurate name and it avoids confusion with the higher-level battle option of "Ambush."

Here is what it looks like if you want to play a card before deciding on a Pitched Battle:

Pitched Battle Choices.png (605.82 KiB) Viewed 2398 times

Clicking on the little Battle Cards icon (obviously) will give the player a dialog like this:

Use Battle Card.png (771.96 KiB) Viewed 2398 times

These screenshots are from the "Resitutor Orbis" scenario, not the 395 scenario. Aurelian always starts that scenario with a Roman Battle Tactics card (with some other cards being random).

BTW: Aurelian doesn't need to play the card in this particular instance. I am just trying to get something to show this week. In "Hannibal," I tend to operate on the principle that "the future is now" as the saying goes. Because Hannibal a good number of Battle Cards. In "The Fall of Rome" it will usually be more common to keep this card in your pocket until you really need it. There are only going to be about 2 out of 40.

I'll try to close out this particular issue (using an Option Card in a Pitched Battle) next week.

[mercenarius]

Well, I didn't do much else with the battle cards except to polish the results in the battle resolution. There isn't much to share about that, really.

I did continue to program the evolution of the Huns' raid into Syria. Here is what their army looks like after gathering some plunder and starting the return "home" in the Autumn:

Huns in Mesopotamia.png (218.07 KiB) Viewed 2318 times

The "Captives" look like this in a report:

Captives.png (603.06 KiB) Viewed 2318 times

I've scaled those screenshots down a little to fit better, so the image quality has suffered a little. I'll try to post more about the Hunnic Invasion of 395 next week.

[Nikel]

It loos very nice

They also got some casualties? Reduced by 1, one of the horse archers and of the heavy cavalry lancers?

What caused it?

[mercenarius]

It loos very nice

They also got some casualties? Reduced by 1, one of the horse archers and of the heavy cavalry lancers?

What caused it?

They had some losses making forced marches on the way - it's a good distance from Sarmatia to Syria. The units in this force are all at the "Elite" level so they can force march very effectively. But some small losses will often occur, especially if a force needs to make what the game calls a Double Forced March.

The Huns also suffered some losses in capturing Resafa and Laodicea and plundering them. I didn't put up a screenshot of that because it's a little hard to capture.

[mercenarius]

I am afraid that I found a bug tonight in AI code involving mountain ranges that are always closed (because some provinces don't have access to a pass in that range). Unfortunately, I cannot post anything new this weekend about the Huns. I should have some new screenshots and updates next weekend.

It's just a thing of getting the AI logic to follow all of the rules that player movement already does.

[mercenarius]

Well, I'll admit that the theme of the Huns in 395 has perhaps gotten a bit stale, but I do want to close it out properly. And I don't simply want to script the course of their invasion. So I have done some fiddling and refinement. After adding some logic, the Huns will often make a move down the Tigris after raiding Syria. Here is one example:

Hunis in Assyria.jpg (223.75 KiB) Viewed 2171 times

A big motivator is the desire to not go through Armenia during the winter. As you can see from the screenshot, Mesopotamia is one of the areas that uses a Winter planting schedule. The selected province is Assyria.

Next week should close this theme out with the response from the Persians.

[Nikel]

Hard decision for the plunderer and looter Huns, retire in winter with what you got from the badly defended East Roman Empire, or go for more from the Sassanid's, not so badly defended?

[mercenarius]

OK, so the logic for the Persian AI has improved and the Persian King succeeded in forcing the Huns to retreat:

Huns Retreating.jpg (214.67 KiB) Viewed 2107 times

The area in question is the upper Tigris and the Huns have retreated to Armenia.

I still have to clean up the logic regarding "captives" and retreats from battle. But it's not too exciting to see in any case.

I'll try to post some new screenshots with a new theme in a couple of weeks.

[mercenarius]

I don't have much new to post this week. Mostly I refined the Huns' raid logic and the Persian response. I did update the order of battle for the Persians somewhat and added a separate Siege Artillery unit type for them (and other factions such as Palmyra). Here is a look at it:

Siege Artillery.png (751.03 KiB) Viewed 1829 times

I have deliberately made the report icon for this type somewhat in the Rube Goldberg vein. A huge Bow-type ballista isn't that probable. But the icon for the unit tile is reasonable and is the same as the one for the Roman Ballistarii units:

Ctesiphon Garrison with Artillery.jpg (71.33 KiB) Viewed 1829 times

And armies now capture any Captives from retreating armies and will also take any plunder if a defeated army is routed:

Victorious Persians.jpg (391.68 KiB) Viewed 1829 times

Armies that successfully retreat before combat get to keep their plunder and any captives, of course. In this instance, the Persian forced the Huns to withdraw from Assyria and then attacked them again in Adiabene and routed them.

[mercenarius]

Well, with the Hunnic invasion now a matter of refinement, I have turned to the issue of Alaric and the Visigoths. Their initial move is also going to be scripted for the scenario. And before Alaric can break his treaty, we have to have treaties in the game. So, here is how they will appear in the Administrative Interface for a particular nation, ethnic group, or political faction:

Admin Selection.jpg (81.06 KiB) Viewed 1774 times

Those sections can be expanded or condensed as the player likes, of course. If a treaty icon is clicked on, a small report dialog will open up:

Federate Treaty.jpg (247.66 KiB) Viewed 1774 times

Because that dialog will be sitting on top of the Admin dialog, the player can click on either of the faction icons to close the report dialog and select that particular faction in the admin dialog.

Finally, certain treaty events will be reported to the player on the strategy map (and added to the notifications stack as well):

Treaty Expired.png (732.37 KiB) Viewed 1774 times

I don't know if the treaty/trruce with Persia was really considered to be in force towards the end of Theodosious' life or not. But it certainly has expired by the time the 395 scenario starts.

I'll post a little more tomorrow. Naturally, the text of these dialogs may get a little refinement along the way.

[mercenarius]

Well, it's still "Tomorrow" (in Arkansas) if barely.

I'd expect most players to remember which Federate Units are currently serving, but there does need to be a way to confirm this. Right clicking on a tile in the Force Display Area will bring up a report. If that leader or unit is serving as a federate, the report will reflect this:

Federate Leader Report.png (809.21 KiB) Viewed 1752 times

Federate Unit Report.png (777.76 KiB) Viewed 1752 times

I hope that everyone will have a nice Thanksgiving, at least those here in the U.S. who observe such a holiday. I'll try to post something next weekend.

[mercenarius]

Well, I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

Now, the name of this thread is "New Game?" and so it is my painful duty to report that The Fall of Rome is not yet ready for alpha testing and therefore the game will not be published in 2023.

I am sorry, and I know that I miss more deadlines than a drunk misses targets at the carnival. All that I can say is that I am working full time on the game and I'm trying to speed things up where I can.

If nothing else, I guess this means that you'll have to spend your Christmas money on other things.

[Nikel]

Do not be discouraged.

Yours is a one man work?! It is amazing what you can do, create a game from nothing representing centuries of history in a vast empire.

And Christmas 2024 sounds very nice

[Orm]

I didn't really expect the game to be released this year so I can not be disappointed. Although, I feel that I must confess, that I have some hope for a release next year.

Any chance for a update on what to expect during next year? Or a screenshot to cheer us up?