Matrix Games Forums

Update v1.03 has a new Beta available. Please check it out in the Members Club. This update gives a new ability to Numidian cavalry, updates the tutorials, improves balance regarding city militia, and makes adjustments to the AI, along with some bug fixes. Please remember this is a beta, so your feedback is appreciated.


Change History
V1.03 Beta 2 – February 24, 2011

• Unit Capability:[/b]
  • Numidian cavalry now receive an attack bonus during all pursuit. If the unit has
    additional attack factors from the play of an Option Card, the bonus applies to the
    increased attack factors as well. This special pursuit bonus applies to all types of
    Numidian cavalry: mercenary cavalry (recruited in Zeugitania) as well as units
    who are allied with Rome or Carthage.
• Tutorials:
  • The third tutorial “Attacking Enemy Forces” has been updated to show the new
    pursuit bonus for Numidian cavalry.
  • The tutorial which shows the new features for the “Normal” level of play now
    does a better job explaining the mechanics of abandoning a siege. This tutorial has
    been expanded to demonstrate this through an actual relief mission.
• Play Balance:
  • The game now uses better symmetry in determining when a city’s militia will
    grow if it was previously reduced. Previously this growth always occurred at the
    end of the turn which favored the Roman player somewhat. This growth now occurs
    at the beginning of each player’s Campaign Phase: cities loyal to Carthage
    will recover at the start of the Carthaginian Campaign Phase; cities loyal to Rome
    will recover at the start of the Roman Campaign Phase.
• Improved AI Intelligence:
  • Roman leaders do a better job deciding when to relieve the siege of friendly cities.
  • The game now explicitly prohibits the AI from using a “Roman Siege” Option
    Card against a Major City when the attacking army is moving by sea. The AI was
    already programmed to generally avoid this behavior but now it is enforced as a
    rule. The Roman player may still move an army by sea and make a surprise attack
    against a Major City on a coast. But the attacking general will not be able to use
    the siege card.
  • The Roman Senate is now a little more aggressive in deciding to invade Africa
    when one of the current consuls is a proponent of overseas deployments. The leaders
    who lean in this direction are Africanus, Scipio, Caecilius, Cethegus, and
    Valerius. This only affects the “Hard” level of difficulty. Compared to 1.0.2 this
    adds a small freedom for the Roman Senate to be more aggressive. Compared to
    1.0.3 beta 1 this essentially restricts an already-existing additional freedom for the
    Senate at the “hard” level of play.
• General Improvements and corrections:
  • Fixes a rare problem that allowed a Roman army to be placed on the map more
    than once. This situation created a duplicate army that kept a leader on the map
    even after his term of office ended. The fix also improves the detection of this
    problem and how it is resolved. This fix should eliminate this difficult and obscure
    error once and for all. J
  • Corrects some errors in cleaning up “allied” cities in the province of Sicily if Syracuse
    is taken by assault or falls after a sally or a relief battle.
  • The in-game Help System now has an Abandoning Sieges topic that does a better
    job of explaining the rules for this feature.
  • Corrects an error in battles which have the “Inspired Troops” option in effect and
    have been saved and reloaded.
  • A few fixes for some minor and obscure bugs.

Played first game. Numidians are finally back on the map It actually hurts now when Romans play Numidian Desertion. Before they were slightly worse than usual cavalry, now they are a force of their own, like elephants. I find myself wishing to spare a unit or two now and they are worth the effort in pursuit.

For a split second it looked like my Numidian cavalry did not get a bonus when commanded by Hadsrubal, but I closed the screen too soon. I will do further testing to confirm or deny this.

Btw, not sure if it's 1.03 beta 1 or beta 2, but I do like that Roman generals now always sally out on the last turn of the siege, even when faced with overwhelming odds - this is something a human would certainly do.

Re: the use of Roman siege against Major cities when attacking by sea, I would recommend leaving this option for Africanus and Marcellus, instead of removing it from all Roman generals. Africanus would get a bonus for capturing Cartagena, while Marcellus for capturing Syracusae. Both used naval forces during the siege. True, it's not really an attack by sea, but it woud make the leaders more distinguished and add another small layer of unpredictability to the game.

Re: Numidian cavalry bonus.

Seems to be working fine in every scenario. After the pursuit the counter loses bonus when it is removed from the front ranks, which prompted my question before.