Fabius

I have some ideas for Rome. The senate house: A unique building that could either give some kind of aura or have some special technologies, maybe some either or technologies, eg pick this or that but not both, like the Seleucid traditional and reform armies. It was suggested to me to have the option to sacrifice a hero in it for a temporary buff, wrath at Caesars assassination essentially. Another use might be as means to gain a second chance at recruiting a hero. The sacred geese of Rome: either a technology similar to sibylline books that gives 10-15% vision range, either just for temples or for civic buildings or just everything. Or a literal war goose like the gallic war dog, geese literally defending Rome is humorous if not historical. Extraordinari being able to swap between sword and javelin.

Resources are not equal in value, metal is not available in large quantities like wood and food, and its required for a lot of important things such as phasing to third, blacksmith upgrades, siege, champions, mercs, heroes.

1. They are throwaway units in that they cost food and the way you used them was to get a bunch and put them on hyper aggressive in your battle line, then you left them to do their thing. 2. Metal is used a great deal and is a "scarce" resource, though I dare say that depends on the maps you play, some maps are more metal rich than others. 3. True, the cost is cheaper on paper, but is it really so in reality? The opportunity cost seems quite significant. 4. That is apparently true, but subject still to the availability of mines. What is more, the number of consistent farmers will almost always exceed your metal gatherers unless you have two or three mines to work at once which would be usually out of the question unless you had massive map control or are playing a variation of gold rush. Going back to opportunity cost, healers will rarely feature late game since why get 6 healers when you can get a ram instead which ultimately has more game ending potential.

Metal is already a necessary resource with high value, is it really helpful to require for something as mundane as a healer? The idea of paying metal for a throwaway unit is not very appealing.

I just noticed that healers now have a metal cost attached, why is that?

The only one on that list that doesn't have a sling option is Sparta. Macedonians have them as mercs, the rest have them as citizens.

if you actually make building arrows damage melee units decently then I am fine with it, but if you going to remove even their vague use against unsupported range hordes, then I am not in favour at all. Defensive buildings are very lacking in utility these days. You get far better mileage out of walls and ranged siege.

Then civic centres/colonies should be P3 as well, they do the same thing except better.

Civic center dropping is way harder than it sounds, I know from bitter experience with trying to build frontier fortresses, if your opponent sees you almost certainly he will rush you and you will likely not get that fortress up and/or lose a lot of troops, especially ranged units.

I don't think you can justify metal cost on veteran Triari as Gauls can make champion spearmen without metal, but more importantly that leaves Rome without any melee unit that doesn't cost metal, also army camps already make rank 2 spearmen. Phase 3 auxiliaries is an interesting idea, I like that it gives the feeling of Rome as a late game power, but since we are trying to dial back the dependency on phase 3 I am not certain that it is helpful to add more features to phase 3. One could add a special auxiliary barracks or something to Rome, and then just to make things interesting you could make it a choice like the Seleucid Traditional and reformed army, only instead its a choice of archers or slingers. Could just skip the unique building and simply have that as a tech choice in the barracks though as a single option doesn't merit a new building.

Numidians though would be another skirmisher cavalry and Rome already has one. Balearics and Cretans would be nice.

Oh, yes I am referring to the army camp not the barracks

Speaking of under used features, what about shifting the Roman castrum to second phase? Perhaps returning more of its siege making capabilities too, the complaint that it was getting used as a cheaper siege workshop is now invalid since everyone has a siege workshop now.

The javelin and sword interchange for legionaries in that Rome at War mod for AOE II is quite a nice thematic feature, can we not borrow the idea and apply to Extraordinari seeing as Immortals now have the spear to bow interchange?

Ok, I will take your advice on that point thankyou

Frankly the whole unlocking thing is just a nuisance. Also certain civs, specifically Rome and Sparta, could use a second longer ranged unit so players have at least some options to consider when making armies, skirmishers are not great for fire fights. I understand the consideration of individual strengths and weaknesses, but every other civilization in the game has two or more different ranged options. For Rome every game is the same, spam the one ranged option you have and your choice of melee infantry. Its quite monotonous and under performs against civs who can field a more diverse army with the longer ranged options, slingers especially still seem to dominate. For Sparta its slightly different as you have superior melee unit options, so the lack of range doesn't hurt as much since you can hammer your way through enemy battle lines. Still a slinger like Athens would be nice, but not as necessary given the strong melee focus already present.

I have never seen this meta of early cavalry spam, maybe I just don't play enough, but the vast majority of games I have played end as slugging matches between infantry blocks. And this is at low level for the record (1300) So I would rather see changes to the infantry roster.

Well to be fair rams are already a core unit and annoying to deal with at the best of times. So it is understandable that people don't want them "buffed" for instance stick a few in front of your army and watch them win because everything tries to kill them on account of the combat ai always trying to hit the closest thing. That is the biggest irony of rams, they supposed to be a siege unit, but they work just as well as a "Taunt" unit that punishes whoever does not immediately deal with them, and you still get indirectly punished for dealing with them by the troop block that goes with them. So on either account you will lose anyhow.

That seems tied to a map with a lot of early hunting, and given walking times I feel like that time was be seriously hard to reach even under ideal circumstances

Then simply add in the relevant information, adding at least an overview of the specific changes would be helpful anyway

I see, fair point I like this plan

Alright, how then is a no opinion stance going to help. you just asked whether we count "no opinion" as a "yes" or "no" , if that is the case you have no third option, simply an implied yes or an implied no.

I would say drop the third option of "no opinion" as its not at all helpful for decision making. A straight yes or no is all that is necessary.

Overall I like this setup and the voting on whether to include things or not. It seems to have gotten things done quickly, which is good.

After further play testing. Ranged troops can no longer go on walls, was this feature intentionally disabled for A26? And if so, why? Why must Rome always rely on skirmishers, why can we not have an archer as well? Almost all civs have two or more ranged infantry options. The only other exception is Sparta and they at least have superb melee infantry to compensate. Catapults have utility against rams again