According to the gameplay manual the economy is too complex to describe in words, which probably means the developers dont know exactly how the Ancient empires economy works, hence the AI doesn't know either.

I think the early Roman state was always vulnerable and un-made in a sense and historically did have difficulty enforcing its rule and hegemony in Italy and abroad. There were struggles both within and without the Roman State.

The economy isn't 'too difficult to describe in words'. This reflects the opinion of the author behind the gameplay guide, who, like all of us, have a finite amount of time to dedicate each week on a project like this. So, just want to bury that notion.

Bobcat - Have you restarted your campaign since the update last night? Proceeding with an old save will not accurately depict the impact the significant changes have had on the game's pacing and difficulty. From my personal point of view, the Roman start *is* challenging now, to a point at where you may find yourself on the losing end of the Punic War if Scipio doesn't prevail. However, unlike the earlier version, the economy is more forgiving during winter and "jumps" less in terms of income. Conversely, maintaining armies has become much more expensive (relatively speaking), and losing a large force may cripple your chances of recovering swiftly. Similarly, buildings have a more reasonable maintenance and more distinct purposes, but improving your infrastructure is an expensive process.

引用自 Philip：

The economy isn't 'too difficult to describe in words'. This reflects the opinion of the author behind the gameplay guide, who, like all of us, have a finite amount of time to dedicate each week on a project like this. So, just want to bury that notion.

Thanks Philip for clarifying that.
I was flabbergasted when I read that statement in the gameplay manual; it did not bode well.
Might have been better to have given a short general overview or just say that information would be forthcoming. But to state it wasn't possible to be described was neither true nor useful.

引用自 Philip：

Bobcat - Have you restarted your campaign since the update last night? Proceeding with an old save will not accurately depict the impact the significant changes have had on the game's pacing and difficulty. From my personal point of view, the Roman start *is* challenging now, to a point at where you may find yourself on the losing end of the Punic War if Scipio doesn't prevail. However, unlike the earlier version, the economy is more forgiving during winter and "jumps" less in terms of income. Conversely, maintaining armies has become much more expensive (relatively speaking), and losing a large force may cripple your chances of recovering swiftly. Similarly, buildings have a more reasonable maintenance and more distinct purposes, but improving your infrastructure is an expensive process.

The campaign I am describing was a brand new one I started last night after I saw the update had been added. I will admit that the beginning was not quite as difficult as it was in the previous version but I still feel that the mod puts too much emphasis on "being thrown into the deep end" mechanics. To explain the metaphor, the deep end is not actually any harder to swim in than the shallow end but if you are not a strong swimmer you probably will be frantically trying to keep your head above water. I felt the same thing with the mod in the early game (on hard in case anyone is wondering). I had no difficulty winning any land battle even when my main army was severely understrength but through out the early game I had to deal with seemingly random spikes in my economy and food.

For instance, at one point I thought I was doing ok and was making in the range of 1-3ish k depending on the season when the next year I was continuously deep into the red and nothing significant had changed. I hadnt gained or lost any provinces, I hadn't really built all that much because of how strapped I was, the mod just decided that I was not going to make any money this year. I somehow struggle through this dry period frantically trying to get more trade agreements and trying to squeeze money out of the AI for nonaggression pacts and the like all the while having my army suffering from desertion at the end of each turn. By the next year(4 tpy add on) I had at least gotten myself back into not losing money every turn but the AI decided to rain on my good fortune and by besieging 1 settlement and tanking my income into the negative. Literally 4 enemy Ai armies attacked 3 seperate cities 1 at a time across 4 turns and each time threw me into bankruptcy between turns until I could get to my turn and fight them off and not be running into bankruptcy running into the end turn sequence. Then magically the next year the pressure let up. I was suprised because all of sudden within a few turns I was steadily making 5k on a good season and the next year 10-15k. It just felt so arbitrary. It didnt feel like it was difficult because there was anything challenging about the situation but felt difficult because said difficulty was contrived and forced me to fight frantically just to survive. What made this worse was just how quickly the pressure evaporated and transitioned into playing like a normal game.

It is for this reason that I argue that the the difficulty need to be adjusted. Being thrown into the deep end carries with it shock value for the player and perhaps some enjoy said shock value but as I said I can't help but feel dragged out of the immersion by how contrived it feels. If I didnt know better I'd think that Rome was teetering on the brink of collapse by this stage of the punic war rather than having actually having barely made it through the teetering point and at least being on the start of a major upswing in their fortunes. To be fair, some elements of the early shock value like the native unrest in the new spanish territories feels good. It makes sense and offers the player a challenging but logical stumbling block to confront. But the economy and to a lesser extent the food situation feel unnecessarily difficult.

Now I don't know how difficult of a proposition this would be as I am in no way tech or coding saavy but as I said before I would drop the deep end approach and go for a softer opening but a more challenging long game. In addition to the difficult native assimilation process (which I feel is perfect) some other things that would contribute to a harder longer game off the top of my head would be to have the economy build up more slowly over time (WITHOUT the more punishing economic aspects in the current early game), have armies take longer to recruit especially the more battleworthy or elite they are and have a steeper recruitment cost (but not necessarily maintenance) so that armies will feel more valuable and losing units or, god forbid, an enitre army will be a very serious blow (something which I feel that the wrath of Sparta campaign from Rome II did well), have certain enemies pose more of a threat, like maybe Roman units take a morale penalty against Gallic, Germanic and Britanic tribes when not on their own territory both because of how fearsome they could be but also because of how superstitious the Romans were and how uncomfortable they would be in some of the environments like this and maybe have only some technologies or general traits that might reduce said morale impacts, make harsher climate conditions more punishing in terms of attrition and supply to make northern europe and the middle east present more of a stumbling block to expansion compared to the mediteranean periphery and give states in these areas more immunity to said attrition, make the AI more canny by getting them to better understand their diplomatic realities i.e. maybe its not a good idea to try to attack the 2nd largest military in the world and instead go after your weaker neighbors and build up a stronger empire first (like a player would do) and add in a mechanic (If the AI isnt good and managing things the way a player would) that would give the AI more advantages the bigger their empire was (would obviously have to be balanced a bit for existing major powers, I'm looking at you Seleucids). These are just the things I could come up with on the spot and I'm sure that there are many other things one could do to ensure long game difficulty without having to resort to short game shock value

I just tried it... yea, to be totally honest, I don't think you will be able to maintain that difficulty for that kind of a popular mod. The public order stuff is absolutely punishing and very harsh seemingly for no particular reason. I will wait for you to adjust, or at least bring the settings of version g into one of the difficulty stages or as a submod (I prefer as a difficulty stage though like easy, normal, hard, ..). I don't need +5000% public order also, like the current "softcore" mod description suggests. Difficulty of version g was a nice sweet spot in my opinion, I did not feel it was overly forgiving, just not like now.

Thanks for your feedback guys.

I'm not responsible for the public order and native discontent directly and cannot thus answer on that part.

In terms of economy and food, two of the pillars of the game, the challenge is more persistent in the current version. Mistakes and defeats are punished - putting the player in a situation where they must allocate existing resources to the right place at the right time, as opposed to just raising another army to deal with any problem which was typical of the previous version. It's hard to snowball oneself into an unstoppable economy due to the more carefully weighted trade-offs of most buildings, and increased costs to expand infrastructure. I think the current version does this much, much better than the last, where the challenge to the campaign would wear off quickly.

With that said, I can understand where the frustration is coming from. Rome's start isn't easy. It isn't meant to be, but it isn't meant to be a frustrating experience either. Remember that we are still in Beta. While the economy and food aspects are undisputably more balanced now, the campaign start (settlements, starting armies, starting infrastructure) has changed remarkably little. More so, the AI has become more aggressive, further increasing the pressure on Rome. The balancing process isn't over, but I - and the team - feel we are getting closer in terms of long-term balance. Adjusting the AI is a complex (and in the case above, unintended to my knowledge) process. It's not going to be focus during these early updates - but in a few weeks or months, when more factions are playable, we will start looking more into these complex campaign mechanics

引用自 Philip：

Mistakes and defeats are punished - putting the player in a situation where they must allocate existing resources to the right place at the right time

You act like the campaigns starting situation and horrible design on how winter works is a mistake players themselves made and have to overcome. I was hoping this patch would fix some serious mistakes but you guys just doubled down on things that no one liked and buried your head in the sand about it.

A side note - the economy was not balanced with 4TPY in mind. The submod lacks seasonal effects which to a certain degree influences the balance. While not a solution, I do recommend trying the default 2TPY setting. Perhaps it plays differently, it may be worth comparing.

引用自 Skrain：

引用自 Philip：

Mistakes and defeats are punished - putting the player in a situation where they must allocate existing resources to the right place at the right time

You act like the campaigns starting situation and horrible design on how winter works is a mistake players themselves made and have to overcome. I was hoping this patch would fix some serious mistakes but you guys just doubled down on things that no one liked and buried your head in the sand about it.

That's a remarkable extrapolation of a comment that doesn't suggest anything of the kind. They are your words, and not mine.

引用自 Philip：

引用自 Skrain：

You act like the campaigns starting situation and horrible design on how winter works is a mistake players themselves made and have to overcome. I was hoping this patch would fix some serious mistakes but you guys just doubled down on things that no one liked and buried your head in the sand about it.

That's a remarkable extrapolation of a comment that doesn't suggest anything of the kind. They are your words, and not mine.

Actually they are your own words let me break this down.

引用自 Philip：

Thanks for your feedback guys.
I'm not responsible for the public order and native discontent directly and cannot thus answer on that part.

Here you're stating you're not speaking about native discontent, or public order. Fine and dandy, easy to understand not much to see here.

引用自 Philip：

Thanks for your feedback guys.
In terms of economy and food, two of the pillars of the game, the challenge is more persistent in the current version.

Here you establish you're clearing talking about the Economy and Food. Again this is very simple to understand.

引用自 Philip：

Thanks for your feedback guys.

I'm not responsible for the public order and native discontent directly and cannot thus answer on that part.

In terms of economy and food, two of the pillars of the game, the challenge is more persistent in the current version. Mistakes and defeats are punished - putting the player in a situation where they must allocate existing resources to the right place at the right time

Here we have the whole thing. Its been established you're not talking about anything other then the Economy and Food systems. You then go on to say the challenge with these two sytems are more persistent in this current version.

You then move on to say that mistakes and defeats are punished putting players in situations where they must allocate resources where they are needed, when they are needed. But from the very beginning of the campaign you're put on a backpeddle, (this was the OP's original point). Which you imply through the use of "mistakes and defeats are punished" are through the fault of the player. But players haven't even had the chance to make any mistakes, they start with this issues in place.(They're not even historically accurate which is another funny issue considering the mods origin point)

Pretty easy to see how you easily imply its just someone elses fault for your own systems right? Again its just you doubling down on mistakes.

Take that into account that I haven't seen you once agree with people who say the Economy is poorly balanced and instead you make unilateral comments that are a veiled "You're wrong, but I want to look like i'm not picking a side".

I feel like if native discontent and resource building squalor were SLIGHTLY nerfed it would bring a good balance between the difficulty.

@Skrain

Mistakes and defeats, as quoted like a hot potato, does not in any respect refer to the game's start. That whole parahraph is a recapitulation of the recentmost changes. To put it very bluntly, those words refer to losing battles, putting armies in the wrong place at the wrong time and prioritising infrastructure over military power or the other way around at a wrong point in time. In the succeeding parahraph, I go on to explain that the starting conditions were not adequately changed alongside the game's balancing. I think that's a firm acknowledgement that our work isn't complete and that I see what the original poster had in mind. It's a subtle hint that there are reasons beyond the balance itself that explain the situation, which doesn't seem to have crossed evereyone's mind here.

Feel free to disagree. I'm not interested in a "he said - she said" discussion. We're trying hard to involve and listen to the community. Inflammatory posting isn't the place we tend to look at for suggestions.

One thing I will say after restarting after my previous campaign encountered an error that I could not fix, I'm not understanding what you mean in terms of the game being punishing of mistakes. I will grant you that the early game is VERY punishing if you don't know the right strategies to get native discontent down to manageable levels and in turn have native discontent eat all of your tax revenue (which in turn leads to an even more imponderable question: how can you both build up in your areas that arent ready to boil over so that you at least have some revenue coming in while also stabalizing your PO in the areas hard hit by native discontent) and if you lose your main army in early game then that is pretty much game over but I don't understand how that applies once you are making like 70-80k on a good season. Where before if I had provinces tied down in native unrest it would virtually be a death sentence, now it is seemingly a non-issue so long as my core provinces are happy and the only real check to my expansion is how many armies I can put into the field for garrison duty. Similarly where before an enemy army besieging one of my settlements would immediately send my economy into the floor I find it hard to see how that would hapen now and although losing an army would not be the most pleasant thing ever as I see things playing out now it would likely only be a temporary inconvenience given how quickly I can currently raise a new army and how much money I have at my disposal to do so.

This is what I was talking about before. The beginning feels very punishing in these regards, as you mention, but after the initial shock wears off (provided you can survive it which is not an easy proposition let me tell you) it feels like there isnt much to actually challenge the player in the long term

This mod is a wonderful masterpiece, a truly Total War ROME 3 in many aspects, except the economy part, who is a nightmare, a disaster willing to happen in less than 5 turns and instead of you focusing on the conquered side, you are dragged into a complex micromanaging like in a rat race, tring to solve the puzzle of the new chains building system with who is doing what- and then asking myself why I have this: "in few turns from the start of the campaign without building anything yet and with few cheap units recruited from around +3000 to -2000 with no logic at all, same with food, from +300 to minus 100"

I rely on what I see on the screen and the number 3000 means I can afford to recruit a limited number of units till I reach the 0$ limit, the number 300 said I ahve enough food, but no, in 2 turns you will discover that you are in bankruptcy, with no money at all, income on minus and very bad shortage on food...

How can be this economic system reliable and playable if in 2 turns it switches you from wealthy to bankruptcy with no logic at all ?

引用自 Gerula：

This mod is a wonderful masterpiece, a truly Total War ROME 3 in many aspects, except the economy part, who is a nightmare, a disaster willing to happen in less than 5 turns and instead of you focusing on the conquered side, you are dragged into a complex micromanaging like in a rat race, tring to solve the puzzle of the new chains building system with who is doing what- and then asking myself why I have this: "in few turns from the start of the campaign without building anything yet and with few cheap units recruited from around +3000 to -2000 with no logic at all, same with food, from +300 to minus 100"

I rely on what I see on the screen and the number 3000 means I can afford to recruit a limited number of units till I reach the 0$ limit, the number 300 said I ahve enough food, but no, in 2 turns you will discover that you are in bankruptcy, with no money at all, income on minus and very bad shortage on food...

How can be this economic system reliable and playable if in 2 turns it switches you from wealthy to bankruptcy with no logic at all ?

The idea is to simulate how income fluctates between seasons, with winter being un productive and summer/autumn being the most productive but I agree. As it is it seemingly fluctuates at random rather than by any discernable pattern