Since the Romans' big deal was strategic road-building, and the Pythians are fantasy Romans, I wonder if there is a way to build road construction into the game engine.
First are some thoughts on technical execution. Further along, I'll be suggesting some theme units.
Road Building
Definition: A road is a map symbol that connects a land province containing a friendly building to an adjacent land province containing a friendly building.
Road Effects: The road effects are activated by a special "Road Move" command. A road has two effects in play:
* Stopping terrain becomes nonstopping terrain for units moving by land across a province border along the road.
* A unit whose entire move is on roads gains a +1 bonus to its overland move rate.
Mapping Conventions: The map might have a hidden "road grid" layer, which connects each land province to each adjacent land province.
1) Each land province would havea "node" point that anchors roads into/out of that province.
(Road symbols begin and end at node points, so a node [say, numbered "1" for discussion purposes] that is adjacent to four other provinces [designated A, B, C, D] could anchor the four different roads: 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, and 1-D.)
2) A road crosses only one border between two provinces--if you want roads into three adjacent provinces, you must build three different roads.
3) A grid node activation/deactivation command would be added to the map editor (maybe even a brush). I expect the default grid field would be regular, with the creator wiping off unwanted nodes when making the map. This might also allow remodding existing maps with a hidden road grid.
4) Other editor functions: "Show Road/Hide Road", "Show All Roads/Hide All Roads"
Building Roads: The "Build Road" command activates only in a province with a friendly building, and functions only if your next click is in an adjacent province with a friendly building.
Special Coding Issues: The Pythians should not be able to:
* build to an enemy building,
* build to a sea province, or
* build across a mountain barrier line that blocks normal movement; also,
* the road has to stay even if the friendly building is destroyed or captured.
Pythian Engineer: The Pythians would get an Engineer commander. The special function of this commander would be to activate a section of the road grid. The specialized command is "Build Road."
Orders Screen: The general orders menue would also get a "Road Move" command that activates for everyone when the first road section is built. Note, however, that only the Pythians actually build roads.
Build Command: Left-clicking the Engineer icon order text can activate the "Build Road" command (which is added to the command menue for this commander).
The "Build Road" command does all of the following:
* checks to see if the adjacent target province has a friendly building,
* calculates and reports the cost of the build,
(* optional: checks and reports time spent building, if more than one turn,)
* moves the engineer's stack to the target province, and
* activates a ghost symbol of the road on the map showing construction underway.
Clicking back on the starting province before the turn ends would reverse and erase the "Build Road" effects. Once the turn ends, and a road is locked in, then the road is permanently on the map for the rest of the game.
End Turn Mods: The End Turn command is modified to look for and lock any road that is finished during the player's turn, add the appropriate road symbol for unfinished and finished roads, and to track on multi-turn road building.
Costs: Road cost depends on the type of buildings you are building from and to, and the type of terrain you are building out of and into.
A working cost structure might look something like this:
Fort +0
Church +50
Lab +100
(The command takes the lowest building value in the starting and target provinces)
(Digression: The above is set up to reflect the following--the Romans built lots of forts and lots of roads, so forts get the biggest cost break. Churches are favored over labs because this game is slanted to encourage church-building and dominion-spreading. Labs are most costly simply because they would tend to be in out-of-the-way and hard to reach places, even in clear provinces.)
Farm or Plains +50
Forest +100
Waste +100
Swamp +150 +1/2 turn delay to complete
Mountains +200 +1 turn delay to complete
(Terrain penalties all add, round fractions up)
Cost Example: On the Aran map, the Pythian player wants to build a from a fort in Dragon's Head (48) to a lab in Ogh Woods (71) in one turn. He can do this by building a road through the Black Alps (65), which for this example, contains a friendly lab. The cost to build from Dragon's Head (Forest, Mountain), through the Black Alps (Forest, Mountain), to the Ogh Woods (Forest) is:
First Turn:
(0 + 100 + 200) + (100 + 100 + 200) = 700; delay +2
Fourth Turn:
(100 + 100 + 200) + (100 + 100) = 600; delay +1
So the cost would be 1300 and it takes 5 turns to complete the project.
That's close to the most expensive short road you can build.
Close to the least expensive short road is one connecting two forts in Plains provinces across an intervening Plains province containing a church:
(0 + 50) + (50 + 50), then (50 + 50) + (0 + 50) = 300 spread across 2 turns
If these are a little high, they can be tweaked lower.
Balance Issues:
Obviously, it's an advantage to have a road net that lets you quickly reinforce threatened zones. The "friendly building" requirement is there to prevent building offensively without laying some more expensive groundwork.
However, road construction as presented here is pretty expensive, and once the roads are in play, they can be used by invading armies as well!
My take is that it is probably a moderate advantage. If you are winning, it will probably help you win faster, maybe more on maps with lots of open terrain. It may be something of a trap for the player who tries to build too much too soon.
Roads might be more suited to solo play (my preference) than multiplayer games.
The core tradeoff I'm looking at is shutting off either the Emerald Guard (my favorite candidate so far) or the Cataphracts (still thinking). I'm not sure the cataphracts are significant enough in play to compensate for the road advantage. When I have played Pythia, the infantry was so good that I didn't pay all that much attention to the cavalry.
In the testing, I'd take a close look at how many roads are being built. Even in a strong Pythian position, they should not cover the map the way that roads cover the map in, say, Civilization. If more than two or three main routes develop, then it's probably coming too easily.
THEME CONFIGURATION
I call it "The Pythian Imperium." It's a splinter group that split off from the base culture and headed out of the swamps for the mountains. They developed engineering skills similar to the Romans in our world.
Special units include cyclopean legionnaires, greek fire grenadiers, field ballistae, and sneaky berserking axemen. Overall, the force has some intentional combined arms challenges. Quality heavy infantry, with lots of crush power, but any cheap fodder has to be scrounged from the independents. Scrawny light cavalry are available, but few or no heavies. Possible tricky build/traffic jam issues in the capital. Possibly somewhat weak against missiles and fliers, we'll see. Possible slant toward air magic.
Two new concepts, road construction and temporary forts--fields for exploration (if they can be coded). Without them, the unit changes should just make a different and more challenging take on the Pythians.
Scales: Order > 0, "Engineering College"
(or maybe just Pythium Imperium)
Roads: As above.
Sieges: Pythian Engineers have siege advantage (+15, but no dedicated sappers). Maybe attached units are x3 when resolving sieges, but keep the command level low, 8/12/16/20/24 maybe.
Camps: A "Camp" command for the Engineer. This would, if a minimum of 20 units are present, create a temporary fort that Lasts until the creating engineer moves (or dies) or the total number of units falls below 20. It could set up in enemy territory, where it blocks tax collection, and it must be sieged and taken like any other fort. The camp would not count as a building for purposes of road construction, nor can it recruit units, but it shows up as a blue fort icon on the map (red if enemy).
Camp: Admin 0, Def 20, Sup 40, Time 0, Cost 0; must have 20 friendly units present.
"Recall" Order: Being in a Camp enables a special order for the Centurion, Imperator, and Alae (cavalry) commanders. This order pulls all Pythian units in adjacent land provinces into the Camp province, except those separated by an impossible mountain barrier. The intention is to provide an automatic rally function for troops scattered by combat.)
Troops:
Hastati, Triarii, Principes, Emerald Guard, Gladiators, and Hydrae are gone. The core of army is Alae Legionaires and Velites. Standards and Hydra Hatchlings remain.
The Arch Theurg is replaced by a Magus.
(Still working on stats for these, but the concepts are
Imperator: Ldr 60 mounted commander; in camp has the "Recall" order.
Centurion: Gp +30. Remains; in camp has the "Recall" order.
Alae Commander: Ldr 15 mounted commander, scale mail and javelin.
Vestal Warrior Maid: Sacred, partial protection from lightning.
Cyclops: Ldr 0; Large, can hurl rocks and logs.
Grand Magus: Still thinking about this. High research rating, of course. Something of a philosopher/scholar, but I haven't decided if a religious component is needed. I expect it will take awhile to figure out whether dismantling the religious structure of the core race this much takes too much out their chances.
Engineer: As Centurion, but Ldr: 8, Siege +15/unitsx3, Build Road, Camp. Each unit under the engineer's command sieges at triple value. Capital only.
Engineer Journeyman: Ldr 6, Siege +10/units x2, Camp. Capital only. Each unit under the journeyman's command sieges at double value.
Engineer Apprentice: Ldr 4; Siege +5/unitsx2. Each unit under the apprentice's command sieges at double value.
(There may be too many engineer commanders here. If so, the apprentice can be lost without much trouble, and the journeyman would build outside the capital.)
"Leaping Lizard" Cavalry: A light cavalry unit, biped lizard rider like the Amazons, but with Pythian armor (but not the segmentata lorica--instead chain or scale)and javelins. The mount has a bite attack.
Heavy Archers: Composite Bow, Scale Mail. Loosely based on the historican Eastern Empire archers, which I've always liked.
Jupiter Ballistae: A mobile light ballista unit with flaming bolt ability. Leather Cuirass. Multiman crew is abstracted as higher unit hit points.
Foederii Axemen: A light-medium infantry shock unit armed with two single-hand axes. Berserker, stealth, wilderness survival.
Sacred Vestals: Unlike the standard Pythian light vestals, more like the Triarii, but sacred and partial protection from lightning. Silver breastplate, long spears.
Cyclops-kin: Heavy assault squads. Trained to Pythian alae legionnaire standards and formations(in particular, they have same movement rate, even though they would probably be faster on their own). Segmentata Lorica and spiked maces.
Greek Fire Slingers: Light infantry with a ranged fire attack. The fire effect is persistent, maybe run the effect off a first rank fire spell.
Final Note: I'm not a programmer, so I'm unlikely to put all these ideas together on my own (I'm currently looking over the modding material with an eye toward statting out the units). I'd be most interested in seeing how the road/fort ideas work if someone else wanted to tackle it.
I'd also be interested in hearing if the current game coding makes the road/fort ideas completely unworkable.
Pythian Roads theme
Linear Mode
