Starting with Food Shortage mechanics - in next version, food shortage will no longer cause mass desertion in units (AI cant really handle it quickly, which means it ends up being weak and provide no challenge)..

Instead, Food Shortage will drastically decrease people satisfaction in such region, as well as it will reduce its economical income dramatically - people have nothing to eat, therefore they reduce their normal activities and focus on survival..

Food Shortage will also have global economic impact on every province, but less profound than in provinces that are directly impacted.

Food surplus will keep its usual benefits, but wont receive any additional bonuses - food surplus is "business as usual", its a desired state, therefore it wont reward player on its own..

At the same time, I plan to adjust the Army replenishment effects based on army situation. Fastest way to replenish army would be to garrison it inside of a city. Yet by doing so, city population will be discontent to have soldiers living in their homes, so It wont be something you can do indefinitely. Putting army into fort (Fortify stance) outside of city will also replenish the troops (but not as fast) and at the same time, will increase the people satisfaction from being protected by the army.

Big change comes with Raiding stance - this stance will now completely suppress unit replenishment in the region, so army that retreats inside the walls, wont be able to replenish itself if enemy is raiding the province, and instead will have to challenge the raiding army as soon as possible. Yet, Raiding stance also means that Raiders are spread out in the region and not concentrated, therefore Raiding army will also receive defense penalty (plus, it will make it more attractive for AI to attack it)

In next update, forced march stance as well as double speed for fleets will cause attrition to the army and fleet. This attrition will apply at the end of the turn, not per action point spent.

For next version, i have decided to rework army and navy stances a bit. Overall, stances will have more economy impact on player simulating certain logistical challenges for army on campaign.

Army (or navy) in default stance will reduce enemy movement in local region by 25% With enemy nearby, armies usually took more careful approach tried to not expose themselves, and tried to protect their baggage train more. At the same time, they sent own light units to harass the enemy movement. Effect is applied at the end of the turn. More armies are in single region, bigger is the penalty - this allows you and enemy to "surround unsupported opposing army"

Army in Forced March will be able to move twice as far as in normal movement mode. Army replenishment stays suppressed, while army is still able to reinforce, but range is reduced to 50%. Attrition effect is removed (was a bit pointless as usually army replenished the number same turn). Yet, unit morale is reduced by 10%, unit upkeep increased by 10% and unit ammo is decreased by 50% as units don't have access to all their supplies which are left behind moving on their own pace.

Fortified Army got upkeep decrease by 10%, together with 10% increase in unit defense values. Anyway armies need to spend 75% of their Action Points to entrench. Romans get their factional bonus and will require just 50% to entrench.

Garrisoned Army (inside city) will have its morale increased, but will still cause discontent on local population (-12 happiness). At the same time, units will have access to more ammo (+25%) and will replenish faster.

Raiding Armies will now get 25% upkeep bonus, will get higher morale while raiding, and will cut down all enemy replenishment in local region, and cause a lot of discontent for local population. Yet Raiding Army will have its reinforcement range decreased, so it wont be able to support other armies in the region that are too far.

Navy will behave relatively similar to Armies, with some small differences:

Docked Navy will reduce amount of piracy in nearby seas by 50%, navy upkeep will be reduced by 25%, replenishment will be very high.

Navy in Double Time mode will sail at 2x greater distance, for 10% more upkeep and reduced reinforcement range. Naval transports will move 3x more distance ( to compensate how slow they are in normal speed), but will receive morale and defense penalties.

Navy in Patrol mode will remove all piracy from local sea region, and will reduce enemy movement range by 50% allowing player to "slow down" local enemy fleets considerably

Attrition from Double Speed Stance will return with next update.
After extensive testing, i found out that naval attrition from deep sea is hard-coded, and cannot be altered. Therefore i have decided to remove it again, and instead, use different form of attrition linked with Naval Double Speed Stance. Attrition will be light, and only applied at the end of turn as before. Usually, its amount can be restored by single turn spent in port.

Forced March wont receive this attrition, as that stance already has a massive (hardcoded) disadvantage with automatic ambush. Double Speed stance doesnt have any (besides being unable to attack), therefore this light attrition is a fitting penalty for overuse, while it is not as devastating as Deep Sea and therefore can be used for exploration or reinforcements a lot often.

One of things that were present in R2TR3 and yet are missing in R2TR4 will be brought back in next update:

Armies and Fleets will now consume food. Certain stances,for example forced march, or siege will be more demanding on food. Raiding will at the other side increase your global food.

To compensate, farms will now provide slightly more food, but higher tier farms will generate more squalor. (historically ordinary small farmers could not compete with rich latifundia owners and it created a lot of disorder in Roman Republic which eventually resulted in Civil Wars)
At the same time, food surplus will provide political support from other families (+10), while lack of food will decrease it dramatically (-20). (this bonus applies to "satisfaction with the government, so +10 will practically eliminate base game penalty, while lack of food will make it quite significant) Lack of food was quite common catalyst for political change in ancient times..


And to not cripple AI too much, AI faction base amount of food will be increased.

For next update, i plan to rework Slaves impact.

Farms and mines will now decrease slave population.

For farms, increase will be gradual, but tier 3 and tier 4 farms now represent Latifundias, which were owned by rich Patricians (in Roman Republic), and as such were dominating small farmers who could not compete with them. Therefore, Tier 3 and tier 4 farms will produce less squalor, but will cause public order dissatisfaction.
Other factions will as well get this slave decrease implemented, but they will not get public order impact as profound as Romans.

For Mines, things will be different. Mines will cause slave population decrease and unrest. Mines were extremely deadly place to be in, and life span for a slave was just few weeks at most. Additionally, Mines will now be a prerequisite for mining income, mining cities will provide less direct income, but instead will have bonus to mining GDP, which will boost the income when mine is present in the region.

Large cities have option to build two specialized building types that impact the slave situation - Slave trader, as in vanilla, will reduce slave population decrease, while providing small GDP bonus. Main purpose of slave trader building is to reduce slave population decline, to compensate effect of mines and farms.

Second building is Arena for Gladiators, which will as before increase happiness, but cause slave population decline.


Overall, goal is to make slave population drop faster than before, so economical bonus provided by them is short term. Player will benefit from winning battles and capturing and enslaving cities, but with all its historical negatives involved.

Another important change planned for next update will involve attrition impact on units.

Barbarian units will be now immune to snow and mountain attrition, as these were usually quite well acclimatized to such conditions. Celtic tribes even sometimes used winter to attack Romans while they were isolated in their camps during Gallic wars..

Just a side note - while there are many "naked" units in Rome 2, Celts usually only undressed before battle.. they did have warm clothes during winter..

Ambusher units will also gain attrition immunity from swamps.


At the same time, North African and Eastern factions will be now immune to desert attrition. This should make these factions a lot more dangerous to fight in such conditions, they will gain another layer of strategic options to drag enemy into unfavorable terrain and fight them when they are weak...



And lastly, All combat ships will be now immune to deep sea attrition. They will be able to traverse sea without issues now. This will not apply to transports, which will suffer in deep sea quite a lot.


AI will especially benefit from these, as it seems like AI doesn't take attrition damage into consideration, so barbarian armies were just running around during winter, getting wiped out by attrition, while nomadic factions did same in desert...

For next update i plan some "economy" adjustments.. Overall, units will cost more as well as buildings. This is mostly to compensate for high income player can accumulate in later stages of the campaign. Certain unit types will cost a lot more, like for example cavalry (as heavy horses were significantly costlier to acquire than anything else)
Ships in particular will be quite costly, but at the same time, number of fleets will be decreased.

Besides cost adjustments, i also plan to roll out new auto-resolve formula, and adjustments to diplomacy values.

expected update release around tuesday, as I still need to fully test the diplomacy changes impacts on gameplay

Another small improvement for next update will handle Armies being transported through seas.

While in reality, putting together huge transport fleet took a lot of preparation, and usually nation had to confiscate its trade fleets, which had tremendous economic impact, due to how Rome 2 is written, its not possible to slow down the boarding process.. But, what can be done, is the second part - so with next update, when army boards the transports, its upkeep will be automatically increased to simulate such impact.
Large scale naval operations will be very costly and very risky endeavors that can potentially ruin you if enemy navy catches you at sea unprotected..

In next update i plan to adjust the military barracks a bit. Eventually, i plan to overhaul the recruitment process, where all units except the professionals will be available from main city buildings, as typically, these were recruited from citizens who used their own weapons, armor and equipment.

For Romans, biggest change was to move towards fully professional army, where state payed the Legionaries for their service (or actually generals, which was main reason why Republic fell eventually - legions were loyal to commanders instead of Republic)..

Anyway,with such move in recruitment, main military buildings would lose their purpose. Yet, historically, these installation were quite common in places where full and constant military presence was required to keep population (of conquered regions) in check.

Therefore, these military barracks will actually improve the public order and reduce the squalor. Temple happiness bonuses will be slightly reduced to compensate.

This way, you will want to build these barracks in contested areas, where population order needs to be in check, plus, barracks will provide higher quality units as garrison force.

Considering each city has limited building slots, i think it would be a nice compromise, how many barracks you want to have in province, to improve the public order vs using those building slots for economy buildings which will increase your income but will generate squalor..

Some further info about planned changes:

- Farming settlements will not consume food, but instead, will produce squalor. This way, farming settlements will have their place, by increasing the GDP production for farms, but not without any negatives. This way, each minor settlement type will have its positives and negatives and will require some consideration which to build and where.

- Population growth will be greatly reduced. Cities will still increase it, but not as much as before, therefore to increase the growth, player will have to use other means how to improve growth - decrease taxes, use appropriate edicts, or govern the province with appropriate agents or generals. (this way, single city slot will now require just 4 Pops instead of 8, which created problems, but pop growth wont be too fast overall)

Gravitas overhaul - Each General skill will now provide 1 gravitas per turn at first skill level. Upgrading the skill wont increase gravitas further. Generals will now gain skill levels faster. which means, player will be put into dilemma if he wants more skills, but with boost to gravitas (which is not desired for other family members), or rather, acquire less skills but upgrade them to tier 3. Each General will have only 9 skillpoints, which is enough to either acquire 9 separate skills, or fully develop 3 of them.

with next update i plan to address the Fleet limitations a bit different way. I will again, reduce number of fleets at the game start. low imperium factions wont have access to them. (fleets were extremely costly, not everybody could afford to keep a war fleet)

At the same time, I will introduce Naval Traditions effect for specific factions which historically had built combat fleets - Greek City States, Carthage and Ardiaei (pirates). At the same time, i will adjust certain wonders to provide additional fleet - Colossus of Rhodes will provice +1, as well as Carthage city itself. This way, whoever controls these, his fleet allowance will increase by 1..

At the same time, Military port will see a major overhaul. It will not provide any economic benefit. Its food consumption will increase. But, it will provide +1 fleet. This will practically make Military Port a base for combat fleet, and amount of these ports will determine how strong faction is on sea. with no economic bonuses, building too many of them will hurt the economy.