The Grandest Grand Campaign for DeI

Through the years I’ve modded DeI campaigns/battles more to my own personal liking, to make the game play out a bit differently.

I’ve combined changes to character traits, campaign variables, battle and unit changes, etc…

The DeI team singlehandedly saved Rome 2. This is beyond dispute.

This mod is not an overhaul of their work, just a few tweaks, however, these tweaks radically depart from a few of the DeI design choices.

My changes:

1. Generals, Governors, Spies, Armies, Navies have roughly 2.5 travel distance.
*To compensate, spies have doubled vision, however, if unprepared you will get hit by unseen forces beyond the fog of war.

2. Cavalry move faster on the battlefield and infantry only slightly faster.

*Especially useful when using any mod that increases battlefield size.

3. The Zone of Control for armies, navies, and cities is roughly doubled.

*This means it’s easier to create strategic bottlenecks and there’s generally less chasing armies and navies around the map. It also means more multi-army battles, as reinforcement ranges are increased.

4. Probably my most controversial take amongst Total War fans: archery and siege ranges are increased massively, as is damage, as is ammo.

*If you charge a position of archers during the skirmish phase of the battle, in the open, your men will likely die.

I know the arguments against…. Archers merely disabled men on the battlefield, armor prevented fatalities, most fatalities occurred during the rout phase, etc…. As there are no mechanisms for this in Rome 2, I’ve erred on the side of increasing lethal damage, however, damage is increased for all projectiles, not simply arrows, and specialist damage is increased, as is charge bonus from cavalry. If and when you close with skirmishers or light cavalry, they are more quickly routed. This means you will need to either field effective screening cavalry, some combination of light and heavy infantry, or develop some other strategem for dealing with them. This makes battles far more variable and interesting to me.

5. Unit caps are removed (globally) and unit recruitment is done within one turn.

*Truly, many societies could levy forces somewhat quickly in antiquity and population constraints take care of some aspect of this already in DeI. But let me know and I will consider reverting this or showing you how to do it yourself.

6. Unit specializations are significantly increased, so spearmen can devastate cavalry. Swordsman are more effective against infantry, etc… As stated above, these changes were implemented to further emphasize the different roles and phases of battle.

7. Unit spacing is still realistic but roughly 1.35 distance from DeI.

*This prevents unit clipping, widens the battlefield and allows better visibility of units and formations. It also works well with expanded battle map mods as the lines will stretch across landforms.

8. Units are cheaper to maintain and recruit, however, navies continue to be expensive.

***Armies are needed much more for garrison duty in order to keep the peace in certain regions until they are fully pacified.

9. Buildings take much longer to construct. This prevents easy cheesy expansion by the AI and player.

10. Cultural conversion is slowed significantly. It will take a few generations with dedicated governors and characters to convert a culture, and some areas will simply require permanent presence to keep them stabilized. You can expect to fight a rebellion after taking a settlement. This also serves to prevent snowballing by the AI and player.

***You might see some snowballing but typically regions will revert to their native culture without a sustained, dedicated presence (governors, garrisons).

11. Resources have more powerful bonuses.

12. Traits and ancillaries have more powerful bonuses (doubled).

13. Experience and veterancy have more powerful bonuses.

14. Tax bonuses/maluses are reconfigured.

15. Technologies take much longer to research. This incentivizes the use of traits, ancillaries, and upgrades to reduce research time.

16. Political parties/factions are renamed in certain instances, to reflect political distinctions and conventions. So the Macedonian ruling faction, for example, is now the "House of Antigonus."

17. Reforms are now historically grounded. I’ll consider making an alternate version if requested, but this is intended to be a long and slow campaign, and will simply not be for everyone. It’s intended for more long-term, strategic, historically-grounded and tactical players. Marian reforms do not occur until much closer to the approximate era (late republic) which they occurred, which followed Roman expansion into Sicily, Spain, North Africa, Northern Italy, Southern Gaul, and Greece.

18. Removed age gates for general ranks/offices. This balances historicity considerations against game mechanics. Of course, there were dynamic young generals and officers who rose to power in defiance of constitutional norms, Pompey, Caesar, etc…

19. Minor settlement battles are almost completely removed. If you really enjoy fighting these let me know, I could make you a different version or show you how to change it yourself, but in my opinion, the AI pathfinding is so atrocious that these types of battles become a cheese-fest.

20. Battlefield size is increased (merge with older mod).

21. Merged with my DeI Traits Renamed mod, to add a bit of historicity to the DeI personality dimension with terminology from antiquity. If you subscribe to both mods, you no longer need the other one.

This mod requires DeI, simply load before it and any other mods that make changes to these systems.

***Recommend playing with the DeI official submod that removes public order penalties for garrisons, as the changes made to cultural compatibility and conquest will make it very difficult to maintain order without garrisons.

***Note: I’ve combined my other mod, The Great Man Theory of History, with this mod, so you no longer need both. The changes from that mod greatly unbalance the vanilla DeI campaign, while they are balanced much better against these global changes.