Way too long to paint the map

[Swaggaccino]

I've been painting the map since Rome 1 TW and unlike some TW fans, I've always had fun with it. Every single game felt fun... until Pharaoh. Pharaoh feels like there's WAAAAY too many settlements like the game should have ended 10 hours ago but it keeps on going. The snowball effect started for me at around turn 70-80ish and about double that length later, I'm bored out of my mind. I simply don't want to continue playing.

Every single battle is a breeze which is ok becauseI like watching battles but every single turn feels like micromanagement hell.
>attack settlement with one of my dozen armies
>fight if odds are against me, autoresolve if odds are for me
>occupy settlement
>repair damages
>build outposts
>upgrade buildings
>ok rinse and repeat next settlement
>do courts
>upgrade generals perks
>do diplomacy to maintain food
>next turn
>repeat roughly 500 times

It's so damn BORING because there's so many settlements and they feel just like the last one I've conquered. It feels like there's more settlements in this world than the entire world of Warhammer 3. At least Warhammer 3 was fun to paint the map because there's unpredictability and every settlement feels like a different world. Pharaoh feels like a 10 hour game diluted into 50+ hours to really conquer everything. And the AI doesn't want to confederate. I'm playing on normal btw.

What does everything else think?

[Swaggaccino]

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

They got grain from Egypt before conquering it, it's called trade.

The Roman Empire had grown massively in population so that feeding the people in Italy just from their own land was no longer feasible. There also wasn't enough land to put more farmers on it, hence the constant conquests.

Rome had constant troubles with internal division, external enemies and famine. Only a small minority of emperors ever died peacefully, the majority was murdered, executed or otherwise prematurly put to death. Traian was the last emperor to expand the Empire, afterwards it only shrank at various rates.

I said Sextus blocked the ports of Italy and that's what caused a massive food crisis.

This literally makes zero sense.

If Rome gets all their food from Egypt and Sextus blockaded Silicy+Sardina+Corsica which is not in Egypt last I checked, how did that cause a famine in Rome? Egypt has plenty of surplus and you still had the reminder of the Empire. This was during the second triumvirate too so Antony was still allied with Octavian during that time. Or is it because Italy could still feed a large chunk of its population and the food from Silicy+Sardina+Corsica was enough and arrived faster than from Egypt due to shipping lanes as I mentioned in my earlier post?

Additionally Rome didn't fight for food. They fought for a lot of things but they had enough food. The Empire peaked with a population of 74 million and scholars argued that it could sustain a population above 100 million with its territory. Today Europe today has a population density of 34 people per square km while the Empire was half that at around 20 and that included parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Speaking of territory, the problem with acquiring more land is that you also acquire more plebs. The highest population peak coincided with the greatest territorial extent. If they had food issues, acquiring more land wouldn't fixed anything as you now have more mouths to feed. Hell speaking of Trajan he literally had a welfare program called Alimenta giving away food. Food was abundant during the early Empire. It was policy or war or the late Empire that made it scarce as I've mentioned earlier.

[Khorne Berserker]

Publicado originalmente por Swaggaccino:

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

They got grain from Egypt before conquering it, it's called trade.

The Roman Empire had grown massively in population so that feeding the people in Italy just from their own land was no longer feasible. There also wasn't enough land to put more farmers on it, hence the constant conquests.

Rome had constant troubles with internal division, external enemies and famine. Only a small minority of emperors ever died peacefully, the majority was murdered, executed or otherwise prematurly put to death. Traian was the last emperor to expand the Empire, afterwards it only shrank at various rates.

I said Sextus blocked the ports of Italy and that's what caused a massive food crisis.

This literally makes zero sense.

If Rome gets all their food from Egypt and Sextus blockaded Silicy+Sardina+Corsica which is not in Egypt last I checked, how did that cause a famine in Rome? Egypt has plenty of surplus and you still had the reminder of the Empire. This was during the second triumvirate too so Antony was still allied with Octavian during that time. Or is it because Italy could still feed a large chunk of its population and the food from Silicy+Sardina+Corsica was enough and arrived faster than from Egypt due to shipping lanes as I mentioned in my earlier post?

Additionally Rome didn't fight for food. They fought for a lot of things but they had enough food. The Empire peaked with a population of 74 million and scholars argued that it could sustain a population above 100 million with its territory. Today Europe today has a population density of 34 people per square km while the Empire was half that at around 20 and that included parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Speaking of territory, the problem with acquiring more land is that you also acquire more plebs. The highest population peak coincided with the greatest territorial extent. If they had food issues, acquiring more land wouldn't fixed anything as you now have more mouths to feed. Hell speaking of Trajan he literally had a welfare program called Alimenta giving away food. Food was abundant during the early Empire. It was policy or war or the late Empire that made it scarce as I've mentioned earlier.

As Italians conquered more fertile territories, their population grew more and more and agricultural capacities of Italy stopped being sufficient.

[NULL]

Publicado originalmente por Swaggaccino:

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

They got grain from Egypt before conquering it, it's called trade.

The Roman Empire had grown massively in population so that feeding the people in Italy just from their own land was no longer feasible. There also wasn't enough land to put more farmers on it, hence the constant conquests.

Rome had constant troubles with internal division, external enemies and famine. Only a small minority of emperors ever died peacefully, the majority was murdered, executed or otherwise prematurly put to death. Traian was the last emperor to expand the Empire, afterwards it only shrank at various rates.

I said Sextus blocked the ports of Italy and that's what caused a massive food crisis.

This literally makes zero sense.

If Rome gets all their food from Egypt and Sextus blockaded Silicy+Sardina+Corsica which is not in Egypt last I checked, how did that cause a famine in Rome? Egypt has plenty of surplus and you still had the reminder of the Empire. This was during the second triumvirate too so Antony was still allied with Octavian during that time. Or is it because Italy could still feed a large chunk of its population and the food from Silicy+Sardina+Corsica was enough and arrived faster than from Egypt due to shipping lanes as I mentioned in my earlier post?

Additionally Rome didn't fight for food. They fought for a lot of things but they had enough food. The Empire peaked with a population of 74 million and scholars argued that it could sustain a population above 100 million with its territory. Today Europe today has a population density of 34 people per square km while the Empire was half that at around 20 and that included parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Speaking of territory, the problem with acquiring more land is that you also acquire more plebs. The highest population peak coincided with the greatest territorial extent. If they had food issues, acquiring more land wouldn't fixed anything as you now have more mouths to feed. Hell speaking of Trajan he literally had a welfare program called Alimenta giving away food. Food was abundant during the early Empire. It was policy or war or the late Empire that made it scarce as I've mentioned earlier.

To feed Rome (the city itself, which was hugely reliant on grain imports even if the empire as whole was probably doing surplus) you need to be capable of bringing the grain by ship to port of Ostia. If that's not possible the grain might as well be in another universe, the volume needed and the logistical realities make it impossible.

[Something completely different]

Yah. Roman emperors didn't use the tried and tested bread and games formula to keep the plebs happy in Rome for nothing.

Rome needed food and it needed to be imported from Africa (the province) and Egypt. Sextus caused food shortages in the civil war because his islands (Sardinia and Sicily) lay smack between the sailing routes from Africa and Egypt to Rome and he had more then enough ships to strangle the sea trade lanes while his opponents did not have the ships to dislodge him.

He didn't blockade the islands, those were his.

[Kendji]

Well, the Loss of Egypt, Roman tax law and other factors, would eventually contribute to the rise of feudalism. People started moving out of Rome, land lords got to pay less taxes if they import/exported less, outside their lands. Incentivising them to build self-sufficient economies where cloth, food, tools etc needed could be produced internally.

So one could say, the Roman food issue eventually became unsustainable.