AGEOD Forums

Storms at sea are way too strong in this game. Time and again I have seen my fleets annihilated in a single turn. I never leave port in the winter, but even in the "safe" months, there is a high chance of finding your fleet gone before you can react. In the latest example I tried to cross the Adriatic Sea at its narrowest point, moving from one friendly port to another in May. The weather was fair at the beginning of the turn. There are only about 100 km of water separating the "heel" of Italy from land on the other side and there are only two sea regions to cross. Yet by the time I reached the other side, my 3 legions and 2 supply units were virtually gone. Only a couple hundred men remained. The fleet lost well over half it's strength as well. This type of result seems fairly common.

This really ruins the naval game imo. There is no way for the player to mitigate the danger of storms, and the effects are so dramatic that they easily throw the game. It would be impossible to conduct trade if the sea were really so hazardous. I can't imagine Rome and Carthage ever fighting each other if there was a good chance everyone would die every time they got on board a ship. I think the risk of storms is a good addition to the game in theory, but they need to be much milder.

In the first punic war, two times a massive roman fleet was totally sunk by a sea storm, just near the Sicilian coast...

Oceans are not your friends in Antiquity...

And your boats are in wood...

I know the technology was not so advanced...

So, if you want to play Roman side during that war in Birth of Rome, don't use the 'Corvus' Technology against Carthage !

Hi Meagher, there was a recent discussion on the beta forum about this and the dangers will be toned down a bit in a future patch.

Cheers,
Chris

The straights around Dyrrachium are indeed a very dangerous area. it seems that a major storm brews there 6-7 times a year like clockwork.I don't think the problem is the devastation that the storms cause but the frequency that they occur. Like El Nino stated the Romans suffered a couple of devastating disasters at sea in The First Punic War but that has been largely attributed to the unstable corvus by some historians. But considering the length of the war and the number of naval operations that occured it was not a frequent problem.

Polybius writes of the disaster off Camarina:

"The blame must be laid not so much on ill-fortune as on the commanders; for the captains had repeatedly urged them not to sail along the outer coast of Sicily, that turned towards the Libyan sea, as it was very rugged and had few safe anchorages: they also warned them that one of the dangerous astral periods was not over and another just approaching (for it was between the rising of Orion and that of Sirius4 that they undertook the voyage)."

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/1*.html

I am not playing during the 1st Punic War when Rome had very little experience at sea. I am playing in the late republic when Rome had abandoned the corvus and maintained a grip on overseas possessions. I look forward to the new patch, and I hope it will include a bonus for ships that are just off the coast of a friendly port as I suggested in another thread.

I agree that there are too many deadly storms in AJE currently. It's okay to lose ships and men in a big storm occasionally, but it shouldn't happen regularly.

Cary and Scullard in their 600 page History of Rome write of the Mediterranean:

"In ancient times its waters were almost deserted from October to April, but in the summer months they were a safe and frequented highway."

So why not different chances of a destructive storm in winter and summer seeing as the Mediterranean climate is basically two main seasons.

Taillebois wrote:Cary and Scullard in their 600 page History of Rome write of the Mediterranean:

"In ancient times its waters were almost deserted from October to April, but in the summer months they were a safe and frequented highway."

So why not different chances of a destructive storm in winter and summer seeing as the Mediterranean climate is basically two main seasons.

The chances are different in Winter/Spring & Autumn/Summer. Lets see how things are after the patch. Hopefully much improved!

Cheers,
Chris

Will be in public beta patch 1.02 showing up soon this afternoon