Messages

Sorry, not yet.

As we are in the middle of moving everything to my new job it will be difficult to play test for the next week or two until we are finally settled and I am stably at my new job.

As soon as I can I will download the mod and play it.

The only reason I was able to answer the questions is because we had a few days with some friends en route to our new place of residence.

BTW - I am not yet familiar with the way Exilian has set up everything.   Where do I go to eventually download the beta ?

One question I had is before I edited the EDU, certain skirmisher units were set up to be infantry units. Velites and Mercenary Peltasts were similar to infantry units as they started with swords instead of javelins, and didn't have skirmish ability on.

Hi Ahowl11,
Sorry I overlooked your earlier post.

I remember now what I did to partially compensate for the AI skirmish bug.   I noted that the AI treats the unit differently if it is a "skirmisher" unit instead of "infantry".   

I had also noted early on in my work that there were many "heavy skirmish" type units (like the heavy peltasts of Thrace, Greece and Carthage), and to me it began to blur the lines of what is light infantry versus heavy skirmisher and how "heavy" does a skirmish unit have to be before it is considered more "infantry" than "skirmisher".   

Dont forget that a Roman Legionnaire is equipped just like a heavy skirmisher only with Chain Mail for amor.  In all other ways thay are equipped the same (both have a large shield and a good sword and javelins - the only other difference is the romans use the more effective pilum versus a traditional javelin).

Also, when I was playing and had heavy skirmish infantry on my side, it was problematic both in the formations.txt file and in actual battle to manipulate them (unless they were infantry instead of skirmishers in EDU).

For example, there are many skirmish units that are equipped with spear instead of a knife and are consequently better to defend flanks from light cavalry as well as flank the enemy.   But if you keep forgetting to turn off skirmish mode, they start running when you are looking the other way and before you know it you have lost most of them to a cavalry charge while your attention was diverted elsewhere on the battlefield.   I wanted to make battle management less micro-managing so the player could focus more on the key elements of battle.

So, I decided to spend some time to actually subdivide and catergorize skirmish units - and in the end you will see how I divided them.   If you look thru my EDU file that you used to manually edit yours, I seperated skirmishers into the following subclasses:

(A) HEAVY SKIRMISH INFANTRY,
(B) SUCCESSOR STYLE SKIRMISH INFANTRY,
and
(C) PURE SKIRMISH INFANTRY.

Heavy Skirmish Infantry would have LARGE shields, some/no armor and a decent melee weapon
Successor Style would have SMALL shields, some armor and a SPEAR as a melee weapon
Pure Skirmish Infantry have no armor, and a small shield (or no shield) and USUALLY a knife for melee (some exceptions)

I later thought that some of those in the aforementioned categories were better classed as skirmishers based on the FIGHTING STYLE of their factions rather than purely based on their equipment.   For that reason I changed Velites, Gallic Skirmishers and Germanic Youngspears back to Skirmishers after having them as infantry for a while.   

For example, the Roman Velites, even though equipped as heavy skirmishers would NOT historically throw and engage but would throw and fall back leaving the Legionnaires to continue the melee.   In a pinch they may be called upon for battle if all else was lost but never under normal circumstances.

On the other hand, many of those heavy skirmishers (that I changed to infantry) WOULD have been used in place of their heavier counterparts if there were no heavy counterparts available (like the Iberians, Illyrians, Thracians and Greeks).   

In addition, I could not resolve the idea that men with large heavy shields were tasked to purely skirmish.   These shields would weight up to 20 lbs - imagine skirmishing with that weight on one arm during the course of a battle.   Typically those large-shield skirmishers were tasked to flanking duties, flank defense for the main troops and could even support the main troops in the main battle line itself.   Since they were better defended with their shield and sometimes even some armor, it made sense to classify them as light infantry (with a precursor weapon) rather than pure "skirmish" infantry.

It was actually quite a long evolution in my play-testing that got the skirmisher category to where it is now.

Sorry for not explaining that earlier,

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hello Ahowl11,

One minor change I would recommend in the EDU file.

I had originally had all hoplites with a lethality (skeleton correction factor) of 0.2 based on my battle testing of a few years ago.

However, I recall that this skeleton was a little quirky and I had to chose between 0.2 and 0.3 (ideally I would have liked 0.25 but more than one decimal simply gets truncated).

In recent battles I had decided it is more balanced to have hoplites as 0.3 instead of 0.2.

So, if you want - change all HOPLITE units in EDU to 0.3 (like other spearmen) instead of 0.2.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hello Ahowl11,

The issue with the pikemen is the skeleton. We use a twohanded skeleton and animation from EB. Looks like it came with that bug

There is a 2-handed pike skeleton you can use for RTW.   From appearances it is far superior to the fs_fast_spearman BUT I found in my playtesting that it had a VERY high variance for kill rates.   Most variances of multiple runs of combat were about +/- 10% but the 2 handed pike was about +/-50%.

I think the reason was because the skeleton thrusts a VERY short distance, and this seems to be important in terms of kill rate.   

I would have used it in my mod, but I wanted the kill rates to be more stable.
However, if you want to try using it, replace the pikemen skeletons to the following:

For PHALANX PIKEMEN, CHANGE
skeleton         fs_fast_spearman, fs_s1_barbswordsman

TO
skeleton         fs_thp_f_spearman, fs_s1_barbswordsman

It definitely looks more correct, but behaves more erratically for ths kill rate.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hello All,

One way the overpopulation problem has been eliminated in my mod and in various other mods is as follows:

(A) Elimintate the "grain" resource completely from the descr_regions.txt file
(B) Elimintate the "grain" resource completely from the descr_strat.txt file

The reason you get overpopulation is the grain resource is traded.   The RTW campaign engine will, for example, trade grain from city A to city B.   This should increase the food available in city B and decrease it for city A.   

However...

What it actually does is increase the food (thus population growth) for city B and NOT CHANGE the food (and population growth rate) of city A.

If both City A and B trade grain to each other - EACH gets abonus from receiving each others grain (?!?)

In other words it is double counting the grain resource - it increases the pop rate of the receiving city yet not balancing that from the sending city.

Then, what happens is if you get several citiies with the grain resource all trading with one another, they ALL get a bonus from grain from EACH sity they are trading with.   Thus 5 cities trading grain with each other, each raises the pop growth by 2 percent or so x 5  = 10% increase for EACH of those cities.   The more cities, the more growth...

Due to this double accounting bug, just eliminate it altogether as other mods such as RTR-gold edition did. (for some reason they brought it back in platinum edition).

You can safely remove it and all the other effects of farming upgrades still work properly.

ie. if you have farming upgrades, you still have more stores of food for siege, you have more harvest income etc...

In fact, the grain resource has nothing to do with you farming income - ONLY a fraction of trade income and of pop growth.

I removed it from my mod and it is the best thing I ever did.   In fact, to me it is more realistic that cities had to fight to get their populations up rather than fight to get them down.   In an age of constant warfare, disease, primitive medicine a city had to creatively think of ways to not lose population and have it grow - not the opposite.

Also, many regons (like Greece) traditionally did not have huge populations and if they lost a battle (and lost a lot of men) they would not be able to raise another army for nearly another full generation.   Thus having huge population rates makes it less important to lose afull stack army because you can recruit another in a few turns if you have several high-pop-growth cities - and you wouldnt even notice it.

What I did was use the government building to give predetermined pop-growth bonuses to certain factions IN certain cities.  For example, I put a pop-growth bonus for Italian cities IF the owning faction was Roman.   This reflects that Rome always had large reserves of available manpower.   But this way another faction conquering that region would not get the same bonus.   Actually, I did the same with happiness and income bonuses as well to give more value to a faction's "core regions" versus their colonies.

This way I, as a player, I find it more challening to monitor that I am not depleting manpower from my cities for low grade troops that I will then not have men available when I am ready to recruit high-grade ones - and I certainly would not want to take high losses of any troops I have since I could not replace them easily.   I even had to (for the Greek and Macedonian cities) transfer population by recruiting the lowest grade troops from other cities and migrate & disband them in my core cities.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

Regards,
phalanx_man

Re: YourStepDad

Okay, here are my thoughts as the Julii VH/VH after some 20+ turns in the game.
Right off the bat, it feels like Polished/Retextured vanilla, which is a very good thing in my book. I am loving the nice touch you added to the animations, and generally how you retextured the units. Really job well done.
--- BATTLES ---
Now, I would say the battles are a bit problematic. Although I adore longer battles, such as they are in Roma Surrectum, here I feel they are somewhat unnatural. Fully surrounded units of 20 men and even below hold their ground when the battle is clearly over.

Likewise, skirmishers have problem with skirmishing, they tend to dive into melee by accident several times, often getting hopelessly mowed down in the process. Only after pulling them away from harms way AFTER some other melee unit of yours has engaged the enemy in melee do they stop to shower the enemy with javelins, regardless of whether skirmishing is on or off I think.
That would be it for now. Enjoyable, promising, pretty, but it needs work and balancing still.

Hello YourStepDad

Part I: End-Of-Battle Stragglers
======================
That first thing you mentioned is one of the unfortunate side-effects of the new combat system.   In order to be more realistic in the early and middle stages of battle, there is this "hard-to-kill-the-last-stragglers" effect at the end of battle.   Unfortunatley, it is either one or the other.  In other words, we either have unrealistic beginning and middle stage of battle and realistic at the end OR realistic beginning and middle but unrealistic at the end.   The reason for that is that I have reduced the penalty to flank and rear attacks because, when there is a UNIT that is surrounded, the rear and side ranks will turn to face the enemy and will naturally fight.   No one will remain facing "forward" while an enemy soldier is striking him from behind.   And since the ANIMATION shows the soldier turning and fighting, it makes sense that he does not suffer a massive penalty just becaiuse he is at the "back" of his unit (in Vanilla NO defense skill or shield applies to defense value from rear attacks, EVEN THOUGH the animation shows the soldier has turned to face the attack).   

I think in Vanilla they figured that no soldier can face SIMULTANEOUS opponents from more than one direction, which is true for an INDIVIDUAL soldier - but NOT TRUE for a unit of many men in formation.

However, this (vanilla) version SHOULD be the case where there is only one rank left or when the soldiers are so spread out of formation that thay are individually isolated.   

Unfortunately, there is no way to do both - that is to NOT have exessive penalty when there is a 2+ rows formation and a heavy penalty when there is only a few soldiers left in a unit.   This combat system is an effort to have the lesser of 2 Evils.

I figured what was the point of having an unrealistic beginning & middle stage of battle since that determines who actually wins the battle.   On the other hand, if the battle is over anyway (and was realistic up to that point), its not so bad to just press the speed up button to kill off the reamining soldiers who SHOULD be dead already.

One other thing you could do (that I do when this part is taking too long), is pull back my exhausted infantry unit and send in a fresh unit OR charge the stragglers with cavalry which usually kills the rest or puts them in rout after which they are killed off much easier.   The only place this wont work is in the main square of a settlement (where they cant rout), but charging them will still take out a bunch and more quickly that in infantry-melee.

Hope this helps.

In my writeup I discuss at length the reason for it and the limitations of the RTW battle engine in this regard.

Part II:  AI Skirmisher Bug
With respect to the skirmishers, that often happens with the AI units skirmishers, and is a reflection of the ai_formations file and not the EDU and DMB files.   In my mod I have adjusted the AI-formation file but enemy skirmisher units still spread out unrealistically wide (dont know why that is) and then run back & forth sometimes firing and sometimes not.   However, for your own (human) skirmisher units, they should be acting normally.   Ie, if you have them attack in skirmish mode, they should do just that (approach, throw, fall back, then repeat until out of ammunition).   In my battles, my skimishers behave normally.   I think it is because the AI widens the formation excessively that it does something bad to that units "skirmishability".   I have seen somehting similar with regular combat units if spread too wide - they seem to try to "rotate" the unit's axis even while it is engaged.   However, If I keep the number of ranks deep enough this doesnt happen.   I think that is just a bug of the RTW combat engine and I havent found a way to stop it from happening.

The one way I can see this happening to human units is when the defending AI unit is on a hill.   The problem is that the skirmisher unit will approcah UNTIL IT IS IN RANGE BUT (and its a big BUT), the range really decreases if they are shooting uphill.   Likewise, if they are defending from a unit that is attacking from downhill, their range is much longer (unrealistically so in my opinion).   

If your (human) units are doing this when attacking an uphill-defending enemy, this is the reason.   On the other hand, if the AI units are doing this when you are defending on high ground then that is also the reason.   Try a couple of test battles on level ground and you should see that this doesnt happen (with the human skirmishers) and should happen much less badly with the AI skirmishers as well.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Re:  Mausolos of Caria

Wuargh. I've just played a few turns with the Greeks. There seems to be a problem with the graphics, the campaign is a tad slow, and battles are terribly slow.  Or well, not sure if slow is the right way to describe it, my peltasts were flying over the map like supermen, but I could only move slowly, like it happened on my 10 000 men battle on MTW2. Not sure why, since RTR VII, RS II and Invasio Barbarorum all work smoothly.

Hello Mauselos,

The battles will be slower than you are used to - that is due to the revised combat system (see the combat system writeup by me for this mod).

In terms of soldiers moving on the battlefield, the battle engine is actually decent at accounting for ARMOR.   You will note that heavily armored units cannot walk or run as fast as light units (same for Cavalry).   This is actually good since it more accurately reflects an armored man or horse being weghed down.   Dont forget, a heavy infantryman would have up to 80 POUNDS of amor and weapons.   That is 75% more than the weight of an unarmored man - he will definitely NOT be able to move as fast as a man with no armor, a small shield and 4 javelins (ie. peltast)  Also, skirmish or archer cavalry will be able to move faster than cataphracts.

I would recommend the following:  in order to get used to the differences, run some test battles and do the following:

Have 2 units on your side, one light & one heavy infantry and just make each of them RUN to the edge of one side of the battlefield from the same starting point (ie. dont engage the enemy unit).   You will see how much faster the lighter unit is than the heavy.   Do the same with a light and heavy cavalry unit.

Actually, in my opinion the game doesnt do a good enough job at this - there is only a slight difference (whereas there should be a huge difference).   Also, the amrored units tire at the same rate as their unarmored counterparts (both running and in battle) and this should also be very different as the heavier unit should tire faster AS WELL AS moving much slower.

But as this is hardcoded, not much can be done about it.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Re: Bercor

Well, I finished my Armenia campaign... with a defeat.

Spoiler

Those evils Seleucids and their innumerable hoplite stacks brought me to an ill deserved fate (I shouldn't have attacked them ). One of the reasons that led to this was the fact that the Ptolemies and the Seleucids were allies, which they seem to be in every game (not very historical), and, as such, the latters could concentrate all their mighty militar power in fighting me. With an economically weak Armenia it was only matter of time till I was put to shame.
Granted I was not trying my best to win the campaign, but it's refreshing seeing the AI pull this off.
Macedon campaign, here I go (hopefully with some better results)!

Hello Bercor,

I agree that Egypt and Seleucid Empire are traditionally enemies.   What happens is whoever you play, the AI stacks the deck aganist you.   For example, when I played the Seleucids, the Egyptians would NEVER agree to a ceasefire with me.   However, if I play Pontus, within 2 turns Egypt and Seleucids are best friends forever.   That is just the way AI does it and even adjusting core attitudes (the bottom of descr_strat) does little to affect it.

On the other hand, I am happy to hear that you had a challenge in a campaign - one of the knocks I had against vanilla is that it was basically too easy to win.   Now, even though the AI is still pretty stupid during battles, at least with a more realistic combat system winning is no longer "a given" but at least takes some thought and pre-battle preparation.   For example, im my mod, I actually use spies quite a bit because I really need to know what troops I am up against before I challenge them to a battle.   Each faction will have stregths and weaknesses.   For me (I usually play as you may have guessed phalanx factions and the greeks), I have to look out for elephants because from the front I have no fear but if the elephants get at the flanks of my formation they will cause a lot of havoc and casualties and my heavy cavalry cant really help out.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Re: b257,

You also might want to have a look at the principes and triarii. I fought a battle against the Scipii with an army of 4 upgraded Libyan Spears, 2 Veteran Slingers and 4 upgraded Long Shields against an army of 5 Hastati 2 principes, 1 trrarii, 1 archer and 1 cav  plus a general. I swept aside the Hastati with some effort but those damn principes and triarii fought to the last man, My army of 948 was whittled down to 462 against just those three units

The reason you had trouble with the Principe and Triarii is because they are literally the best units of the game.   You may be used to vanilla where if you flank a unit you are easily able to defeat it.   This new version of combat results in less penalty for flank and rear attacks (see the writeup I did for the revised combat system to see why).   Now, even if you have good troops flanking elite troops, you will have a hard time - and this is historically accurate.   The romans often were badly outnumbered and still beat the oddds just due to superior armor, armament and discipline.   The only real way to beat Rome is with the phalanx (but keep the line solid and protect the flanks at all costs - phalanx pikemen will rout if their flanks or rear are compromised).   The other way is to always (but ALWAYS) use the BEST troops possible in your faction.   I know if you have experienced mid-grade troops you are loth to discard them.   What I do is use the lower quality (but experienced) troops to sweep for rebels or fight against non-Roman non-Phalanx opponents (like the parthians or barbarians etc) and send only the best against the Romans.   This way, when they get experienced, they will be almost comperable to the Roman Principe/Triarii and Legionnaires.   

Of course, once exhausted in combat, a heavy cavalry charge from the back or flank will rout even the best Roman units.   

As the saying goes, "Infantry is the Queen of Battle and Cavalry is King."

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Re: B257
quote: Playing a new carthage campaign today I noticed something odd, Egypt had declared war on Armenia, I ignored it at first thinking it was nothing but every few turns it popped up and I didn't think Egypt had expanded so quickly, so When I toggled fog of war I saw that Armenia had a settlement in southwest Arabia. Is this a bug? because Armenia had pretty good sized garrison in the settlement but was getting thrashed by the seleucids who were pretty much duking it out with the egyptians./quote

The reason for this is because there was a loyalist-revolt (revolt settlement to not-rebels) and the settlement will default in ownership to either whomever is listed as "faction_creator" in descr_strat.txt OR whomever is listed as "default_culture" in descr_regions.txt (I am not sure which but I try to keep these 2 the same in my mod).

Since Arabs do not have a culture of their own, I remember the vanilla version used Armenia as the default culture or faction_creator and thats why this settlement revolts to Armenia.   (I think in vanilla they figured the best match for Arabs was Armenia or Eastern culture)   In my mod, I based all Arab settlements to be more closey related to the Carthaginian culture and use Carthage as the faction_creator and default_culture since I think that represents Arabs better.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Re: Bercor and the spear position issue

Quote from: ahowl11 on February 18, 2014, 01:28:52 AM
Are they like this every time?
I don't think so, I only noticed in this battle.

Hello Bercor, Ahowl11.

Regarding the hoplites, you are right Ahowl11, the hoplite skeleton (fs_s1_hoplite) does this sometimes.   I havent figured out the pattern as to what triggers this but it is something that is just a bug with this skeleton.   It seems that a little more than half the time the hoplites point their dory forward (and slighty down) but sometimes they hold the butt end down (almost as if they are finishing off fallen troops).   The reason I still use this skeleton (instead of the vanilla version (fs_spearman) ) is because it is still more correct than a regular spearman.   It is impossible to have a true hoplite formation with the spear held to the side because that is where the next hoplite is.

Regarding the pikemen, this should not be happening.   I am wondering Ahowl11, since you were modding the EDU file manually you may have inadvertently left off a couple of attibutes OR perhaps have the oncorrect skeketon in DMB.   I know I did so a bunch of times when I was making changes en-masse in those files.

Check the following:

All PHALANX PIKEMEN units should have the following:

EDU.txt (on their pri attr line):
=====================
stat_pri_attr    ap,long_pike, spear_bonus_8

DMB.txt: 
======
(this is referred to from the EDU line "soldier" for that unit, so look for the entry after soldier in EDU and find that name in DMB)

skeleton         fs_fast_spearman, fs_swordsman


Also, just to check, all HOPLITE units should have the following:

EDU.txt (on their pri attr line):
=====================
stat_pri_attr    short_pike,spear_bonus_6

DMB.txt:
======
skeleton         fs_s1_hoplite

Note, be sure that the hoplite skeleton only has ONE skeleton in the line.    I tried to have 2 so that they could have a second weapon and go to swords if need be (historically, when the hoplite spears were smashed or the combat became too closely-spaced, the hoplites would go to their swords) BUT, what that does in-game is (1) spread out the formation (which is incorrect) and (2) when they charge they automatically go to swords first (also incorrect).   The only way to solve it is by NOT having a second weapon for hoplite units.

Check it out and let me know.

If you cant find one of the 2 issues above maybe email me the EDU and DMB files and I can take a look myself.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hey Guys,

Sorry I wasnt available to answer some questions regarding combat -I just took a new job and am in the middle of moving (frm Mexico to Michigan).   I am scrolling down and will sequentially answer all the combat-related questions as I catch up.

First, from B257,

Just did a quick three turns and let me just say I love what I am seeing right now. One bug I found though as playing as the Brutii. When I was attacking a town, I forgot its name but it was Illyrian, their Skirmishers did not fire on my ram, and when I ordered my velites to engage they did not fire until they were in their face, I mean I know Javelin units don't throw that far in real life but I doubt they got that close. I tried a custom battle and archers work fine but Javelins didn't fire until the enemy got real close, I dunno if others will have the same problem but I think javelin range should be adjusted somewhat.

Hello B257,
Thanks for the positive feedback (further on down) - I really tried to bas our in-game battles as close as possible to actual ancient battles and used historical extimates of battle duration to benchmark how long they should take in game.

The reason for the javelineers not firing at a distance from where they used to in Vanilla is because I also did research on modern experiments on ancient missile weapon ranges (I just googled and also used wikipedia) and then I changed all the ranges accordingly.   The javelins I dont remember changing very much (I dont have my vanilla files on my laptop, so I can see if I decreased it slightly or actually INCREASED it slightly) but see below.   The pilum troops, however, have about half the range of vanilla (hastati, principes and all legionnaire-types).   This reflects the fact that the pilum is much heavier (in fact it had a lead ball slightly larger than a mans fist about 12 inches from the barbed end).   This increased mass (coupled with the pointed barb) is what makes it armor piercing (and shield piercing) and greatly increases the damage it dows BUT it also significantly reduces its range.   Of course, since the Roman combat infantry (ie. non-skirmishers) didnt have to actually skirmish, it didnt matter that they had to get closer to the enemy since they would be closing to hand-to-hand combat right after they threw their pila.   

Also, with missiles, I have noticed that the game is actually good at accounting for trajectory and any obstacles that are in between.   For example, missiles troops will not fire if they are too close to a wall if the trajectory will put (I think) more than 50% of the missiles into the wall itself.    As per above, I may have actually slighly increased the range of javelins (based on modern experiments) so having them too close to the wall means they will not throw.   Try moving them back a little bit OR, shift them sideways (instead of having them right in front across the wall), since when you do that, their trajectory becomes longer and can then clear the wall and still hit the mass of troops targetted.

I have done the same thing and, it is a bit of a pain bacsue visually you think they should be able to hit the opposing unit or throw up and have "plunging fire".   I guess the game figured if you have to throw with less force the missile will no longer do the same damage and flunging fire is not too realistic since the javelin has to arc up, then turn 180 deg then come down point first - much more difficult than just throwing straight.

If you want to get a good feel for range ina visual -battle sense, rin som test battles with various troops on fire-at-will mode and see at what point they then throw their missiles.   As they are doing that, look at you unit from the side and if that trajectory would have a wall interposing it, they will not fire in the siege situation you mentioned.

I hope that helps.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hello All,

I made some additions and changes to traits and ancillaries in my personal mod.

TRAITS:
For example, I added FastSpy, FastDiplomat, FastAssasin, FastShips since these should move much further in a turn than an army.

I also added AICommandBonus so that all AI generals have 10 stars and consequently the AI plays a LITTLE better (or less badly) than when they all have 2 or 3 stars.

I also modified many of the combat related traits for generals to give both influence and morale bonus (penalty) if a general becomes better (worse) in battles (Renown,  Good/BadInfantryGeneral, Good/BadCavalryGeneral, Good/BadCommander, Good/BadAttacker, Good/BadDefender, Good/BadAmbusher, Good/BadSiegeAttacker, Good/BadSiegeDefender).

ANCILLARIES:
I added a Ships surgeon to heal wounded after a sea battle in the same way as Doctor or Chirurgeon for generals
See Ancillary ships_surgeon.

I also modded some of the triggers that were happening too often or not often enough (mostly for Priests, Spies, Assasins and Diplomats).

PS - I couldnt attach the entire files (due to the size limits), so I attached the excerpts only in TXT file format.

Regards,
phalanx_man.

Hello Fellow Modders,

I am phalanx_man and I am new to this forum.   I am Serbian by birth and a Canadian citizen.   I currently live in Mexico but am about to move to Michigan, USA for a new job in the coming weeks.    I have been a Mechanical Engineer since graduating in 1990 and my specialty is working at power plants in a commissioning and field service capacity.    I have always been interested in ancient military history from a young age.   My favorite period spans from 490 BC (the Awakening of the Athenians), through the campaigns of Alexander and the period of the Successors to roughly the end of BC (the beginning of the Roman empire), although I have lately also become interested in the early Roman Empire and the span of the Eastern Roman Empire as well.   If reincarnation is real then I must have been a Greek in those times because I love the Classical and Hellenistic periods and everything Greek in general.   I have particularly followed the military career of Alexander the Great and my greatest historical interest regarding battles are the fascinating duels between the Macedonian Phalanx and the Roman Legion.   In 2010 my wife gave birth to our first child, a boy, who we named Alexander in honour of the Greatest Man That Ever Lived.

I have been an avid fan of RTW since January 2009 when I first played the game.   Since then, I was introduced to Rome Total Realism which, for me, took the game to a new level with its' realistic battles, skins, historical unit additions and historical backgrounds.   This prompted me in 2010 to do my own research on ancient arms and armour and, after reading many works of both ancient and modern historians, I made my own personal mod of RTR which I have been playing and tweaking ever since.

My modding has mostly focused on text editing of various files that were necessary to do my RTR mod and I can say I have pretty much examined or modded about half of all the text files in the Data subdirectory.   The files I have spent the most time with are EDU, DMB, EDB, descr_Formations, ED_ancillaries and ED_character_traits.    I haven't had much luck modding banners as I had hoped – something for a future time perhaps.    I am here because my work on EDU had been noticed by ahowl11 and he has graciously asked me to contribute my findings and the EDU file that I modded to hopefully make for even more realistic battles.   Thank you ahowl11 for involving me in this and I hope that the other members herein will find my work useful.

Please refer to the following link in this forum that will outline the work I had done on EDU that has been used in this mod. 

http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2865.new#new

It is a pleasure to meet all of you,

Kind Regards.
Phalanx_man.

[http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?111344-The-Complete-EDU-Guide]

Hello Modders and Gamers.

I have been an avid fan of RTW since January 2009 when I first played the game.   Since then, I was introduced to Rome Total Realism which, for me, took the game to a new level with its realistic battles, skins, historical unit additions and historical backgrounds.   This prompted me in 2010 to do my own research on ancient arms and armour.   In the course of this research I saw where the game's combat mechanics could be further improved and, in fact, made equivalent to actual historical battles in terms of casualty rates and battle duration.   I also began to think that the combat parameters themselves could (and should) be more standardized to reflect, for example, sizes of shield, types of armour and the skill of the troops as a reflection of their level of training.   Up until now, the values of armour, shield, skill and attack seemed to be a rather ad-hoc affair rather than systematic.   

These changes would all be made in the EDU (export_descr_units.txt) file.   Aradan has written an excellent tutorial of the EDU file which was invaluable to me in this work.  Please refer to it here if you wish to me more familiar with all the parameters in EDU:

The Complete EDU Guide, by Aradan (July 20 2007)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?111344-The-Complete-EDU-Guide

The EDU file that this particular mod uses incorporates all of the many changes that have evolved with my research and battle testing of combat parameters in the RTW battle engine.   If you are used to the RTW vanilla battles you will see a distinct difference here, and it is my sincere hope that you enjoy the battles even more.

Ahowl11 has asked me to give some background as to what changes have been introduced and I will do so here.  Before I do however, let me say that there is a lot of information on things I have discovered and I don't want to overwhelm anyone with too much information.   Thus I will rather try to summarize the key changes rather than make this an all encompassing writeup.

Also, I have broken up my work of combat parameters into four separate phases, two reports of which I have completed (and posted in the http://www.twcenter.net/forums/)  and two more of which my work has been completed but I have yet to post the formal reports.

The reader is welcome to go to the above forum and see my first two works of combat parameters, the links of which are here:

RTW BATTLE MECHANICS: Part I – A Study of Combat Parameters (August 02 2010)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?377804-RTW-BATTLE-MECHANICS-Part-I-–-A-Study-of-Combat-Parameters

RTW BATTLE MECHANICS: Part II – Equalization of Skeleton Lethality (January 18 2014)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?638418-RTW-BATTLE-MECHANICS-Part-II-–-Equalization-of-Skeleton-Lethality

Part I will give the reader a good overview on the subject and Part II will explain why the values of lethality (the last parameter on the EDU line "stat_pri" and "stat_sec") have been changed to those values you see in this EDU.

The result of subsequent work is also included in this EDU but, as I have not yet written up parts III and IV, I will try to summarize here the highlights of what I had done.   I hope to shortly give a more full account of those changes when I do write parts III and IV and post them on the forum.

The remaining work includes the following:

Part III:  A Systematic Approach to Standardizing Combat Parameters

The basic thing I did here was define quality of troop types and, using that quality, standardize the values of Armour, Defence Skill, Shield, Attack, Base Morale, Recruitment (training) time, Recruitment and upkeep costs. 

III-A: Troop Types and Quality:


TROOP        DEF     TRAINING  ATTACK
QUALITY     SKILL   TIME         MODIFIER  (NOTES)
=========================================================================
Untrained   07-09     0            -2        (can train multiple units in one turn)
Levies        10-12     1            -1         (minimal training)
Regular      13-15     2             0         (standard training)
High           16-18     3            +1        (Well-Trained)
Sub-Elite    19-21     4            +2        (Superbly trained)
Elite           22-24     6            +3        (Elite level training)
Ultra-Elite  25-27     8            +4        (Best-of-the-best, only Spartans & Hoplite Elites)


Note that I use Marcus Camillus' 4 turns-per-year, so levies have 3 months basic training, standard troops 6 months (which is typical even for today's armies), and so on...   The Ultra-Elite group only exists for those soldiers that take the best of existing elite troops to form their units (Hoplite Elites) and Spartans since they are trained pretty much from birth to be nothing but soldiers.   Since I could not model this in the game, I simply put a very long training time to represent this.

As I have needed a numerical parameter to measure the quality of troops, I chose Defence Skill which I am using to represent overall combat skill in my system.   Thus, as we shall see, every other combat parameter will be based on this value.   From here on, I will refer to Defence Skill merely as "Skill".


III-B: Morale:
A VERY important stat, Base Morale is represented by the first parameter in the EDU line "stat_mental".   
Inspired as I was by the words of Vegetius,

"The courage of the soldier is heightened by the knowledge of his profession."

in this system, stat_mental is set EQUAL to skill, with some adjustments for certain troop types as follows:


Most Units:                         Base Morale = Skill
Harsh Environment Units:  Base Morale = Skill +1 (Harsh Living Bonus)
Roman Infantry Units:       Base Morale = Skill +2 (Roman Discipline Bonus)
Zealot Units:                     Base Morale = Skill +3 (Religious Zeal Bonus)
Berserk Units:                   Base Morale = Skill +4 (Berserk Bonus) 
Spartans: (special)           Base Morale = Skill +5 (Spartan Discipline Bonus)
All Phalangites:                Base Morale = Skill -4 (Penalty)

For the other 2 parameters in the stat_mental line, we have the following:

SKILL     DISCIPLINE VALUE   TRAINING VALUE
===========================================
01-12     LOW                     UNTRAINED
13-15     NORMAL                     TRAINED
16+     DISCIPLINED     HIGHLY TRAINED


III-C: Armour

HEAD PROTECTION:
Skull Cap = +1 (or other misc types that are not hard but reasonably offer some protection)
Metal Bell-Type = +1 (No Side/Cheek Protection - even with ear and rear neck prot) , Ex = Carthaginian, Iberian
Metal Full-Open Face wi Side Protection = +2 , aka Thracian style (Macedonian, Thracian, Illyrian & Roman)
Metal Partial-Open Face wi Side prot = +3 , aka Chalcidian style (ATG Spartan Hoplites)
Metal Closed Face = +4 ,  aka Corinthian style (Elite Hoplites), Full Thracian (Bastarnae, Thracian Infantry)

LEG PROTECTION:
Greaves = +2 , 
Note = Roman Troops only used one Greave and it was on the shield side.

BREAST/MID-BODY PROTECTION:

Thin Cloth/Padding = +1.  Deemed to exist under ALL armours – soft mails need cloth, breastplate needs padding.
Thick Cloth/Padded Cloth = +2* on its own (no extra +1 bonus for cloth underneath other armours).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following Armours have the value indicated IN ADDITION TO +1 for the Cloth or Padding underneath.

Padded OR Soft Linen Armour OR Animal Furs = +2
Small Breastplate = +2   

Leather Mail (non-hardened) = +3 
Quilted Linen = +3 
Medium Breastplate = +3 

Hardened Linen or Studded Leather = +4   

Hardened Leather = +5   

Linthorax (Lamellar Reinforced Hardened Linen) = +6

Normal Chain Mail = +7     

Full Chain Mail (cover hips, groin AND thighs)  = +10 for Men, +12 for Horse/Camel/Elephant*

Normal Scale Mail = +8 

Full Scale Mail (cover hips, groin AND thighs)  = +11 for Men,  +13 for Horse/Camel/Elephant*

Bronze (Full) Breast Plate with Leather waist = +9

III-D: Shield Value:
I had initially done this based on my research into the Legionnaire's shield dimensions and made the following assumption/definition. 

Shield Value = Number of square meters of total shield area x 10

The Roman Shield was one of the largest at approximately 0.8 square meters, yielding a shield value of 8.

For other shields, I simply based it on a VISUAL comparison to the Roman shield.

Approximating based on visual determination the following general rule can be used for shield values:


RELATIVE   SHIELD
SIZE          VALUE     EXAMPLES
==============================================================
SMALL         2           Peltast Shields
MEDIUM      4           Barbarian Swordsmen
LARGE         6           Barbarian Spearmen
HUGE          8           Roman Legionnaires *


* Hoplite shields are given a value of 8 even though by their size they are only a 6.   This is because, in the hoplite formation, each hoplite is defended from the sides as well by his fellow hoplites to either side.  So, by the nature of the FORMATION, it is EQUIVALENT to having a larger shield.   Other shields that have excess curvature which in turn affords some extra protection have small bonuses as well.


III-E: Weapons

For weapons, I started with the most basic weapon and its most basic value as used in RTR.   The typical value for low trained spearmen is 8, so I began with that as a basis.   Don't forget, the actual damage value increases +1 with each level of quality, which is in turn based on skill value.   The sword values I calculated using a method I derived which is a little long to explain here but I will elaborate on it when I post the Part III writeup to the forum.   

Suffice it to say that the base weapon values here are calculated/estimated based on the following criteria:

(a) how easy it is to get around a shield (short weapons are better, so swords are better than spears),

(b) weapon momentum when thrust/swung at an opponent (heavier = more damage,  2-handed > 1 handed),

(c) the number of means of attack the weapon has (2 edges is better than one, 2 edges and pointed is better than 2 edges with blunt point, so Xiphos is superior to Kopis or Barbarian sword)

(d) swordsmen emphasis on thrusting over slashing is more damage (so Roman Gladius** is better than Xiphos)


                       BASE
MELEE                    ATTACK       WEAPON        UNIT
WEAPON                VALUE    EXAMPLES     EXAMPLES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spear (1-Handed)    8    6'-9' Spear    Hoplites & Spearmen
Pike (2-Handed)   10*          12' Xyston     Phalangites, Short Pike Phalanx
Pike (2-Handed)   13*    21' Sarissa   Phalangites, Long Pike Phalanx

Sword (1-edge)    9     Kopis       Eastern Swords & Arabian Scimitar
Barb Long Sword   10                       Barbarians (not including Iberians)
Sword (2-edge+p)   11              Xiphos        Greek Swordsmen, Iberians
Sword (2-edge+p)   12**     Gladius       Legionnaires
Short Sword              6                                Some Horsemen & Archers
Knife                    5                       Some Skirmishers

Axe (1-Handed)    9                                 Cilician Pirates
Pick-Axe (2-Hand)   12*                               Germanic Berserkers (Vanilla)
Rhomphaia              13*                       Thracian Infantry, Bastarnae
Falx                   16*                        Falxmen
Club                     5           Mod Specific

MISSILE               BASE
WEAPON             VALUE    RANGE         UNIT EXAMPLES
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bamboo Javelin      8      25m                Any Indian Elephant Units
Javelin               10      25m                Skirmishers, Peltasts
Pilum               11*    15m                Legionnaires
Arrow                 3      120-170m       Archers (Range 120m – 170m)
Sling Stone            1      150-180m       Slingers (Range 150m – 180m)


* means Armour Piercing Attribute ("ap" for melee weapon or "ap thrown" for missile weapons)

** Roman Legionnaires emphasized thrusting over slashing, which gives their attacks much more chance to hit unarmoured areas.   This is the chief reason behind the relative superiority on the Roman method of sword fighting over their Barbarian neighbours.   Note that even though the Xiphos is double edged and pointed (like the Gladius), the troops using it (Greek swordsmen and Iberians using the same Gladius Hispanicus as the Romans) did not have the same emphasis on thrusting, so the same equivalent weapon in their hands does less damage than a Roman Legionnaire would do.   


III-F: Training Units  (optional but recommended)

Since the more skilled a unit is, training is longer with more phases ( basic, advanced etc).   Just like comparing Navy Seals to Marines to Regular Army, the training is more rigorous and longer.    Also, for units that take the best of other units (Hoplite Elite) or that train from Birth (Spartans), hereby referred to as Ultra-Elite, the only way I could represent it was to add more training time.   For these, 8 may not be enough – I am considering raising it to 10 or 12 instead.


                          TRAINING BUILDING                         MINIMUM
SKILL         CIVILIZED                BARBARIAN               SETTLEMENT
=============================================================
07-11    Muster Hall               Muster Field              Town
11-14    Militia Barracks         Hall of Warriors         Large Town
14-16    Barracks                   Hall of Heroes           City
16-19    Provincial Barracks   Regional Barracks      City
19+    Royal Barracks         High King's Barracks  City


I added to my EDB (buildings) barbarian equivalents to Provincial and Royal barracks and made City the highest required settlement size.  I did this mainly so that Barbarians were on a level playing field for recruiting with respect to "civilized" factions (since barbarians settlements cannot go beyond city).     Furthermore, it seemed logical that once a settlement reached city status, it should be able to train any types of troops – being any bigger should not make any further difference.


Part IV:  Modified Defence System for Flanking and Rear Attacks

I had noted, during some campaign play-testing that I had not addressed one important issue in my part III work – and that is what I will call the "excessive flanking effect" that some of you may have seen.

In one test battle,  I matched 1 unit of SPARTANS against 2 units of MILITIA HOPLITES and (surprise) the SPARTANS were DEFEATED if one militia hoplite unit engaged from the front and  the other attacked from the rear of the Spartans.   When you look at the numbers it made no sense (nor historically either).   To give you an idea of the numbers, Spartans were ATT=12 ARMOR=15 SKILL=25 SHIELD=8 and militia hoplites were ATT=7 ARMOR=5 SKILL=12 SHIELD=8.   So, according to the RTW battle engine 2 units of 7/25 could easily defeat one unit of 12/48 !!!  (And not just defeat, they EASILY defeated them).   Something was drastically wrong.   

The problem that I failed to realize was that the 3 attributes of defence (Armour, Def-Skill and Shield) were applied differently by the RTW battle engine.

- ARMOUR applies to all f directions relative to a soldier – front, left flank, right flank and rear.
- DEF SKILL only applies to front and partially to right flank (it is supposed to represent parrying the enemy's weapon with your own) and does not apply to missiles attacks.
- SHIELD only applies to front and partially to left flank (using the shield to block enemy blows) and applied double for missile attacks from the front.

However, in a real battle, if a second enemy unit comes at (say) your unit from behind or in a flank attack, the soldiers at the rear or flanks are not going to simply stay facing "forward" but will obviously wheel about to face their new attackers (at least one rank or file would anyway).   In fact, this is true VISUALLY in RTW since you can see ANY units will have the men in the flank/rear ranks turn about to face the new enemy soldiers to their side/back.   Thus, it stands to reason that these soldiers SHOULD STILL have their SHIELD and SKILL credited to them - but they don't.   This confused me earlier on as I figured if they are turning around they must be getting all their combat stats as well.

I understand that RTW probably thought that it would somehow compensate for the fact that once a unit is flanked (or surrounded) that there has to be SOME penalty (or effect) to that unit - which is true... BUT, that penalty should be in the form of LOSS OF MORALE, NOT a penalty to their fighting ability.

How it SHOULD have been (to be realistic) is as follows:
- ARMOR should apply all around for both melee and missiles
- SKILL should apply all around for melee, but not apply at all to missiles
- SHIELD should apply all around in melee, apply double from missile attacks from the general "front" of the unit and not apply to missiles from any other direction.

So, in our example, the Spartans had a Defence value of 48 from their FRONT, but ONLY 12 from their rear !!!

Since the way the battle engine uses these numbers is hardcoded, there was no way I could change that outright BUT I could compensate by taking defence skill and REDSITRIBUTING it between armour and shield values.   In this way, the TOTAL defence (from the front) would remain unchanged BUT there would be a much smaller penalty to attacks from the flanks or rear, which is more realistic.

I decided to redistribute the defence skill value in the following way:
- Most Infantry Units: 80% to Armour (rounded up) and remainder to Shield
- Hoplites: 75% to Armour (round up) and remainder to Shield
- Phalangites: 25% to Armour (round up), 25% to Shield (round up) and leave remainder as Defence Skill
- Infantry with no Shield: 100% to Armour
- Cavalry Units where Rider has a Shield:  80% to Armour (rounded up) and remainder to Shield
- Cavalry Units where Horses Crest comprises the Shield: 100% to Armour
- Elephants, Chariots and their Riders:  100% to Armour
- Skirmisher Units: Same as Most Infantry Units above
- Pure Archer/Slinger Units:  New Armour = 6+old armour value
- Specialist Archer Units: Treat as Skirmishers above

So, in our above example, the values of Armour/Skill/Shield change as follows:
Spartans go from DEFENSE(orig) = 15/25/8 = 48 to DEFENSE(new) = 34/0/14 = 48
Militia Hoplites go from DEFENSE(orig) = 5/12/8 = 25 to DEFENSE(new) = 14/0/11 = 25

And thus now, the battle to the FRONT of the Spartans is unchanged in terms of kill rates BUT from behind, instead of the militia hoplites attacking a Spartan rear defence of 15 they are now attacking a 34.

When I reran that same test battle, the new result was as follows.  Both militia units were defeated ! (as would be expected).   When both militia units routed they had 110 men left (took 370 casualties), and they had killed 38 Spartans, resulting in a kill ratio of about 10:1 – a FAR more believable ratio considering the Spartans fighting prowess.   Also, the militia hoplites had killed 15 Spartans from the front and 23 from the rear which is also good since it shows not too much of a difference but still notable due to the shield value not applying to the rear side.

Note,  the reason I didn't simply transfer ALL the skill value to armour is twofold:

(1) The greater the skill of the soldier, he should be equally more skilled in how effectively he uses his shield
and,
(2) Shield effect against MISSILES is double from the front, and again, more skilled troops should be able to better defend against missile volleys from the front than less skilled ones.

The other thing I had to do was tweak all the missile attack values to bring missile casualties back in line to what I had before because now the armour value is higher and the shield value (which is doubles vs. missile attacks) is much higher effectively, I was getting no casualties from missile attacks even against unarmoured and unshielded troops.

I also had to tweak all the weapons that had the ARMOR PIERCING attribute, since this attribute works by counting only half of the targets armour.  But now that the armour value was so much greater, ap-weapons were getting a huge bonus increase from before which I had to compensate for to bring back in line.   

In the test battles (and in-campaign battles as well) I have run since this change, this modification has worked out very well in my opinion.

I hope you all think so too.

Best Regards and Happy Gaming,

Sincerely,
Phalanx_man.