RTR Project 'Grand Campaign' BETA Testing 0.5!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[Bercor]

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

Strange, I've never seen that bug in EB. Maybe you should talk to someone from their team and ask how did they dealt with that.

[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.

[ahowl11]

Well it's just an assumption at this point

[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.

[ahowl11]

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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[ahowl11]

Okay, will do! Also, excellent ideas!
Did you see my post about the skirmishers?