DarthMod Empire 0,95 General Feedback & Suggestions

[DARTH VADER]

ONLY FOR THIS VERSION


DarthMod Empire includes:

-Optimized Land battle system (Musket lethal in short range but not in long range, Extra balance for all units per faction, more difficult AI by indirect methods etc.)
-Optimized Naval battle system (Ships turn and handle realistically, each faction has a special battle character, realistic tactical battle AI from indirect methods etc.)
-Better Campaign AI (More aggressive AI, Better decisioning in land invasions, better Naval AI blockades, better Alliance group wars etc.)

Special New in version 0,95
-Grenadiers have more upkeep cost. Some more cost of recruitment.
-Rocket ships have much more cost to make them less desirable.
-Made AI to volley from closer range (Test) and revamped the whole battle system through various techniques of morale and other attributes settings. That goes for naval battles too.
-Close range Musket lethality is increased and now everything seems set (Try it).
-Turkish units have even less upkeep to help them grow Huge armies.
-Fatigue files are removed from mod... something is wrong with these files (They seem bugged from vanilla and I removed them for now).
-Grenadiers have Square Formation ability.
-Russian Line Infantry costs even less, so that the Russians can wage even more armies. Some other units too.
-Cavalry balance reworked a lot (Hussars became a defensive skirmish cavalry, Lancers real chargers, Uhlans something in the middle, Cuirassiers a good all around cavalry and also other).

Special New in version 0,9
-Grenadiers will not be able to throw grenades (Until there is a fix to be able to change their ammunition)
-More devastating close range musket fire (The way it was requested)
-Cannon trails will be those of the great mod of scivian

Special New in version 0,85
-Removed Population cost for armies (Only 200 instead of 2000 which was set in previous version)
-Made the rank distance in units a little higher
-Re-inserted the cannon trails (Laser muskets are out permanently)
-Ferguson and green jackets will have variance (propose)
-Infantry morale has greater shock penalty against extended missile fire
-New fatigue alterations
-Campaign AI work out (Should be better, needs testing)
-Land experience will be gained differently in accuracy and reload rates
-Modified the charge distance (A new parameter I have found) to create a true battle experience and better AI

Special New in version 0,8
-Improved the Campaign AI (Hopefully).
-New Musket Balance = Devastating close range fire. Harder Battles.
-Removed the laser bullet-ion cannon trails of vanilla (I needed them for calibration... off they go now).
-New Land Unit Balance (Melee Units are very dangerous when they are close, Line Infantry get new special character=very large Defence, low Melee= The battle mechanics makes them to keep formation like the Last of the Mohican movie)
-Balanced Cannons= Special shells have lower range and higher reload penalty, adjusted their universal accuracy)
-Naval Cannons have special reload rates each. (Each Ship is now even more important due to the special realistic balance there is already)

Special New in version 0,75
-I removed the "fire and advance" ability. AI gets lethal without it.
-Increased the ammo.
-Optimized the accuracy and the aiming system of the muskets to feel realistic.
-Made Absolute Monarchy to have better bonus in recruiting troops.
-Many minor adjustments that were requested.

[Barabus]

So I have tried out a few custom battles,

First, rocket ships are good now, the expense means if you go pure rocket ship and your opponent takes 5th rates, they have seven extra ships and crush you in a custom battle.

Tried out a few one on one battles between Guard units and Grenadiers (both prussia, playing as the guard unit twice and the grenadiers twice, both on offense and defense once.

The Guard unit won the match up every time, not really even that close, but they cost forty less that the Grenadiers so not sure if you're going to want to tweak that.

Going to test some cav now...cheers

[Barabus]

Special New in version 0,95
-Made AI to volley from closer range (Test) and revamped the whole battle system through various techniques of morale and other attributes settings.

I did not see this in my one on one tests, the AI still spent their entire ammo at their max range before charging, both as guard and grenadier.

[Celareon]

Didn't see the AI trying to shoot from a closer distance, and I also had two units of two-chevron sepoys and one unit of two-chevron company infantry get annihilated by a no-chevron unit of islamic swordsmen - as I mentioned in 0.9 the nerfing of line infantry's ability to fight in melee makes the game seem unbalanced to me.

3 units of experienced line should not succumb to one unit of inexperienced islamic swordsmen.

[carlisimo]

Have the galleys been tweaked at all?

[Midknight]

Darth - I changed the projectiles_tables for flintlock musket damage to "5" (5x what v0.95 is set to). This is the kind of killing power the musket should have, if not more !

I tested it with basic line infantry vs hundi warriors and unloaded 3 volleys right in their face (held fire until the last minute) the results were :

150 down to 81 in 3 volleys, the last volley by the rear rank took about 30 men down which was superb. The hindus were shaken badly but went on to smash the line 120 to 33 before the line routed.

Final stats :
Hindus 150 stated out - 67 survived
Line infantry 120 started - 30 managed to run off.



This is kinda perfect - as a platoon leader you would do this, unload at the last minute to ensure you were not caught re-loading. However at range the shots were still killing a lot of men (10-12 per volley).


That final volley from the rear rank was pretty incredible from 3-4 meters, given each file was 38 men wide that means pretty much all the shooters killed a man with their shot which at that rank is spot on for a weapon so lethal.

How do you alter accuracy ? Is it just with the unit stats ?

[Celareon]

Midknight -

I tried what you said, changing the damage values for muskets and rifles and wow, what a difference it's made, finally the battles have that musket lethality they should, no more do volleys from 10 meters only take down 10 men, now they take down 30 or 40, as it should be, I've toned down the values

Rifles, 4
Flintlock Muskets 3
Matchlock 2
Carbines 2

Works like a charm, thanks +rep

About what Ankel sais below, yeah thats true, but I don't ever shoot at buildings with infantry, I mostly try to clear them with bayonets, until I know how else to increase lethality I'll keep it as-is.

[Lunar Havoc]

My only problem with grenadiers was the lack of square formation, thanks Darth!

[Onkel Tuca]

Darth - I changed the projectiles_tables for flintlock musket damage to "5" (5x what v0.95 is set to). This is the kind of killing power the musket should have, if not more !

I tried increasing musket damage to 3 a while back. It's the same as the puckle gun, seemed reasonable to me. Then I noticed how a few vollies of musket fire made buildings crumble, and in the end were destroyed completely, without any artillery having fired upon it.

[ruzenqures]

"-Turkish units have even less upkeep to help them grow Huge armies."
First of all thank you for that and i tested a few battle : ai doesn't comes closer but they tried to surround me this time ...strange and they also respond when i tried to surround them.Happened only ones though.
P.S. For Turkish units, their accuracy can be little low (as it is now) but for their melee stats and units, i thing those are need to be raised little more
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=246168&page=4 post no 80.

[Don in the North]

H/H great britain.

cherokee indians are strangely quiet in this campaign, usually they have overrun the east coast by 1715, but its now 1733 and they still have the same layout, one and a half stack in carolina on the coast, one in cherokee capital, and one and a half in the one next to it in centre.
they also have a half stack in florida/spain territory, camped inside the plantation building closest their territory but in spains, so that goes withotu saying they are at war and have been since they first moved that stack into spains plantation in 1705ish. havent made any other aggressions, and spain after 30ish turns still maintains no garrison, just the grey-box of firelocks in florida.

not as many wars with "real fighting" going on, but there are a few. prussia and austria kicking it up with poland trying to t-bone, india being disputed by the 2 indian factions, random other skirmishes with united provinces declaring war on my protectorate the 13 colonies, im forced to end alliance with them in favor of the 13.
as far as i can tell, russia and austria , mughal and that orange indian faction have each expanded by a few territories but not many.
couple of minor factions have been eliminated and sot hat accounts for a few of those territories.


my first battle with 9.5 a weird one, i was defeated by inquis indians in the north.
i took 6 line, 4 grenadier, 3howitzer 1 general and 2 regimental cavs, the enemy had 11-12 units of cav and 7 inf, 1 saker.

i situated the howitzers on a perfectly sloped hill, then put 3 line and 2 grenadiers in square formation, put them 2 squares down on hill from arty, in a straight line, then behind them on the flanks the remaining infantry in square formation also, but rotated so it was a double diamond . then i placed on inf double line facing behind arty and general mixed with that, and the cavalry filled the two gaps between the extra reserve rear inf and their squared flank comrades.

AI advanced all at once, their fixed arty shelling me with good precision, the cavs beared down, was very little i could do with arty was just too many of them, they got into range, the mounted tribesmen fired back as my squares shot off as many as they could, finally one lancer on my right flank charged my first unit there, the grenadiers.
10-15 seconds later, the rest of the lancer cavalry on front and left charged.

grenadiers start faltering, general resets that. by now the enemy inf is in range, bowmen shoot a bit and the medicine and tribesmen charge , focusing on front, and the right corner of line and flank.

by now just one of the enemy cavs that charged left was wavering, so i had my cavalry in rear charge their respective columns to drive the enemy into route if i could. all is going mostly to plan and a win looks highly likely as ive located the enemy general and arty is about to target him.
but the right grenadiers got hit by inf, so suddenly the dropped the square formation and went into 4-5line deep, 10 seconds later they route right in front of my generals eyes, and the 2 lancers on right push deep, along side the medicine men who are ebbing away at the next unit on the right of front line, suddenly he drops square formation, subsequently flees.

by now the left flank is hit by another cav, my cav on left flank flees and whole front line is overrun. squares are being reformed like flies and half of my army routes.
i try to rally them but the general dies from something, so with arty about to be overrun completely, i order a mass withdrawal.
game over, a few generals body guard survive along side 2 units of arty with 12 men each. over 1700 men dead vs a similar number,

one thing i noticed was units routing would flee backwards, move 15 mtrs in that direction, then suddenly change by doing a 180, running 5 mtrs then do 15 backwards etc.

i had a think about this, and after watching my armies attack single units of indians around the map, the enemy would move backwards to escape the range, the exact moment i ordered my arty to attack them.
intelligently, they would run out of artillerys cannonball range, and untill they were had no where to go theyd do that a bit. ive seen several instances of this, even in huge army brawls rather than whole army vs 1 unit situations like i just described.
while thats all good i dont mind that, i like it. but i think it may be related to the issue i brought up in the previous paragraph- the routing units changing direction.
could it be that these units, when fleeing/routing , are controlled by the AI to some degree to decide their paths and all, would the enemy attacking them be detected by that side of the AI and force them to do similar behaviours, to flee backwards/out of range once they register a ranged attack from enemy ?

ill be trying out naval once again later, tho i doubt youve edited much other than the rocketships that i dont use. as ive only just unlocked 2nd rates so now im building fleets to take out prussia, who have captured one of my scottish ports. weve been at war since they declared a war of seccession in 1707 or so, so its nice to see the prussians finally growing a pair after 25ish years of war without fighting

my second question pertaining to my above report, is there a way to prevent units from leaving square formation after being melee attacked with inf? AI units suffer this too, when i hit with inf, and obviously combined with a cavalry attack its rather devastating and costly due to the certainity of a route

[Takeda Shingen]

hi darth and all!

I have to say again how thankful I am that somebody is taking care to alter the game in a way how it should have been released from the start.

anyway, I don't want to criticise you in any way, but I would love to have the grenades back for my grenadiers^^

Is there a simple tweak to do that?
Or maybe you can explain again(you probably did but I didn't find) why you took away this ability!?

Thanks in advance!!!

[joreto]

This is my short report about Darh Mod on my campaign with Prussia ( H/H ) where I am in 1741 now.
First of all this is the European map in 1741 in my campaign -


You might notice several things -
- Austria is now a monster. They destroyed France and many little countries, also Sweeden had a several regions ( like Hannover and the region below) which Austria took too ( fortunately I am close ally with them).
-Russia is a very big country too. However that happend by many wars - First I was in war with Poland and after it they were with only one region, but then their country rised up again and they took 4 or 5 regions from Russia, but then Russia destroyed them in several turns (they are my ally too).
- There are no little states in my campaign. - Yes they were destroyed mainly by me and Austria.
The things I like in my Darth Mod campaign:
- the naval battles are just awesome. They are perfectly optimized and finally the boarding is fixed.
- the campaign AI is very aggressive and now it is much more challanging to play.
- the new units stats are greatly optimized (it is much more realistic now) and the I like a lot the new function of the grenadiers.
The things I don't like in my Darth Mod campaign:
- the AI leaves its regions empty and it is extremely easy to take a region now ( I think that this is the main reason for the big territorial expansion of some coutries controlled by the AI)
- the land battle AI somethimes do nothing, they are just waiting to be killed, and in other cases they make a very strange "formation" of their untis ( I guess that is impossible to change for now).
- the AI develops its techs really slowly and for now there is no army that could beat me because they don't even have fire by rank !
Conclusion:
Although there are couple of thing I didn't like (considering that they are impossible to change for now) I think that Darth Mod gives us the best that could be achieved from that game without modding tools.
So great work Darth Keep it that way !

[Lone]

Wow, never saw AI expansion like that in vanilla! I just started a new campaign with Darthmod and already in my game too Austria declared war on France which I as GB most gladly joined. See if Austria becomes a superpower in my game too

[joreto]

Yea for example in my campaign when I decided to declare war on Sweeden and take their towns Hannover and Cologne as my ally Austria joined on my side and took these towns before me ( the same happend when Saxony declared me war).

[jegui]

I have also been playing DM 8.5/9/9.5 on H/H with France and I must say it's a real improvement over vanilla:

Campaign
plus
- main factions are expanding better and actively warring each other.
- minor factions have declared war initially (stronger) and made peace/allied later (weaker)
- Army composition better than vanilla
minus
- AI not very agressive towards player... better than vanilla :-)
- conquered almost all trading points in 3 out of 4 trading scenarios. AI did not race for it...

Battle (land)
plus
- last more and more challenging
- AI keeps distance before closing in for kill
- cav outflanking more
minus
- cav too strong (I'll try more in 9.5)
- some AI units get stranded and face from heat of battle (easy to kill)

Battle(sea)
plus
- AI much improved to vanila and more challenging.
minus
- Some AI shipd got tanggled in heat of battle and turned into minced meat :-)


In all and as always Darth Mod is a must have if we are not to dump our boring vanilla game and go back to M2TW/RTW superb mods. I've been playing your excelent work since RTW and it's superb... let's see what great transformation you will achieve once the modding tools arrive :-)

[Swiss Halberdier]

Hello Darth Vader,

here is my little summary of DM 9.5 on H/H with Britain.

Campaign AI
The main factions are now really a threat. Also the minor factions didn't attack me once like they do in vanilla sometimes. (also when they're very underpowered and it's obvious that they would loose the war)

Combat AI
The firing lethality gets to its perfection. Probably you could add some more damage to close range volleys.

You did remove the grenades, but you could give the grenadiers the "scary enemies" option. Because the opponents feared the strength and experience of the grenadiers. I will do some testing if the balance is ruined and if the grenadiers are overpowered.

The ship battles are now very realistic and fun to play.

I've played since Darth 0.1 and the game gets even better each release!

>>> Could you please add a link to the older changes again in the first post?

[T-Duke]

Grenadiers could inspire "fear" to enemy since now grenades have gone they seem to be underpowerd....

[Earende]

Just tried a new game with Portugal, H/H. I build up a full stack (2 company horses, 3 sepoy, 1 cannon, company line for the rest.) and attacked Mysore (3 mob plus reinforcements, full stack but all units half dead: pikemen, hindu, 1 horse.) Technology: I had Ring Bayonet and Square, they had nothing.

The battle started with a single Mysore mob unit mindlessly charging towards me - easy kill, so I sent a horse unit to ram them. Result: Mob slaughtered half of my horse in melee (No shooting.) before routing.

I took the gates easily (Undefended, enemy reinforcement still far.), 1 enemy horse (with 10+ men.) reinforcement managed to reach me and a single sepoy unit of mine engaged it in melee. Result: Sepoy (Full men.) completely slaughtered. x2

I continued to the fort's center and dispatched the remaining mob. Result: 3 company line, 20-35% men left. x3

Finally the tired, injured enemy reinforcements arrived. I sent my horse (Full men, not the half-dead.) unit to flank (Successful.) charged a 20+ men Hindu unit but they started dropping my horses. I managed to pull them back. The rest of the enemy charged and it became a giant brawl with the end result: My entire army routed and annihilated. Enemy: Less then half losses. (And they were already half to begin with.) x4

Did melee became so 1-sided in 9,5 or I suddenly suck so bad?

[ke3pr]

i also changed the damage into 4 for rifles and 3 for flintlock and stuff, wow now my musket battles are so intense if you fire close range the AI on my grand campaign is a little low in activity,
North - america = nothing happening
Europe = only russia is attacking and capturing regions (spain defeated portugal also)
India = pretty active, me (UP) took south region, mysore took 3 regions of maratha and mughal has been capturing maratha's regions too.
Would be cool to see more activity in northern america (south america is impossible due naval invasions) and some more activity in europe(at least in my campaign it's idle )