A little experiment for longer battles.

[Cromagnon2]

I find the kill rates in BC are a bit too fast for my taste, before i know it the battles are over, so i edited the EDU and doubled the hitpoints and the amonition of all units, battles have now a more realistic pace for me.
Missile oriented armies will have it a bit harder and charge bonuses will do less damage as a side effect. Elite units will fight much longer and elephants slightly more resitant to javelin.
What do you think, do you think it is still balanced? Try it out if you like.

location: Medieval II Total War\broken_crescent\data

[Intellected]

hmmm?

When I play the original (vanilla?) MTW2 grand campaign I see the turkish horse arches runn like ants with turbo boosters.
And when it comes to hand2hand battles its the same.

So in my opinion and as far as I have experienced BC is far more balanced in battling making the battles go more realistic.

[wudang_clown]

That's cool idea for a modification, Cromagnon.

But I'll move it to the Submod area of the forum.

[Morfans]

I find the kill rates in BC are a bit too fast for my taste, before i know it the battles are over, so i edited the EDU and doubled the hitpoints and the amonition of all units, battles have now a more realistic pace for me.
location: Medieval II Total War\broken_crescent\data

Doubling missile units' ammonition is a bit unrealistic - what about doubling their attack factor instead ? Would it have the same effect ?

[Cromagnon2]

So in my opinion and as far as I have experienced BC is far more balanced in battling making the battles go more realistic.

Vanilla is dramatic, BC is better but still too fast for me.

That's cool idea for a modification, Cromagnon.

But I'll move it to the Submod area of the forum.

Thank you.

Doubling missile units' ammonition is a bit unrealistic - what about doubling their attack factor instead ? Would it have the same effect ?

Thank you for the feedback.
Well i don't know if it is unrealistic, maybe there are some supplies or maybe some looting on the battlefield
Maybe doubling their attack value would be better but, then they will soon be out of amo and doubling their attack value requires allot more editing in the edu, but i am considering increasing the charge bonus.

[Morfans]

Maybe doubling their attack value would be better but, then they will soon be out of amo and doubling their attack value requires allot more editing in the edu, but i am considering increasing the charge bonus.

My present setup:

- doubled all hit points
- doubled missile unit attack
- increased charge bonus by 20%

It seems to work well - pitch battles are much longer and more realistic. Siege battles are ok, though they require some further tweaking of tower stats ...

There is another aspect in battle realism and that is the excess of militia units in M2TW. In fact, I dusted off BC 1.05 + LestaT's Kingdoms extension and adjusted the EDU recruitment offsets with:

- various bonuses for high-cost units
- bonus to cavalry units
- malus to siege weapons (very annoying in pitch battles)

AI armies are stronger, disciplined and ultimately more realistic. It is still uncommon to lose a battle (VH) against the AI, but your casualties are much heavier - and the campaign is much harder.

Thought it could be of interest for BC 3.0 ...

[Cromagnon2]

My present setup:

- doubled all hit points
- doubled missile unit attack
- increased charge bonus by 20%

It seems to work well - pitch battles are much longer and more realistic. Siege battles are ok, though they require some further tweaking of tower stats ...

There is another aspect in battle realism and that is the excess of militia units in M2TW. In fact, I dusted off BC 1.05 + LestaT's Kingdoms extension and adjusted the EDU recruitment offsets with:

- various bonuses for high-cost units
- bonus to cavalry units
- malus to siege weapons (very annoying in pitch battles)

AI armies are stronger, disciplined and ultimately more realistic. It is still uncommon to lose a battle (VH) against the AI, but your casualties are much heavier - and the campaign is much harder.

Thought it could be of interest for BC 3.0 ...

Really nice modding you did there
If i understand you did this for v1.05 Kingdoms right? Did you do this for v2.02 too? If so i would like to try it out! What do you mean with malus to siege weapons, did you lowered their stats? BC v2.02 has also a decrease in militia and siege weapons, it has it's own recruiment script for the AI.

I hope BCv3.0 will take some inspiration from this, combined with the possible increase in unit size from Kingdoms, battles promise to become epic

[Morfans]

I used BC 1.05 because it has a stable Kingdoms version (By LestaT).

In Kingdoms, the EDU is enhanced by the "recruit_priority_offset" statement (not available in M2TW).

In BC 1.05 (Kingdoms version), I changed the EDU like this:

- all units have a base priority offset of 10
- cavalry units are given a bonus (+1)
- siege weapons are given a malus (-2)
- unit whose recruitment cost is > 400 get another bonus (+2)
- unit whose recruitment cost is > 700 get another bonus (+2)

For instance, ERE stratatoi have:

recruit_priority_offset 15

because they cost 910 and it's cavalry (+1+2+2)

Conversely, ballista has

recruit_priority_offset 8

Result is that AI army composition looks pretty much the same as human player's.

Because AI units have same stat_mental as yours, they don't route easily - your "double hit point" schme does the rest - very long battles, a lot of manouvring --- and veterans get real experience.

Lots of fun !

A pitch battle (VH) against a stack of comparable strength costs 50-60% casualties. You must try and outnumber the AI, if you want to really win the day ...

[Cromagnon2]

I have been using LestaT's Kingdoms and trying to improve it some time ago, but i am sticking for the moment with v2.02 for all it's new goodies and AOR. Do you know if 'very hard' only affects morale or does it affect other stats too?

[Morfans]

I have been using LestaT's Kingdoms and trying to improve it some time ago, but i am sticking for the moment with v2.02 for all it's new goodies and AOR. Do you know if 'very hard' only affects morale or does it affect other stats too?

I'd say it only affects morale.