Casualty rates and movement speeds

[Saddletank]

Hi guys

Enjoing the game so far apart from the dragbox freeze up with v0.98 (see thread elsewhere). I am a bit surprised at how lethal javelins are against hoplites and cavalry. I am finding javelinmen really dangerous and I got about 100 hoplite casualties in a 240 strong unit from two volleys of javelins from a 240 strong jav unit. That seems a bt too much to me and it may be a result of the densely packed hoplite ranks in v0.98.

I also think cavalry (generals units) move a bit to fast and respond to orders to change direction and withdraw from battle to fast as well. I have Darthmod v8.1 installed hoping it would slow units down but it doesn't - it does make the campaign and battle AI much tougher though!

Ca I also ask that the javelin units be made smaller, maybe 50% size. With a 240 strong hoplite unit in the huge scale it looks great but a 240 strong javelin unit is a bit unweildy and covers so much ground about 5 ranks deep. If all skirmishers could be made about 120 strong in huge scale I think it would balance up the casualty problem I'm seeing as well.

Is it easy to reduce casualty rates or set the hoplite spacing wider or reduce unit sizes? I'm a noob to modding so plase use small words!

Other than these little glitches, nice mod! Well done!

[Achea]

The strengh of javelinmen is being adressed in v1.0, I believe. If you are not a fan of tight unit spacing (I am not a huge fan either) then I suggest you download 0.97. The unit spacing is wider there. In regards to bodyguard speed, I would suggest you download this- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=6652489#post6652489. Cpdwane created this sub mod which reverts the cavalry bodyguard into an infantry one. The unit card doesn't change, but it is WAY more realistic.

[Saddletank]

Useful, thanks. I will try with v0.97, though I like the extended recruiting times of v.098. Perhaps you can do something about this with v1.0?

Hoplite general's units? Great. I will go get that and restart a campaign and report back.

BTW, with your unaligned minor cities faction I notice you can't use the diplomats - the only treaty option they have is 'bribe' just like rebels do. Maybe using the rebel faction as a basis is not a great idea - or was that intentional? Also two of the minor cities are across water and no shipbuilding capbility is present that I can see - can this be fixed? Or give them generals and let these recruit mercenary ships?

[Seleucos of Olympia]

Version 1.0 will have an intermediate spacing between the one used in 0.97 and the one in 0.98, while many other features from 0.98 will be kept with small alterations. TGW makes its own changes to unit speeds, so the Darthmod files would not be taken into account by the mod - you'd have to copy those files right into the TGW folder (untested).

We need a rebel faction anyway, so we merged its interests with those of the unaligned cities, which shouldn't play out as a centralized faction anyway - no single diplomat would have the authority to negotiate on behalf of all of them, so I think the rebel system works out mostly okay.

[Achea]

Useful, thanks. I will try with v0.97, though I like the extended recruiting times of v.098. Perhaps you can do something about this with v1.0?

Hoplite general's units? Great. I will go get that and restart a campaign and report back.

BTW, with your unaligned minor cities faction I notice you can't use the diplomats - the only treaty option they have is 'bribe' just like rebels do. Maybe using the rebel faction as a basis is not a great idea - or was that intentional? Also two of the minor cities are across water and no shipbuilding capbility is present that I can see - can this be fixed? Or give them generals and let these recruit mercenary ships?

Just to get the record straight, I am not a member of the team, just a fan. Happy to help though.

[Saddletank]

No problem. v0.97 is working for me - I think it may be an issue to do with the tightly spaced files of the hoplite units in v098b. Though I noticed that 'huge' units in 097 are 160 men while in 098b they were 240. Maybe the extra load of 3d models just freaked my laptop out.

Darthmod certainly DOES affect TGW. I just played a game with only TGW installed then another with DM installed afterwards and the unit speeds in battle are much improved (as in slowed down) also I think the campaign and battle AI with DM installed is better, much more clever. The two mods together work well.

[Seleucos of Olympia]

Hm, it would depend on whether there are files changed in Darthmod that aren't changed in TGW. If the latter applies, then the game reads the TGW files and doesn't notice the vanilla/Darthmod ones. It should certainly have an effect on v0.97, since most of the speed changes were made in 0.98, IIRC.

[Saddletank]

No, I think I spoke too soon. v0.97 does seem to have faster movement. I preferred the slower movement of v0.98.

I'm looking forward to v1.0 when you guys finally gather all the best aspects together. *cheers the team on*

[Achea]

You can change this quite easily yourself. Go to your RTW directory, find TGW modfolder, go into TGW's data folder and find the text file entitled descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers. Fiddle around with the values until you find ones that suit you.

[Saddletank]

Those are 'global' modifiers though aren't they? I was thinking of altered speeds for different units which would mean editing each units stats - too big a job for me and overwritten at the next game patch

[Achea]

A global modifier would take into account the origonal unit speed and modify it from there, so javelinmen would still be faster than Hoplites but they would both be slower in general (if I understand the file correctly).

[cpdwane]

Yes, I am in support of the lowering of the unit sizes of skirmishers in the next version. They are too unwieldy at the moment. Alternatively, what about increasing the size of hoplite units to 240, with skirmishers at 160 instead?

[debux]

Sounds good to me more hoplites for the carnage

To reduce neurons wasted on doing math:
huge: 240 H/160 S
med: 120 H/80 S
small: 60 H/40 S
tiny: 30 H/20 S

To add my 10 cents, yeah, skirmishers did use a lot of space (hoplite-length-wise) in loose formation

[Saddletank]

Remember that v1.0 will have wider spaced hoplite files vs v0.98 so the frontage discrepancy between javelins and spears will be less but I agree that currently 'huge' javelin units are unwieldy. I tend to deeply them about 5 deep.

Something that's useful to bear in mind, debux, when choosing unit sizes is to try and find numbers that are all multiples of 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 etc... so that the formations look better. It's a small thing but nice to see when mod designers make that little extra effort.

[debux]

Oh lol, I always assumed one only had to divide/multiply by 2

[Saddletank]

LOL, my obsessively tidy mind is showing!

"Oh, no! The back rank is 2 men short! I can't fight under these conditions! Agg!"

[debux]

You too? lol, thank goodness I'm not alone

Like spending hours during deployment phase because of a crappy mouse, and that bloody unit at the farthest left/right that can't follow the pattern