RS 2.6

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Question, won't this make arrows useless? I'm all for nerfing Horse Archers, but doubling the armor will pretty much murder any late game Missile play.

not if they make arrows more lethal

Actually the 'doubling' that tone describes was done out of the work to 'sort out arrows'. In order to keep arrows under control (and we're talking here about the common light and not overly effective arrows of the ancient world) they had been made a bit too inaccurate. This made them fly all over the place and cause cases of rather silly fratricide (brought home to me in my little Sarmatian sojourn when a couple of HA units at range either side of a target managed to kill some of each other rather handily - and I even had arrows taking wholly ballistic trajectories. Any more inaccurate and they would probably have come back out of the screen at me!

So, arrows are now more accurate and 'Missile' power restored - but so Armour & Shield have increased. Simply solving the 'problem' from the other end.

With luck, battles will be even 'better' than before.

[Darth Bane1]

That's interesting. I often had the same expierences Tedric. It's pretty funny how effectiv those Roxolani Lancers are. 3 Units of them and you will have an arrow rain on your enemys. Even elite units are not a challenge for them when shooted in the rear or in their backs.

[Love Mountain]

Thanks Tedric, great to hear! I always have missile units in my armies, love the mod!

[tone]

We originally increased missile attack to try and encourage the AI to recruit more archers and slingers and reduced accuracy to compensate, but this had the severe accuracy effects that Tedric describes.

we tried doubling armour and shield values and returning arrows to a better accuracy though not quite as good as before. We're doing some testing of these new stats the moment. What I'm hoping is that the really of this will be more impact from the initial charge, less effect of armour upgrades, and overall better balance with weak units giving way quicker.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Thanks Tedric, great to hear! I always have missile units in my armies, love the mod!

You're entirely welcome, but I will equally happily note that I have always been after encouraging an environment where the player is actively encouraged to recruit and maintain relatively historical armies. For a Roman that would mean that an army would contain about 2 Skirmishers (Velites/Antesignanii) and about 2 Archers - all the way until they took on some of the more Steppe and Eastern-types when a few more may be useful. Missiles therefore need to be balanced to have their genuine effect.

In Vanilla, for example, Archers were a bit too much like the English Longbowmen at Crecy! In reality, the arrows of the ancient world were mostly an irritation to formed and shielded infantry.

[Petite Wolf]

I find it more fun using historically accurate armies and such. It's the reason why during my Roman campaign I took the army compositions from this thread and adapted them to RS2. It's fun using historically accurate armies, and it also helped me stave off the boredom that came in Roman campaigns when I saw "Polybian Cohorts" and "Allied Republican Cohorts" and thought "Hm... they're the same thing, except with a different skin and slightly different stats." I went out of my way to find units that could be classified as "allied" that weren't "Allied Republican Cohorts" to use in my Polybian armies, and it made it a lot more fun.

[azulfan01]

We originally increased missile attack to try and encourage the AI to recruit more archers and slingers and reduced accuracy to compensate, but this had the severe accuracy effects that Tedric describes.

we tried doubling armour and shield values and returning arrows to a better accuracy though not quite as good as before. We're doing some testing of these new stats the moment. What I'm hoping is that the really of this will be more impact from the initial charge, less effect of armour upgrades, and overall better balance with weak units giving way quicker.

awesome. thaNK you tone for the update, always appreciate it when you guys keep your fans in the loop.
btw in regards to your previous post, yes, a minor patch would be VERY welcome .
thanks again!

[ur-Lord Tedric]

I find it more fun using historically accurate armies and such. It's the reason why during my Roman campaign I took the army compositions from this thread and adapted them to RS2. It's fun using historically accurate armies, and it also helped me stave off the boredom that came in Roman campaigns when I saw "Polybian Cohorts" and "Allied Republican Cohorts" and thought "Hm... they're the same thing, except with a different skin and slightly different stats." I went out of my way to find units that could be classified as "allied" that weren't "Allied Republican Cohorts" to use in my Polybian armies, and it made it a lot more fun.

You do know, however, that a 'historically' accurate Consular army of the Early Republic would indeed contain both a pair of Roman legions and a pair of Allied legions? Hence the troop types. Other 'allies/mercs' would probably be on the lines of a single unit of perhaps Cretan Archers or Balearic Slingers.

[Petite Wolf]

"Historically half of a consular army (the unit upon which my standard army is based) was composed of allied/non-Roman troops, the socii." This is the idea I base my armies off, really. Sure, I could recruit stuff like "Allied Republican Cohorts" and "Allied Triarii", but it's boring and if I'm going to do that I may as well recruit Polybians, as they're completely identical, except slightly better in terms of stats and with a slightly different skin. So instead I recruit stuff like Lucani Light Infantry, Insubres Infantry and Samnites, as they are allied units like Allied Republican Cohorts, but are actually different than Polybian Cohorts, and as such not boring.

This is the composition I model my armies after:
Polybian
The Roman core of a Polybian consular army is two legions, represented by the following units:
1 unit of Velites
1 unit of Accensi
2 units of Hastati
2 units of Principes
1 unit of Triarii (or two if you're playing with half-sized maniples)
1 unit of Equites

The two socii alae are composed as follows:
2 units of allied skirmishers (any mix of javelineers, archers and slingers)
4 units of allied infantry (two different pairs of Samnite, Lucanian, Bruttium, Ligurian, Gallic, or Iberian infantry)
1 unit of pedites extraordinarii
1 or 2 units of allied cavalry (Campanian, Greek, Gallic, Ligurian or anything else available, or possibly equites extraordinarii)

It is designed for EB, so I of course adapt it to RS2 units. Generally for me it's:

2 Polybian Velites (as there are no Roman slingers in RS2)
4 Polybian Cohorts
1 Triarii
1 Polybian Equites

2 Allied Skirmishers (usually Cretan Archers from Cannae or Celtic Warband Archers from Ariminum or Arretium)
4 Allied Infantry (2 Samnites and 2 Lucani from Cannae usually, but also others like Insubres from Genoa, but it takes longer for them to become recruitable as Genoa needs to grow in size a bit.)
1 other infantry unit to take the place of Pedites Extroardinarii
2 Allied Cavalry (Campanians from Capua, Paloveneti from Arretium and Ariminum, etc)

Taking the general leading the force in to account, that makes 18 slots filled. The other two I leave open for whatever I feel I can use at the time, whether it be a second general for whatever reason, a unit of artillery or possibly some mercenaries recruited in the area the force is campaigning in. Note that the units recruited for the base army of 18 slots are all units that I can actually recruit from a city, not mercenaries recruited from some region in Italy, and as such are all classified as "Allied" in my books, as they are recruited from a city that is under Roman control in some capacity - usually as an allied state - and not recruited as mercenaries. Mercenaries that are bought - like the Bruttian Infantry you can get in southern Italy - are treated as just that.

All that said, I still do use Allied Republican Cohorts, Triarii, Velites and such from time to time. Most of the time it is only when I can't yet recruit allied units that aren't the Republican Cohorts and such yet, like in the beginning of the campaign when dealing with Hannibal and the rebellion. I just prefer not to, as I can get allied units that aren't Polybian clones dressed in different colours quite easily by simply building up my cities to the point where I can make them Allied/Client States and can begin recruiting allied units from them.

But that's enough off topicness. Back on topic!

I'm looking forward to any updates/news/etc for 2.6/2.7/whatever you decide to call it ^_^

[Briareos]

Nice update and keep it coming... I havent played RS for quite some time but Ill happily do so when the new version come out. (I do hope i still have all my customed/modded files backupped somewhere in the depths of my machine)

[Dulo91]

Hi first id like to say thanks to the team of RS 2 for all your hard and long work in making this huge mod that to me at lest is the best mod for rome.Sorry if what i am asking is ripiting some one else but i am interested in 2.6 if your going to make more bonoses for the army when you bild tempels of war gods like the tempel of mars i am asking if i bild the last level of the tempel and a last level of blaksmith baracs and every other militery bilding in 2.6 will units recruted and retreaind have gold wepon and armor and more exp.
P.s sorry if you dont understand much of what i wrout and for my bad english

[ur-Lord Tedric]

................ i am interested in 2.6 if your going to make more bonoses for the army when you bild tempels of war gods like the tempel of mars i am asking if i bild the last level of the tempel and a last level of blaksmith baracs and every other militery bilding .............

Do not worry, I think I easily understood what you were after - and the simple answer (as indeed I reviewed this aspect almost a year ago and have been testing since...) is - 'yes'.

For Rome (and other factions are similar in their own temple areas):

- The Jupiter range will top out with +1 to Heavy Weapons (so incl Pila-armed legions and ships & Heavy cavalry)
- The Mars set will top out with a matching upgrade to Light Weapons
- The Vulcan suite will end with +1 Armour

All those matched to a Merged City with a Large Foundry will result in Gold upgrades. Rome is not currently supposed to have Gold Missiles, however. That's reserved for other factions.

[john duca]

i saw many threads about the Cimbri CTD after 50-80 turns dont remember...i experienced that too..will that be fixed?(it's a very old issue)

[ur-Lord Tedric]

i saw many threads about the Cimbri CTD after 50-80 turns dont remember...i experienced that too..will that be fixed?(it's a very old issue)

There hasn't been a Cimbri CTD in all my testing - so I'm fairly sure there's no problem.

[Darth Bane1]

Well, every campaign is not the same. I had an strange encounter in an Massalian campaign. I fought against the Belgae. I had stolen all their regions in Gaul. They only had 2 regions in Britain after that. But they had still an army in Gaul. So I destroyed this army. Next turn, strangely , the same army with exactly the same troops pops up and was standing there at the same place. This army didn't move in the next turns. I was sure this army came not from Britain, because it was an army with silver weapons and armor. Exactly like that army that I destroyed. So I took there last 2 regions and the army became one of the Free Peoples. I destroyed them and it never happend again in this campaign. I don't if somebody as ecountered such a thing, too.

[Post Hoc]

Maybe it was a scripted army.

[tone]

Almost certainly

[Darth Bane1]

Hm, I thought that too. Maybe this army would spawn there every next turn after I destroyed it. That would be annoying.

[Dulo91]

Do not worry, I think I easily understood what you were after - and the simple answer (as indeed I reviewed this aspect almost a year ago and have been testing since...) is - 'yes'.

For Rome (and other factions are similar in their own temple areas):

- The Jupiter range will top out with +1 to Heavy Weapons (so incl Pila-armed legions and ships & Heavy cavalry)
- The Mars set will top out with a matching upgrade to Light Weapons
- The Vulcan suite will end with +1 Armour

All those matched to a Merged City with a Large Foundry will result in Gold upgrades. Rome is not currently supposed to have Gold Missiles, however. That's reserved for other factions.

Thank you for the good news.About the Gold Missiles that thas not worry me to begin whit when ever i played rome i use only hv. inf and hv . cavalary and it never failed me to this day i only use missiles units in this mode to make a more historikly corect legion but dont have much use for them, have to say that i started using catapults in these mod

[Arkangel]

RS Facebook said a March release date for 2.6? do you have another idea as to a release date now? :>