DarthMod 8.x FeedBack

[jester7707]

hell, that would be cool

[Vanquisher]

Ok then, I've just started as the Skipii on the 270bc campain on h/h. So far so good, have great difficulty in financing an army to attack sycruase and to hold aff attack from carthage, am going into debt infact! No probs there, I like a challenge .

However, I have met carthage twice on the battlefield and on both occasions their army outdid mine hands down. Having tryed a few custom battles before, I was expecting this to be very hard indeed. However, this is what happened.....

occasion 1.) Carthage army assaults Messana:
Carthage have elephants, 3 poine spearmen, numidian cavalry, slingers and a 4 star general against my 3 star general with 4 hastati. Carthage breaks walls with elephant, elephants charge into my army causing no casualtys!!!!????
Rest of the army procedes to pour through wall, however because of eles panicking, they can't squeeze through, hole army comes through 5 men at a time and gets slaughtered! In my opinion, this needs to be sorted. I also had a problem with moving men out of a fort on another campain because of them getting "stuck."

Occasion 2) I have 4 hastati and three principles, however they are against a whopping great carthage arm with twice the units. Now i'm thinking this IS going to be hard!

Lo and behold, although, I had a slight scare halfway through due to a clever counter attack, I absolutly anialated them! I didn't have many men left, but i killed and army twice the size with ease, my army was mostly in two seperate static lines with a couple of units to flank all the time, surely the ai, should have killed me?

One major problem I have found is the inaffectivness of elephants to cause casualtys, I think this also needs to be addressed. Is it by the way, to make it harder to play as carthage because that would explain it, but it makes rome too easy.

Please don't take this the wrong way though, I still think your mod is the best one out there right now by far, but i do see it as important to point out things like this so as to make the game even better in the future, other wise you wouldn't have this thread would u, silly me
Soz for the spelling errors
Keep up the terrific work Darth!!

And how the hell do you put pictures on here, do you have to upload them somewhere first?

[jester7707]

And how the hell do you put pictures on here, do you have to upload them somewhere first?

I believe you do I personally use photobucket. I never used any pics on this forum but it should work just fine

(corect me if I am wrong)

[wipeout140]

I believe you do I personally use photobucket. I never used any pics on this forum but it should work just fine

(corect me if I am wrong)

Imageshack is much better as it does not make your image smaller if its too big

[Vanquisher]

Ok, thanks guys, here is a picture of the end of the second mentioned battle:
I really was not expecting this on H/H



And here's another with the unit stats:



The good thing though, is they just keep on comming, i'm about 15 turns in and i've hardly had a chance to leave the Messana region due to the relentlous attacks from Greece and Carthage, Think i'm wearing em down though as my presence is growing and i must of killed half their army's. Money is going up nicely now thanks to some better family members appearing. The quality of the battles is so much better, so as to make you think hard for every one though, unlike the vanilla where i tend to get bored by relentless attacks from an AI that just, well slaughters itself! You just get annoyed by all the pointless boring battles in Vannila and some other mods, not this one though!!!! All in all this mods got me hooked, it's gonna take a lot of work, taking the map region by region....

Thanks again the great Darth!!!

[LegionaryMarurder]

2 campaigns both julii

h/h and easy/easy for fun

[Vanquisher]

Ahhhh.... and the poor Greeks still don't learn their lesson! I've just battled them with an army of 9 hastati and 3 generals, they had about 6 hoplites, 2 archers and 2 skirmishers, they went into typical greek formation, hoplites in centre and they put their archers etc on the flanks...

I proceeded to advance....

I sent my flanking hastati to chase the archers, then they turned on the sides of the hoplites as u can see, while the cav carryed on o chase the archers away, then my cavalry turned and, with the rest of the reinforcments, charged the surrounded hoplites into oblivion (which is also a great game by the way).

Classic but simple, why the hell didn't the AI do something clever, or are the greeks coded to have very static formations for realism?

Here is the end result by the way:tooth: mwaaahahaha:


Way too easy for Hard. I have played the challenge by the way and have failed numerous times to win, but i'm getting there.
Maybe it should be played on Very Hard? (the campain i mean)

[wipeout140]

Way too easy for Hard. I have played the challenge by the way and have failed numerous times to win, but i'm getting there.
Maybe it should be played on Very Hard?

I find if i play Hard i win everytime so i play VH just for challange even if the AI gets bonus.

[Vanquisher]

arrrrrrhhhh, I've just started the roman campain and it's quite a bit, no almost impossibly hard, just how many armies do you need to defeit Pyruss? There's Gauls, and Greeks and Carthaginians and Slaves everywhere, and their all trying to kill me!!! arhhhh, now I see the reason to join the dark side.....

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Hi Dark Lord and all his followers!
Superb mod and almost perfect AI!
For a few days I'm into DM v8 tough Gaul campaign (h/h), cuz wanted to remember the good old bloody hairy and dirty barbarian culture; enjoying it more than ever, even remembered the good old MTW AI, with Darth's modifications I dont wanna go back to MTW crappy graphics
Anyway here's the issues I noticed and suggestions I propose:

1. Naval combat needs to be improved - too much fleet chasing around. To this cause I edited export_descr_units file and made decreased ship sizes twice - now I really get decisive naval engagements (similar to SPQR). Just donno how to change that '20 men per ship' into '20 ships' to make it more realistic (huge naval powers had freakin large ancient fleets loads of ships not just 40 men but 1 ship).

2. Edited diplomats, spies and assassins to gain level 1, level 2 and level 3 exp, when trained at higher level buildings (you know its hard to get good diplos after 1.5/1.6)

3. Imo population growth in many cities is way too big, cuz of grain imports and thus it causes a lot of problems for barbarians (in 1 of my towns population is 18000! it should be harder for barbs to grow population historically) also marian reforms happen to quickly.

4. Could you add loyalty (at least for romans) in DM? That would really make things tougher. So what do you Darth and guys think?
Here are the linkies it seems it's easy to add loyalty for every faction without any problems
loyalty 1 link
loyalty link 2
Btw if its possible to add loyalty in RTW DM then could you make that generals become unloyal more slowly cuz this is not BI trecherous wanna be ceasars lol :tooth:

5. About recruitment in DM newly conquered settlements: if its impossible to make RTR style ZOR, then take a look at The First Triumvirate mod. In that mod if you conquer a settlement, you have to raise all the enemy's military structures and only after you build your own then you can train your own faction troops. What do you think about implementing this one. Imo that would make the gameplay even harder and battles will be even more decisive.

6. Darth is it possible to make some factions re-emerge? I think I remember that earlier you made this to Gauls and Parthia. So?

7. Awaiting garisson script

8. What about automerge unit script after battles? (an idea from TFT mod) Since AI doesn't retrain units it's an exploit.

9. How about scripted victory conditions? If it's not hard to implement of course

10. Is it normal that roman maniples have such wide gaps between them? (I'm playing on large (comp lags on huge) - 120 men per warband unit for example).

11. In city view for Gauls there are many units not of barbarian culture. Also some units look grey without colours check it out, Wipeout. Txs.

Thanks for the best gameplay mod Darth
Now I must get back to massacre those romans arghhhh wuhahahahahah *goes berserk*

[jester7707]

Imageshack is much better as it does not make your image smaller if its too big

thank you, I will give them a shot.

[marvius]

I think gauls are no match to my superior fighting ability :hmmm: ... I have my last battle to finish the gauls ... just one more region... the alesia... hehe some what a semi historical... hmmm whos next?! :devil:

[The Bogeyman]

Hi there,
great Mod without question. Last weekend I´ve been playing Carthage on the Europe 270bc map on H/H. It´true, the AI acts a lot smarter than before, although I am still undefeated in battle (naval too) to the present game date (252 bc).
I won most battles quite clear but most of the time had clear numeric advantage (exept against rebels and Numidians--curse them--back in africa. I managed twice to sink Scipii fleets carrying lots of reinforcement for Sicily. Same thing I did with the greeks who went in to save Syracuse. Great going and lots of fun, so far. I´ll keep you informed how the AI acts in more competitive battles.
PS. I love the mod, it´great.
See you
The Bogeyman

[Sergius Lucius]

The Gauls are kick as* hard on H/H, I am literally running out of people, I have to fight Iberia, Romans, Germania, Britons, and Dacia!!! Its like hell yeah everybody wants a piece of me, and nobody wants to be my allies, I am so ronery, so ronery and sad And one more thing, I have 7 generalls and all of them older then 50, but only one of them have a daughter 2 years old, why do I have so few children, is that because generalls are not in the cities much, and fight all the time? And how about more units for gauls, like raider infantry, would be nice...

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

The Gauls are kick as* hard on H/H, I am literally running out of people, I have to fight Iberia, Romans, Germania, Britons, and Dacia!!! Its like hell yeah everybody wants a piece of me, and nobody wants to be my allies, I am so ronery, so ronery and sad And one more thing, I have 7 generalls and all of them older then 50, but only one of them have a daughter 2 years old, why do I have so few children, is that because generalls are not in the cities much, and fight all the time? And how about more units for gauls, like raider infantry, would be nice...

Glad to hear you're having such an uber challenge Lucius! Imo it's possible to avoid war on many fronts as Gauls: let the britons (ally with them) fight germans and tire themselves; let Spain (be their allies and trade with them) confront Carthage and try somehow to turn Dacia east and not on you. Then concentrate on romans and beat the **** outta them huhahhaha!!! I'm in 255 bc and so far everything works great for me, I've just annihilated full senate stack. Rome I'm comin for ya and I'm hungry wuhahaha :tooth:
EDIT: yes you need to station your generals in settlements in order for them to become governors. Then they become real 'womanisers' and chick appreciatives :tooth: So this way you can get more noble children

[Rino666]

Does anybody know if there are any new units for Parthia, Armenia, Pontus and Numidia. Please post them here. Thanx.

[Oldgamer]

Darth,

I just wanted to drop by and offer my congratulations on an extremely good mod. I've decided that the mod is so good, I will stay with it until M2TW is out. Right now, I'm playing the Roman Campaign, it's 259bc, and I've got all of Italy south of the Po River, except for Croton and Rhegium. The map is extraordinary ... I really like the scale.

Also, I don't know why so many people are having trouble with Pyrrhus. I back my force up against the mountains, so that I have "lovely ground" (as they used to say in the American Civil War), make the Greeks wear themselves out just marching to my position, and hold the line ... hold the line. I lost 108 men to their 697, before time ran out. Then, I counterattacked, killed Pyrrhus, and destroyed almost the rest of his army. The very next turn, I had Tarentum under siege.

It's a great game, and I've added CCLiteMod and LatinVoiceMod to it. Plus, I've added some good ole-fashioned Miklos Rozsa brass and percussion from Ben-Hur, King of Kings, Quo Vadis, and so forth.

And finally, it's a wonderful thing to see my forces in an actual manipular formation! Checkerboard, even!

Great work ...

[Tim]

Good work as usual. The ai is Much better. I noticed he flanks a lot more with the cavalry. However, I am a bit frustrated. I've been playing for about seven hours today as Carthage. The game is Hard/Very Hard. I guess it is too much for me. My alliance (pre-set by you) with Spain held until I sided with Gaul. However, the problem was Sicily. After maybe 20 turns or so, Greece had four full stacks at their city -don't know the name. Scipio has about two at their city. They never attack each other. I have a full stack at my city...and Greece attacks me. Over a 6-turn period I guess, they siege me twice. I killed over 6,000 of them, only losing may 800 total. Then, of course, Scipio attacks. I crush that army. Still, Greece and Scipio are not fighting, at least not that much. Then Scipio takes the Greek city. Really, there was no reason why Greece didn't attack Scipio.

I'm just getting on my feet when, hello, here comes Egypt. Wave after wave of Egyptians appear. I beat one, another one sieges a city, I beat that, and then another full stack or two comes. I guess with the setting of Hard battles and Very hard diplomacy, there is simply no way to auto-resolve battles. I've had to have fought at least 50 battles. More than half were against Egypt. I maybe lost 4,000 total against Egypt, but had to kill over thirty thousand of them. Give me a break...Finally, I beat them back, and finally have attacked Spain, and take it all and hold it for about 10 turns. It is going well...then here comes Julii. No use there. Spain is about gone. Then, right when that is happening, here comes Numbia,and takes the two cities on the North African coast..not Charthage and the city beneath it. Ridiculous. I then land an army in Egypt...I don't know what happened to Egypt. After one big battle for Alexandria, and they don't seem to have any armies in that area. I take Alexandria, then Thebes(?) Only that other city left to take, and it can't have more than 200 men in it. It was like 6 turns or so and he has sent no army in that direction.

BAck to Scipio. I land a good army and take the Bruti city at the foot of Italy. I did this maybe 20 turns ago, but got beat back after sacking and holding the city for a few turns. Scipio has taken the other one. This last battle, just abo9ut 30 minutes ago was my last one. I have no idea of what units he had; maybe 10 Early legionary cohorts, a praetorian, some ranged units. I had 8 sacred band, 4-5 other good units, then 8 units of cavalry and ranged units. I guess at least 2,500 on each side. Again, ridiculous. I pin his entire line down, then smash into his engaged left flank with my general (4 star or so) and three other cavalry units...nothing... His units just go on as if nothing happened, while my cav gets ate up. I bring in 3-4 peltasts to charge his rear along with my 4-cav units....nothing. Long story short, at the end, I had about 40 men on the field. I hate to say it, but I'm a bit miffed. I guess I try with a new game set on medium/medium. I like the improved AI (A LOT), but his bonuses must be coming out his wazoo. His army should have folded. Now, I've got my city with 600 (wounded brought me back) and he sieges it with a full stack (3,000 men I guess). I'm just not very happy about it.

Oh, back to Sicily. Scipio lands a captain with about 400 men. I attack him with a 3-star general, aloig with about 1,600 men. I auto-resolve..my mistake. He kills 900 and loses like 100. I'm done with that game. I guess I'll have to go to med/med.

Fighting all these battles and losing a few that I should have won has been a bit frustrating.


Oh, sorry for the long, *****y post. One last thing. Most of the Roman foot soldiers -non ranged units- feet/legs are all pointed?? On some of my advanced Carthage troops I get the same thing. Any ideas?

[DARTH VADER]

@Vanquisher:
The assault is a situation where the defender has the advantage. Still in many assault battles you will get the opposite effect I am sure. If a human player has heavy troops and guards very well and the numerical advanthage is not too much for the attacker it is quite logical. Even a human would have problem. About elephants....you surely cannot believe that DArthMod elephants are weak.
You must do (and you did) defend the elephants very well. It is a priority. Their rout did made the carthaginians lose the battle.
Their mass is making them produce obstacles in the field..so they stuck.

In field battles it is a different situation. I am sure by now you will have witnessed many competetive battles to realize that. So yes...it is very sure you will get decisive victories but maybe then you have a good star general and army ....why dont you try this with a very quality rival army?
Also romans are meant to have very high upkeeps and produce small and effective armies (In DarthMod)
AI romans would win you exactly the same with less army.

You must play a campaign of H?H for starters.

I would say that if you play it on VH?VH you will get furious.

@Grand Duke Vytautas:
I keep your comments into separate archive for later study.(As I had doen in the past)


@marvius:

How you do with germans?

@The Bogeyman
Any loss to report?

@Sergius Lucius:
The gauls are set to provide a challenge so that they are conquered much later in the game as it was done historically. When romans get their marius effect...they are doomed. Until then you will struggle.

@Oldgamer
Indeed...attrition. A magic battle word. If you just charge their army it is no use.
2 stacks of full romans and Pyrhus can win them with ease if you cannot use them wisely.

@Tim:
Indeed...the VH/VH is very difficult in DarthMod.
Another setting would be M/VH battles so that in campaign AI is less aggressive against human player and the armies you oppose are more difficult but not that many.

His early legionary cohorts were no match for spearmen only. You should have some good sword carthaginians with you as well.
Although I cannot see the battle as you describe but want you to say that in DarthMod, if romans succeed to build many cohorts and quality army ...you are in deep problem. You need then numerical advantage.It is very good to know that...also Egypt joined the fight for Sicely!

[Vanquisher]

OK, good explanation, am switching to VH/VH now, still those Greeks were abit easy....

BTW, after carthage had attacked me so many times, I ended up with an 8 star general with a full stack of 3bronze and 1/2silver units, with which I took Sicily and Sardina with ease . Am now moving on to Raise Carthage to the ground, destoy all the buildings and start a new campain on VH/VH, which after cutom battle thingy is probably going to be f*ing hard.

Thank Darth for such a work of art.