DarthMod 8.x FeedBack

[Tiberiu_R]

Yeah great mode, I also started playing Rome with DarthMod. Love it

[DARTH VADER]

I have installed DarthMod in my new computer before 2 days. I played some battles and I remembered...what I have created. I praise my own mod but it was a surpise to feel the gameplay of an old game to be so much better even from the new one in Medieval 2 Total War.

CA were unwise to make the formations fixed and making me not able to play with them as I did in Rome Total War.

Seeing the Romans deploy effectively their maniples is so satisfying or seeing the phalanxes to be so tight and powerful.

I could not have created this thing without the formation ai file.
If only I had the configai for RTW I could certainly liked to re-mod it.

I am considering to create a celebration 1-install DarthMod 8.1 (Not with these 3 separate installations now needed)

I do not think there is something needed for the Mod. No bugs or other annoying things are here as I know. I will consider it.

@badapple:

Elephants fall easily if you use peltasts against them with javelins. If you play multiplayer games you must set the difficulty to medium because the hitpoints are increased a lot by CA hidden engine making them over enduring.

However you can reduce their HP in the Export_Desc_Unit.txt.

There are other secret attributes (such as in desc_mount.txt)for them as for many other units so better not to interfere with them.

@Cmdr_Sdxo
Thank you for your words. I know what you mean

@Tiberiu_R:
Nice to see you here Tiberiu. Long time to speak to each other. I hope you like DarthMod for RTW-BI. I played also BI and I liked very very much the battles. I am going to start a campaign in BI with the Byzantines.

[Agisilaos]

I am considering to create a celebration 1-install DarthMod 8.1 (Not with these 3 separate installations now needed)

I think it would be great if you did that. i would love to see that Darth

[ezekiel2517]

I have been playing your mod for 2 days and it is very challenging, i'm very satisfied with it and frustrated cause Pontus (a pitiful nation in Vanilla) is giving me such a hard time

however, i want to play the Vanilla version with my friend. What do i have to do so i can play it that way? i hope i don't have to un-install everything.

[Mav]

Hej Darth,

Thank you very much for your challenging mod!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only RTW version I play, is your version, because of the AI. Just now, I play Romans - Julia; Imperial Campaign; both settings on "very hard difficulty".

Your formations and AI tactics (battles and strategy map), definitely enhance the game play. Unfortunately I have same questions though:

Despite all the enhancements, I want to ask you, if I do something wrong with your version. Because I think the only challenging way to play this campaign is without any missile troops:

The Barbarian AI (Gallic, Spain, German and Dacia) cannot handle my missile units. Only 2 slingers and 1 Velites skirmishing before my main battle line are necessary to kill half of the AI army (ca. 1500 from 3000 men) without any effective counter action. The decimate AI units run one by one in my roman maniple ... and are killed instantly. The remaining army is totally disorganised and wiped off immediately.

AI Phalanx (how can German indiscipline barbarians ever form a phalanx????), unfortunately totally ineffective. The AI moves them constantly around (like in vanilla), so that they cannot form any effective line. So they are done after a short while ...

Additionally, it’s unfortunately still possible to kill the entire town garrison (let’s say 3000 Barbarians) by only using missile units firing over the wooden walls (like in vanilla). Do you think you could enhance the garrison behaviour, too?

Hence, fighting without any missile units on human site, leads to really heavy battles.

I do not want to make your mod bad (I am sure that’s obviously not possible)!!!! I’d like to give same constructive feedback/questions. I am not a Technician, so could you please tell me if it would be technically possible to make the AI handling human skirmishing missile units well???

I am looking forward to hearing from you,

Great mod!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jinandjuice]

Hey Darth,
First off I'd like to give my sympathies and disgust for CA not taking you. Tell you the truth I wanted to apply for CA myself after I finish school (in computer science).

Anyways, I found a few things I find slightly peculiar in this mod:
1. Units in skirmish mode seem to retreat often after the enemy gets too close. This is especially the case with cavalry, as they often hit the skirmishers right when they turn their backs to retreat, taking massive damage and decreasing their morale. I find it irritating that I have to manually command my missiles to retreat behind my infantry every time I see the enemy cavalry charging.
2. I could have sworn you said in one of your threads that you fixed the skirmishers getting pinned in the corners, but I still find my Egyptian Chariot Archers in edges and corners of the maps commit suicide runs. Same goes with other horse archers. I haven't tried out foot archers and skirmishers because I usually take them off skirmish mode when I'm near the edges of the maps.
3. I never understood why Egyptian Machimoi (sp?) Pikemen are more expensive than Nile Spearmen. Nile Spearmen looks much more powerful in terms of stats than Machimoi, but Machimoi seems to have an advantage in terms of longer pikes and more men per unit.
4. Infantry seems to take more damage in the protective/shield-wall formation over the regular/loose formation against cavalry charges. It seems that in the loose formation infantry serves almost as a cushion against the charge, while the "wall" seems to "explode" on impact. I've tested this in the vanilla version as well, and the results are the same: loose-formation beats tight-formation when facing cavalry charges.
5. I don't really know if defensive-mode with swordsmen (i.e. legionaries) work better against other swordsmen and cavalry than non-defensive. I know that non-defensive works better against phalanxes and the rear, since swordsmen tend to expand to the sides on phalanxes, and attacks on a bigger surface-area at the rear. But I never know if I should have my hastati on defensive or not when the gaul infantry or cavalry are charging. In the vanilla version, the Hastati will beat carthaginian poeni infantry on defensive and protective-formation better, but I don't know if it's the same in Darth mod. Pretty much my tests show that defensive+protective is better against swordsmen, while loose-formation is better against cavalry. Again, not sure about defensive formation against cavalry.
6. Egyptian Chariot Archers seem waaaay too powerful. Not only do they only take 1 turn to train (compared to the Scythed Chariots w/ no archers which takes 2 turns), missile damage is more powerful than Pharoh's Bowmen (21 vs. 15 I think). Their defense is weaker to Scythed Chariots only by about 2 points.
7. This goes for rtw in general, not just Darth Mod, but I find that ballistae are the most worthless units in the game (maybe besides screeching women, but at least they're fun). Contrary to the description, the ballista's arrow projectory is so curved that they often can't impale several men. They're much more likely to impale several of YOUR men as they advance in front of the ballistae. Instead they serve as a medium-range, long cooldown-rate, low-missile count, but one-hit kill unit. Oh well, at least the bolts sound cool.
8. I guess this goes for rtw in general as well, but cavalry in wedge formation seems to suffer more casualties than they are in block formation. I only find the wedge more useful when I edit the cavalry block to a tighter and wider block, so that when they're in wedge they look more like a tight obtuse isosceles triangle than an acute isosceles.

But all in all, this is my favorite mod.
Oh, and please forgive my English. It's been a long and sleep-deprived day.

[Nevski]

Thanks a lot for a great mod. Finally, I found something challenging, as I got sick and tired of doing veni vedi vici thing in vanila with any faction on VH/VH.

[DARTH VADER]

@agisilaos

Unfortunatelly my time prevents me...I would like to do so though.

@ezekiel2517

Probably you have done this already...yes you have to unistall unless you use correctly the modswitch mod which I do not know if it is fully compatible.

Tell your friend to install DarthMod 8.1 Full as well to play together ONLINE.

@Mav:

Thanks for the message. One of the main attributes of DarthMod is the initial good usage of all the basic arms of battle, infantry-cavalry-archers+artillery.

So I do not know if these behaviour of troops you refer to are battle special because it may depend from AI general stars or uneven composition of armies.

@jinandjuice
Thanks for the long post. Nevermind for CA...all things happen for a reason, usually a good one.

1. AI uses them well, Human must be careful...yes.

2.Fixed but not perfectised.

3.Phalanx, Armour, Discipline makes them a better choice in the battle if you use Greek phalanx tactics. A choice balanced.

4.It depends on the unit as well. Generally a lot could be discussed here as the engine penaltises scatterness as a general rule in close combat but in some occasions such as rear charge or missile fire is worse. The rule is to use this with heavy shield carrier troops to hold a ground but to be sure to have their flanks secured because the normal formation is better adjusted in flank-rear attacks than it.

5.In this formation, disciplined troops may stand ground more effectively for a preparation of a super center attack while in the other mode they are more free and the line may expand too much and break in the centre. Again...you must be carefull to use this for center attacks as the Romans did. It is not so linear to explain.

6.They do not cause so many casualties in charge due to lack of scyth. As missile troops they have much slower rate of fire but are sharpshooters. It depends on the way they are used. Scyth chariots have secret attribute of long scyth attack.

7.I totally disagree, they kill not too many as you expect due to slow rate of fire and less units but each volley can kill 1-4 troops and are heavy demoralisers.

8.I kind of agree because it is hard coded engine of the formation itself. It should not be used from a general unit or it will be lost too easily. Still, it can be good for a carefully planned charge with correct timing as always. If you use your cavalry as a click and point frenzy as all basically do, better is the block formation as it is more versatile.

@Nevski:

I know what you mean. Welcome to the club. I hope I had time to play my mod as well.

[Aznroman]

Don't know if anyone said this before but I noticed that after I downloaded and installed DM, the Roman Arcani Unit doesn't show. I tried to continue a previous campaign started before I installed DM and it shut down on me and I think the missing unit might be the problem.

Is there anyway to fix this Darth Vadar? :hmmm:

[Fluffy The Destroyer]

I've played this mod before, but it was on my XP desktop. I have a vista laptop with an ATI Radeon 3200 video card. It should work fine, because I've had no other game problems. Well, I'm having a problem, now. The installation isn't working. I redirected it to my original install file and it just keeps saying that there was a problem and won't write over the old information from the original game. I installed 1.6 for BI and now I'm on to 8.0. It won't even get 1% done without an error. I haven't checked the entire forum, but is there a way to fix this?

[jinandjuice]

since darth vader hasn't looked at this for 4 months, i guess i should try to help you guys.
@Aznroman, Darth Mod took out the Arcani Unit because of its historical inaccuracy. However, I think the unit stats should still be in descr_unit.exe, just commented out. try searching for "arcani", and if you find it, take out the semicolons. that should work.

@Fluffy, first try to see if the original rometw.exe works. many times when i fail trying to install mods is that the vanilla version somehow got corrupt during installation. the video card shouldn't have anything to do with it. try reinstalling rtw if that's the case.

[Flavius Maccus Opium]

just a quick question...Is darthmod used in Roma Surrectum or am I mistaken ?

[jinandjuice]

...you mean the formations? I think RS uses Sinhutet's formations, although I'm not entirely sure...I didn't enjoy it as much.
As for the campaign map, RS changed it significantly, allowing 0 turn recruitment, recruitable governors, etc, while Darth Mod didn't change anything.

[gord96]

Great mod! Is it possible to edit a file to get 4tpy?

Thanks!

[Omegastar]

I recently decided to retry RTW. When i had first played RTW years ago i soon got bored of the AI's stupidity and subsequent cheating in order to "keep things interesting". But slaughtering army after army with practically no tactics used was extremely boring.

But now, i downloaded Darthmod and played again. And i cannot thank you enough for the fun and challenge your mod has given me. I started playing, and i am still playing as Germania in H/VH, and after 200 turns it is still challenging and fun to play! I never had a more epic RTW game before this one.

The things i noticed specifically were these:

1: The AI is fantastic. No longer do i encounter the standard vanilla RTW "pin with infantry, flank with cavalry" battles. With Darthmod, there is always more to the battle then just flanking. And now and then the AI manages even manages to completely surprise me with its tactics. For example - the first time i fought a roman army. Germania's strength lies partially in the spear warband/gothic infantry phalanxes( atleast, i did). So imagine my surprise when the Romans did not present the usual battle line. Instead they scattered their forces far beyong what my phalanxes could cover. As a result, i was forced to break up my phalanx line to prevent the romans from completely surrounding me. Almost at once, half of their forces attacked my phalanxes, pinning them in place - after which the other half of their forces ran into the gaps and attacked my phalanxes at the sides. They nearly won(i luckily had more then just phalanxes) the fight.

1b: I also noticed the AI actually learns from previous encounters. For example, i blocked the main-route into my territories the romans were using by placing an army on a bridge bottleneck. The romans did not like that and send a full army to chase my army away. Offcourse, when they tried to cross the bridge, they were completely slaughtered by my forces waiting on the other side(i dont think i ever saw a bridge so full of corpses). Imagine my pleasant surprise(i like challenges!) When the romans then sent another full army and placed it Next to the bridge, after which their main army came up, placed itself in front of the bridge, and attacked. The resultant battle was, i think, the largest ive ever fought in RTW( 3 full stacks = 3k troops per stack = over 9k soldiers in total involved in the battle).

2: Unfortunately there are still a few situations where the AI acts like a retard. As already mentioned in this topic: I regularly encounters armies that enjoy doing nothing while my archers empty their ammo at them. Infact, they even oblige to, when one of their divisions is destroyed, move their next division up so that my archers can start slaughtering more of them.

2b: And then there were the bridge-battles i mentioned in 1b. The fights certainly were epic, but they wouldve been more epic if the AI hadnt done the following: Mass all his forces at the bridge, and then send them all over the bridge at the same time. The resultant chaotic crowd made any organised crossing impossible as their troops hindered each other from moving across the bridge, making it extremely easy for my waiting phalanxes to kill any troops that did make it. Furthermore, so many troops at such an extremely small spot made it a turkey shoot for my archers. The battle statistics after the fight showed my archers having made about 1800 kills - out of a (roman(=armored)) 3k roman army.

3: One great improvement is the enemy factions aggresiveness towards each other. Finally something was actually happening outside of my own wars. And as a result of the increased aggresiveness, alot of factions were destroyed. This left the remaining factions with much more land. Thus, as the player expands his domains, he will encounter increasingly stronger factions, which keeps the challenge alive!

[jinandjuice]

1b: I also noticed the AI actually learns from previous encounters. For example, i blocked the main-route into my territories the romans were using by placing an army on a bridge bottleneck. The romans did not like that and send a full army to chase my army away. Offcourse, when they tried to cross the bridge, they were completely slaughtered by my forces waiting on the other side(i dont think i ever saw a bridge so full of corpses). Imagine my pleasant surprise(i like challenges!) When the romans then sent another full army and placed it Next to the bridge, after which their main army came up, placed itself in front of the bridge, and attacked. The resultant battle was, i think, the largest ive ever fought in RTW( 3 full stacks = 3k troops per stack = over 9k soldiers in total involved in the battle).

I'm loving your enthusiasm, but I have never heard of the RTW engine learning from previous battles, and I have never heard of how this can be modded. Learning from mistakes is not only VERY difficult to program, but if it is, it's most likely hardcoded to prevent absolute disaster if modded. I think you might have just gotten lucky that time. Sorry man.

[Omegastar]

Ah well, im not sure, because it does seem to me the romans changed over time. At the bridge battles, i first encountered roman armies with lots of cohorts and some skirmishers and cavalry. I thoroughly beat those for a while, but then the armies started to slowly change. First one division of archers, then two. then three. And Onagers were also added. Now, holding the bridge against melee is quite easy. But its not so easy when you are holding back melee cohorts and at the same time archers and onagers are pounding on your flanks. My armies were nearly destroyed because of that, and i was forced to come up with a new strategy to beat them. It sucks that their cheap Archer Auxiliares have a longer range then my Chosen Archer warbands QQ.

[Omegastar]

Also, i have a problem with the provincial campaign.

Whenever i try to start a campaign there, after about 15 seconds on the campaign map, the game crashes. It might have to do with a specific place i zoom in on. Ill make a guess and say that some files are corrupted and ill just have to reinstall it. Can anyone confirm this?

[Mile007]

I just want to say that the britons are ed up. Their cities have a small income so you cant do anything with them. Can you make a fix for them?

[jinandjuice]

I don't think Darth Vader works on this mod anymore...sorry.