Game experience and suggestions( Syracuse perspective)

[HighOnTea]

I have some suggestions for the gameplay( excuse me if the following were brought up before or cannot be implemented):
Battle:
1) I see that many people like the rate at which soldiers get killed, but I don't feel that way.
A unit in stance of defense can annihilate an opposing unit with very few casualties. It sounds fair, but a fight turns to a massacre: casualties of 10 vs 112)medium unit size)

Roman infantry with scutum shield are very easy to kill. In theory, the previously mentioned shield provided more defense that the round shield of f.ex Hellenic factions and Carthage. Is there any way to improve that?

A Carthaginian cavalry attack killed 90% of Syracusian heavy hoplite unit just by crashing into the latter's front. Hoplites were moving,but 30 horses can't kill 69 men in 3 seconds by just riding into them.

2) Ships can't travel long enough distances when carrying troops. Visually,the distance decreases by 300%. 100% sounds fair taking the cargo and troops load into account. Because of this issue, I wasn't able to quickly retrain and reinforce my units( I'm playing a Cyracuse and am now fighting Carthaginian Empire, so the only feasible way to reposition the army is by sea.
Finance:
3) In other M2TW mods I never felt the need to disband troops to cover the deficit of my budget. PI succeeded in introducing me to such experience. And don't take it as criticism. I'm actually glad that I have to take care of finance. However, salaries take up too much for the funds.

In terms of trade I have to say that some minor improvements should be made.Despite the fact that I am currently trading with every nation on the peninsula and Sicily, I only get ca. 2700 in trade. I employ an aristocrat who adds 5% to trade,but it's not significant to allow me the building of income generating structures.

As a result of my expansion in Sicily , I captured 2 rebel towns. I was hoping to get some gold out of it, but the options to "occupy" or "loot" provided equal opportunities of 0 gold pieces of income. Is it fixable? Btw, in 12 moves, the two towns were more than happy to pay very high taxes with little effect on population growth,public order and happiness. The capital,on the other hand, had a negative 0.5 of population growth paying low taxes. How is it possible?

To summarize, I have to say that the mod is GREAT in many ways, but there is always room for improvement.

DON'T take the said above as criticism,please. I am aware that the active part of developer group is doing everything possible in an effort to deliver a seam less final product.

Some Questions:
PlayerOne, when is the new version with updated models going to be released?

Are the javelins for Hastati and Principes going to be implemented?

[PlayerOne]

Thank you JustDoit8, this is exactly what we like to get. It really helps us to determine areas in which we need to look into.
As for the next version, I don't know. However I would like it to be weeks rather than months.
Unless a suitable fix is found for the javelins before charge, then the roman units will not use them in this mod.

Oh, another note that may help you with battles. Have a look at the file called battle_config.xml. In there you should find a small section near the top like this
<melee-hit-rate>....</melee-hit-rate>.
Simply replace this section with something like this,
<melee-hit-rate>0.75</melee-hit-rate>.
The lower the number the longer the battles. However i am unsure is this value affects missile kill rates.

[HighOnTea]

Thank you JustDoit8, this is exactly what we like to get. It really helps us to determine areas in which we need to look into.
As for the next version, I don't know. However I would like it to be weeks rather than months.
Unless a suitable fix is found for the javelins before charge, then the roman units will not use them in this mod.

Oh, another note that may help you with battles. Have a look at the file called battle_config.xml. In there you should find a small section near the top like this
<melee-hit-rate>....</melee-hit-rate>.
Simply replace this section with something like this,
<melee-hit-rate>0.75</melee-hit-rate>.
The lower the number the longer the battles. However i am unsure is this value affects missile kill rates.

PlayerOne, speaking of javelins, I'm pretty sure that Republican Romans from Hegemon Ancient Wars mod for M2TW have active javelins. They are insanely overpowered though: annihilating 1/5 of average-armored unit with one volley.

And one more thing. Are the units going to get new armor look once upgraded? I mean chain-mail for Principes and the wolf-skins for Velites. I know that historicaly, velites and principes didn't have many differences in equipment and men could only wear what they could afford(plundering wasn't allowed in Rome,contrary to Carthage). Since in-game you can make various units to share some model parts, it could be feasible to add chain-mail to prinicipes. In addition, Triarii could get a variation of chain-mail and bronze cuirasses. Btw,that's what ROME 2 introduced in demo. For future note,of course.

Back to Syracuse experience. I played a number of battles and the main flaw is: Syracusian ekdromoi
( light hoplites) cannot withstand a frontal charge of heavy cavalry even when standing on guard(defense mod),heavier spearmen units,however,can hold with minor losses.
This seems strange to me, as no matter what their body armor is,they have big shields and spears,which should give them some bonus vs cavalry. Swordsmen also loose too many men when hammered by just one cavalry unit. I suggest lowering the charge bonus for the cavalry. This way, player would be forced to maneuver and attempt outflanking the enemy to inflict highest damage.

I also had an issue with syracusian horse archers. They had "hit and run" tactics "on",but did not retreat when charged by Carthaginian cavalry. Got cut to pieces obviously.

How about the speed of units when going from walking stance to running, and speed of getting back in formation after running? it seems to be low.

[xxxMoRaVexxx]

By "hit and run" maybe you mean skirmish mode. Its bugged in M2TW, thats why I didnt use it often. If you're using a hit and run unit, just micromanage them. Javelin throw before charge is buggy too; it makes the unit who threw the javelin to just stand and do nothing. This can be remedied by the player by micro-ing the unit; just alt+right click on an enemy unit to let them attack with their meelee swords once they threw their javelins. The problem is with the AI because if that problem arises they couldn't cope with it (correct me if I'm wrong ).

[Yayattasa]

I suppose the victory conditions will be changed in the future, because in my current campaign (playing as the Boii) the Tuscan League won by 324 b.c., and they weren't that great.

[KEA]

VCs need to be looked after, last but not least because they (partly) control AI behaviour.