Empire Realism - Feedback and General Discussion

[Sherab]

Yes, I suspected that limits are dictated by historical accuracy. In this terms, general starting conditions of Commonwealth are probably still too good. But while it is good as games starting conditions, not necessarily good for whole gameplay. Going this way further, playing as Commonwealth we should lead the nation to partitions if we would like to be historically accurate, right? But who would like to do so?


I suppose this wouldn't be such big problem if I would focus on Central Europe region, as you suggest. But my lands are now stretched between Baltic and Mediterranean Sea, with my main army stationed in Athens. ;P In no way they can reach Warsaw if some bad events would occur there. What I mostly can recruit still by the moment are dragoons, with can't realy fight alone. Austria and Prussia are actualy my allies now, and till now rather solid ones, so I'm shielded from land invasion, but if French will land by sea, thats different story. Simply don't have men to protect all borders. Limits for Commonwealth are set such way, that there is enough line infantry for one full stack (balanced) army and a little bit plus. To make things worse, that "plus" was also fighting at Balcans And since this are reletively fresh gains, I can not simply march my armies back to Poland not risking mutiny in Rumelia. Leaving Athens and Istambul out of protection it is not that good idea either, since French can sail also this way. At least I persuaded Spain for peace. ;P Not sure what to do now, to secure my position.


This is strange that having such vast lands, and quite good economy, I can not recruit more men. This is why I think those numbers should be somehow fluent. I fully accept this static numbers if otherwise CAI would create those "magical" stacks, but otherwise it would be nice to have them fluent. Not sure, however, how to do it.

[Mjarr]

I wonder, how advantages of 18th century second half artillery can be represented in game environment, together with disadvantage of civilian team of carriages? If only maneuverability would be added, then there would be no drawbacks to using "napoleonic" tactics as soon as 1710 (?) - depending how fast we would unlock proper technologies. Maybe cannon crews should have relatively huge radius of fear (or rather their enemies radius of "scares artillery"), making them easily broken when close to battleline? At least for some types? Small caliber, regimental guns should be able to stay in battle line I suppose. Same way, horse artillery should be less afraid of close combat due to it mobility - secured by cavalry, they could always escape.

You cannot really go full Napoleonic artillery in ER early in the game unless you want to pay massive upkeep for slow firing pieces because they march slow on the battlefield, they restrict your campaign movement speed a lot and for single artillery unit you're better off with single dragoon guards or even dragoons for verstatility. Only exception is the regimental guns you start with but since you have to research lighter artillery before you can get more of them, if you lose it you're stuck with old artillery pieces for quite a while. Granted, with reduction in early artillery pieces per unit it probably is even harder to pull off. Not saying it is impossible but there aren't that many factions in-game who could afford rushing tons of artillery for massed batteries. Truth to be told I often have found myself removing artillery from stacks in order to keep up marching pace and usually avoid using artillery too much early until lighter pieces are available.

Regular batteries already have pretty poor morale (especially early ones) and light guns have slightly better morale, so arguably they can already fulfill the role "we can be closer you can be further away" somewhat logically.

[Sherab]

I see. Thanks for explanations.


I meant only, that if someone would focus totaly on artillery tree, then he/she could unclock more advanced guns relatively early. But generaly you are right for sure.


I was using Sakers in my campaign with some success, however most of the time they indeed were to slow in every possible way - with is good and realistic. Now I have access to early 12pdr and regimental guns (ingame they are called light infantry guns if I recall correctly). But haven't opportunity to test them in battle yet. I suppose they reflect newer, but still pre-Gribeauval designs.

[Mjarr]

Adding to general complaint about the current double fire method now that I gave new campaign a brief go:

It's pretty ed up and borderline broken. Even untrained colonial militia turned easily into massive death-dealer able to massacre heavy cavalry before they even got nearby and murder skirmishers assuming someone got close enough to spot them or they were in open field.

[JaM]

yeah, seems there is not enough dispersion, so they hit with both projectiles the same target... i'm removing it in next version

[Destin Faroda]

The modding awards for 2016 are coming. Please support Empire Realism!

[007Jua007]

JaM, any ideas when the next version will come?? also, if you need some help editing some tables or whatever just contact me, I've got plenty of free time nowadays...

[JaM]

no idea. Right now im busy with one big project, but i definitely plan to update the ER to latest level in the near future.

[cjrio]

How come armed citizenry and the town militias have higher morale than my line infantry?

Prussian Fusiliers- 5 moral

Saxon armed citizenry- 7 moral

[JaM]

they start with 0exp, while line infantry gets some at recruiting, which increases their real morale

[JaM]

Brief changelog for 4.9:

- Volley fire returned for all units
- Ship sails hitpoints reduced, with bottom sails being easiest to destroy. Player should stay in battle sails to prevent them being damaged quickly
- Adjusted Minister bonuses, making their effect more profound
- small campaign AI changes
- reworked artillery with slower rate of fire (sustained instead of maximum), All artillery now has same max range, but dispersion varries on type and caliber size with heavy artillery being more accurate than light at long ranges
- All muskets have same effective range but different rate of fire and dispersion. (line infantry will be able to open fire at skirmishers but effect of their fire will be very low at max range)

[JaM]

i have identified some bugs which will be fixed later this week:

- American faction doesn't have any garrison unit assigned, therefore every time their city is attacked, game crashes. (it can be prevented by keeping normal unit inside such city)
- startpos files for Road to Independence are not updated, but vanilla versions.

both issues will be fixed in 4.91 version.


additional changes in new version:

- removed heat and cold fatigue, as it is counterproductive in cohesion model.
- adjusted projectile explosion reliability for howitzers to be more useful
- slightly increased marksmanship stat for skirmishers
- reduced hitpoints for various wooden buildings on battlemap
- adjusted fatigue/cohesion for walking, units will now keep good order while walking
- adjusted fatigue/cohesion for running, which will cause a bit faster cohesion loss

[JaM]

Next version will be called 5.0 (finally) and it will bring all changes i have done to NER so far, with reworked artillery, new cavalry system, and some additional changes to infantry behavior ( mostly to irregular units) Also it will contain some economy adjustments, improved building effects etc.

[Aper]

Great!

[JaM]

i'm also considering doing one radical thing i did in the past to R2TR mod. I'm thinking to remove the unit experience gains, and instead, make it standard for all units, so high quality units will start with higher stats than low quality units, instead of making the difference through experience bonuses. There are multiple things that support that decision.

First - Empire Total War has a bug, where unit stats are not updated for experience bonuses when their stats are opened on campaign map (they are only visible when opened during battle) With fixed stats, it would be same in both occasions, and overall unit effectivity would be obvious to player immediately.
Second - Empire Total War time period is quite wide as it plays out between 1700-1799. Ordinary soldiers would serve at max for 15 maybe 20 years and then (if alive) would retire, yet in game you can keep their experience present for 99 years, which is not very realistic.
Third - it will allow me to expand general/admiral traits/anciliaries to play more role as these are present only for the lifespan of the character

Anyway, i will keep the graphical representation of experience (chevrons) present, so player will have clear indication of unit quality, even without checking the actual stats. But no bonuses will be provided by it (except for small cohesion bonus linked with experience) and it will be impossible to gain further levels..



So, i will investigate and test this approach in nearest future and if i dont find any unsolvable issues with it, i will introduce it with next update.

[Morifea]

Great to hear thats this awesome mod is still worked on!

Little Question: I´ve nearly conquered the whole world with France. My Tax-income is drastically shrinking, in most settlement I´ve Zero Money through taxation.
Bug or Feature? :-)

[JaM]

Its a administration cost penalty. bigger you get, higher penalty is applied, with top at 136 regions i think (its vanilla value)

[JaM]

Some info on new unit stats:

- experience chevrons now represent unit discipline, effectively, they have no impact on unit stats, but have impact on unit cohesion (how fast unit can recover its cohesion)
- Unit stats are now fixed, based on unit quality and unit type.
- Line Infantry training was focused on speed of reload, therefore Reload stats is now main distinguisher between units. Elite units have high reload, while untrained militia has reload very low. Accuracy stat varies very little, as line infantry was not trained for aimed fire. (min accuracy is 20, max 35)
- Light Infantry has slightly higher accuracy, and reload than standard line infantry of the same quality.
- Skirmishers are more proficient in aimed fire, while their reload skill is secondary.
- Eastern units are in the middle, as they were actually using aimed fire, therefore their accuracy is higher while loading is worse than with western infantry.
- Artillery accuracy and reload is now a lot higher for late artillery units with professional crew. Horse artillery is now considered Elite artillery unit, therefore has highest training.
- Unit cost is adjusted accordingly

[JaM]

small update - War for Independence Campaign (Episodic campaign III) will have victory condition adjusted, instead of 15 regions required, you will need just 10, while campaign will only last till 1800. 8 main regions are still required though. I have adjusted some units to be available to US side, while they got some military tech at the start so they wont have to develop technologies that were already used by that time commonly.

[Marcus Vitruvius]

Great changes JaM! When can we expect ER 5.0?