Empire Realism - Feedback and General Discussion

[JaM]

What did you do with Scotland? Could that Ottoman CTD bug be the problem for my random campaign map crashes?

Scotland wont have Provincial Line Infantry available anymore, instead Scottish Line Infantry will be recruitable for whoever captures the province. And yes, its quite possible the CTDs you experienced were due to Ottoman bug.

[Gorhaax]

Well thats good to hear. Started a new game with the beta as the Maratha Confederacy and got half of India conquered. After a number of completely ridiculous diplomacy offers I am now at war with Britain, Protugal, France and Prussia.

[JaM]

Yeah, Playable Maratha is problematic.. I have focused on forcing them more historical behavior, which greatly limits their potential as a playable faction. Plus i have "build in" some hatred from Britain and France to force them actually invade India at some point (in my current build, they will have even Victory conditions there..)

[Dandelion]

Bug or feature?

In the industry research panel I am able to research two tier 3 and 4 metal industry techs, although I do not own - and have not owned previously - the corresponding metalworking buildings needed for this research.

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Then I had my first battle against a european opponent - Savoy - with larger forces. I had a fifteen unit stack - General, two Cavalry, two artillery, eight line infantry - while Savoy attacked me with three stacks totalling 18 units, most of it rubble though.. I found a favourable position to deploy, then had to see that the AI deployed it's units for a three-pronged attack, with the main force hitting my right flank in a way, that my artillery couldn't reach them.
I was lucky that the AI sent it's cavalry ahead, which tried to charge my Irishers, who stood firm and shot a salvo when they already could see the white in the cavalrymen's eyes - which stopped the charge immediately.. one of my own cavalry units then drove the savoy riders off the battlefield.
In the end my more experienced troops - who already had fought in Morocco - stood firm against the incoming opponents and bringing in my cavalry units from the flanks of already engaged infantry units made them rout quite fast.. once the first unit turned and ran, the rest followed.

After some R&R in Savoy the troops are now in the UP..

Though I'm still playing on N/N - like in the vanilla, 3.5 and 3.7 campaigns before - the AI seems to deploy their troops a tad better.. when before it was usually a line of opposing units right in front of my own line, now the units often are deployed on one flank only, concentrating on one of my flanks.

When my freshly conquered - fortressed - capital of Morocco came under attack of some rebels, I saw some strange behaviour by on of the attacking units, which I hadn't seen before. They marched close to the walls, threw the grapple-hooks and then seemed unable to climb the ropes. Instead they did some kind of chicken-dance, which lasted until I ordered my troops on that part of the ramparts to move aside a bit...
I don't know if the fact, that the the fortification is one of the large stonemade (oriental) ones with buildings inside has something to do with that..

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Is there anything You want to have tested with priority?

[JaM]

In the industry research panel I am able to research two tier 3 and 4 metal industry techs, although I do not own - and have not owned previously - the corresponding metalworking buildings needed for this research.

a bug i'm unable to figure out how to fix it so far...

When my freshly conquered - fortressed - capital of Morocco came under attack of some rebels, I saw some strange behaviour by on of the attacking units, which I hadn't seen before. They marched close to the walls, threw the grapple-hooks and then seemed unable to climb the ropes. Instead they did some kind of chicken-dance, which lasted until I ordered my troops on that part of the ramparts to move aside a bit...
I don't know if the fact, that the the fortification is one of the large stonemade (oriental) ones with buildings inside has something to do with that..

most probably.. Walls are problematic, some quite a lot.. it was the main reason why i removed them completely from all cities except capital.

[JaM]

I have completely reworked Victory conditions for all playable factions, making them all more realistic and slightly less damaging - For example France no longer need to conquer 13.colonies, instead they will focus on Michigan and nearby Native Territories. France also got some victory requirements in India.

Austria and Prussia now don't share that much victory conditions, which means they will not have to fight each other till death. Same thing with Sweden and Russia, they no longer need to capture each other capital..

So far all this is in testing phase, anyway my current Austria campaign looks quite interesting with AI behaving much more realistic..

[Dandelion]

Could it be that the armed indiamen tradeships are a wee bit too strong?
I had a couple naval battles with and against them now, and they really can stand at the same level as frigates.

Battle 1:
My 58 gun SOL, 24 gun frigate, 24 gun brigantine and 18 gun schoner vs. three armed Indiamen - result was a very close win, with only my 58er not getting routed.. The 24 gun frigate got hammered and lost a third of their guns..

Battle 2:
Same ships on my side (with the still damaged frigate vs. two Armed Indiamen - again, a very close win. I fared a bit better this time, as one of the Indiamen managed to get itself in a very bad position against the wind and I was able to board it, but nonetheless the Brig and the Schoner were again routed..

Battle 3:
Two Armed Indiamen on my side vs. a Pirate Brigantine and a Pirate Privateer - The Brig got hammered to splinters and sank. The Privateer exchanged broadsides with the second AI, then tried to use the wind to get in a favourable position, but couldn't manage to get away from the AI. When my merchants tried to board the Privateer they were repelled, then surrendered, but the boarding action allowed the second AI to get in close range and as it fired a broadside along the Privateer, the pirates surrendered..

So.. maybe You'd either reduce the number of guns, amount of hull or - what I'd prefer - the moral of the Armed Indiamen a bit? Compared to them, the Dhow that turned up - with several other ships - when I engaged a fleet of the Ottomans, immediately went to white blinking flag and it only needed a small push to rout them.

Any chance to make generals available on lower tier buildings? Right now two of the starting spanish generals died of old age within the first 10 years of the campaign, and not being able to send replacements feels a bit.. weird.

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Actual situation of the campaign:
The year is 1718.

Spain has conquered Morocco (and managed to quell the rebellions after about three years..), Savoy (didn't rebel.. lucky me..), the Cherokee Nation (piece of cake with the caribbean units), Texas (the carribean forces went there, after they finished off the Cherokee) and the UP. Rebellion in the UP will go on for a while.. (the lower classes are a tad bit miffed about being conquered.. like -23 at first, before I burned down that university with all it's revolutionary book..) I'd love to send the Spanish Inquisition to get those rebellious dutchmen straight, but as it seems, I'll have to sit this one out..

Mexico - former New Spain, seperated from them in 1708 or so... - is next on the list of future conquers. Their army was already destroyed, now only the capital has to fall, which will not take too long, as it's only defended by town militia..

Politics:
War.. war everywhere..
Maratha still hasn't taken more than half of the Mughal Empire.
The French and British fight each other - and the native americans - in North America.
Austria has lost Austria and Silesia to Prussia, and also Bavaria, which they had conquered after Prussia had taken it.
Poland.. well.. they just don't seem to get anywhere.
There are rumors about a war between Russia and Sweden and Russia and the Ottomans, but no lands have changed hands yet...

Spain is at war with Britain, Austria, Prussia, Hannover, the Ottomans, the Barbary States, the Pirates and Mexico..
Spanish allies are the Italian State, Genoa, Venice, France, Westfahlen, New Spain and *cough* Portugal..
Two spanish armies are on the field of battle, one in Amsterdam, the second in Mexico and as my finances now allow it, a third is build right now, to free Austria from the prussian oppressors.

[JaM]

i didn't put generals to lower tier because you can still promote general from any unit anyway.

[Dandelion]

i didn't put generals to lower tier because you can still promote general from any unit anyway.

Any differences between build or promoted Generals?

[JaM]

no not really.. promoted ones might be actually better sometimes, as they can have traits and ancillaries as colonels

[Filmor]

Having a few questions and proposals again.

Why is carronade's range so big? I know that larger caliber means longer range but that doesen't account to carronade type. Other weird thing about these is their better hull in comparison with standard frigates, which model they use. Insted of that they have hull on the level of heavy frigate. I would suggest to give "naval board" and other navy-universities in big cities some bonus for research of navy techs, because they are nearly useless now, apart from giving access to higher tier research.

Worldwide bonus would be also good for barracks and cannon foundries to their techs accordingly(at least to cannons as they are hard to research), but this is not as important as in the navy case.

What do you think about reducing charge bonus of sword-wielding cavalry? I feel almost no difference in current state between sword and lance(apart from lance being much less armored). It places lance units as being much less capable which was not very true. Were they better or not we can't really say but with time their proportion in armies of XVIII century was much larger.

I am still playing 3.7

[JaM]

i did some reconfiguration of naval guns just recently, anyway with naval guns i went different direction - aimed fire was not possible at sea, so i completely ignore maximum range, and only use direct zeroed guns range.. for most of naval guns this range was quite similar - about 300-500m - carronades have shortest range of all, anyway difference is not that huge. where carronades lose is the accuracy - they have no accuracy bonuses based on their barrel, while long guns get quite good accuracy bonuses based on caliber - for example 12pdr naval gun gets accuracy bonus 30, 18pdr naval gun gets 45 and 32pdr gets 80! While those values might seem huge, please notice i have stopped using 50% accurate range in KV_rules (its set to 0 instead of 50-100) so practically it makes heavy ships much more dangerous as their guns are more accurate - which was thanks to their larger decks while being more stable on sea than smaller ships...

Carronades are now good for close range work, but if you use them at standard ranges, lots of shots would not hit anything...



For sword wielding cavalry, its unique setup - all units have same melee stat and only difference is charge value - Lancers have charge 20+, while shock action cavalry 12-15. Only lighter cavalry like Light Dragoons or Chevaulegers have charge just 10 as they were more like mobile skirmishers anyway (they have skirmisher class weapons, which makes them quite good at harassing enemy at range,but you need to dismount them) - Whole point of this system is to make cavalry work realistically - they were only strong in initial impact,during which they have charge values applied.. once charge is spent, they fight in melee while their melee attack is low - this also solves the usual vanilla problem of huge cavalry casualties in counter cavalry melee - instead melee is indecisive and everything is resolved by morale - so giving lancers higher charge values might be contraproductive... plus, all lancers got "scary horses" ability along the "scary enemy" so they have good advantage over standard cavalry or infantry anyway (again - morale is the deciding factor)

[Filmor]

About cavalry I mean the situation when you charge infantry batallion. Practically it is no difference if you use lancers or for example cuirassiers. Rather than increasing bonus for lancers I would rather decrease it for sword(if change something).

About these naval guns-I like that

[JaM]

There are practically two ways how to do the cavalry design, and low melee/high charge is one of two.. Second one is to use low charge values, but increase melee values accordingly, while reduce melee effectivity for cavalry with level of fatigue/disorder. I admit, i don't fully understand how charge bonus is added. from combat i saw it is definitely not some bonus added to melee stat during charging.. so, this means probably move towards second scenario/design should make more sense.. Anyway i will need some time to do more thorough combat tests with cavalry to decide to abandon first and adopt second. (both ways lead to realistic cavalry balance)


And regarding naval guns - maximum range was way above 2000m for heavy guns, but only with certain elevation.. problem is, with naval gunnery you are not standing still, your elevation rises and decreases based on waves.. so any sort of accurate fire at extreme ranges would be waste of gunpowder. THis was main reason why British preferred close range action so much - every hit counted is such situation, while their crews were reloading much faster than anybody else. Another thing why i chosen max range so low is the ETW hardcoded design - for each ship certain gun-deck decides max range for whole ship, no matter if guns with longer range are on different deck.. so making small differences in range between calibers is pointless, because most of the time upper deck decides what ship max range is... and because of that, its best approach to have same/similar range for all broadside guns. There are few exceptions as i have slightly longer range for special chasing guns which are on prow, those can outreach broadside battery, while are much more accurate than others - usually those guns were used to cripple escaping enemy, and were maned by best gunners available..

so, as you can see, with naval design i try to go around hard-coded issues but i try to not sacrifice historical feelings of naval combat... you wont see any unrealistic nonsense implemented as we have in vanilla ETW, where small sloops carry extremly accurate guns, while SOLs are highly innacurate, just to give player some sort of a Rock-paper-scissor scenario which has no backing in real Age of Sail naval combat...

[Filmor]

I am generally very much pleased with the navy model which is now implemented. From what you say it would be not bad to make small changes in ship's range along with the numer of decks the ship has. This could fortify big ships position as a rulers of the sea which is very desireable.

I like how cavalry looks and the effects of the charge which I told you once before. The only problem is small difference between types od cavalry. As it is used in proper way-on infantry in line, hopefully damaged-infantry routs and cav usually has no losses at all. On the other hand attacking well prepared infantry-in long line not directly on flanks and in square-cav don't even can reach target after a few salvos or clashes and fights for a while, then routs. The thing that would be nice is making a difference in working of these two types of mounted soldiers. As both lancers and cuirassiers were mainly used for direct attack, leaving jobs such as harassing the routed enemy for hussars/light cav, I can imagine that mixing both of your models would be something that fits there nicely. I don't know what is the scale of decreasing cavalry effectivity in meele which can be implemented so don't know if it would work together with the other model. Cuirassiers getting into meele without doing much damage apart from disrupting enemy with charge alone and then making havoc for a very short time with their swords would be nice. On the other hand lancers relay almost solely on impact and superiority of their weapon during charge thanks to it's range. I don't know if it is possible but I consider it worth trying. I think that main difference should be that cuirassiers should be designed to enter fight and destroy enemy or loose, while lancers are more like hit and run with dealing massive damage if charge reaches the target.

[JaM]

actually, against infantry, lance was mostly used as a melee weapon, not "charge direct impact like knight" weapon - lance gave lancer longer reach to attack infantrymen even with his bayonet attached, and lancers tactics against infantry was to ride around square and thrust lance into block of infantry..

in anti-cavalry combat, lance was good for initial impact, or during pursuit, but was not that good in close melee where shorter weapon was more useful -which was the reason why only first rank of lancers was equipped with lance while second one used sabres and carbines - after initial impact it was the second rank who engaged enemy in melee while lance equipped cavalrymen tried to get out and attack again.

And btw, in reality, Cuirassiers were the only cavalry type that could defeat lancers head on - their armor provided good protection against lance while straight sword was deadly against unarmored lancers... Second were some Hussars, who could outmaneuver lancers and get very close so they couldnt use lance to their benefit, but even very fast hussar didnt had such advantage as armored cuirassier...

Anyway, with ETW engine, its quite difficult to properly simulate weapon differences on this level of detail..

[Filmor]

Sounds ok. Taking into account that XVIII century uhlan's lances were rather short it probably wasn't so effective in direct charge as before.

When do you predict the next version is going to see a daylight? I am currently finishing my french campaign and would like to start something in central Europe now.

[JaM]

Depends, if you want to participate in beta test, i can provide you with link for current version - all i need is for you to write some feedback from the gameplay of your choosing..

update:

I have further modified recruitment areas - From now on, Hessian units will be recruitable in Westphalia/Hessen, Hanover and major regions in North America (New York, New England,etc), while both Westphalia/Hessen and Hanover will be able to recruit them (several battalions of Hessian Line Infantry and Hessian Grenadiers.)

[Dandelion]

Conclusion of my Grand Campaign as Spain (playing N/N) with E:TW-ER 3.8 Beta:

I ended this campaign in 1735, because a new version of the Beta was available and needed a fresh campaign.
I didn't encounter any bugs, at least none obvious to me..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Political situation:

Maratha still had not taken all of the Mughal Empire's Regions.. right now only one region is left, but that already had been the case in 1730 and then two regions held by Maratha rebelled and turned Mughal again..

Persia has been destroyed and Afghanistan appeared.

In Europe, Austria had lost regions to Prussia and Poland. Spain (me..) had taken Austria from Prussia, then Bohemia and Saxony too, to gain a favourable position for a peace treaty with Prussia. A short while later Hannover declared war on my ally, Westfalia, and I took it. Then Prussia became suicidal.. with three spanish armies doing maneuvers near the prussian, Prussia declared on me. Five turns later Bavaria, Brandenburg and Silesia fell to spanish troops, while Poland took East-Prussia... Time for a peace again..

Next Austria - at that time left with only Serbia and Transsylvania - declared war against my ally Portugal.. if I hadn't ended the campaign, it'd be left with only Transsylvania in a couple turns.

Observations:

- Maratha, as already stated above, seems to be less overpowered in it's conflict with the Mughal Empire.

- Wurttemberg survived 20 years of war against Prussia and France. Both were sending small stacks of units to Stuttgart every couple turns and didn't achieve anything.. in 1735 Wurttemberg still was a free country..

- In America France and Britain seem to have fought each other to a standstill. France had it's "usual" regions, Britain their's.. The Cherokee regions had been taken by Spain (me) and the Huron and Iroquese Nations were still alive, with only the Iroquese being in a state of war.. Seems the AI has some problems in waging proper war in the Americas.. Largest army stack I've seen there consited of about 8 units and Britain seemed to be in financial problems as many of it's possible towns weren't even sporting any building, industrial or other..

- I didn't notice much naval action, mostly because I was at peace with Britain and Portugal and all other nations sporting navies nearly all of these 35 years. There was rarely a blockade of trade routes (apart from some short lived blockades from Russia vs. the Ottomans and Maratha taking the trade harbour of the Mughals.. Especially the large british fleet only appeared once for me to be seen, then disappeared about 15 years ago..

- in the end I had 12 of 9 possible Armed Indiamen *cough* of which several hadn't been build by me. Together with a further 3 not armed indiamen I was able to take 15 Trade Slots, which never were challenged by any nation I waged war against... so.. maybe taking those trade spots in a war could be made a priority for the AI? - Seems taken care of in 3.99

- apart from the usually one to two units that were garrisoned in each region, the spanish empire had five armies on the march. Two 16 unit stacks plus a 10 unit stack in europe, one 16 unit stack made from carribean units which, after taking all former pirate regions there, was sent to Ceylon. And one stack of 16 units in North Africa, which slowly moved east through all the Barbary Pirate States. The Naval forces consisted of only a couple galleys in the Mediterrenean and one stack with two 70, one 60, two 50 SOLs and some smaller ships..

- a few regions are very hard to get to evolve all possible towns. One has to go very deep into the agriculture tree to get enough boni so that the towns can still grow. I guess it's not that hard for a human player, but the AI might need some help there..

Started a new campaign as France for Beta 3.99

Done the first 5 years now. There will be some heavy naval fighting soon, because Britain declared war on France the moment the 13 States came into it's possession. I already lost the Windward (or Leewards?) Isles to them..

I already noted enhance Pritate activity at the trade nodes and trade routes..

For me, cavalry seems to work absolutely as I think it should.. Send them in from the rear or side against infantry already engaged in line to line shooting and see the infantry running. Send them against opposing cavalry and start to pray that your guys win the fight. Enhance chances for victory in a cavalry vs cavalry fight by either sending more men than the opponent or by sending fresher (less tired..) troops or troops with higher morale..

[JaM]

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Thanks Dandelion, lots of changes in last few beta versions.. especially regarding the Austria/Prussia/Poland relations. I also plan to give AI a bit more money to offset AI stupidity in economical area,but it wont be as huge as it was in vanilla,where AI was never hurt by&nbsp; blocked port or damaged cities..</p>
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