Aeimnestus Ancient Naval Warfare & Realistic Combat mod (Current version 1.5)

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

This is a great mod and the only mod released that comprehensively fixes issues in naval combat, but it's incompatible with all the other major improvement mods, which improve a great many more things in a great many more areas. For this reason, do you hope to expand to all the other areas of BAI, CAI etc that mods like Magnar, Silven and Radious concentrate on? Alternatively, would you consider combining your mods to bring a single source for fixes?

It'd be great to be able to actually access all the improvements made thus far without having to compromise, which, I'm sorry to say, using your mod, is.

Great work thus far!

[Aeimnestus]

No, when I'm done with the barbarian navies I'm done with the mod, although I may bring in some further tweaks. However I will happily allow anyone to use my mod or parts of it in theirs or change mine to be compatible with theirs. I know of at least 2 modders who has asked permission to use my changes in their mods.

The upcoming 1.6 will feature:

- The last round of the naval boarding changes: the barbarian cultures.
- Another look at ship turnspeeds and acceleration.
- Reworked ship ramming: light ships (Biremes, Hemiolia's and Trihemiolia's) will do insignificant ramming damage to the really big ships, making their only effective option vs those ships missile attacks or boarding. Medium ships and heavy ships have been tweaked as well. I'm also looking into creating a new ship category of "super heavy".

[Master Necromancer]

When, when, when?

[aris888]

I downloaded the latest version, dropped it into the data folder, opened it with mod manager, but it won't work, even if I deselect all other mods :/ Am I missing something?

[Master Necromancer]

I downloaded the latest version, dropped it into the data folder, opened it with mod manager, but it won't work, even if I deselect all other mods :/ Am I missing something?

How is it not working?

[goingtothebeat]

There might be a problem with a recent update to R2 stopping this mod from working correctly.
It was fine when I used it on Friday but when I went to play today, Rome updated and now the naval units for Carthage have been replaced with vanilla units (with vanilla upkeep). I haven't played a battle yet so I can't tell if the mod features are still functional but I'm not holding my breath.

[Hieronymos]

Truly genius work! After a few vanilla battles at sea, it became obvious how borked the Devs concept was of ancient naval warfare. So your Increasing ramming strength of smaller biremes, your tweaking of relative marine complements, etc.--all of it, so well done!
I was on the RTW RTR Naval Mod team, and have always had an intense interest on how poorly the Devs get the naval component of ancient warfare..
You've really done a superlative job, given the hard-coded restrictions in place.

So a hearty +rep for you!

Feedback:
1) To further rectify the imbalance created by "naval-transports-masquerading-as-real-navies", perhaps you could further decrease movement ability of transports: slower top speed, poorer acceleration, & wider turning radius.
With the increase to ramming power you've provided--especially to smaller biremes and the like--such changes should make transports easy kills, and further end the scenario where a hemiola rams a transport, doesn't sink it, then gets swamped by leaping soldiers...

2) More playtesting is needed to balance comparative effectiveness of Rhodian/Liburnian fast+agile ramming ships vs. Macedonian/Egyptian heavy rammer/heavy weapon/boarder tactics.
Successor Heptares, for example, were constructed with especially thick hulls to withstand or at least retard damage from ramming, but were fat tubs compared to Liburnians.

3) Thank you for eliminating onagers from the naval roster. However, the effectiveness of Ballista "sniper" navies is way OP imo. Naval artillery is still in need of reworking.

4) Please release your mod as separate Naval & Combat mods. Both are valuable, but with the large and growing number of combat mods available, conflicts will result.

5) Naval Buildings are also in need of reworking. Cities like Carthage had both a large naval base (covered sheds for their quads & quinqs + chandleries, etc.) and a thriving commercial harbour. There were no separate naval structures like in the game for constructing artillery vs. assault ships.

6) Naval garrisons: 'naval' factions like Athens, Carthage, Syracuse, Rhodes. etc. should have larger naval garrisons to reflect their seafaring natures (and intrinsic infrastructure). This will also make it easier for said factions to defeat/repel blockades by puny ai fleets.

[Dunadd]

I downloaded the latest version, dropped it into the data folder, opened it with mod manager, but it won't work, even if I deselect all other mods :/ Am I missing something?

I read some thread by one of the CA programmers in mod workshop a few days ago saying that the priority number for mods had been accidentally changed from 3 to 5 and this would make some mods not work unless that number was changed, until patch 5, which will set the number back to 3. No idea how to do any of that.

Also some mods don't seem to show up in mod manager even if they're in your data folder (not sure if for this reason or another one)

[Dunadd]

Truly genius work! After a few vanilla battles at sea, it became obvious how borked the Devs concept was of ancient naval warfare. So your Increasing ramming strength of smaller biremes, your tweaking of relative marine complements, etc.--all of it, so well done!
I was on the RTW RTR Naval Mod team, and have always had an intense interest on how poorly the Devs get the naval component of ancient warfare..
You've really done a superlative job, given the hard-coded restrictions in place.

So a hearty +rep for you!

Feedback:
1) To further rectify the imbalance created by "naval-transports-masquerading-as-real-navies", perhaps you could further decrease movement ability of transports: slower top speed, poorer acceleration, & wider turning radius.
With the increase to ramming power you've provided--especially to smaller biremes and the like--such changes should make transports easy kills, and further end the scenario where a hemiola rams a transport, doesn't sink it, then gets swamped by leaping soldiers...

2) More playtesting is needed to balance comparative effectiveness of Rhodian/Liburnian fast+agile ramming ships vs. Macedonian/Egyptian heavy rammer/heavy weapon/boarder tactics.
Successor Heptares, for example, were constructed with especially thick hulls to withstand or at least retard damage from ramming, but were fat tubs compared to Liburnians.

3) Thank you for eliminating onagers from the naval roster. However, the effectiveness of Ballista "sniper" navies is way OP imo. Naval artillery is still in need of reworking.

4) Please release your mod as separate Naval & Combat mods. Both are valuable, but with the large and growing number of combat mods available, conflicts will result.

5) Naval Buildings are also in need of reworking. Cities like Carthage had both a large naval base (covered sheds for their quads & quinqs + chandleries, etc.) and a thriving commercial harbour. There were no separate naval structures like in the game for constructing artillery vs. assault ships.

6) Naval garrisons: 'naval' factions like Athens, Carthage, Syracuse, Rhodes. etc. should have larger naval garrisons to reflect their seafaring natures (and intrinsic infrastructure). This will also make it easier for said factions to defeat/repel blockades by puny ai fleets.

Totally agree - especially on 4) - would love to be able to get the naval part of this mod only and try it

[Kristoff]

Why not try first this mod as a whole? Aeimnestus did equally good job on land battles - besides retarded CA BAI these are now much more enjoyable and plausible. IMHO it's the best mod of a kind overall, not dropping "+50%" or "-50%" here and there, but a really a well thought-out mod with solid historical ground.

[Dunadd]

Because a) I don't want units moving more slowly - it takes long enough for a battle to start as it is
and b) It takes away slingers' armour piercing and then gives armour piercing to archers - which makes no sense and is historically inaccurate
and c) It improves morale for all units, which isn't really accurate imo either

I do like all the things he says he's done in sea battles though

[Dunadd]

No, when I'm done with the barbarian navies I'm done with the mod, although I may bring in some further tweaks. However I will happily allow anyone to use my mod or parts of it in theirs or change mine to be compatible with theirs. I know of at least 2 modders who has asked permission to use my changes in their mods.

The upcoming 1.6 will feature:

- The last round of the naval boarding changes: the barbarian cultures.
- Another look at ship turnspeeds and acceleration.
- Reworked ship ramming: light ships (Biremes, Hemiolia's and Trihemiolia's) will do insignificant ramming damage to the really big ships, making their only effective option vs those ships missile attacks or boarding. Medium ships and heavy ships have been tweaked as well. I'm also looking into creating a new ship category of "super heavy".

That last thing sounds pretty dubious historically, given that lots of ancient sea battles were won by fleets of smaller, more manouvreable oared remes that could ram and shear the oars off of larger less manouvreable ones - e.g Polybius describes a battle between Phillip V of Macedon's fleet (which included lots of quinquiremes and some much larger ships) and Attalus of Pergamum's fleet, which was mostly biremes and triremes. The smaller ships completely outmanouvred and defeated the larger.

Also in the battle of Actium, in which Anthony and Cleopatra's fleet was mostly quinquiremes and larger - and Agrippa's fleet was mostly made up of much smaller liburnians, Agrippa's fleet won heavily by being able to outmanouvre and ram the larger ships.

That suggest small oared ships with rams could damage much larger ones easily.

[juicetoon]

I agree completely.

I cannot seem to get this mod to work alongside other mods. Radious' mods in particular (not including his battle mod). What mods are you using Thomas?

[juicetoon]

This is a great mod and the only mod released that comprehensively fixes issues in naval combat, but it's incompatible with all the other major improvement mods, which improve a great many more things in a great many more areas. For this reason, do you hope to expand to all the other areas of BAI, CAI etc that mods like Magnar, Silven and Radious concentrate on? Alternatively, would you consider combining your mods to bring a single source for fixes?

It'd be great to be able to actually access all the improvements made thus far without having to compromise, which, I'm sorry to say, using your mod, is.

Great work thus far!

I agree completely.

I cannot seem to get this mod to work alongside other mods. Radious' mods in particular (not including his battle mod). What mods are you using Thomas?

[Hieronymos]

Does not work with patch#3...even if I deselect all my other mods.
Can't figure out if it's a patch3 conflict or what...
Sorry.

Waiting for when you issue a standalone Naval Mod version.

[Hieronymos]

Does not work with patch#3...even if I deselect all my other mods.
Can't figure out if it's a patch3 conflict or what...
Sorry.

Waiting for when you issue a standalone Naval Mod version.

[squirel]

I have no problem using this mod with patch 3, neither official patch 3 or the past beta version. The trouble must be on your end.

[Hieronymos]

Sorry for now triple posting--but TWCenter won't let me edit or delete earlier post(s).
Mod loads up fine now--but was shocked(!) firing up an Athens campaign to see naval unit upkeep costs so low [a slinger hemiola of 80men costing less than half of a land 120man slinger unit]... But it will certainly make for more naval combat, as factions build monster stacks!
Looking forward to testing your systems of land and naval combat.

[Hieronymos]

Fired up an Epirus campaign, and my first naval battle was vs. 19 Spartan "transports" with a fleet of 11: 1 RoyalGdHex, 5 ArchTriHem, 5 SlingHem.

Got slaughtered by the fleet of "instant quinquiremes":
1) The SlingHem's were as useless as in vanilla; even a clean broadside ram at high speed resulted only in getting boarded by Spartans...
2) The ArchTriHem's did better; clean broadside hits resulted in kills 60% of the time...and getting boarded roughly 40% of the time. The succesful ArchTriHem's got chewed up bad by Helot Javelinmen tran's--120men throwing javelins is some serious firepower..
3) The generals' RoyalGdHex underwhelmed, killing one transport with an obligue frontal ram; but then collapsing and sinking when ramming a second transport from behind(!). Some weird engine logic there.

The "instant Quinquireme" phenomenon still needs nerfing. Is it possible to lower transport speed, turning radius, and ram attack? Unless they die from a ram attack, they board the rammer. And with the reduced marine complements, a boarding tranport has a huge advantage in numbers...

The correct modded crew sizes for the SlngHem's, etc. now shows (but not on first turn); crew of 25--new upkeep costs makes sense now.

Have built a Military Wharf (II) in Brundisium.; will test out the new ships it makes at first opportunity.

[Hieronymos]

Fired up an Epirus campaign, and my first naval battle was vs. 19 Spartan "transports" with a fleet of 11: 1 RoyalGdHex, 5 ArchTriHem, 5 SlingHem.

Got slaughtered by the fleet of "instant quinquiremes":
1) The SlingHem's were as useless as in vanilla; even a clean broadside ram at high speed resulted only in getting boarded by Spartans...
2) The ArchTriHem's did better; clean broadside hits resulted in kills 60% of the time...and getting boarded roughly 40% of the time. The succesful ArchTriHem's got chewed up bad by Helot Javelinmen tran's--120men throwing javelins is some serious firepower..
3) The generals' RoyalGdHex underwhelmed, killing one transport with an obligue frontal ram; but then collapsing and sinking when ramming a second transport from behind(!). Some weird engine logic there.

The "instant Quinquireme" phenomenon still needs nerfing. Is it possible to lower transport speed, turning radius, and ram attack? Unless they die from a ram attack, they board the rammer. And with the reduced marine complements, a boarding tranport has a huge advantage in numbers...

The correct modded crew sizes for the SlngHem's, etc. now shows (but not on first turn); crew of 25--new upkeep costs makes sense now.

Have built a Military Wharf (II) in Brundisium.; will test out the new ships it makes at first opportunity.