Suggestions/Requests/Historical Coolness

['Gunny]

As I prepare to show off what I've been working on in regards to the Celts, I figured I may as well open this thread for any particular suggestions, requests, or historical tidbits anyone wants to see added in, or if there are features of the battle portion that you think could use improvement. Hopefully we can get some decent discussion in terms of both game play (particularly the campaign) and historical features for the coming 3.0 update. As ever, keep an eye on the previews thread, because once I finish actually making the Celtic units, we'll have a nice preview for them, and a discussion on how we plan to deal with the factions coming in the Campaigns of Gaul DLC.

Cheers!

[White_pigeon]

I disagree with your choice for 3.0 to let javelin armed melee infantry be put on a fire at will mode similar to how it was in rome 1. The problem with this is that it makes in impossible to defend from these troops as they will toss tons of javelins at you if you try to hold your position. Also, for example roman legionaires did not use their javelins in the fire at will sort of sense but rather similar to the mechanic in rome 2. I think this could be a change made for the theuropoi since i believe that it would be historically correct and make them a more valid and versitile unit. If you still want it in the mod could you please have it as an optional addon or offer me a course in modding so i can delete it myself :p. (Could you fix the pikemen aswell since they are basically worthless in the current state of the mod). Sorry for being whiny 3.0 still looks absolutely fantastic and you guys have done a great job so far.

['Gunny]

Well in regards to the Romans and the like firing at will, remember that they don't have the ammo that proper skirmishers will carry. Romans had only 2 Pila and according to my research, as well as theories proposed by Alexander Zhmodikov, the Romans could use their Pila at any time, this is also stated in Ancient Celts by Tim Newark who contends that the Pilum was developed to break up Celtic charges before impact on a defensive Roman formation. This feature will be balanced though, and we'll be sure to make it so that Legions can't be used as heavy skirmishers I will say though that it won't be part of the lite battle portion of the mod that will still be available separately. As for the Pikes, I haven't seen any issues in terms of their effectiveness, but Ahiga is working on the Hellenes, so he is better to answer for the Pikes.

[White_pigeon]

Yeah im sure you will work it out, as long as they only carry 2 pila it probably will be fine. And i have changed my opinion about the pikes....as it played out, it was another mod that i used that made pikes underpowered. So as it seems it will be all sunshine!!

[Le_Swede]

Do you remember what mod that was White_pigeon? I'm having the same problem with my pikes being useless atm.

[White_pigeon]

Alright, after doing some testing, ive changed my mind once more. If you have the "formation attack fixed" mod, that makes pikemen become even worse so that one you can turn off. When i did the testing and thought it worked out fine i tested thorax pikemen against armoured legionaires and the pikemen won. The problem is of course that legoinaires have formation attack activated so they are worse at fighting pikemen. However pikemen are worthless against armoured infantry without formation attack. I tested a thorax pikemen that received a frontal charge from an iceni chosen swordsmen and the pikemen lost quite dramatically. I am using the 2x unit size version and i think the problem is that with the increased numbers and reduced melee attack the pikemen can't kill off the enemy unit before it has gotten around the flanks and infiltrated it which it could in vanilla. A general tip is therefore to is therefore to have the pikemen in quite thin lines on the flanks of the formation so that it's wider than the unit attacking it. In vanilla this is not the case cause the unit will get killed before reaching the flanks of the pike unit but in lines of battle, having a wide formation buys your unit valueble time before the flanking happens. That being said pikes still lose to armoured units out of formation attack.

['Gunny]

Huh, noted, come to think of it most of the times I've played with pikes it's been against other Hellenes and Romans. We'll look into ensuring Pikes can withstand the onslaught of enemies without formed attack.

[Ahiga]

If people want to chime in while I'm trying to decide on this, I'd welcome opinions.

Currently most Hellenistic/Punic factions get three types of Thureos bearers - light (unarmored), regular (linothorax), and thorakitai (mail). I'm starting to consider changing that to two types of thureophoroi that evolve into late era variants: thureophoroi (unarmored with maybe 1-2 linothoraxes, then the late version is mostly linothoraxes with 1-2 unarmored), and Thorakitai (all linothoraxes to linothorax and mail). Possibly only the Thorakitai would upgrade - I see a lot of late era Hellenistic depictions of completely unarmored thureophoroi.

The reasoning is: "Thorakitai" is simply "cuirassiers", there's nothing to say that it was explicitly mail. Accounts in antiquity of 'cuirass' applies to linen as well as mail or metal armor. Most depictions (not all) of thureophoroi have them unarmored, then the minority I've seen with mail or linothoraxes. If the Hellenistics can field reasonably armored Thureophoroi early on it kind of mitigates the uniqueness of the Roman legions and other barbarians.

The counter-argument is: We have light and heavy peltasts, being unarmored thureos skirmishers and armored thureos skirmishers respectively. They represent the thureophoroi who served in a skirmishing fashion since the game engine limits us from having an all-inclusive single unit that can coherently skirmish and melee (the AI won't handle that). So in theory we already have light thureophoroi with the peltasts - in fact it might stand to not have light melee thureophoroi at all with that fact. I'm inclined to keep them just because I want more unarmored melee infantry for the player to rely on.


Simply put, which do you prefer:

A) Light Peltast, Heavy Peltast, Light Thureophoroi (Unarmored), Linothorax Thureophoroi, Mail & scale Thureophoroi

B) Light Peltast, Heavy Peltast, Thureophoroi (Unarmored with a handful of linothoraxes), Thorakitai (first all linothorax, then mix of linothorax, scale, and mail)

C) Something else

Edit: Still flexible to change it, but I am pretty sure I'll pursue option B.

[White_pigeon]

I agree with option b, seems to be the most realistic and fun. Can't wait for 3.0

[mennelik]

What about roman archers?

[White_pigeon]

It's me again bringing some christmas/new years cheer with new critique of your mod :p. So basically the problem is with javelin men. I realise that javelin troops should be powerfull since they have little ammo and short range. And in infantry combat they work fine, perhaps a bit op against other skirmishers. But anyway the big problem is against cav, i've been playing an egypt campaign recently and fought against the north african tribes. And since the AI is as smart as a seagull who's brain got ran over by 1000 semi-trucks they often isolate their javelin men and i think it should be a good opportunity to kill them with cav. The problem is that the volley they throw before the charge kills off basically a third of the cav unit, and when you charge the next one 3/4 of your unit is dead. I realise that missiles do a lot of damage to cav since the horses often have little armour and you can imagine that 240 javelins flying through the air would do some damage but still it sort of kills the rock, paper, scissor style gameplay that's total war. So I don't know give horses a crazy resitance to javelins or something

['Gunny]

Well Roman Archers weren't very commonplace if I recall correctly. The archers in the pre-Marian republic were largely mercenary from Crete, and eventually the auxilia system became the main source of archers for the Romans, and that's pretty much how we'll leave it. We are really reworking Mercenaries though, so it shouldn't be impossible to acquire archers as mercenaries before you conquer say... Crete.

As for the Javelins, yea. The ability of missile units (and particularly javelins) to be able to knock out a fast moving target like Cavalry. I'll look into seeing about buffing Cavalry resistance to missiles, as while they are a bigger target, they are moving faster. Maybe what I can do it look into upping their shield values and decreasing their base defense to compensate. I'll test that out a bit here soon I think.

[Ahiga]

For the Roman Archers business, we could grant them national mercenary (Anywhere they own a province) access to Cretan Archers. My thought for national mercenaries was to have them be the most ubiquitously and iconically used mercenaries of a given faction. So for example Thureophoroi would be one of the national mercenaries for just about every East Mediterranean Greek faction. Also especially if the unit/nationality in question had a special mercenary relationship with the given faction. For instance the business arrangements Pergamon and Macedonia seem to have had with the Cretans, or Carthage's vassal/client relationships with the Numidians, and so on.

The problem for the Romans is they really seem to have developed those mercenary relationships after they'd become the West Mediterranean Hegemon (so after the 2nd Punic war), and some of them really hinged on having removed the Carthaginians from the picture (hard to get standardized recruitment of Balearic or Numidian mercenaries when the perfidious Punics are blocking the way). But I could see the Romans having a very small national mercenary access to Cretan Archers.

Actually had a thought of if it's possible to tech-lock mercenaries. If it is, it would be perfect to them allow Romans to recruit a mercenary variant of their standardized Auxilia Spear/Archer/Horse (as well as the more traditional method).

['Gunny]

No here is something we are looking into:

Startpos changes. We've already done some (Corsica and Novo Carthago to Carthage, The Etruscan land of Northern Italy to Rome, and Mesopotamia to Seleucia) but this also brings up the question of Egypt. At the period the game is set Cyrenica was in revolt against the Ptolemies, and would be independent for appx. 20 years before returning to Ptolemy control. So historically, the situation is more or less correct, however issues arise in terms of Egypt's survive-ability. We therefore see three options:

1. Leave it as is

2. Make Cyrenica a satrapy of Egypt

3. Have Egypt absorb Cyrenica entirely.

Also: Thanks to Dresden for his tutorials and also assisting me heavily in the region changes.

[White_pigeon]

I think you should leave it as it is. Even though Egypt might perish in the steel storm of Cyrenaica, Selucids and nuisance african tribes making cyrenaica a satrapy or a part of Egypt would make egypt too powerfull when player controlled in the early game which is the only time the game is even moderatly challenging. I understand that it is a bit boring to see Nasamones controll 75% of africa but I think the main focus has to be to create factions that are fun to use when player controlled. Perhaps it's possible to give the Egyptian AI some buffs cause I would consider that the best sollution.

['Gunny]

For now I've given it to Egypt, we'll see how it works out. Current view of the startpos:

[Crow]

Would it be possible to include the Angles and Saxons? Their shield wall was legendary.

['Gunny]

Later era German units are going to draw influence from peoples such as the Franks, Angles, and Saxons, with the ability to form shield wall as well as wedge, but the game itself is a little early for a full on Angle invasion . We have some more info about our plans for German unit designs though in the main previews thread.

[Ahiga]

Nicely done Gunny.