Battle Balance - Drop your challanges

[KAM 2150]

Ok, I'm more then a little irritated by how many people clam this and that about the balance. Of course, some stuff from time to time goes off, just wait for another "patch" from CA Selea is doing amazing job with his battle balance, yet it is to hard to please some people. First they write that this is unbalanced, then it is changed, followed by even bigger cry that it was perfect before and now it is unbalanced. So far in MOST OF THE CASES the fault of unbalanced battles was on the side of person posting his bug, because he used other submods or higher difficulty, ruining this mod on his own behalf claiming that DeI is broken As I wrote in the beginning, from time to time patch from CA breaks something and Selea is not able to see all changes, in those situtations and with proper video coverage claims of unbalanced stuff are more then justified.


I think I'm a little bit know here as a fanatic DeI follower so here is my challenge for you guys.

If you think that something is unbalanced post here your challenge, I'll do the testing on normal difficulty with no other mods instaled then DeI. I'll video record it or if the length will be too much, just post bunch of screens.

So yeah, this is what was going on my mind. If you are not sure or want to just double check something with battle balance, write here, I'll gladly help you and post the reasults.


If you feel offended or provoked by what I wrote here, sorry, it was not my intention, but it is just difficult to see new theards about the balance turning into flame wars, and in most of the cases OP not being able to provide proof about his claims. If you are right, my video material will prove it.

[Anonymous_Jones]

Agreed.

[Mr.IAmHere]

This is a good project ! Maybe start with some of the complaints that are already active such as the encircling one.

Hope this puts to rest some of the more outrageous claims while revealing a couple of bugs along the way!

[raducul32167321]

I don't know if this falls under the category you want but the unit that is giving me unrealistic nightmares are persian sharpshooters http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/...ersian_Archers

I'm understand that they are elite, but if so souldn't they cost double that?
They are almost imposible to counter and the AI is able to field hordes of them, they chew through almost any other archer and cavalry is useless against them, I mean they seem to go through the heaviest cavalry line a knife through butter.And the infantry gets mowed down by the arrows before it even reaches them.

The only way I found to beat them is to send in elite heavy cavalry to keep them busy while I come up with elite heavy infantry like royal peltast or something.

I'm not saying that the unit itself is unbalanced, but the unit plus dirt low price defenitely is/

[filmfixed]

This is a excellent idea!

[KAM 2150]

I don't know if this falls under the category you want but the unit that is giving me unrealistic nightmares are persian sharpshooters http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/...ersian_Archers

I'm understand that they are elite, but if so souldn't they cost double that?
They are almost imposible to counter and the AI is able to field hordes of them, they chew through almost any other archer and cavalry is useless against them, I mean they seem to go through the heaviest cavalry line a knife through butter.And the infantry gets mowed down by the arrows before it even reaches them.

The only way I found to beat them is to send in elite heavy cavalry to keep them busy while I come up with elite heavy infantry like royal peltast or something.

I'm not saying that the unit itself is unbalanced, but the unit plus dirt low price defenitely is/

If I remember well, DeI team has not yet balanced unit prices, it's still a thing to be redone.

About their effectiveness against cav, those archers are using spears after all, but I found cav charges pretty strong against them. Prolonged melee with heavy cav also brought those archers down, but light cav might have some problems here. If two units of those archers will engage cavalry unit, they might fend it off.

Vs Infantry they were not that great, although 3 units of them killed 40 thorakitai before they reached them. In melee, infantry mowed them down. In most of the cases, archers were routed when they were cut from 160 to 90-120 men.

Battle took me 13 minutes so no video yet, not enough free space on my hard drive, forgot to delete some stuff. Still the proble reported is the price, not their battle balance.

Basically I tried to be as much helpful for the AI as I could. My infantry was only marching all the way, cavalry charged quite some time after the infantry clashed with them. I suffered largest casualties when archers shoot my men from the flank, but I must admit, they scored few kill before my infantry reached them, still not that much significant (Only those thorakitai mentoned above got some real casualties).

VERDICT: Persian Sharpshooters can be brought down both by infantry and cavalry, but require some more caution then other archers due to their melee capability. They can be formidable foes when in big numbers. Going back to the basic problem, price, I think they should get some higher cost, if not the highest from all foot archers, so the claim is in my opinion justified.

Here are the screens for comparison:

Persian Sharpshooters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Cretan archers:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As seen on those screens, Persian Sharpshooters are not only towering above Cretan Archers in all aspects, but are also cheaper, with cost a little bit higher then regular peltasts.

[raducul32167321]

I'm sorry, don't mean to be an ass but I just don't see how you got those results

I don't usualy do experiments in custom battle but when I read your post I had to do it, and put a unit of sharpshooters vs a unit of nakharar cav and easily won. I don't know if the nakharar are the best cav in dei but they are certanly up there.

video below and apologies for quality I'm pretty new at fraps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvwHTi2T8w

[Black9]

I'm sorry, don't mean to be an ass but I just don't see how you got those results

I don't usualy do experiments in custom battle but when I read your post I had to do it, and put a unit of sharpshooters vs a unit of nakharar cav and easily won. I don't know if the nakharar are the best cav in dei but they are certanly up there.

video below and apologies for quality I'm pretty new at fraps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvwHTi2T8w

That's pretty convincing. I had a peek at the tables. Turns out that their melee weapon is set to "spear" not dagger like most archers. So they're probably getting a bonus vs. cavalry in melee. Plus they have some stellar stats.

http://europabarbarorum.heimstatt.ne...egory=infantry

Link semi-relevant.

EDIT: Yep, their melee weapon gives them a +20 bonus vs. cavalry.

[raducul32167321]

What makes them unbearable are the numbers the AI fields, 50% of all the troops of Media Atropatene are this guys.

In my curent game as Ptolemy I'm sending troos to the east trying to help my allies there against these guys. I'm having to field armies full of elites, witch I don't like to do because it brakes immersion and still the leading cause of death among young egyptians in my world must be arrow fire It's a meat grinder out there

[filmfixed]

I'm sorry, don't mean to be an ass but I just don't see how you got those results

I don't usualy do experiments in custom battle but when I read your post I had to do it, and put a unit of sharpshooters vs a unit of nakharar cav and easily won. I don't know if the nakharar are the best cav in dei but they are certanly up there.

video below and apologies for quality I'm pretty new at fraps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvwHTi2T8w

hahahaha oh my god that is nuts, I would probably double all their related costs (upkeep and recruitment) if their stats aren't going to be changed

[LawL_LawL]

I get that the sharpshooters mauling cavalry is scary, but I learned that quality doesn't always win when I first found out heavy cavalry can't rout formed levies. Whilst you can question it all you want, there's an easy way to deal with everything in the game. Those sharpshooters fall apart in melee to any real combat unit that isn't mounted (inherently shafted, quite literally, due to the spear bonus). And they sure as hell don't seem to be very painful on Thorakitai-class infantry with decent armour and shield values. Half the archers inevitably die in the javelin volley and the rest just melt. Not to mention the AI can't manage it's troops for and half the time the archers will just stand there shooting till you've caught them in melee.

Slightly off topic, but whatever the issue may be... just make a post regarding whatever it is that seems off and leave it be. If it's genuinely a problem a lot more people will run into it and chime in as well, people will notice, and something will happen. When people go on rambling about how the mod is, and then cite one custom battle or one campaign battle (that they got wrecked by a potato for a CPU) that's taking it too far with the 'realism complaint.'

As long as everyone can be civil, everything works out. But when people start throwing stuff... hell I'm down to debunk some incompetence.

[raducul32167321]

Could you please point out were I was being uncivil ? Or were I rambled about how the mod is?

Is pointing out something I consider unbalanced in a thread about battle balance rude ? Am I attacking the mod or the moders ?

As for the balance issue, I guess that depends on the metric or criteria by which judge it.

If the criteria is “Can the player prevail against the AI” then nothing is ever unbalanced, you could give the AI an airforce sooner or later he’s going to crash it. So there is no point in ever bringing up the notion of balance.

If on the other hand the criteria is “Historical plausibility” and “how does an AI with these units fare against another AI” resulting in the same factions emerging preeminent game after game, then this seems to me unbalanced.

U can disagree, but accusing me of being uncivil or having a tantrum is a bit much.

[LawL_LawL]

Could you please point out were I was being uncivil ? Or were I rambled about how the mod is?

Is pointing out something I consider unbalanced in a thread about battle balance rude ? Am I attacking the mod or the moders ?

As for the balance issue, I guess that depends on the metric or criteria by which judge it.

If the criteria is “Can the player prevail against the AI” then nothing is ever unbalanced, you could give the AI an airforce sooner or later he’s going to crash it. So there is no point in ever bringing up the notion of balance.

If on the other hand the criteria is “Historical plausibility” and “how does an AI with these units fare against another AI” resulting in the same factions emerging preeminent game after game, then this seems to me unbalanced.

U can disagree, but accusing me of being uncivil or having a tantrum is a bit much.

You should take a hint at the fact that I never specifically addressed anyone in a thread of about 7 or 8 people. It was a general comment aimed at the slow.

[raducul32167321]

You should take a hint at the fact that I never specifically addressed anyone in a thread of about 7 or 8 people. It was a general comment aimed at the slow.

If I took it the wrong way, I apologize

[KAM 2150]

That is why I did normal battle, not 1v1 In 1v1 you won't try to hide your archers and AI will not shoot because of skirmishing mode on, so they will just fallback on sight. When we are shooting at those Nakhar till the melee, we inflict HUGE damage damage from the close fire.


About your test, I did the same and had the same reasult. but...

When I or you play as those Archers vs Nakhar we win with small losses, yet when I played as Nakhars vs Persian Sharpshooters I lost one, ONE, Nakhar.

Here are the videos:

Nakhar (me) vs Persian Shooters, as you can see I lost one rider and routed those pesky archers in few seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whxZ0...ature=youtu.be

Persian Shooters (me) vs Nakhar (AI) - same reasult as yours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60_O1xOSM3w

(I just uploaded videos so they might not work, give them few minutes)

As I wrote, they just cost to low, so AI can field masses of them and with big numbers even AI can slaughter with them.

Also their damage might be to high, but I had no problems with fighting army that fielded lots of them. Ok, I might have some problems, but not "I-gonna-lose-this-battle" problems.

[raducul32167321]

I agree It's the cost and the numbers that will give you headaches.

I only lost one battle against them, the first time I met them and was amazed by their performance. But from looking around at the eastern rosters I don't think this is the final version, they don't seem to have overhauled them yet, I'm sure it will come in the future.

In the meantime take my advise and if you plan to go east, go early before they get them, otherwise be prepared for a slugfest

[Ascaron]

When I or you play as those Archers vs Nakhar we win with small losses, yet when I played as Nakhars vs Persian Sharpshooters I lost one, ONE, Nakhar.

1. You had your general in your unit
2. sharpshooter unit did hardly shoot
2. sharpshooter unit ran into melee

You guys should do the test with an enemy army of 12 sharpshooter +other elites (how I faced the AI sharpshooters)
If you are not facing a ton of elites yourself you will hardly be able to handle those guys -which is historically stupid

I am not complaining about the balance of the mod, but this force me to field all elite armies or lose plenty of battles and that's something I don't want.

[KAM 2150]

And that's what I did in my first test. Army vs Army.

I also wrote why my nakhars won so easy

[filmfixed]

I think I read somewhere we will be getting stack limits for units in 0.8 so if that comes to fruition then these units could easily be balanced by say only being able to field 2-4 of them in each stack

[wrcromartie]

@KAM - nice idea, +Rep.