First Impressions

[Didz]

As you may have read I've taken a considerable interest in the development of this MoD, and the original research that Kaunitz undertook which inspired JaM too embark upon it's development.

The strange thing is although I did conduct a play test of the original Kaunitz Mod I have never actually got round to trying out Empire Realism. I think at the time of the original launch I was in the middle of my 'Didz Plays Prussia' video and by the time I'd finished that things had moved on and I was playing something else. So, anyway I finally decided to download and install Empire Realism 4.4 yesterday, and I have just completed a quick battle (Austria v Britain) to see how the land battles play.

WoW! Epic or what. I very nearly lost. At one point the British had managed to outflank my line on both flanks and my line had become a bit more of a box. My right flank gave way completely and I lost two battalions and horse artillery battery in the rout. I managed to stall the enemy by a desperate charge with my Cuirassiers, which fortunately caught their outflanking force in it's flank before they could reform after pursuing my infantry and that bought me time to form a new smaller box with a refused flanks to face them.

A couple more well timed charges from my Cuirassiers saw their flanking force on my right in a general retreat, and I was able then to restore my line on that flank and begin to swing round to threaten the flanks of their main battle line in the centre. My general galloped after the routing infantry and artillery and managed to rally the Horse Artillery battery and a battalion of Jagers, who were carefully moved back into the line.

Unable to break through my light infantry screen on the left and having taken heavy casualites from skirmish fire the British attack stalled, though I could see through the smoke that they were bringing up their artillery now to provide extra close range firepower. Time was short and I needed to secure victory before they could recover the initiative. Once again my Cuirrassiers were moved forward carefully moving to outflank their line, whilst the light infantry were moved forward to pin them in position with skirmish fire. The Cuirassiers began their final advance to the charge, but it never even closed, seeing the cavalry advancing on their flank the British broke and fled, and the panic spread along their line.

Soon their entire army was in flight except their artillery. The Cuirassiers charge was redirected against one horse battery and overran it, the other was taken at the bayonet by two battalions of Jager.

Victory! but it seemed like a close run thing, even though the final casualties were about 350 to 1,150. Most of those were men cut down during the pursuit.

So, well done JaM I was impressed, and I'm interested to see what you've done with the naval and campaign aspects. I have a feeling this is going to be a lot more challenging than I'm used to.

[Mattias Tannhäuser]

More posts like this and maybe we can finally see the next version of mod with new AUM. Quick battles are not a challenge, but the campaign itself is. If only JaM forgot for a moment about Rome 2...

[Didz]

I've played the first few turns of a new French campaign, and have already noticed a lot of differences. Louis XIV and his ministers are not a bunch of useless idiots as portrayed in the vanilla campaign, which reflects more accurately France status as the dominant power in Europe at the time.

I am a bit puzzled how i build merchant ships though, so far they haven't appeared in my naval recruitment tab, though I do have privateers.

THIS IS JUST GETTING WORSE AND WORSE

I just got beaten by the AI in an even Naval battle, that has never happened to me before, and I still can't believe it. I had the wind gauge, I even had firepower superiority at several points during the battle, but those damned English ships just would not surrender. The only thing that did surprise me slightly was that the english ships have larger crews than the French, which I always thought was the other way round, but nevertheless I should have won. The shame of it beaten by the AI at sea.

Oh! another interesting thing I noted was that when you get beaten your population suffer a war weariness penalty. Just to rub it in.

[Didz]

I'm about seventeen years into a Maratha Campaign now, and it's getting really difficult. Troops are expensive, economic development is expensive, in fact everything is expensive and limited and I'm trying to annex the Sultanate of Mysore whilst fending off the Mughal Empire. I'm having to think a lot harder about every move, and I've had to disband troops on two occasions to compensate for recruitment elsewhere where a sudden crisis has developed.

There have been some surprises and I have a few questions:

1. Do troops cost more when they are on foreign soil?

I only ask because whenever I go on the offensive I seem to go bankrupt, even though I'm not aware of hiring lots of extra troops or anything.

2. Why do armed peasants cost more than trained troops to maintain?

I sort of assume that this is some sort of mechanic to stop the exploitation of massed low cost troops, but it creates an interesting dynamic. I was forced to conscript loads of local peasants to defend one of my cities from a Mughal assault. They did really well, in fact surprisingly well pretty much seeing the enemy off all by themselves, but I was then forced to send them all back to their farms because I couldn't afford to pay them.

3. Why do you need musket shot to fire a fort cannon?

I really like what has been done to improve the fort defences, but I'm at a loss as to why a man has to be holding a musket, and have shot in his pouch to fire one. Surely anyone ought to be able to fire a fort cannon, or strictly speaking they should fire anyway, as they ought to have their own crews as part of the garrison.

4. Running out of ammunition?

This is proving a serious problem on the new more realistic battlefields, and I'm wondering whether something needs to be changed. I think the amount of ammunition carried has been increased, but I'm even wondering whether it ought to be made unlimited. Not because the amount of ammunition carried was unlimited, but simply because I've rarely come across examples of troops running out. I suspect that most were resupplied from reserve ammunition wagons, which is something we don't have in ETW. I know that French artillery batteries had one caisson each filled with 10,000 musket cartridges for just such a purpose.

It's not a major issue except in forts, where running out of musket ammunition means you can't fire the fort defences anymore, which can be a bit embarrassing. On the battlefield I find I have to replace front line units when their ammo runs out, which is fair enough except that you can't send them to the rear to replenish.

[Mjarr]

1. Do troops cost more when they are on foreign soil

Unfortunately I have not played as Mughals in a long time so I cannot be any more specific here, but cavalry in general is pretty costly to replenish, and if you are using cavalry in very aggressive manner all the time it will show up in your bank account.

2. Why do armed peasants cost more than trained troops to maintain?

I believe it's meant to simulate that since you need to recruit people off from farms and such there are less workers to do work and thus you will lose money in the long run. In one of the old ER unit guides there was fairly reasonable explanation for it but right now I cannot find it to quote, and thus are best used only in temporary emergencies.

3. Why do you need musket shot to fire a fort cannon?

This is ETW issue regardless of mod in use I'm afraid.

[JaM]

I believe it's meant to simulate that since you need to recruit people off from farms and such there are less workers to do work and thus you will lose money in the long run. In one of the old ER unit guides there was fairly reasonable explanation for it but right now I cannot find it to quote, and thus are best used only in temporary emergencies.

yeah, exactly this - recruiting such unit has impact on your economy, so while you can call them into service quickly and cheaply, you dont want to have them in the field for long a it hurts your economy... American Militia is similar. you use them if you have to, but its better to use regulars long term..


regarding unlimited ammo, it is possible to enable it within game settings, therefore i didnt considered it as necessary

[Matt68046]

Is there a release notes on this mod? What are the major changes to the campaign, like turns per year, upkeep cost, money, ect.?

[JaM]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ire-Realism-IV

[Matt68046]

Im installing this for a second time, just wondering if it would be possible to know any other major changes you did, i guess im gonna figure out turns per year in a minute, but is it possible to use 40 stack units, is the there 4x per year, is cost to allow for larger armies, ect.

[JaM]

you can enable 40 units per army, but it will cause CTDs occasionally. from my tests 24 units is the max you can have without having issues. If I remember correctly, campaign should be 3TPY, but without winter season, as all wars were just not fought during that time anyway. And for costs, it depends on your economy. It is definitely possible to have large armies, you just need to build up your resources so you can sustain them.

[Matt68046]

Cant you just lower upkeep costs by half? I find it hard to believe that the entire army of france (i know its a game but still) consisted of One army of maybe 3,000 men plus 1000 colonia milita and a dozen or so ships. If you lower upkeep costs, or tell me how, i would so much enjoy this game. I have an i-7 3770k with Nvidia GTX, i think most people today have better computers than 2009 when this came out, if we can run larger more realistic armies, WHY NOT!

[JaM]

you can do it by editing the unit tables, in ER_main pack using PFM. It is not that hard actually. RIght now i dont plan on updating ER mod, as im still very occupied with R2TR Mod.

[Matt68046]

When i load Pack file manager (yes i have netframe 3.5) i get this error

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly
'Common,Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=null'
at PackfileManager.PackFileManagerForm..ctor(String[]args)
at PackFileManager.Program.Main(String[]args)

WRN: Assembly binding loggis is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some preformance penalty associated with assembly
bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].

[JaM]

what version of PFM you have? download the latest from R2 thread here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...a-improvements

and just switch the game to ETW. should work.