Poor balance and terrible battle AI

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Pikemen may work well against the AI, because they can fix units and delay melee contact. So that your cavalry and/or missile troops can kill them from behind. Against other players they are bad, because their sides are so vulnerable that they are too inflexible.

Any player that leaves his phalanx with flanks insecure deserves their loss. And the Mod is balanced against the AI - not against other players, because that's not how the Mod is designed.

[Aliquis]

Any player that leaves his phalanx with flanks insecure deserves their loss. And the Mod is balanced against the AI - not against other players, because that's not how the Mod is designed.

But the AI uses phalanxes too and you know how bad it is.

[CatoTheYounger]

Macedonian Phalangites work just fine two players. Players will always protect their flanks. I did have threee Macedonian armies against my twom Roman armies and was badly outnumbered in horse so gettign around them was almost impossible. Tough machup

[Aliquis]

A simple plan to deal with armies with phalanxes is to attack one side of the army. The phalanxes in the centre and other side can either watch or help and get attacked in the flank. You can't always protect their flanks.

[Fulvius]

1. Cavalry is too cheap and charges, especially from behind, are too powerful. I wonder how realistic it is ...

You should ask someone with horse in his posession to ride it at middle speed close to you (not ON you as it is happen in those battles).
After washing pants, you will very well understand how realistic is that powerful and devastating attack of horse riders from behind the infantry line. Until then - you may just believe me that cavalry in game is weakened a little in favor of balance.

[High Fist]

Oh god d'ja ever actually have a horse ran at you full pelt? It happened to me once when I was about 12, scared the outta me. Two retired race horses that lived over on the hill across from my house (which was across a river and a greater distance than it sounds), lucky they didn't ing flatten me. I guess I spooked them and they didn't like my presence.

Anyway, horses are scary when they're running at you. But they wouldn't charge full pelt into a mass of infantry - not the cavalry of the ancient world anyway. You as a rider don't want to charge a mass of infantry - as what is the cavalries advantage? Their speed, which makes them scary and hard to hit and hard to avoid. If they charge into a mass of men they lose they're speed. Whose afraid of horses just standing there? The rider can't get away and so they're chopped down. The riders of Rohan were unique.

[Darth Bane1]

Let's not forget that this fear factor was even higher, because in case of the cataphraktoi that the horse and the rider were both fully armoured. Also those riders wore often face masks, so you couldn't see their faces and they looked the same. Very notable by Parthian and Hellenic cataphraktoi.

[Alavaria]

Good thing our random Ekdromoi hoplites and thureophoroi (not intended for fighting horsemen!) can take a charge of super-heavy horse like champs.

Of course ironically they have more to fear, as these heavy horse are very capable in melee, of course using their unbreakable lances and whatnot.

[MacBlain]

I gotta agree that I'm pretty stunned by the performance of those hybrid light infantry units. I don't mind too much because I often find the AI protecting its flanks frustratingly well when he has brought several of them to the battle. They are classed as "light infantry" and the formation behavior sends them to intercept, and kee-ripes do they hold out for a while.

[Alavaria]

Yes, a critical first part of an attack is to get the AI to send out its flank guards, then you shoot them to death, and THEN you can flank and kill everyone in the battle line.

[Aliquis]

I hope you make a balanced version of RS II. Remove some units if that is necessary. An unbalanced game is a bad game.

[Aliquis]

I haven't visited this forum for a long time and just took a look if anything has changed. It seems that nothing has changed, which is unfortunate. Points 1 and 2 can definitely be solved by adjusting the stats of units and making different cavalry units for player and AI. Sure you would lose some units, but you already got a lot. I think I would start playing this mod again, if this would be done.

[dvk901]

But what IS a 'balanced' game? Therein lies the problem, because what is nicely balanced to one player, is not to another. Some complain that the AI is too weak...some too strong. Some say missile units and cavalry are too weak...some, too strong. It's hard to please everyone with a 'median' (which is what we tried to do), so that really leaves the personal preferences not reflected in RS2 for people to 'self-modding' the stats to their liking.

I for one think that Barbarian units in general are too weak on attack and too good on defense...but the problem there is that if you were to set them that way, they would lose battles constantly....it's just a matter of 'balancing the units themselves' so that they can stand 'toe-to-toe' with like units. We can't simulate the fury and rage, or the drug induced craze that some Barbarian units fought in\with. Nor can we accurately portray the unorganized chaos of formation and individualistic fighting style of the Barbs. RTW has only 'this stat' and 'that stat' you can use...there are no others.

Plain and simple, those 'in the know' about the workings of RTW would pretty much all agree that there is only so much you can do...even Rome2, for all it's 'newness', has the same problems as Rome1 (along with others that Rome1 didn't have).

[Aliquis]

But what IS a 'balanced' game? Therein lies the problem, because what is nicely balanced to one player, is not to another. Some complain that the AI is too weak...some too strong. Some say missile units and cavalry are too weak...some, too strong. It's hard to please everyone with a 'median' (which is what we tried to do), so that really leaves the personal preferences not reflected in RS2 for people to 'self-modding' the stats to their liking.

I for one think that Barbarian units in general are too weak on attack and too good on defense...but the problem there is that if you were to set them that way, they would lose battles constantly....it's just a matter of 'balancing the units themselves' so that they can stand 'toe-to-toe' with like units. We can't simulate the fury and rage, or the drug induced craze that some Barbarian units fought in\with. Nor can we accurately portray the unorganized chaos of formation and individualistic fighting style of the Barbs. RTW has only 'this stat' and 'that stat' you can use...there are no others.

Plain and simple, those 'in the know' about the workings of RTW would pretty much all agree that there is only so much you can do...even Rome2, for all it's 'newness', has the same problems as Rome1 (along with others that Rome1 didn't have).

You would be right if the balance of units was much closer. It can be that one way of balancing results in an ideal army of 6 cavalry and 14 infantry and another way 3 -17, but as it is now the ideal army would rather have 20 cavalry and no infantry. Then you know something is terribly wrong with the balance.

[dvk901]

The balance of the game is largely..out of necessity...based on players making common sense decisions when it comes to composing their armies. We did, IMHO, a pretty decent job of setting things up so that the AI composes its armies of a decent selection of units...missile, infantry and cavalry (which is one reason cavalry is so cheap. If you make it too 'realistically' expensive, the AI will not recruit it).

One good example of this is that during testing we had a fellow who was composing his Roman armies of ALL 1st Cohorts...then said it was too easy. Well, duh. What Roman army realistically had ten 1st cohorts? Another, a tester who was using armies of all slingers...claiming it was too easy to win every battle that way. So? What army in history was composed of all slingers? And yet, you do need to make a 1st Cohort and a slinger worth buying, so you give them appropriate stats. But that isn't so you can basically cheat and use them exclusively.

To counter your argument, I would say basically the same thing....what army during this era was composed of ALL cavalry other than a horse culture nomadic one?
So as I said above, 'balance' is a perception based on a lot of variables.....including player perception, the way someone plays, the attitude of the player (do they just want to win all the time, and therefore seek ways to get around the norm), or do they play with a more historical army composition.

A LOT of good people (modders) have done a lot of great jobs configuring stats to certain styles of play....but you can only go so far. If you make cavalry expensive (and believe me, we had heated discussions about this), then the AI will ignore it. This is because the AI has a built in hard coded preference for the most men in a unit+its stats+its cost. It is a 'value based system, and if the AI doesn't see the value of a unit, it will never recruit it. This is the case with cavalry, because even at the SAME cost as an infantry unit, the AI sees that it has half as many men...ie, it is a bad deal.

As for being able to charge the backs of infantry...yes, a cavalry unit has that advantage. If you have 'about' 3 to 4 cavalry units in your army, and the AI doesn't have any cavalry you have to deal with, then you 'may' be able to charge them into the backs of infantry. But if you recruit 5-7 or more cavalry units because you know what they can do....well yeah, you will have an bigger advantage and have degraded your own experience with the game by stacking the odds. That is NOT a lack of balance, that is a lack of self-control.

Anyone who works on, or has worked on unit stats knows that the best you can do is balance stats based on a unit per unit basis, and a more or less balanced army against another balanced army. That's why ton of our battle testing was done to ensure that AI armies were composed of roughly what a player 'should' have in his armies. But there is no way on earth to balance anything based on a player finding the most kick-butt unit in the game, recruiting it exclusively, and then wiping the floor with them. I don't 'care' if people do that, and have fun doing it. Great. But don't then come back and say: "This is so unbalanced."

[Ovidius Empiricus]

One good example of this is that during testing we had a fellow who was composing his Roman armies of ALL 1st Cohorts...then said it was too easy. Well, duh. What Roman army realistically had ten 1st cohorts? Another, a tester who was using armies of all slingers...claiming it was too easy to win every battle that way. So? What army in history was composed of all slingers? And yet, you do need to make a 1st Cohort and a slinger worth buying, so you give them appropriate stats. But that isn't so you can basically cheat and use them exclusively.

And just to back up the point even more, it makes very little difference how powerful the unit is. It's not because cohorts or slingers are also overpowered, like cavalry. It's mostly because you're a human playing against a computer, and maybe you also have some really weird expectations that can't be met. Computers don't tend to do that.

Aliquis, you try spamming tons and tons of cheap foot skirmishers or whatever (or find people who've already done it). Test this hypothesis of yours, that it's actually the unit itself which is too powerful, and not your own actions or methods or playstyle. Your choice of spam, whatever it is, doesn't need to be very good at all. Your bank will obviously be able handle an enormous number of them, because they are cheap and that apparently is a concern for you (even though money is easy to come by in this game...). With enough units, a good player could win handily against just about any army the AI could throw at them, since it's easy to figure out ways of using your spam units appropriately (given the different kinds of unit there are), while the AI has a very hard time (or no chance of) figuring out how it's being tricked or manipulated. Surround them with eight stacks full of skirmishers (etc.) if need be, and it's not a challenging game anymore. Whatever your choice of spam, it would be more efficient than you probably expect, just based on this this strict kills/denarii type of calculation we're supposedly meant to be doing. Maybe it's even optimal play, economically speaking, to use the worst and cheapest unit in the game, whatever that is.

But nobody should seriously expect the game to be played that way. You're not running an economy, so it's not simply about finding solutions to an optimization problem like that, or however you want to think of it. You're playing a game that's meant to fun/interesting/challenging/beautiful, maybe even educational about a real historical setting. And I just don't see how it's possible for it to be "balanced" for all of the possibilities at once, since spam clubmen armies aren't spam slinger armies, nor are they spam 1st cohort armies or spam cav armies, none of which is anything like the more diverse sorts of armies that you could use if you're playing the game closer to the way it's intended. It's not just that there are an enormous number of possibilities (although there are) which makes this balancing job difficult to do -- you simply can't do that for all of them at the same time, because that would be mathematically impossible and contradictory. So, there will be lots of whacky ways to exploit the stat distribution, no matter what distribution the game happens to have (except I guess a totally flat and boring one, with every unit being the same).

Of course, if you had something that's reasonably specific, like "this unit of cavalry is way stronger than some other cavalry unit than it ought to be," then that's actually something a person could do something about. I mean, you could just change a few stats yourself without much trouble, even if the mod doesn't do it officially. But this extremely vague "it's unbalanced, they're all too strong, and I can spam them, so I'm not even playing the mod by the way" type of thing just isn't going to be helpful to anybody.

[Aliquis]

I am not really the type of player who does a lot of roleplaying in games. I understand that this mod is more suited for those players, but even they should notice that those few cavalry and slingers in their armies are a lot stronger in this mod than they should be. I don't make armies based on historical accuracy, but based on what units I like and what works well. I would love it if an army composed of a single type of unit has got a serious downside. Right now you can attack their infantry frontally with cavalry to fix them and then use cavalry to attack them from behind. You can solve this by either making cavalry less effective in sustained battle or making their charge less effective, especially from behind.

[Alavaria]

Really, when it gets to the point where you don't need pikemen because all your musketmen have stuck long knifes on their guns it's troublesome.

But I somehow can't believe that slinger- or skirmisher- armies actually work. Well I theorized it was possible (at least for some of the skirmishers with decent shield etc, like longshield skirmishers) but it never struck me as actually field-battle capable.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

But I somehow can't believe that slinger- or skirmisher- armies actually work. Well I theorized it was possible (at least for some of the skirmishers with decent shield etc, like longshield skirmishers) but it never struck me as actually field-battle capable.

Kind of a strange statement, considering how much you like to use them (or cheap thureophoroi, for instance). But I get that you have pikemen (also cheap ones) holding the line, as is traditional. Just don't have a line. It's quite simple, really, albeit very chaotic and ugly and bloody.

You would need to micromanage them in the battle more than you might be used to (pausing a lot), so they can avoid some of the more devastating (but totally predictable) attacks. And I don't mean you won't see heavy casualties in some cases, just that they would be cheaper to replace or retrain than heavy infantry (the only ones that aren't considered "too cheap"). And you can afford to have a big ugly horde of them that vastly outnumbers and engulfs the AI. So, never mind the casualties and just fire away from all directions. Their expensive units will die (or rout), no matter who it is, while your cheap units are dying. Admittedly, because of their range and mobility and amount of ammunition, archers or horse archers are probably better for this than slingers, and javelin skirmishers are worse. That also depends on which faction you're fighting I guess. It is still a viable (but ridiculous) way to play the game, just like spamming heavy cavalry. (Which are also cheap, the reason being that the AI and not you needs incentive to recruit any of them at all.)

[Grimbold]

I am not really the type of player who does a lot of roleplaying in games. I understand that this mod is more suited for those players, but even they should notice that those few cavalry and slingers in their armies are a lot stronger in this mod than they should be.

They're not overpowered. If you attack the AI from the front, they wont do anything. Do it from the back and you'll ravage the enemy. That's not being overpowered, that's tactics.