Ideas For RSIII - Garrisons, Armies, Battles

[sturnado]

I originally posted this in the sub-mods forum, but I think this would be better here. If a moderator sees this, would you please delete the post in the sub-mod forum? Thank you.





Hello all - I know a very little bit about modding Rome I, and I'd like to discuss a few thoughts I had. (For example, I know how to edit unit stats or change faction names/colors, stuff like that).



Faster Battles:

I don't see much in the way of thoughts on how to speed up battles. In RSII, battles take way too long - it's not that they're difficult, victory is almost always a sure bet, but nothing ever seems to route. I'll have an enemy force getting hit on all sides, and even their levy troops won't break quickly. This not only makes things tedious, it also isn't particularly historically accurate from what I know of warfare at the time.

What are some ways this could be addressed? I know of a submod for the DEI mod for Rome II that alters combat in very interesting ways, I'm assuming by using some scripting. It makes morale highly dependent upon fatigue, for example, and also upon the number of troops that have been lost by that particular unit. One unintended side effect of this method is, when you have an army that has some injured units, and it enters battle, all the injured units start off with a reduced morale from the get-go.

I don't know anything about scripting, but I was wondering what your thoughts would be on reducing unit morale across the board, reducing the defense skill across the board, or some methods to increase lethality of all units across the board. Ultimately, I'm thinking reducing the battle time to about 10 - 15 minutes per battle would be much more reasonable than the 30 - 45 minutes it currently takes.



Garrisons:

Is there a way to reduce the garrisons added by RSII? Not eliminate them entirely, but reduce them so that I don't start besieging a city only to, one turn later, be facing a numerically superior army of elite infantry that magically appeared out of thin air. Another method I thought of was to specifically script the types of units created automatically by the garrison. For example, instead of 15 units of PCP-injected giant barbarian ax murdering lunatics covered in woad appearing, you could instead have 6 units of levy infantry (dependent upon that faction), 4 units of the cheapest archers, 4 units of light skirmishers, etc. Something more along the lines of how I would imagine a city militia would appear during this time period.



Endless Army Spam:

I play on 1 turn campaigns as, in my experience, 0 turn campaigns are endless battles from start to finish. I love fighting the battles in this series, and I always have ever since I first stumbled upon Shogun I when I was a kid, but endless 30 - 45 minute battles isn't enjoyable, it's just tedious.

No matter what faction I play, it seems I always wind up fending off stack after stack after stack of enemy armies, which I'm forced to fight manually since auto-resolve is dicey at best, and before I know it I've spent 5 hours to go through as many turns in the game.

What type of effect would doubling the upkeep of every unit in the game have? Would the AI go completely bonkers? What are some other ways to prevent the army spam?



Thanks for your time.

[20ninescene]

Well I agree with most things you said, the only problem with your first point is that as far as I know you can't script morale except for historical battles. What I did when I rebalanced the EDU stats is reducing the morale of all units (but not as low as in vanilla).

[dvk901]

Well, here's the deal......and it's something everyone should understand about RS2. RS2 was made and developed very late in the RTW modding era...in fact it was one of last ones made. So most of the people who worked on this mod had had a lot of experience playing almost every other mod out there for RTW. And to a man, we wanted something that was very different. In fact, one of our motto's was: "I want to play this mod...and be able to lose! Or, at the very least, have the intensity of feeling that I might lose."

That's a tall order for a game that basically gives the player all of the advantages, whilst the AI has a penchant for being dumber than a brick. But we looked for ways to make this mod hard.

Another thing is that most of the developers, myself included, have no problem playing campaigns that last for months....even over a year. We just love the game, play as we see fit, and aren't in hurry. But I realize that everyone doesn't play this game that way...so we have diligently offered alternate ways to play the game. The next patch will include yet another alternate set of EDU stats that will probably be more to the likely of the 'shorter battles' crowd. They will be called 'New RS2.8 Stats', and they include what a lot of people have asked for. They were created by the fellow above: xXxXxXxEmo4everxXxXxXx.

As far as Garrison scripts, there are already several different options there, ranging from less emergency with garrison, less emergency with less garrison troops, to less emergency with no garrison troops.

[sturnado]

Does the BAI work like Rome 2's BAI, where it issues orders to units based upon how quickly they completed the previous orders?

I haven't experimented with this on my own, since Rome 2 without mods is a horrible game, but I have read discussions on the DEI mod forums and sub-mod forums about battle orders.

Basically, slowing the battles down makes the AI even worse, while speeding battles up makes the AI far more capable for whatever reason.

Is there any similarity between that BAI and Rome I's?

[Alavaria]

Does the BAI work like Rome 2's BAI, where it issues orders to units based upon how quickly they completed the previous orders?

Shouldn't be the case. If anything the AI is incredibly passive about using units.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

This not only makes things tedious, it also isn't particularly historically accurate from what I know of warfare at the time.

What are some ways this could be addressed?

Just my own point of view here....

One thing that's fairly historically accurate about it is that you have some time to maneuver and make some reasonably sophisticated strategic or tactical decisions in a battle. That is, skirmishers and other missiles are useful, you can flank, you can bring in fresh units to reinforce weak spots, you can have them withdraw, etc. -- and you have some opportunities to change your mind about any of it if you see the AI is thwarting your plans. If units are routing too quickly while the lines meet face-to-face, because you're expecting a superior infantry force to immediately dominate an inferior one, there's a very short window of time (if any) to do those things. Of course some infantry did have better training and equipment than others, but it's not like there was such a disparity between them that they generally prevailed all on their own, without support from others who could provide such strategic/tactical advantages.

What you can do, if you don't have all day to fight a battle like historical armies did (and we're not actually talking all day in the game, just some minutes), is you can use the fast-forward buttons in the game to speed things up. Battles don't take long that way. If you wanted to spend the time enjoying the spectacle of them grinding through each other, or if you needed the time to maneuver units in various ways like I said above, then going at regular speed makes that kind of control well within the realm of possibility (without having to overdo it and micromanage, by pausing constantly). I like that you can really act like a commander who is giving some fairly sophisticated orders as the battle unfolds and the situation changes -- because there is enough time for the situation to change. But if the pace is too fast, then the game is less flexible/useful for people who want to do a lot of things like that. I mean, even pausing all of the time wouldn't work, as you might think, because that won't be making adjustments to the ratio between the speed of units moving around and the "speed" at which they rout/the battle ends. I'm sure it could be shortened somewhat before any of that goes completely out the window, but I think it ought to be enough of a grind so that everybody has a reasonable amount of time to do their thing and have some role to play in the army.

Ultimately, I'm thinking reducing the battle time to about 10 - 15 minutes per battle would be much more reasonable than the 30 - 45 minutes it currently takes.

Those are your estimates for a full-scale battle at regular speed, right? With the option of going at double or quadruple speed (or whatever the multiples are), that doesn't seem very long. And with smaller battles or those where one side is significantly outnumbered or gunned, that will give it an even less epic flavor. Siege battles can be kind of tiresome sometimes because of how capturing the square works, and I do understand that you don't have that much time to spend playing a game. But I'm worried that making them too quick will remove too much of the strategy and tension and confusion that are a big part of what I like about the battles. And like dvk901 said above and others would attest, it doesn't bother me that I'll spend my time playing "the same game" over several months. I'm actually pretty satisfied that it takes me longer than a week or a month or so, in order to win a campaign. It gives me something to go back to whenever I have free time, because I haven't gotten that far (in game time), so there's still plenty of interesting stuff to do. I mean, that's still not much time compared to the hundreds of years of history it's representing, but making the pace of the game even faster seems like it might take something out of the experience for me.

[dvk901]

I have found, in my own experiences playing RS2 and variations thereof, that battles that proceed too fast do indeed take away the 'pleasure' of formulating a plan, based on the foe you face, or using tactics to win a battle that is fairly evenly matched. It also tends to prohibit the AI from doing the same, as well as inhibiting its ability to recover units that have routed because there is little time for them to 'mend', so to speak. When we were working on these stats, I pretty much insisted that I 'liked' seeing units that broken and ran come back to the battle after a rest. And also, I 'disliked' seeing my units route...period. Since I play mostly as the Romans, it just gives me a bad taste in the mouth to see my Romans break and run....I want to see a 'Cannae' if they are going to lose...not their rear ends high tailing it for the trees.

I have played battles with both the default RS2 stats and others that speed things up, and one thing I notice is that a 15-20 minute battle between two large armies really isn't sufficient time to have a very good battle. If you include the time it takes for the armies to actually meet, then you have a very short time to actually get a feeling for what's going on, and what the AI is going to do. Instead, the two armies clash, and then in ten minutes or so a large number of 'somebody's' units start running away. Not very rewarding in my opinion. As suggested above, I think it better to use the battle speed buttons to speed up the marching and running stuff...if you're so inclined, and to speed up the chasing of routing units. That can remove a good bit of time from a battle. But for me, well, I guess I get a bit of sadistic pleasure out of watching my Roman cavalry chase down routers....and I just like looking at the units themselves. Never get tired of it, actually. Maybe that's because I have a good appreciation for how many thousands of hours of work went into creating them!

I'm afraid I must disagree with the idea that the AI is 'smarter' in faster battles. Quite the opposite...our testing found that the RTW AI was a lot smarter than we thought...it just never had the time or proper environment to operate very well in Vanilla. Why is that? Well, for one thing, when we changed the environment to more realistic battlefield scenarios, we noticed immediately that the AI started taking advantage of trees and high ground to improve its position on the field. That was a bit surprising.....then again, not so much when you consider that almost all battlefields in Vanilla were just golf courses....flat, flat, and more flat. The AI rarely if ever had any 'high ground' to take advantage of...but it's impressive to know that the author of this AI had actually built that into the programing.

Another thing the AI will do...given the time...is attempt to screw up your nicely laid out formation plans by trying to flank you. Factor this into a forested area where it's hard to see, and you can find yourself with half your army on the wrong side of the field......so you end up scurrying and even panicking to get your forces over to a place where they can be of use.

Still another advantage of a slower pace is very evident in cases where AI reinforcement armies are involved. Given time, the AI will use a reinforcing army pretty cleverly...attacking you full on in the front with one army, and from the side with the other....or even from behind. But if you have stats that make for a very brief battle, and the AI's main army ends up running away, then the reinforcing army will quite often turn tail and run as well.

And, still another advantage of a slower pace.....the AI will make very good use of cavalry missile units to attack and withdraw, attack and withdraw, to faint and try to flank...in general, use the time to try different things to harass and intimidate you. So it is my observation that the AI in RTW is all the dumber when battles are too short.

[neep]

Does the BAI work like Rome 2's BAI, where it issues orders to units based upon how quickly they completed the previous orders?

I haven't experimented with this on my own, since Rome 2 without mods is a horrible game, but I have read discussions on the DEI mod forums and sub-mod forums about battle orders.

Basically, slowing the battles down makes the AI even worse, while speeding battles up makes the AI far more capable for whatever reason.

Is there any similarity between that BAI and Rome I's?

I don't know what the similarities are - I haven't played Rome2 and likely never will
As far as the runtime of battles, my perception is that the longer times allow the AI to develop some nice strategies - much more than the vanilla version did.
With RS2 I see the AI actually more fully deploy cavalry on the wings, trying to outflank me. I also see it responding ( at the very least it APPEARS to respond ) to my moves and switch from trying to outflank to a focused charge up the middle where my centre is now too thin and weak. Ten or fifteen minute battles wouldn't allow that style to develop.
I don't think the AI in RS2 is actually smarter, it's just given a little extra time to develop it's moves and have them play out.
RS2 has given me more palpitations than vanilla did, especially when going up against the Dacians and their cavalry heavy stacks. I've frequently been surprised, and impressed, by their tactics as the battles develop.

If a battle takes 'too long' because one is just grinding out an infantry vs infantry stab contest then perhaps a revision of tactics is needed.
Isolate or outflank an individual enemy unit; get it to route; have your cavalry chase down the stragglers while your infantry turns it's attention to the next enemy unit in the queue.
There are a few situations - taking an enemy city square - where your options are limited, but typically there are better tactics that could be deployed.
If I find myself in a grind situation I slap myself and re-evaluate my tactics since that suggests to me that I'm just being lazy and should look for a better technique. There's also an immersion aspect to that - I feel bad as a general that I allowed too many of my troops to get hacked up just 'cos I was lazy about how to win the battle. Plus, the penny pincher in me get's annoyed that I have to spend a lot more replenishing my overly depleted army.

[Alavaria]

If I find myself in a grind situation I slap myself and re-evaluate my tactics since that suggests to me that I'm just being lazy and should look for a better technique. There's also an immersion aspect to that - I feel bad as a general that I allowed too many of my troops to get hacked up just 'cos I was lazy about how to win the battle. Plus, the penny pincher in me get's annoyed that I have to spend a lot more replenishing my overly depleted army.

This is one reason why I love the levy pikemen unit.

Regardless of your low stats, or indeed being highly fatigued, the magical anti-infantry field generated by forming phalanx remains powerful throughout a pushing match (except against another phalanx)

It's almost humorous watching one's phalanx disintegrate when the AI just charges its own pike through, though. In that case, you really got to hurry some ranged units to the back.

[Prince of Epirus]

i dont know if anyone noticed it but major factions such as Seleucids , fight on multiple fronts (ptolomaics in the south , pergamon to the west and parthians in the east) same for the romans and others except for Carthage they have no threat to their borders except in spain so u can easily focus large armies directly on rome with ease
i propose a berber faction in africa or some additional tribe in spain that will create a conflict in a certain region to keep carthaginians frontiers at a certain degree of balance

[Legatus Legionarii]

I really do not want to see faster battles in RS2 for a variety of reasons, most of them being mentioned already by dvk. And at the moment, I am very happy with RS2's battle AI. In addition, for me the battles are the cornerstone of this game and if they last 30 minutes or longer, why not? I remember my first battles in Rome 2 and was so disappointed because everything was over in 5 min. That is why you can find many mods in the work shop making the battles longer now, because what is the point if everything is over quickly. Yes, the planning and thinking on the strategic map is equally interesting and rewarding and for me an important part of the game but the battles are supposed to be the decisive moments in your campaign which should determine if your are winning the game or not... Same goes for the old RTW. I played once one more time the old vanilla version and was so disappointed when the enemy was running away after the first pila exchange... Surely, nobody wants to have that back...

[Alavaria]

Pila were pretty scary, I guess...

It's funny to watch pila rain on a pike line and kill like 2 our of 243 soldiers in a unit.

[dvk901]

THAT is my one complaint about the default RS2 stats. In creating the settlements, I have fought scores of battles with various units, and seeing the Romans literally rain down pila on a couple units...ten cohorts and ALL of their pila....I've rarely counted more than 2-4 dead. And that's on large settings. Given the characteristics of this particular weapon, that's absurd.

[sturnado]

There's room for middle ground between five minute battles and forty five minute battles. Obviously I'm in the minority here, but on the off chance anyone reading this has Rome 2, I recommend downloading the DEI mod, and downloading Kam's experimental BAI and unit stat balancing mod. Battles usually run me about 15 - 25 minutes, obviously it will be less time if I'm fighting a smaller battle.

I don't mind playing with unit stats myself, however I do have a question for dvk. In order to achieve something like this, shorter battles but not absurdly short (five minutes is way too quick), would you recommend doing something like a flat -20% to morale across the board?

[dvk901]

Well, I suppose it's worth a try....can't really say what that would do with any surety. Or, you can wait for RS2.8, which will have 'xXxXxXxEmo4everxXxXxXx's' alternate EDU's that may offer the mid-range you are looking for.

[Alavaria]

THAT is my one complaint about the default RS2 stats. In creating the settlements, I have fought scores of battles with various units, and seeing the Romans literally rain down pila on a couple units...ten cohorts and ALL of their pila....I've rarely counted more than 2-4 dead. And that's on large settings. Given the characteristics of this particular weapon, that's absurd.

It's quite horrifying if they hit anything but pikemen though.

(Only on Very Hard battles perhaps) especially if they start throwing in a melee, I've had new units just smashed apart by point-blank pila throws

[DeathtoEgo]

@DVK901 have you and/or the team ever thought about implementing something like the Roman Leadership system in RTRVII, if your not familiar with it, it uses transferable ancillaries and traits for the cursus honorum, when a FM is eligible for an office he goes to Rome and gets an ancillary(or has it transfered to him) tribune, praetor, consul, etc. each office has its benefits and abilities, only consuls can lead armies in enemy territory without incurring the prohibitively negative traits that a FM without that office would incur. It's a really cool system, but it's pretty hardcore, and increase difficulty immensely.

[LoGaL]

About "long battles" ,in my opinion their are okay as they are, actually they are too long only if you are not good at fighting them
The only thing that concerns me is the endless spam of stacks( and i play 1 turn campaign, i don't even want to think about 0 turn!):
when i pass the turn in my roman campaign i usually get attacked by at least 3 armies( in some cases even more, considering half stacks that the AI randomly throws at you) which means around 20-25 min each battle, and this is rather tedious, because
1) i have to fight each of them, or just spam autosolve
2) fighting 3 different battles against the same faction , AND against army compositions which are almost the same is quite repetitive
3) maybe i don't even have time to finish the turn, and i cannot simply quit the game and load it later, due to the fact that i must turn on the script
Overall, i feel that fighting a large battle ( or 3 repetitive battles ) isn't decisive at all, because 2-3 turns later 3 stacks show up again from nothing
This is especially boring when, in the beginning of the campaign( first 70 turns or something), one wants to play defensive in order to let the AI build up and provide a decent challenge later: The AI keeps sieging the border cities every turn, so it's all about fighting countless sieges ( which are waaaaaay longer)

[dvk901]

@DVK901 have you and/or the team ever thought about implementing something like the Roman Leadership system in RTRVII, if your not familiar with it, it uses transferable ancillaries and traits for the cursus honorum, when a FM is eligible for an office he goes to Rome and gets an ancillary(or has it transfered to him) tribune, praetor, consul, etc. each office has its benefits and abilities, only consuls can lead armies in enemy territory without incurring the prohibitively negative traits that a FM without that office would incur. It's a really cool system, but it's pretty hardcore, and increase difficulty immensely.

When we discussed the 'Cursus Honorum' long ago, we had had to make choices regarding how much 'player involvement' would or should factor in, and the effects that the system should\would or could have on difficulty, immersion, irritation, etc. We pretty much decided on a much more 'auto-pilot' system that was written by Calvin. That system simply works in the background, electing characters for office for a time, then promoting them on (or not), and ensures that only the offices that a certain class should get would be assigned to them.
The reason I liked this, in particular, was two-fold: 1. It could be a good teaching tool in terms of showing how the system really worked. 2. It would prevent the player from creating 'super-characters' by giving those characters things that they shouldn't have. The idea being, that the whole system would be more like it was in reality...you get what you get in terms of the leaders you have to work with. No fiddling with things or transferring things because you liked one character over another.

About "long battles" ,in my opinion their are okay as they are, actually they are too long only if you are not good at fighting them
The only thing that concerns me is the endless spam of stacks( and i play 1 turn campaign, i don't even want to think about 0 turn!):
when i pass the turn in my roman campaign i usually get attacked by at least 3 armies( in some cases even more, considering half stacks that the AI randomly throws at you) which means around 20-25 min each battle, and this is rather tedious, because
1) i have to fight each of them, or just spam autosolve
2) fighting 3 different battles against the same faction , AND against army compositions which are almost the same is quite repetitive
3) maybe i don't even have time to finish the turn, and i cannot simply quit the game and load it later, due to the fact that i must turn on the script
Overall, i feel that fighting a large battle ( or 3 repetitive battles ) isn't decisive at all, because 2-3 turns later 3 stacks show up again from nothing
This is especially boring when, in the beginning of the campaign( first 70 turns or something), one wants to play defensive in order to let the AI build up and provide a decent challenge later: The AI keeps sieging the border cities every turn, so it's all about fighting countless sieges ( which are waaaaaay longer)

I reduced income by 25%....hoping that will improve the Rome 1-turn game. But, I've saved the original EDB as an option for those that preferred it.

[sturnado]

Is there any way to allow every unit to be retrained back up to full strength no matter what settlement they're in/what buildings that settlement has?