Why it was done like this ??

[Phalangitis]

+rep for the simpsons (and the yell)..They rule

[Jepekula]

Hippeis wos cav unit is unavailable for, I think, everyone, as it has nonsense as iti s a random fantasy generic CA unit, same as the generic "hoplites" unit....Hoplites from where ? Damn CA... lol

I can understand the idea behind the generic hoplite unit, seeing as the scope of the vanilla game is pretty large, and it would have no effective difference whether the hoplites were from Rhodes or Naupaktos, they'd be armed in the same fashion and they would fight in the same faction. If they had made unique units for every single Hellenic region in the game, they would have to make region-specific Celtic, Italian, Iberian, Eastern, Nomad, Germanic etc units, which would basically add up to hundreds of units which are basically the same. It would be increased work for little gain.
This does not apply for Hellenika, though, since the scope of the mod is much smaller, and the region specific units have mechanics behind them.

{this incoherent and tangential rant ends here}
E: nevermind, I briefly forgot that the map is from a DLC, which I haven't played at all without Hellenika.

[-MZ-]

I test the mod and i find the skin, the campaign , the strategy, and all the other mechanism are good... but all that ''decrease'' with the ''hidden stat'' because you need to knew the (armour or skill...) when the fight between (heavy vs heavy) or light vs light or even eastern spearmen vs medium hoplite or...... so you can make the mod ''complete'' with some add or fix

[Tenerife_Boy]

I test the mod and i find the skin, the campaign , the strategy, and all the other mechanism are good... but all that ''decrease'' with the ''hidden stat'' because you need to knew the (armour or skill...) when the fight between (heavy vs heavy) or light vs light or even eastern spearmen vs medium hoplite or...... so you can make the mod ''complete'' with some add or fix

A heavy beotian is same heavy as an athenian, same with lighter vs lighter for instance and same with the REST of the factions. Spartans are a bit step forward as you may know but not too much.(if you face them, read about how they were defeated during a couple of battles of this timeperiod and recreate that into the mod, it's perfectly doable!) A medium hoplite will win most likely always to any eastern unit. even a light one can match them. Pay attention to the terrain and omens, that's all you need to know.

This is the flavour of our mod: "Ancient generals didn't have a calculator and stats above their soldiers ". Keep that in mind and you will win always.

[Phalangitis]

I test the mod and i find the skin, the campaign , the strategy, and all the other mechanism are good... but all that ''decrease'' with the ''hidden stat'' because you need to knew the (armour or skill...) when the fight between (heavy vs heavy) or light vs light or even eastern spearmen vs medium hoplite or...... so you can make the mod ''complete'' with some add or fix

MZ please mate read my answers.. I have answered you here in post 12 (see below) that even if you knew the stats the outcome of the battle would be different depending on the terrain.So the stats are useless here. You will not gain anything from knowing them. Read below for 2 minutes to understand..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

@ -MZ- in the manual there is an example (see below) . So even if you knew the stats depending on the terrain you would have different outcomes. The stats could confuse you because when you see them you might think i can never winn this battle BUT if the terrain is suitable you can win. Check those HEavy vs Light battles in bold. One shows the kills in even terrain and the others in uneven. The stats would be the same in all cases.

"Glossary

H= Heavy hoplite
M=Medium hoplite
L=Light hoplite
ET =Even terrain
SUT=Slightly uneven terrain (like forests)
UT=Uneven terrain (like hills)

H Vs L
1) Kills : 39-2 ET
2) Kills :65-33 SUT
3) Kills :21-128 UT

H Vs M
1) Kills :87-52 ET
2) Kills :91-127 SUT
3) Kills :63-129 UT

M Vs L
1) Kills : 80-68 ET
2) Kills :67-42 SUT
3) Kills :68-106 UT "

[JCB206]

Pay attention to the terrain and omens, that's all you need to know.

Terrain always. I have to admit that I completely forgot about the omens. I will have to watch that more. I didn't see my soldiers breaking sooner or more than they should on any particular battle.

My Spartan Army won every battle but one, a draw. The timer (forgot to change it!) expired as I was killing the last enemy unit from all sides. I had about 15-20% casualties just took awhile (40 minutes apparently). It was the Battle of Mantenia I believe.

The biggest thing I noticed was the PO penalty for the Spartans "losing" a land battle! My territories started going to crap quickly! Well done! But two things...1) shouldn't it matter if it was a "close" defeat or a "decisive" defeat? It took me over a year to destroy that army because it turned winter and I had to sit there and when I went after it again, winter hit again and I was forced back into my towns. 2) Once I finally caught the army and destroyed it easily, the stigma didn't disappear immediately. Seems realistic that the Spartans would get a penalty for losing a fight, but is there a faster way to get rid of this negative faster?

I would imagine this will happen again in my Athenian campaign, but probably naval defeats.

[Phalangitis]

If there are small defeats and big ones a Spartan defeat in land is always somewhere in between. Biger penalty than ordinary defeat but easier to be removed. I mean by conquering a new region it is removed while this is not the case with other type of defeats where they are removed either by time OR by greater victories..(they regain their prestige by conquering again a new region). The same happens in sea for Athens as you correctly predicted.

[dmperu11]

Quick question. I am playing as Sparta and I am launching an attack on the city of Argos. The crazy thing is that it seems that the ballista towers are soooo overpowered lol. I almost have no units left by the time they reach the walls. 1) I know this mod aims for historical accuracy, so my question is, were the ballista towers as deadly and as accurate as they are in the game? and 2) Is there any way to lower the deadly power of the ballistas?

[JCB206]

JMO... Towers were not that deadly back then but sieges were very difficult. Very few sieges against walled cities were attempted successfully. The game is attempting to make sieges very undesirable. Argos, though not a walled city in the campaign map, was a major faction. You will take many losses trying to siege the city.

You have a better hoplite army. Attempt to catch an army outside the city with the garrison reinforcing. Roll up their line and use 2 light cav to run down the garrison. Then take the city.

[M@x1mus]

Also Argos has walls in the battle map, but we couldn't make them appear in the campaign map.

[Demokritos]

You just confirmed my impression that sieges are more difficult to pull off in Hellenika than in vanilla. Partly due to the towers of walled cities having such a long range and sharpshooting ability and the Hoplites being so slow to move. Head-on assaults are a no go. The option is to either starve the city into submission or prepare for the garrison to sally out.

Noticed also that the range of Greek names for the characters seem rather limited. Among half a dozen female agents that I've recruited for Argos (choosing the alternatives at random), for example, three were named Aglaonike. This could follow from the vanilla files, of course. Any plans to enlarge that name pool for greater variety and sense of a given character being more special (perhaps to some extent, regarding certain names, even faction-specific)?

[Phalangitis]

Yes indeed.Although we havent touched towers slow hoplitic speed does hinder the besieging army. Solutions are either to starve the city (as it was done in reallity and you also suggested ) OR if you have to attack then either call an ally to help and use his army as a pillow to take the tower casualties or gather cavalry, commanedr units close to the attackers. Those units increase speed and all accumulative effect plus the send a courier ability increases the speed of units to almost double valuse than the vanilla. It just needs heavy coordination. Keepo troops together , use skirmishers to "act as couriers" in order to decrease the send a courier time etc.. Another option is to lure an attack outside the walls in which the garrison will follow as a reinforcement party. This is also historical. You see the main reason of pillaging was to anger the farmers closed behind walls to exit and confront htem in the field of battle.
For Names yes the database is limited but at the end we were too tired to gather ans insert a bunch of nnew names and we left it as in vanilla. In future we may have a look on this also.
Thanks for all feedback.It is much appreciated.

EDIT in the manual in siege section there are described many ways to significally lower the siege holdout time but i guess you know about them

[Demokritos]

OK, good to know that you may look the names issue over later.

Thought I should mention a couple of other things.

The ability for (some) agents to assassinate counterparts have been disabled in this mod, right? And yet the AI seems to try to keep doing in this, reporting characters to have been murdered but showing them rise from the fall in bloodied garments on the campaign map. Is it supposed to be like this or can you do something about it?

The new UI in the battlefield mode makes it difficult to see the battle timer. It looks like a box of lighter background colour, against which the digits would appear clearer, is somewhat misaligned. It's the same for the arrows indicating choices in battle speed.

I also get the impression that the option to speed up the battle (like when you have to wait for the enemy to bring forth their reinforcements before they, as attackers, commence the battle) does not work anymore. Not even the clock for "fast forward" seems to go faster than that for "play". Don't recall having experienced this in vanilla. So some battles appear to take longer than necessary. Is it possible that Hellenika affects these speed options?

[Phalangitis]

FOr agents. THe ability has been altered. Champions can assasinate but not lure other agents to your cause. Dignitaries cannot assasinate but they are the best to "turn " an enemy agent to your side. Spies do a bit both but less succesfully than those above. Ai will keep trying but will not succeed and this is not that bad because it nerfs the agent in acceptable level (nerfs because some of Ai's actions are fruitless)

I agree about the Ui. I noticed that from the begining but since this was a work of Morfeasnikos and he is retired we kept it likje this to honour his work. After a while we can change it


Now for the speed up of units. We have done nothing towards this direction but i had a similar experience and let me tell you what happened.Before i upgrade my rig in battles with many opponents i was experiencing this also. Maybe due to processor limitations or cards. When i upgrated the issue stopped from happening. It is true that our variant meshes are heavy since M@x made many tricks that in order to be beautifull this made them a bit heavy for the pc..That's probably it i guess.

[Demokritos]

Yes, my rig is not top notch. Could perhaps explain the lag when trying to increase the battle speed, if M@x1mus has stuffed the variant mesh files full of goodies.

See your point with the agents and agree: don't mind them being nerfed a bit - enemy agents are swarming my cities. Also good to hear you have plans to change the battle mode UI.

Two other Qs have came up. Lately I have been attacked by two factions without them first having declared war on me or first getting a message about them having joined a current war against me. How's that possible? One faction that recently did declare war on me had a couple of allies, but none of them sided with that faction and those allies were not the ones that attacked me later anyway. So I find myself wondering where that came from.

The other oddity (that happen to follow shortly after the above) is that the influence of my party suddently dropped from 44% to 0% from one turn to the next without any large misfortune happening to the realm (other than the sudden enlargement of the war). In fact, the attacks from the new enemies had almost all been successfully repelled. Well, one 4-star general out on the sea with his troops were caught by the surprise attack and went to the bottom with most of his force, but a proper admiral swiftly retaliated by sinking both perpetrator fleets, one after the other. The party was still good after that first defeat at sea. So I have difficult to believe that this incident could somewhat belatedly make the whole party take a dive like that (not sure the general was even a member of that party).

[Mausolos of Caria]

Same here, I can increase battle speed on my computer, but not on my parent's laptop which I also use for TW when I visit them. So it's definitely related to your processor too and you might just never have paid attention to it before (so did I for a long time haha).

Also, in general, I am sure our team tries to help with all issues as soon as possible, but unfortunately we also have to keep in mind that the game itself has some limitations and problems the mod can't fix and does not really affect. Just saying

[Phalangitis]

For the undeclared attack can you remember when it happened? also can you remind me what faction you play? I ask because there are few situations were some scripted war declarations are happening and i may have not added texts for them

For the loss of political power i cannot explain it. We have touched nothing there..we only added some consequenses for low political power and we added some situations in whin=ch you gain power not loosing..

[Demokritos]

Same here, I can increase battle speed on my computer, but not on my parent's laptop which I also use for TW when I visit them. So it's definitely related to your processor too and you might just never have paid attention to it before (so did I for a long time haha).

If you can confirm the hardware issue, Mausolos, then it clearly rings to be true, even if I never experienced it before (i.e. I've played battles in R2 where I definitely could I speed up the pace of the event). Just goes to show the uncommon load of stuff M@x1mus crammed into those variant meshes for Hellenika, I guess.

Also, in general, I am sure our team tries to help with all issues as soon as possible, but unfortunately we also have to keep in mind that the game itself has some limitations and problems the mod can't fix and does not really affect. Just saying

Yes, of course, most issues with the game can be traced back to its vanilla state. I'm well aware of that. But when gamers playing a mod find novel issues, they need to ask where it comes from, in the hope of learning that there's an easy fix available. If there isn't, well, then that's settled. Nothing more to it than that. Not in my case.

For the undeclared attack can you remember when it happened? also can you remind me what faction you play? I ask because there are few situations were some scripted war declarations are happening and i may have not added texts for them

Yes, when I play a campaign, I like to take screenshots of the developments so that I can relive the best moments later. So I can inform you precisely that Argos was attacked without warning in the city of Mantinea by Koinon Akaion in 407BC, and at sea (near Argive territory on Krete) by Satrapa Sardis the same year and season.

For the loss of political power i cannot explain it. We have touched nothing there..we only added some consequenses for low political power and we added some situations in whin=ch you gain power not loosing..

I guess you've never heard of such cases for the vanilla game, either. Weird. There's no knowing how to prevent this from happening then.

[Phalangitis]

Again strange. No we have no scripts declaring war on Argos and at this date.I dont remember from vanilla but is there a possibility that they have signed a treaty with an enemy of yours and entering war without declaration?
PLease keep an eye on those and when i will fnally manage to paly a campaign i will check also.

[Demokritos]

No news of any treaties and I've checked the diplomacy status: these two factions have no allies (well, another faction, the other Satrapa, broke their alliance with Sardis after the latter's attack on Argos and then went to war against Sardis). The going to war without declaration seems unfamiliar in TW games.


PS. Regarding the larger names pool project later, please have look at the Persian pool as well, plus the names for Greek fleets, as I just had an encounter with fleets from Argos and Elis being named exactly the same.

BTW, while you're working on that project, kindly consider giving the Persians authentic names. The name by which a king of Persia became famous, Xerxes (or Kserkses in game), for example, was the Greek form of his real name, Khashâyârshâ. I find the real deal cooler reading, as it gives more character (different from the rest).