Announcement: Europa Barbarorum II 2.3 released!

[Hrobatos]

This mod is beyond amazing!

[Bossc]

Hey everyone, recently getting back into TW after a few years of not playing them (and seemingly the old account I used have on TWC no longer exists!) Thought I'd try out EB2 because I played a lot of EB1 back in the day.

I apologize if this has been answered but some googling has rendered me nothing so far so; I can currently only game on a laptop which only has 1 drive. All of the material for moving the M2TW steam installation assumes you have multiple drives so currently, none of the tutorials actually work for me. Is the only solution here just reinstalling steam into a different folder?

[Domaje]

Hello Bossc, I never tried the tutorials you talked about, but when I installed EBII I had to uninstall and reinstall Steam (I opted for C:/Steam). It was a pain for some hours, but at least it worked like a charm after that. If you do not have a lot of games installed in Steam, it is a good solution, if not the only one.

[Septentrionalis]

Hey everyone, recently getting back into TW after a few years of not playing them (and seemingly the old account I used have on TWC no longer exists!) Thought I'd try out EB2 because I played a lot of EB1 back in the day.

I apologize if this has been answered but some googling has rendered me nothing so far so; I can currently only game on a laptop which only has 1 drive. All of the material for moving the M2TW steam installation assumes you have multiple drives so currently, none of the tutorials actually work for me. Is the only solution here just reinstalling steam into a different folder?

Hello Bossc, I never tried the tutorials you talked about, but when I installed EBII I had to uninstall and reinstall Steam (I opted for C:/Steam).

Hi Bossc, good to have you back playing EB and welcome to the community! Wait a minute before you do anything as drastic as Domaje suggested. I may have a solution for you but I need to check something. No guarantees yet, though; you may have to do as Domaje suggested eventually.

[Septentrionalis]

I can currently only game on a laptop which only has 1 drive. All of the material for moving the M2TW steam installation assumes you have multiple drives so currently, none of the tutorials actually work for me. Is the only solution here just reinstalling steam into a different folder?

Alright, I think I got it. I was able to have two Steam folders on one drive by manually editing a file called libraryfolders.vdf in your default program files folder. So the possibility is in there, but for some reason the Steam client does not allow to do that. The Steam client has some remarkable shortcomings to it anyway, given how much effort has been put into its development. I frequently need to google how to do things in the client because there is often no intuitive path in the user interface. So you are not alone.

But I digress. My libraryfolders.vdf looks like this:

"LibraryFolders"
{
"TimeNextStatsReport" "1535997707"
"ContentStatsID" "98341811560285726"
"1" "C:\\Program Files (x86)"
"2" "C:\\SteamLibrary"
"3" "G:\\SteamLibrary"
}

Now that SSD drives are getting more affordable, I recommend that you invest in one that is dedicated to game installations. But as that is not always economically feasible, creating a new folder and specifying it in the .vdf file should allow you to have more than one folder to use. My installation is in C:\\SteamLibrary and running just beautifully. If you have trouble with that or experience crashes to desktop after battles due to memory management issues, give us a holler and we will try to help you in more detail.

[Septentrionalis]

Now that SSD drives are getting more affordable, I recommend that you invest in one that is dedicated to game installations.

Right after posting, I realized you mentioned having a laptop. So see if adding an address line to the .vdf file works for you.

[Sar1n]

Hm...sorry for asking about this again, but...is it worth starting a new campaign now, expecting it to take a month or two at least, or wait for 2.35?

[QuintusSertorius]

Hm...sorry for asking about this again, but...is it worth starting a new campaign now, expecting it to take a month or two at least, or wait for 2.35?

Play something you wouldn't normally play. We're in the final throes of tweaks and fixes, but that could still take a few weeks.

[Septentrionalis]

Play something you wouldn't normally play.

I recommend a timeless masterpiece called "The fight of the sumo hoppers". You need a friend for that (and you share a keyboard), but good times are guaranteed to ensue once you beat the initial learning curve.

[Sar1n]

I ended up starting Seleucid campaign. That promises to be shorter, and I prefer starting small.

By the way...is the morale for Hippeis Tarantinoi and Kurepos right? It's only 2, while those are supposed to be trained units, not a low cost skirmisher cavalry...yet I've seen Kurepos break in a battle going well without taking any casualties (and it was commanded by decent general on my side), just due to presence of scary unit, which makes no sense...

[Lusitanio]

What is the EBII team opinion about including Insubres, Bruttii (especially since they mobilised large numbers of troops, with some accounts saying 15 000 to support Annibal) and Campanian units in the future? I know from reading other posts that at least Campanian units are planned but what about the others?

[QuintusSertorius]

I ended up starting Seleucid campaign. That promises to be shorter, and I prefer starting small.

By the way...is the morale for Hippeis Tarantinoi and Kurepos right? It's only 2, while those are supposed to be trained units, not a low cost skirmisher cavalry...yet I've seen Kurepos break in a battle going well without taking any casualties (and it was commanded by decent general on my side), just due to presence of scary unit, which makes no sense...

They have higher morale than those low-cost skirmishers, and avoiding a fight with a "scary" unit is sensible behaviour on their part. Note they come back when they're out of reach of those units, which is one of the design intents of giving cavalry lower morale. They rout easily, but rally and return.

What is the EBII team opinion about including Insubres, Bruttii (especially since they mobilised large numbers of troops, with some accounts saying 15 000 to support Annibal) and Campanian units in the future? I know from reading other posts that at least Campanian units are planned but what about the others?

There are more Campanian units, but no plans for Bruttians. There are some other Cisalpine units planned.

[tomySVK]

Play something you wouldn't normally play. We're in the final throes of tweaks and fixes, but that could still take a few weeks.

Ptolemies

Anyway thanks for great news and for all the hard work! I really like the previewed updates

[QuintusSertorius]

We have a battle playtesting mission for anyone familiar with editing the EDU (and not just for one person, the more the better).

For 2.3, we removed the prec attribute from a host of melee infantry units because of a freezing bug whereby units would stand there doing nothing in the act of loosing. Our fix was to turn those units into non-skirmishing "skirmishers". However, this created a new problem of charges being nerfed - when ordered to charge, those units would stop at charging distance and switch weapons before actually carrying out the charge. We've learned the removal of prec may also have caused the widely-observed problems of phalanx infiltration.

So what we need is feedback on a compare-and-contrast between the two setups - how things are now, and how things would be if we restored prec. 1v1 isn't useful feedback, it needs to be at least 3v3, with the general not participating (one way to do this is to make them a unit of levy archers).

They way you switch a unit back to prec is to add prec to the stat_pri_attr line. So with the Camillian Hastati, this:

stat_pri                20, 0, pilum, 60, 2, thrown, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 0, 1
stat_pri_attr           no

Becomes this:

stat_pri                20, 0, pilum, 60, 2, thrown, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 0, 1
stat_pri_attr           prec

We'd like feedback on how often units (especially the AI) freeze and how much battles are impacted by better charging for those units. Also whether it has a meaningful impact on phalanx infiltration by those units.

[Baharr]

Hi QS, I'll run some tests tomorrow and post my results here!

[Sar1n]

You wouldn't happen to have test EDU ready here?

[Hellenikon]

I have done several (7 or 8) custom battles with marian cohorts x5, versus phalangitai x10, to test if the infiltration would happen. Reduced the mass of the cohorts to cap at 1.2 like QS mentioned previously, and gave them the prec attribute.
The cohorts fired their pila and then charged without issue, most of the time. However several units got stuck into the "reloading" animation while in melee, i believe this happens when there is some projectiles remaining (when they fire, it isn't 100% guaranteed that all the soldiers spend their ammo.. some do the animation but don't shoot), and AI gets confused trying to unload the remaning ammo. Of the 5 cohorts, around 1 always had this issue, the rest worked without problem.
I observed a significant improvement in cohesion, in that the phalanx formation remained whole instead of being completely pushed back and disrupted by the cohorts (this was the behaviour without prec). Still, the romans were able to bypass the sarissa wall for the most part as combat ensued - nothing like in RTW where the units in front of the phalanx would be pinned down at a distance.

The second test i did is the same but lowering the mass of the cohorts to 0.2 (from 1.2), as it was suggested could improve phalanx behaviour. The behaviour was similar (one or two units got stuck in "shooting" stance), but the phalanx remained whole for a lot longer, as the romans had a lot more problems getting into shield striking distance. After a few minutes they got in anyway, but in general it seemed like sarissa acted more as a wall. Increasing the mass of the phalanx wasn't very noticeable, instead reducing the mass of the cohorts is what i noticed helped the sarissa wall perform better.

[Kull]

Do NOT make any other changes aside from setting the "stat_pri_attr" to "prec" AND ensuring that the ammo level is "2" (not 1). When you do, look for any instance of "frozen" units owned by the human player as well as those controlled by the AI. All your test battles should have AT LEAST 4 units on each side, although more is better.

[LusitanianWolf]

I've done a few tests using the prec attribute and for the most time it appears to work fine. I noticed only once a unit (Thureopheroi under my command) taking a freese before a second voley (after melee) but don't seem to be nothing worrying. Also Phalangites sometimes seem to get a bit messy (especialy if they are attacked when moving or in phalanx vs phalanx battles) but they do their job pretty well. 4 unit of unsuported Pandotapoi Phalangitai won in a head on clash agaisnt 4 units of thureophoroi (in medium dificulty) and 3 units of Phalangitai (supported only by 2 units of toxotai, 1 General BG and 1 of Xystophoroi) managed to hold a much bigger gallic army long enought for the cavalry to get rid of enemy cavalry and do the Hammer work (hard dificulty).
I'm enjoying the results of the testing so far.

[Baharr]

I ran two tests today, both 5v5 Polybian Principes vs. Phalangitai. Nothing was changed except for the Principes' stat_pri_attr being changed from thrown to prec.

I was Rome in the first battle, vs. AI Macedon. I was Macedon in the second battle vs. AI Rome.

In both battles the Principes demolished the phalangitai, which surprised me. With prec, the Prinicpes charged much more cohesively, but they did much better in the first battle since the AI's phalanxes were presumably not set to guard mode and everything quickly turned into a fairly blobby melee. None of my units froze.

In the second battle the phalangites did a little better (guard mode and received the charge) but were still ultimately defeated. One AI Principes unit began to charge at one point, changed its mind, decided to attempt to fire pila, did nothing instead (reloading bug, I'm assuming), and then abandoned all that and decided to charge - I don't know if the BAI gave the unit new orders or if somehow the bug resolved itself.

Regarding phalanx infiltration - against an AI phalanx, this is difficult to measure, as they don't seem to use guard mode and thus blob into a melee regardless. However, my phalanxes, when fighting AI Principes, managed to hold the line (for a time) and fight formation-to-formation, mostly, with the exception of one random phalanx unit which was completely penetrated right down the middle by Principes who almost split it in half. The four remaining ones didn't experience this.

Finally, unit cohesion and in particular charge cohesion seems dramatically improved for both player and AI units with prec.