Heavy Peltasts - Too Few Men?

[TheSavage]

Is it just me or are Heavy Peltasts underpowered compared to normal Peltasts? While their stats are better, a unit of Heavy Peltasts contains half the men (30 vs. 60), which means half the javelins being thrown.

Greek Peltast:
Men: 60
Missle Att: 17
Melee Att: 8
Def: 25
Mental: 14 morale, normal discipline, trained
Cost: 250/175

Heavy Peltast:
Men: 30
Missle Att: 17
Melee Att: 15
Def: 29
Mental: 18 morale, normal discipline, highly trained
Cost: 450/215

So basically, HPs have the same missle attack, significantly better melee attack (15 vs. 8) but still too low to make them very effective in melee, slightly better defense (29 vs. 25), and slightly higher morale and training. But with half the men, are they worth it? Should the men in HP units be increased to 40 or 50?

[dvk901]

I compromised and increased to 45.

[Wolfstorm]

Latest versions of my expansion have they renamed to Thureophoroi and their numbers increased to 60.

[Spartas Julius]

hehehe I did some changes into mine, and set several under number units closer to others, for example the sagitary or gallic archers, as well as the marines, with phoenic archers, and several units I switched units from 30 to 50, and missile units tear any army now I hate those athenian marines, thank god I'm ally with the greeks they had one too many.

I increased the number most ifnot all units of missile, except like velites or some that are already good, but incrased their recruitment and upkeep alot, same to the beserkers, incrased numbers as well as power, less defense but cost alot more to recruit as well as to upkeep. those guys need a full belly to go nuts .

So just go around seeing which units have not enough numbers, and change them on your own.

[Wolfstorm]

I gave my peltasts, heavy peltasts and equivalent cavalry skirmishers the hardy trait. The archers (and cavalry archers) dont have this trait. This is to stimulate the use of peltasts, and is more logical, given the reason they have to be closer to the enemy and as such, need a better stamina to run. Archers are more to be used on walls. I had used a lot of peltasts, they are very cheap and can do a lot of damage because of the armor piercing trait (archers dont have that). Latest battles I had put them into a column with four units, right behind the phalanx line, or at the front if theres enough grass to hide them.

[pcaravel]

Please help me, because I'm not familiar with modding.
How do you change unit numbers and give traits? Which files do you edit?

[Nellup]

export_descr_unit (located in the data folder) is the file you are looking for. Read all the stuff at the top of the file, then it becomes fairly self-explanatory.

[Spartas Julius]

^^^ what he said all the instructions are there, on how to add certain traits, but MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE ANYTHING, otherwise you might find your self installing everything from scratch.

[Brusilov]

Please help me, because I'm not familiar with modding.
How do you change unit numbers and give traits? Which files do you edit?

I prefer to play the game as it was delivered my the mods. Making a game do something you want it to rather than how it was intended means you aren't playing the mod anymore.

If a unit has less men in it it just means you may use them differently in game - don't expose them as much as you would a larger unit.

^^^ what he said all the instructions are there, on how to add certain traits, but MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE ANYTHING, otherwise you might find your self installing everything from scratch.

If you are ever changing any file (apart from 'preferences.txt') that is sound advice. Unless you're a cowboy.

[Nellup]

I prefer to play the game as it was delivered my the mods. Making a game do something you want it to rather than how it was intended means you aren't playing the mod anymore.

I prefer to have the game as I want to play it, this usually involves getting a mod which I like and editing it in minor ways to enhance my playing experience.
I haven't actually had to edit RS very much (I've only stopped brigands from appearing and tweaked a couple of traits). However for M2TW mods, such as Broken Brescent, I have modded far more extensively by giving everyone a slightly stronger economy by increasing trade across the board, increased everyone's movement to ~ RS levels and made larger changes to the traits.

I don't mean to lessen the achievements of any modders because, after all, I don't have the skills to make an entire mod to suit my preferences, but if I think that something would be better changed, then I'll change it.

[TheSavage]

I prefer to play the game as it was delivered my the mods. Making a game do something you want it to rather than how it was intended means you aren't playing the mod anymore.

If a unit has less men in it it just means you may use them differently in game - don't expose them as much as you would a larger unit.

It's not so much a matter of exposing them, but rather if they are even worth recruiting (when for less money you get twice the javelins with regular peltasts).

As great as the RS mod is when delivered, there are always going to be outright mistakes as well as inconsistencies and issues that the developers overlooked. In my mind, there's no reason why Heavy Peltasts shouldn't have almost as many men as regular peltasts. They do have upgraded protetion, but other than that aren't all that much different or better, and they cost more. Per man, a "Heavy Peltast" costs nearly triple a regular peltast, which makes absolutely no sense. I don't know what the developers originally intended, but in these instances I think it's OK to "fix" the inconsistency for my games.

[Squid]

Per man, a "Heavy Peltast" costs nearly triple a regular peltast, which makes absolutely no sense. I don't know what the developers originally intended, but in these instances I think it's OK to "fix" the inconsistency for my games.

While in this case I agree that the heavy peltast needs some work, you are looking at things incorrectly, it isn't the cost that is important, but the cost/benefit that is important. A legion costs far more per man than a town militia, but everyone wants legions in their armies and not armies of militia. It doesn't matter if there is an increased cost per soldier, but rather if the benefit you are getting is worth the increased cost.

[TheSavage]

While in this case I agree that the heavy peltast needs some work, you are looking at things incorrectly, it isn't the cost that is important, but the cost/benefit that is important. A legion costs far more per man than a town militia, but everyone wants legions in their armies and not armies of militia. It doesn't matter if there is an increased cost per soldier, but rather if the benefit you are getting is worth the increased cost.

In this case, it is not worth the increased cost. Heavy Peltasts have slightly better defense and morale, but otherwise they're the same. They don't have enough offense or defense to be used as melee troops, so it's still all about skirmishing. And because they have half the men as regular peltasts, they thus throw half the javelens and they're basically half as effective (although they will get killed more slowly due to slightly higher defense).

It totally makes sense for elite units, or those which can only draw on a very limited number of potential soldiers, to have fewer men per unit. But heavy peltasts are basically peltasts with a bigger shield and slightly better armor. The boosted stats result from better equipment, not some rare skill on the part of the soldiers. There's no reason why they should have only half the men.

[dvk901]

No problem with that....I changed everything I played in some small way...learned....and ended up doing this.

[Gotthard]

I suggested upping the heavy peltast to 90 myself as well, it works much better, and becomes a worthwhile unit to build. I've made that change in my game, along with some changes to the armored hoplite and royal guard for the greeks.

it's not that you shouldn't 'expose'a smaller unit as much, it's that it becomes a worthless unit. When a unit of 120 can do a better job than the 60, why build it at all, especially when it's costlier? Archers used to have the same problem before 1.5A, now they're a lot more balanced (albeit a bit weaker, but maybe I'm just biased... )

[Gotthard]

@TheSavage~
With so many units, and their balancer leaving sometime last year, it's hard for DVK to come up with changes. I ran a TON (100+) tests with archers that revealed inconsistencies with marines vs. archers. If you do make some changes to the units, let us know, it might be a unit that didn't have time to go through rigorous testing. Who knows, maybe your fixes will get included!

[TheSavage]

@TheSavage~
With so many units, and their balancer leaving sometime last year, it's hard for DVK to come up with changes. I ran a TON (100+) tests with archers that revealed inconsistencies with marines vs. archers. If you do make some changes to the units, let us know, it might be a unit that didn't have time to go through rigorous testing. Who knows, maybe your fixes will get included!

I did change the number of men to "50" for Heavy Peltasts on my game, leaving the unit the same otherwise. I'll let you know if I see any other inconsistencies.

[Gotthard]

Well there's no reason they should be less cost effective. If they have less men, they should be cheaper (although with limited slots available, the same cost effective unit with more men should be used of course), or have some other increased skills to compensate.

For example, 'levy' type archers might have 120 men, but 1/2 the attack of 'elite' archers, who only have 80 men. The levy unit would be equivalent to 60 elite men, so perhaps should be about 30% more expensive. I realize this is simplistic, as there are floor/ceiling effects in combat, as well as a general non-linear rate of return as stats increase, but there are justifications for less men if it's balanced correctly.