Cataphract attack values

**Camcolit** · September 09, 2008, 11:18 PM

Hi,

Sorry if this has been answered before - I couldn't find it in search, if anyone knows please point me to the thread. My question is what's the rationale for Parthian and Armenian cataphracts having 8 attack while Seleucid and Bactrian have 12? That's a huge difference - why so? Thanks.

**Camcolit** · September 10, 2008, 02:38 PM

Anyone?

**Quinn Inuit** · September 10, 2008, 07:52 PM

Hey, I only get to check this board in the evening on weekdays. Some of us have to work.

Anyway, you bring up a good question. I'm not sure why that is, but I suspect it's an error on my part. As I understand cataphract equipment, the correct attack value should be 11 for them all.

**Camcolit** · September 10, 2008, 08:23 PM

Work? Oh you mean doing stuff for money

. I've seen a little on TV. Thanks for the response - I hope it's fixed soon because I love my Armenian cataphracts and can't play if I know someone else's cavalry is better. Very nice work on the mod.

**Quinn Inuit** · September 10, 2008, 08:38 PM

I'm glad you like it!

It's easy to fix that. Just go into export_descr_unit.txt, search for space cataphract (or " cataphract" without the quotation marks), then change all of the first numbers on the stat_sec line in the unit entry to 11.

**Camcolit** · September 10, 2008, 10:33 PM

Excellent - I'll do that and some more tinkering.

By the way, do you or does anyone else know if there is an easy way to cap unit experience - at, say, 3 bronze chevrons. Or if there's no way to do that is it possible to just remove unit experience altogether. I wouldn't like to do that but I always found the experience system in RomeTW generally to be very unrealistic and an unfair advantage to the player.

For the unrealistic part, it allows a unit of levy hoplites to be as good or better than a unit of Spartans (no matter how experienced levy hoplites are, they're still levies, not Spartans, if they're that good they should go to Sparta and sign up - for another example, a crack roman legion with slightly improved weapons and armor should not have twice the attack and almost twice the defence as a well-trained fresh unit with good weapons and armor - incidentally the weapons and armor upgrade system is also silly. The experienced unit's main advantage should be better morale, not superhuman combat skills). Also, unit experience and armor upgrades benefit some units more than others, namely cheap/bad units and missile units.

A striking example of all these faults is this. Try a custom battle some Greek toxotes that are not upgraded. Try firing up a hill at some armored units - not very effective to say the least. Next, give them 9 chevrons. These are the best Greek archers of all time. Now they decimate everything. But why is that? No matter how good an archer you are, if you have a crappy ancient European bow and don't have depleted uranium self-propelled arrows you're just not going to be much more effective in a big group than people who just know how to use the bow reasonably well (inexperienced unit).

It's an unfair advantage to the player (so is command stars) because basically the AI's troops don't last (neither do their generals). So in every game I have a couple of standardized armies who go around winning battles and being retrained. Before long all my units have a couple of silver and gold chevrons with the best weapons and a general with lots of stars. Anything the AI brings just routs on contact with my force, even on very hard. Also, the effect of command stars is far too great. No matter how good a general you are, if the enemy has an overwhelming numerical/quality advantage you are not going to win an open-field battle with them. Or to put it another way, the superior enemy force is not going to rout on contact with your pathetic army, allowing you to cut them all down, just because you have a great general. Great generals were great because they were superior tacticians and outmanuvered superior forces, not because the enemy were terrified of them. The bonus for having a great general should be a small morale boost for you and small penalty for the enemy if their general is inferior to simulate a successful general's reputation and the disheartening and encouraging effect it can have on your enemy and troops, respectively. But this effect was negligible compared to effect of the tactical skill of generals. In this game the player controls the tactics and you shouldn't get a huge morale bonus to represent superior tactics because you already have superior tactics to the AI, no matter what general you have.

Anyway that's enough ranting

- if you know of anything I can do let me know. Thanks.

**Quinn Inuit** · September 10, 2008, 10:52 PM

I don't think we can stop units from getting experience or nerf the general boost. However, I think I can help you deal with your super-army problem, though--don't retrain.

The AI doesn't retrain units (unless it can upgrade their weapons, which isn't often). Therefore, retraining is a big advantage to the player. If you don't retrain your units, they won't gain experience that rapidly. (I don't understand how that works.)

**Camcolit** · September 10, 2008, 11:29 PM

Thanks, that should be a help. I'll do that from now on. It's a real shame nothing can be done except limited work-arounds though as it's an aspect of the game that annoys me more all the time. I'd like all units of a type to be more or less the same with a very slight attack/defence effectiveness bonus for experienced units with a more substantial but still relatively minor morale bonus for them. This would be historically accurate. As it is it's very unrealistic, ridiculously so for cheap troops and missile units who have the possibility of more than tripling their attack compared with a normal unit of the same type.

**Delvecchio1975** · September 11, 2008, 04:30 AM

Camcolit, a good tip for you is the letter "m". When you select an army with your semi-depleted units, press the 'm' key, and your computer will merge all your units into as little units as possible. this way you free up slots for extra, fresh units.
it's a bit bugged, so sometimes not all units get merged, and very sometimes none at all. in general it works though. and before you feel guilty about it: the AI does it too!

**AqD** · September 11, 2008, 05:11 AM

It's not merged if the depleted numbers are too low. And It has bad effects on unit experience.
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**Delvecchio1975** · September 11, 2008, 05:16 AM

Originally Posted by aqd

It's not merged if the depleted numbers are too low.

you mean when there is still 78 out of 80 soldiers in the unit? that might be the case, now you say so, when they don't merge they seem to have quite high numbers anyway...

And It has bad effects on unit experience.

quite the opposite in my experience! it seems to find the best soldiers in all depleted units and put those together in one unit ... the key is to merge them before entering fresh (unexperienced) units... unless you mean something different?

**Camcolit** · September 11, 2008, 05:34 AM

aqd - What do you mean by 'bad effects on unit experience'? If you mean that the experience doesn't go up a lot then good! I don't want ridiculous invincible armies comprised of Spartan-like levies and longbowmen-like Greek archers. Did you read my posts?

Delvecchio - Thanks for the tip, I'll try that since I've been doing it manually anyway since I heard that this doesn't retain experience as well as retraining. But now you say that this has 'quite the opposite' effect, which I think you mean it's a good way to get a lot of experienced troops. Again, I don't want any!

**Delvecchio1975** · September 11, 2008, 05:39 AM

Originally Posted by Camcolit

aqd - What do you mean by 'bad effects on unit experience'? If you mean that the experience doesn't go up a lot then good! I don't want ridiculous invincible armies comprised of Spartan-like levies and longbowmen-like Greek archers. Did you read my posts?

Delvecchio - Thanks for the tip, I'll try that since I've been doing it manually anyway since I heard that this doesn't retain experience as well as retraining. But now you say that this has 'quite the opposite' effect, which I think you mean it's a good way to get a lot of experienced troops. Again, I don't want any!

Well no, not if you look at it like that: AQD thinks it does what you want, I think it does what you DON'T want

EDIT: well, either way, if AQD or I am right, doesn't matter: merging units will definitely lose more experience than retraining!

**AqD** · September 12, 2008, 06:33 AM

Originally Posted by Camcolit

aqd - What do you mean by 'bad effects on unit experience'? If you mean that the experience doesn't go up a lot then good! I don't want ridiculous invincible armies comprised of Spartan-like levies and longbowmen-like Greek archers. Did you read my posts?

Delvecchio - Thanks for the tip, I'll try that since I've been doing it manually anyway since I heard that this doesn't retain experience as well as retraining. But now you say that this has 'quite the opposite' effect, which I think you mean it's a good way to get a lot of experienced troops. Again, I don't want any!

It merges by depleting troops in most experienced units to least experienced ones.

If you have unit A with 9 experience, 100 men, unit B with 8 experience, 110 men, and unit C with 1 experience, 120 men (full = 140 men), automerge will change them to C with 140 men, B with 140 men, and A with 50 men.

Now if you retrain A, its experience would be reduced because there are too few troops (less troops = reduce more experiences).
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**Quinn Inuit** · September 12, 2008, 07:23 PM

I strongly advise against retraining units. AQD is correct that XP will go down, but not as much as you'd think. I've noticed that XP is conserved when merging units, but seems to increase when those units are retrained. Again, not sure why, but I've noticed this repeatedly.

Basically, take units A, B, and C.
A = 1/3 str., 3 xp
B = 1/3 str., 2 xp
C = 1/3 str., 1 xp

Merge them, and you get unit D, with 2 xp. Retrain them, and you're likely to get:
A' = 1 str., 1-2 xp (varies)
B' = 1 str., 1-2 xp (varies)
C' = 1 str., 0 xp

As you can see, the overall level of XP will usually go up. I don't know why this happens, but it does.

**Camcolit** · September 13, 2008, 12:09 AM

I've stopped retraining troops and use the automatic merge function. I'm not long into my current campaign but I've definitely noticed that experience gain is thankfully much slower. I plan to keep all my troops at 3 bronze chevrons max experience and I'm enjoying the game much more already.

**Quinn Inuit** · September 13, 2008, 06:48 PM

Excellent! I'm glad you're having more fun now.

**Delvecchio1975** · September 14, 2008, 05:18 AM

yes, i tested it in my autoresolve carthage campaign yesterday. In sicily messana got attacked every other turn by a stack of romans. initially i merged units and trained additional fresh ones. later on i switched to just retraining, not merging. the latter strategy results in MUCH higher xp. with merging i didn't get beyond 3 bronze chevrons, with retraining i JUMPED to three silvers in like three turns ....