v1.70 DOWNLOAD LINKS AND CHANGELIST (Updated 19 July 2012)

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Yeah, it's a pitty CA England went back to RTW style recruiting. So we are stuck with unit limts, which is less then ideal. Anyway, back to TROM. With the indroduction of so many new units in TROM I think it's time for a basic design discussion about units, their balancing, and recruitment. In my current Prussia campaign I find myself recruiting only a limited amount of unit types. For example I see no need to recruit fusiliers, because line infantry is much better and there are enough of them. Same with provincial cavalry, which is inferior to dragoons. I recruited saxon line infantry, because they are cheaper and even better the the prussian one (that shouldn't be). I have some use for my starting militia as garrisons for cities and ports, and I use some pandours because of their very cheap upkeep for policing. Overall the new units in TROM are a bit of a mixed bag. Some units are usefull, but others are only decoration. When it comes to unit limits, it's hard to see a system. Some units have limits, some don't. For example Bavarian Freikorps Cavalry is limited to 6 (too much I think), but Hessian Mounted Jaeger have no limit.

What I would prefer is a much clearer cut between the core units of a faction and all extra/AOR units. Core units shouldn't have a recruitment limit beside elite (for example grenadiers) and guard type units. On the other hand all extra/AOR units should be more severly restricted, but also much more viable. They should either be superior to standard units or much more cost effective, preferably by lowering their upkeep significantly.

For some units I see no future. Fusiliers are useless, because for battle I want the better line units, for garrison the cheaper militia. To make them viable they would have to take over the spot of the militia.

[Johan217]

Thank you Yarkis for your insights. I believe some of these issues might be the result of the fact that we hardly get to play campaigns since we are too busy modding...

I've only started a new campaign now and, like you, I don't feel the need for Provincial Line, since I don't have enough money to support so many stacks that I would reach my Line Infantry unit limit. Unit limits is something that can be addressed easily. Unit balancing will be another matter - as I said before this is a grey zone for me, so I'll leave that to Sage Maybe it's also an opportunity to revise the unit rosters on a per-faction basis. Also, I've been putting new regions into the startpos file - we're just not using them yet because we wanted to ensure compatibility with people's ongoing campaigns. But with those changes it should be possible, for example, to make a unit available only outside a nation's home regions.

Anyway, you've given us some food for thought

[Aeon221]

I appreciate the shoutout, but does it work well for you guys at zero? I've had it set to 100 blockade and 2000 trade route raid for a while now, and I still see pretty regular blockades. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I just wasn't noticing before because I wasn't playing the colonials heavily enough.

It's enough to make me wonder about the efficacy of the file itself.

Even weirder is that the Navy_Local_Distribution element of the CAI Personality Junctions for pirates is already heavily biased towards enemy trade routes -- it's set to .7 trade routes and .1 for everything else. So they should really be focused on those routes, but they seem to generally go for the ports anyway.

WRT Unit Balancing: Those Dragoons are really significantly better than pretty much every other cavalry unit on offer. They're faster than anything they can't outfight, and can outfight anything they can't outrun. They''re also really, really cheap. The only really viable counters to them -- heavy cav -- are expensive and highly restricted.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Thank you Yarkis for your insights. I believe some of these issues might be the result of the fact that we hardly get to play campaigns since we are too busy modding...

Yeah, I know... After I started modding my games some years ago, I hardly play the games I buy...

I think I will write up some of my ideas and start a new thread, because this is the wrong place for extensive discussions.

[Johan217]

I appreciate the shoutout, but does it work well for you guys at zero? I've had it set to 100 blockade and 2000 trade route raid for a while now, and I still see pretty regular blockades. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I just wasn't noticing before because I wasn't playing the colonials heavily enough.

Well... to be honest I'm still seeing Pirates blocking my ports. I can't see any other value included in TROM that would conflict with the setting, so it must be an ETW thing

I think I will write up some of my ideas and start a new thread, because this is the wrong place for extensive discussions.

Excellent, thank you. For that discussion it might be useful to read up some of the threads from the TWC Historical Research Forum... They have some good info on faction-specific stuff.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=500

[Aeon221]

Well... to be honest I'm still seeing Pirates blocking my ports. I can't see any other value included in TROM that would conflict with the setting, so it must be an ETW thing

I'm thinking it might be more useful to set ports to zero in Navy_Local_Distribution.

I've attached the cai pack I've been using so y'all can see what I've tried. Basically I've set to zero the regions and ports sections of the Navy Local Distribution for pirates, and upped trade routes to .9. I'm going to try it in this setting as the Spanish -- since they have shittons of ports near the pirates -- and hopefully end up with no blockades and serious raids.

My basic guess is that the personality profile handles everything, and the manager behavior junctions do nothing.

[Johan217]

If that works, maybe it would be a good idea to give Barbary States the same AI as Pirates. Because they are raiding/blockading ports like crazy. In a way it's good because it forces you to patrol/garrison your ports, but not when they send a single kamikaze galley EVERY turn.

CA if you're reading this: instead of inventing a new use for sloops by giving them unrealistic range/accuracy, why not simulate their REAL use by making the smaller ships very stealthy so they can slip by undetected, and only get caught by other small ships!

[Johan217]

Coming back on unit rosters/recruitment, here's a tentative idea working with the units and region ID's already in TROM:

Homelands: your own Line Infantry
Provinces (i.e. not your homelands and not a minor/major nation): Provincial Line Infantry, occasionally supplemented by "Foreign regiment"
Minor's territory: the Minor's Line Infantry
Major's territory: Volunteers (i.e. Major's Line with a different name and uniform)

And Militia... Maybe depending on the nation they could replace or supplement one of the above in certain cases (e.g. Russia's Landmilitia and of course the US). Other nations I believe didn't really use militia in their armies, so there they would be represented by the "Armed Citizens" that are generated when besieged.

A system like this would make the units +/- mutually exclusive, which would help to give them their own use.

[Aeon221]

If that works, maybe it would be a good idea to give Barbary States the same AI as Pirates. Because they are raiding/blockading ports like crazy. In a way it's good because it forces you to patrol/garrison your ports, but not when they send a single kamikaze galley EVERY turn.

CA if you're reading this: instead of inventing a new use for sloops by giving them unrealistic range/accuracy, why not simulate their REAL use by making the smaller ships very stealthy so they can slip by undetected, and only get caught by other small ships!

M'kay, it does nothing. I'm feeling very certain now that neither file has any function whatsoever.


And I agree, the simplest way to make those tiny ships useful would be to give them that walks Paths Less Trodden ability so they can move about hidden on the campaign map.

On the other hand, you'd also have to remove their ability to carry invasion forces, because that would be totally broken if they could invisibly carry massive armies around.

Even better, frigates could be given an ability that lets the whole stack see and move further, as well as the ability to see all hidden ships within some radius of the fleet.

Then you'd have a reason for small ships and frigates, without them needing roles in the line of battle.

[Aeon221]

Coming back on unit rosters/recruitment, here's a tentative idea working with the units and region ID's already in TROM:

Homelands: your own Line Infantry
Provinces (i.e. not your homelands and not a minor/major nation): Provincial Line Infantry, occasionally supplemented by "Foreign regiment"
Minor's territory: the Minor's Line Infantry
Major's territory: Volunteers (i.e. Major's Line with a different name and uniform)

And Militia... Maybe depending on the nation they could replace or supplement one of the above in certain cases (e.g. Russia's Landmilitia and of course the US). Other nations I believe didn't really use militia in their armies, so there they would be represented by the "Armed Citizens" that are generated when besieged.

A system like this would make the units +/- mutually exclusive, which would help to give them their own use.

What would help differentiate the units is if they had different general specialties. For instance, I'd be more than happy to pick up provincial infantry with worse shooting stats but great melee stats, or vis versa. In general, more variety in stats would be nice!

Also, I personally am way more interested in/excited by units that are different than the rather dull XXX nationality line infantry. Stuff like the Walloon Guards is just way more interesting.

Finally, never underestimate the importance of flavor text. I know I'm not the only min-maxer out there with a weakness for interesting sounding units!

[Beastro]

It's 177something in my Austrian game and I haven't recruited a Provincial Infantry Regiment yet.

A large part of this has to do with the fact that Austria get Hungary so they have a total of 16-18 first rate regiments at the start.

I took Italy earyl which netted me the Italian linemen, then moved onto Genoa and Poland.

I made a habit of holding conquered territory I had no intention of keeping for the infantry, with this I have Hannoverian, Westphalian and Danish regiments.

I've found the militia regiments useful but the provincial cav is all useless beyond the very very beginning before you can get Dragoons.

Also, you might want to place a limit on 3rd rates, the AI doesn't make use of their unlimited number (they're more often busy trying to raise a BB fleet to begin with) while it allows the player the chance to churn them out at their pleasure.

[Didz]

Talking about Austria, I've just installed 1.50 and started a new Austrian Campaign. Am I imagining things or do Austrian infantry march slower than normal. I couldn't help noticing that they seemed noticeably slower than the Swedish infantry in my last campaign under 1.45. Is this a feature, or am I just imagining things?

The Pandours especially seemed to take ages to walk anywhere. I'm not complaining just curious really.

[sage2]

Did I miss the changes to the Regiment of Horse, because they are no longer available? Any reason for that? Didn't find anything in the readme. Btw as Prussia I can't recruit any cavalry at the beginning of the game.

Edit: ignore, was confused.

[sage2]

There remains the gap for medium cavalry... Ideally we should indeed have dragoons from the start. Maybe we could change the way the "carbines" technology works, so that it would not be a requirement for dragoons, but an upgrade. Or: have "Early Dragoons" (the old Regiment of Horse) and "Late Dragoons", and make the early type unavailable after the Carbines technology -> better solution IMO than just having a unit limit.

That's a good idea.

[sage2]

Thank you Yarkis for your insights. I believe some of these issues might be the result of the fact that we hardly get to play campaigns since we are too busy modding...

I've only started a new campaign now and, like you, I don't feel the need for Provincial Line, since I don't have enough money to support so many stacks that I would reach my Line Infantry unit limit. Unit limits is something that can be addressed easily. Unit balancing will be another matter - as I said before this is a grey zone for me, so I'll leave that to Sage Maybe it's also an opportunity to revise the unit rosters on a per-faction basis. Also, I've been putting new regions into the startpos file - we're just not using them yet because we wanted to ensure compatibility with people's ongoing campaigns. But with those changes it should be possible, for example, to make a unit available only outside a nation's home regions.

Anyway, you've given us some food for thought

I think the reduced value of Provincial Line / Fusilier units goes back to one of the changes from 1.4: the increase in recruitment area for regular Line infantry. In my Russian game, my experience was that I actually recruited a fair number of the provincial line-type troops, because the time spent to recruit and then transport to the front regular line units from a single province (i.e. Muscovy) was often quite large. Once those provincial line units became experienced, they were actually reasonable cost effective as good quality and reliable troops, and I did not choose to replace them with inexperienced regular troops.

With the recruitability of these line troops increased from one single province, to multiple provinces, this is much less of a consideration.

The recruitment limits were set by me not to push players into recruiting provincial line troops, but to push them (and the computer) into recruiting the other types of regular named Line troops. One solution would be that these maximums could be significantly lowered, thus pushing the player into recruiting provincial infantry before they have managed to capture enemy territories.

[sage2]

Talking about Austria, I've just installed 1.50 and started a new Austrian Campaign. Am I imagining things or do Austrian infantry march slower than normal. I couldn't help noticing that they seemed noticeably slower than the Swedish infantry in my last campaign under 1.45. Is this a feature, or am I just imagining things?

The Pandours especially seemed to take ages to walk anywhere. I'm not complaining just curious really.

Movement rates are not set per unit, so there's probably something else going on (snow, rain, fatigue etc...)

[sage2]

Also, you might want to place a limit on 3rd rates, the AI doesn't make use of their unlimited number (they're more often busy trying to raise a BB fleet to begin with) while it allows the player the chance to churn them out at their pleasure.

Hmmmm... I dislike putting limits on a bread-and-butter ship like this. What kind of limit number might you suggest?

[Johan217]

I think the reduced value of Provincial Line / Fusilier units goes back to one of the changes from 1.4: the increase in recruitment area for regular Line infantry.

That can be addressed since I have coded in a new region "provinces" that excludes all home regions. The only reason we're not using it yet is that it requires a campaign restart. I think that for the next major update we can start using it.

Another reason why you find Provincials useful playing as Russia is that Russia doesn't get Militia beyond the Streltsy, which are obsoleted early in the game. We may consider creating a "Landmilitia" unit for Russia, however, as Russia appears have used them on campaign. Anyway, for a more in depth discussion I refer to the thread here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=278932

[Didz]

Hmmmm... I dislike putting limits on a bread-and-butter ship like this. What kind of limit number might you suggest?

Historically, the limit would have been the amount of resource needed to build one, and the amount of manpower the nation had capable of manning them.

For example: one must assume that the early United States was not exactly short of tree's, so they probably had ample wood to build ships of the line. But the only one they did build they actually gave away to France, who accepted it graciously and then quietly broke it up as soon as they got the chance. The reason was that the Unites States simply didn't have enough seamen capable of manning their ships, and France preferred to use its limited manpower on ships of their own design.

Even the US merchant marine was short of men, which was why they were constantly prepared to accept deserters from British warships and grant them instant US citisenship.

In ETW terms one can only assume that the resources needed to construct a ship are represented abstractly by the cost of its construction, and that in the absence of any sort of manpower mechanism the problems of maintaining a ships crew must be lumped into the turn by turn maintenance cost.

So, on that basis the only sensible limitation of 3rd rate production ought to be the cost of maintaining them. That leaves the AI and player free to invest in a large fleet if they feel it justified but makes such a strategy extremely expensive.

So, I would say increase the maintenance cost of warships in line with the number of men needed to man them, if necessary increasing the cost per man according to the size of the crew. That way the bigger the ship the less you get for your money.

[F@32]

Had very tough naval invasion by Denmark at Abo Finland. They dropped off half stack with 3 arty batteries, 2 grenadiers, 2 line infantry, provincial cavalry and general. Loved that it made me scramble and send quick reaction force.

Where TROM shines, ETW blows... That wonderful experience was spoiled by incapable path finding and my reinforcements were delayed for too long because one of the first units in the deploy queue got stuck on the fence lol. Won battle anyway with couple minutes remaining on the clock.