ARRGHGH! this drives me nuts about RTW. Did you fix it?

[stefoid]

Hi, Im just now playing rome total war after playing the original TW many years ago and I see that nothing much has changed with respect to the basic problem I have with the game. I am wondering/hoping.. does Total Realism address this issue?

warning, long rant follows;

The issue is basically the way battles invariably degenerate into a silly 'benny hill' situation about halfway through. For those not familliar with this old Brittish TV show, the end sketch was always a farcical scene where half the cast would run around madly in all directions chasing the other half of the cast, in fast forward time, accompanied by the shows theme music.

Total war is just the same and just as farcical. I put it down to the following, in order of significance:

1) morale. units and the entire army maintain the will to keep fighting loooong after they should. Really, the morale of these units is incredible. 3/4s of the army could be lying slain around them, and the rest will keep on slogging away, getting a pasting. Whats more, routers who have just sprinted a kilometer to escape pursuers will rally and rejoin the lost cause unless individually hunted down to all points of the map!

morale is more fragile than that - it can turn from the slightest of things and once it turns, fear is extremely contagious and a whole army can take flight with hardly a blow being struck. morale is more important than +1 to an attack score or better armour. elite fighting units have elite morale, whether they have plate mail or fight naked with tatoos. its just so important, and its very badly modeled in Total War

2) stamina. how many charges do you think a cavalry unit can make before it is totally spent? 1? 2? certainly not 12! how far do you think an infantry unit can sprint before it is spent? 200m? wearing armour and carrying heavy weapons? certainly not a kilometer! there are reasons that units keep in close contact with one another in ancient battles - the primary one was that they couldnt move quickly to adjust their position if need be. The way in TW you have these units running about on their own, sprinting here and there... its ridiculous. If a unit sprints for more than a couple of hundred meters it should be forced to a crawl after that and totally spent and useless in a fight for a looong time afterwards. In TW you can drive units around like cars if you want to, sprinting from one side of the battle to the other as needs be.

3) control and command. Again, a very good reason to keep units in close proximity. Units far away would not be aware of the situation more than a few hundred meters away due to noise, dust and general confusion, and orders have to be relayed by hand, not by radio. There is no modelling of this, perhaps as a concession to gameplay for the RTS crowd where micromanagement is the norm. I am willing to concede this.

however, I still think that morale and stamina is modeled woefully, and that these would be sufficient in themselves to control the benny hill situation which is quite tedious, but also the units driving around on their own like cars.

changes to make:

a) routed units which arent pursued may have some chance of rallying, depending on their current proximity to the enemy, their state (stamina and casualties) and most improtantly, their underlying morale. On the whole, it should be less probable rather than more probable, even for elite units. rubbish morale untis should have no chance.

b) units that are pursued, or dont have any chance of rallying (which will be most units), should simply disperse in all directions as they rout, not run after a guy with a flag. Initially they should run directly directly away from danger (on an individual basis) and this should lead to a natural dispersion pattern anyway. I mean, why stay together offering a juicy target for pursuers? its just not natural and ends up with the silly benny hill thing happening. Once the pursuers are faced with routers who are dispersing in all directions, they will naturally stop without an obvious target to track down. and obviously dispersed units can never rally - they are gone.

c) Isolated units know that if they get into trouble, they cant expect help in a hurry (due to the fog of war and command/control/stamina issues) so they will justifiably be more brittle than when amongst the main line. this 'isolation fear factor' would count less for agile light skirmishers and most for slow infantry. therefore the further that units are away from the main gravity of their army, the more their morale will suffer, in inverse-proportion to their ability to evade danger.

d) units should have a stamina that depletes very quickly due to running (proportional to the unit type - light / heavy) and takes a long time to recover, and stamina should have a very significant effect on fighting ability. quite simply, units that have been fighting for a medium time, or running/routing/pursuing for a short time should be absolutely stuffed in terms of further fighting or moving, and should recover very slowly.

e) bad morale should be very much more contagious than it currently is. with the changes above to dipersing routers and isolated units, it will make it more contagious anyway - as routing units, particularly dispersed units, dont count towards having friends closeby. but it should be even worse. I know this factor is probably already modeled somewhat by the game, but I dont think it is factored anywhere near strongly enough. units breaking, unless crap peasants or skirmishers, is a huge thing for their neighbours and is absolutely the last thing a fellow soldier wants to see. they know the real killing comes once the rout starts and they dont want to be on the wrong end of that. whether an army routs in total or not is very much more about morale than casualties, and morale is most directly affecetd by the current situation of the unit in question (is it winning/loosing against its direct oppoennt - is it surrounded by non-routing friends) than whether it is taking casualties.

I would like to see a whole army that has taken only 10% casualties turn tail and rout en-mass because one improtant unit in the center started loosing, lost its nerve, and caused the whole house of cards to collapse. I think that is very unlikely to happen in Total war, but that it is much more realistic than what nearly always does happen, which is the benny hill thing where both armies sprint all over the map in all directions chasing routers of the other army, with neither side breaking although both have taken historicaly ridiculous levels of casualties (like well over 40-80%).

rant over

[despot_of_rhodes]

Most of those things are hardcored. CA can eather change the engine or make this things modable, otherwise i see no chace to "fix" it, to be honest...

[stefoid]

changes to morale (in general to make units significantly more brittle in various ways as described above, and much less likey to rally) and stamina (tiring and recover rates, affect on further movement and combat ability) would be accomplished by changing paramters of existing algorythms, I assume.

you say this isnt possible?

what about simply reducing the morale of every unit in the game to (as example) 30% of its current setting (make everything more brittle), and increasing the defensive capabilities of every unit in the game by 200%? (reduce casualty levels across the board, thus diminishing their effect on morale in proportion to other factors). that would be interesting. It might go a long way towards 'realism'. although hard to predict how the engine might react to that.

then as a second run, change the rate of fatigue from running by +300%, fighting by +100%, and the rate of recovery from fatigue to 25% of its current value. then change the effect of being exhausted on combat ability by +200%

conceded that changes to make broken units disperse would be more a behavioural change rather than just parameters.

[UnfortunateHam]

Most of those things are hardcored. CA can eather change the engine or make this things modable, otherwise i see no chace to "fix" it, to be honest...

How do the programmers decide what gets hardcoded and what gets (?)softcoded(?). Why did they hardcode the AI and not the maps, for example? Is it because TCA doesn't want other developers to find out how they made their AI?

[pannonian]

How do the programmers decide what gets hardcoded and what gets (?)softcoded(?). Why did they hardcode the AI and not the maps, for example? Is it because TCA doesn't want other developers to find out how they made their AI?

AI is possibly the hardest part of any game to program. To make it work is hard enough. To make it work, and be customisable, is even harder.

[UnfortunateHam]

AI is possibly the hardest part of any game to program. To make it work is hard enough. To make it work, and be customisable, is even harder.

That didn't really answer my question.

[Quinn Inuit]

That didn't really answer my question.

Hey, no need to get snippy. I think he did answer your question*, and, even if he didn't, the polite thing to do is to say that you don't understand and ask him to rephrase himself.


*I think he's saying that AI is highly complex to code, and the complexity is increased substantially if you want to design it to be easily modified by users. Therefore, CA probably chose to not make it user-modifiable in order to keep complexity (and therefore costs) down.

[mcantu]

have you actually played RTR (or the newest version, RTR-TIC) or are you just stating what it is you dont like about vanilla RTW? try out some of the RTR variants and see if your issues have been addressed...

[stefoid]

As my posts says, I am asking if these issues have been considered/addressed in RTR. If not, I will probably try RTR anyway, but from my point of view, changes to unit types and so on are largely cosmetic in that if the combat still runs like a benny hill sketch, it wont matter -- to me the game will still be fundamentally broken.

[despot_of_rhodes]

Several mods, and RTR, as the name implies, were actually made to transform vanilla into smth. historical, realistic and logical, getting rid of phantasy units, underrepresenting some important factions ( stopped moking on barbarians f.e. ) and to give a player a role play aspect by introducing new recruitment systems, gouverments, traits etc. etc.

To change the behaviour of a unit ( f.e. to let them spread in all directions after they´ve been routed ) isn´t possible to my knowledge, because this concerns the game engine. But changing stats of a unit ( be it fatigue, moral, attack/defence values can be easily made in the EDU, even by yourself ). The way how armies act on the battlefield can also be changed if altering the formations ( there are several of those called "Darth´s" or "Sinuet´s" formatioins used by most of the established mods ). And the units are affected by the death of their general, by seeing friends routing or while they are concerned over exposed flanks. But to let them break faster, without taking causalities is only possible, if they start weaving and you deliver a dececieve blow at that moment - that´s how the engine works, afaik. Furthermore, if an elite unit, wich also has a "command" attribute ( inspires friendly units ) is routed, then this bonus is gone, so, you can definetly cause a mass routing by killing such a unit, somewhere in the middle of the battlefield, while other factors make the rest of the job. But you can´t directly connect the routing of that unit with a break of the whole enemy army, that´s not how RTW engine works, afaik.

RTR took care of many factors you have listed, wich were possible to change for the modders, but you should consider, that the last update of it ( RTR PE ) is allready quite dated, so don´t expect miracles. Instead try it simply out ( if you´re an experienced player, try ExRM directly, the latest and newest classical RTR update or aqd´s RTR mod, wich requires the alex. exe, though ). Meanwhile you could test TIC ( The Iberian Conflict - a mini campaign preview of RTR VII ) and in several months you can enjoy the FOE ( Fate of Empires ), wich will be a blast compared to the previous RTR versions and make you hungry for a grand campaign of the latest RTR version.

I hope i could clear up at least some of your concerns, but see for yourself and make your own judgement

[stefoid]

"come back with your shield or on it" - routers drop their heavy/unweildy equipment to get away. this isnt modelled either. for many, many reasons (supplies gone due to looted camp, equipment abandoned on the battle field, deserters, lost, starved, hunted, etc..etc...) a defeated force is basically finished - time to go home and raise a new one. the number of actual casualites taken , even though heavy during a rout, isnt really that important in terms of the continued fighting ability of a deafeated army. that isnt modelled either. i.e. in TW (not sure about TR) the force you have left is what you started with, minus casualties. that is pretty funny really.

actually a defeated force on home territory has a better chance of maintaining cohesion by routing to nearby friendly towns where they can eat, despite the fact that they might have the fighting capability of ill-armed peasants. whereas a defeated army in hostile territory is just sooooo goooone! as a fighting force they are basically finished unless they have an occupied town or naval transport very close by.

[Pat89]

"come back with your shield or on it" - routers drop their heavy/unweildy equipment to get away. this isnt modelled either. for many, many reasons (supplies gone due to looted camp, equipment abandoned on the battle field, deserters, lost, starved, hunted, etc..etc...) a defeated force is basically finished - time to go home and raise a new one. the number of actual casualites taken , even though heavy during a rout, isnt really that important in terms of the continued fighting ability of a deafeated army. that isnt modelled either. i.e. in TW (not sure about TR) the force you have left is what you started with, minus casualties. that is pretty funny really.

actually a defeated force on home territory has a better chance of maintaining cohesion by routing to nearby friendly towns where they can eat, despite the fact that they might have the fighting capability of ill-armed peasants. whereas a defeated army in hostile territory is just sooooo goooone! as a fighting force they are basically finished unless they have an occupied town or naval transport very close by.

lol matey... You don't have to explain what would be realistic... Better explain how we can ever reach something like that without illigally editing the .exe?

We've got plenty historians with academic degrees in such stuff. So you don't have to worry that we don't do whatever we can to make Rome Total REALISM as realistic as possible...

[Caligula Caesar]

Send a letter to CA (actually, don't... they won't listen). The only one that is possible to correct without breaking the law and editing the .exe is the morale. There is a morale parametre in EDU (export_descr_unit). If you halve the number behind "stat_mental" on every unit there, units should rout a lot quicker.

[Arkaeyn]

RTR does model this a little bit better. The pacing of the battle combined with the edits to strength and morale make it more likely that an army that breaks will break all at once, leading a faster victory/defeat.

However, it doesn't always happen, and there's still far too much chasing-down-that-last-damn-light-cavalry-unit. But it's better than RTW vanilla.

[Caligula Caesar]

I somehow doubt this is possible

[FriendlyFire]

And to get back to one of the original points of this old thread, Quinn's latest v3.51 hotfix makes stamina *much* more important. Halving unit lethality means that melee combat takes a lot longer, and by the time your previously-unbeatable Principes have cut through their first enemy unit, they *will* be tired. I just had a siege battle on Crete where the enemy had some (unexpected) peltast and Cretan archer reinforcements. My legion was already tired after killing the initial defenders on the walls, and they were exhausted after fighting the peltasts on the square. I had to give them a 5-minute breather in loose formation just to stop them being unhappy about exhaustion, while the Cretan archers rained arrows on them. Thankfully my troops seemed mostly immune to arrows from the front - gotta love those scutum shields!

[Quinn Inuit]

Awesome! I'm glad this is making combat more complex than "biggest tank wins." And yeah, principes are going to be pretty much immune to most missile weapons from the front. They're just really heavily-armoured _and_ have huge shields.

[UnfortunateHam]

AHHHH. I see. I thought it might be because they didn't want their secrets to how they developed their AI to be so accessible. okay, well, sorry if I sounded "snippy."