Kaunitz Project [work continued only for vanilla-ETW-version]

[Kaunitz]

Made a brave new change to parameters of battle_entities files that were for much time untouched as they were balanced in a different way. Changed the value of the 8th column from the left in battle_entities file. This I have understood is the "locomotion speed". It affects how quickly the formation of the unit moves around its center (If you fantasize a unit length as a snake then it affects how quickly is the movement of the body of the snake that walks as a wave). Also I modded the 5th and 6th columns of the same file. These values affect the acceleration of the unit as I know (acceleration and deceleration respectively). Also, many other parameters were changed like radiuses, targeting angles (removed 360 degrees of light infantry because it made it to form strange angles automatically), masses, radiuses, models etc. All these clearly have transformed the battle system, both in melee mechanics and musket behaviour.

This quote of Darth Vader made me quite excited. Unfortunately after some tests, I cannot agree that the 8th column refers to the "locomotion" speed. I've set it to very high values, both positive and negative ones, without noticing any differences. If there was a value which determines the "locomotion" speed, then we'd probably finally have a way to make columns move much faster than lines. This would be the case if we'd severly reduce the "locomotion" speed. Right now, individual soldiers that move around the centre of the unit get a speed burst. What we would need is a speed reduction instead!

-----

PS: Unfortunately, my conclusion is that soldiers who move around the centre of their unit simply move at their "running" speed. Maybe I've simply misunderstood what locomotion means.
Now, setting the running speed equal to (or even lower than!) the walking speed helps a little bit to make it harder for line formations to pivot. As charge-speed is something different from run-speed this would not affect charges in any way. However, the big backdrop is that routing units also use their run-speed. I'm really angry about that. Why didn't they make routing units use their charge speed! Or else they could at least have made routing units independend from fatigue-movement-penalties!

So, if we want lines to be hard to manoeuvre, especially when it comes to pivoting, we would need to reduce their running speed, while keeping up their charge-speed (otherwise there wouldn't be any successfull bayonet charges at all...). This means that any unit that routs from a melee (and will use its walking=running speed) will be totally annihilated even by infantry-chargers who use their charge-speed.

PS: updated the download-packs in my post above to try out new settings.

[hippacrocafish]

Regarding abilities: infantry square formation has been replaced with a "pike square" formation

Over all this sounds awesome, but I like this feature in particular. Good luck man!

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

Hello Kaunitz,

Firstly, i applaud your continued efforts in the pursuit of historical accuracy for all this time. Now I see you've released the first incarnation of your glorious project but I do have 2 questions.

1) Is this for singleplayer of Multiplayer?
2) If it is for singleplayer (which I sincerely hope it is) how effectively does the Ai cope with your changes, particully the new slower movement speed and the morale changes?

Thank you

The Cap

[Kaunitz]

First of all: Welcome hippacrocafish and Captain Jack Aubrey of HMS Surprise!

1) Versions:

The version that is available now is a very small test-version for single-player-custom battles (if you are interested, please read the instructions). I hope that I get some feedback on how battles work and feel with this.

I'm still planning to do two versions. For singleplayer, I have to remove some features like the fog of war on the battle map because the AI can't really cope with it and fatigue-settings also had to be changed because the AI keeps running its units on the battle field and fatigue can have severe effects in my mod. The big work still to be done is to make my mod campaign-compatible. Right now, you can only play custom battles with it. I can't say how long it will take me to make it ready for "release". I guess I'd need some collaborators. My plan:

1) waiting for some input and feedback about the battles
2) changing all unit-stats of DMUC according to my mod (so that all factions will be available for custom battles)
3) making my mod DMUC-campaign-compatible (so that you can play campaigns and custom battles with all factions; I might also change some aspects of the campaign)
4) We need maps! Large maps, so that hidden manoeuvres are possible and maps with terrain that fits to the 4:1 scale and have some interesting features!
en passant: adding more immersion (skins, sounds, etc. - everything should fit to mid 18th centruy/7YW; maybe I'll also add some quotes)

2) AI-behaviour

It's hard for me to tell really, since I haven't played vanilla DMUC battles for about a year now. What I can say for sure is that AI artillery is useless on hilly maps. This is due to the flat trajectories. They are are realistic, sure, but the AI doesn't take them into account. I've changed fatigue settings so that units recover from fatigue when they're walking. The solely purpose of this is to help the AI. The AI still uses its cavalry rather recklessly and sometimes commit them right at the beginning of the battle. This means that the human player usually gets good opportunities to strike the AIs flank and end the battle. Another thing which I was unable to change: usually the AI starts to fire at maximum range. It doesn't understand that it might be better to get close and unleash a close range volley.

Maybe there are some people who are ready to test my pack files so that they can give you a better comparison regarding AI-behaviour. If you give the AI more units, then battles can be quite challenging. I'd hope to find someone for a multiplayer game on a big though! That would be wonderfull!

What I like to do in singleplayer custom battles: give the AI 1,5 - twice as much units and then divide your force in two parts (e.g. a cavalry wing and an infantry brigade), one of them demonstrating/binding the enemy, the other trying to get into his flank and crush him. It's a challenge, really, and you need good timing. But it can be done, even without fog of war. I had some very interesting battles this way which had a really good and tactical feeling - at least in my opinion. My favourite 1-1 map is Algeria for this purpose. All the other maps are rather boring, lacking interesting features.

[Didz]

Hi Kaunitz,

I was watching a programme on the French revolution last night and it mentioned that in the opening campaign of the First Coaliiton in 1791, the Prussian and Allied army of Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick which was invading France at the time managed no more than 5 miles per day. So, clealry not much improvement had been made since Marlborough's efforts of 1704 in his army.

[♔Dignan♔]

Looking forward to giving this a try Kaunitz. +rep

[Kaunitz]

@Dignan: Great! Please let me know what you think about it! I'm happy for any feedback I can get, no matter how bad the critique might be! It seems as if 4 people have already downloaded the packs. I hope they're going to share their impressions!

@ Didz: Hadik made his way from Elsterwerda (about 50km northwest of of Dresden) to Berlin in 5 days. According to the route-map in Duffys Prussia's Glory, his force covered about 30km/18miles a day. But one has to take into account that his force was really small (about 1630 horse, 1600 infantry, mainly composed of Grenzers and Hussars) and he didn't encounter any serious resistance on his way. The troops marched without tents (camping in the open) and had to cook their rations of meat in the evening so as to save time (apparently they'd otherwise do that in the morning, wasting time=daylight? it was mid-October). There is also a Kronoskaf-article dealing with Hadiks raid on Berlin: http://www.kronoskaf.com/syw/index.p...raid_on_Berlin

So this was quite obviously an exceptional venture, which is not very representative. I'm going to try things out once I start modding campaign-aspects. I'll certainly go for reduced movement speed as your findings clearly support the incredibale slowness of premodern armies. But the exact values will depend on how many turns per year are possible and useful.

[Didz]

@ Didz: Hadik made his way from Elsterwerda (about 50km northwest of of Dresden) to Berlin in 5 days. According to the route-map in Duffys Prussia's Glory, his force covered about 30km/18miles a day. But one has to take into account that his force was really small (about 1630 horse, 1600 infantry, mainly composed of Grenzers and Hussars) and he didn't encounter any serious resistance on his way. The troops marched without tents (camping in the open) and had to cook their rations of meat in the evening so as to save time (apparently they'd otherwise do that in the morning, wasting time=daylight? it was mid-October). There is also a Kronoskaf-article dealing with Hadiks raid on Berlin: http://www.kronoskaf.com/syw/index.p...raid_on_Berlin

As you say this was an exceptional movement of a column specifically intended to move rapidly. So, I would classify it as a 'Flying Column' in terms of campaign movement. The march of Smith and Pitcairns columns from Boston to Concorde were similarly unencumbered by supplies and managed even faster movement rates.

In gameplay terms such columns would have to be catered for, but would suffer from a lack of 'food and ammunition' only having a token suppy which could be carried in a haversack. Enough for a small raid but not really enough for a serious campaign movement or a battle.

So, it looks as though a daily movement rate of between 5 miles and 10 miles a day is reasonably representative of an army at the start of the period which is reliant upon civilian contractors, depots and magazines to keep it supplied. 'Flying Columns' would move at the upper end of the scale and might even manage 15 to 20 miles in good weather. 20 miles would represent a five hour march at normal walking pace which would leave approximately the same amount of time for essential rest, food preparation, foraging etc. For example we know that it took a team of 16 men 12 hours to grind the corn necessary to bake the bread for one company for one day. Therefore, time was needed for this and similar activities. Napoleon tried cutting down on this time whenever possible, at one point he experimented with issuing his soldiers with flour rather than corn, thus avoiding the need for hand grinders. However, flour was difficult to carry successfully, it got wet and heavy and eyewitnesses report that one could tell which road a French column had marched along because the entire surface was so covered in flour that it looked as though it had snowed.

Napoleon completely changed the face of army logistic's when he sacked the Breidt Company who held the contracts for the French Republican Army. His comment was that 'it would be difficult to orgnaise something worse' as the Breidt Company were nothing but 'a band of rascals' and so he decided to come up with a better system based on a proper military commissariat.

Unfortunately, as it turned out it wasn't that much better, and despite the efforts that Napoleon went to to prepare advanced depots in Poland and Russia for his campaign of 1812, he discovered that the commissaries who were supposed to be preparing then were actually made huge personal fortunes selling these supplies to the Russians before the French army reached them. When Napoleon discovered the culprits he had them summarily executed, although one managed to save his life by crawling on his hands and knee's alongside Napoleons horse for several kilometres of the march by way of penance.

[Kaunitz]

@Didz:

So basically, you'd give all units (also light infantry, hussars, and perhaps even cossacks?) the slow campaign movement speed? That probably means that we'll see less "raiding" and pillaging of structures?

And what about native american tribes? I guess that it will be really hard to defend against their quick raiding parties if we choose a realistic slow army speed for european factions. Basically that's a good thing, as long as the native americans don't field bigger armies. I doubt that you can make the CAI behave in that way.

Concerning the beta-preview:

Hrm, 7 downloads in 5 days but no feedback yet. I guess I need to put more efforts into publicity. I've got a charming avatar and a nice Kaunitz-banner as signature. What more can I do? Probably people are detered by the very limited extent of the beta-preview? Or else Shogun II and Napoleon are stealing potential realism enthusiasts, or the "Hosted Mods/Darthmod/Submods"-Forum is a bit difficult to find. Or else I'm just impatient...

Another game-play video

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now here is a very long video of my last, quite interesting battle (using a slightly modified/updated version from the pack-files I've posted here). It shows a battle from the start until end (or rather: decision) with a duration of 57 minutes (which I considered quite realistic for the scale of the engagement ). I left it unedited because 1) I’m in lack of time, and 2) it shows what the game is like. The real action starts after about 13 minutes, so you might want to jump forward to that point.

I was in command of the Austrians. My army consisted of an infantry brigade of 2 regiments à 2 battalions each (in total 552 ingame-soldiers representing 2208 men), plus some Grenzers (50=200), a battery of 4 12pounders, three squadrons of cuirassiers and a squadron of hussars. The Prussian army was about twice that size (Go, AI, go!).

My infantry brigade had the task to concentrate on the Prussian left wing while my cavalry pinned the Prussian right wing. The worst part of this game was the bayonet charge which developed into a horribly wrong and long melee fight. I’ve got no excuse for this, and I’ll further work to make sure such a thing never happens again. Clearly I should have driven them off, given that they were already shaken and got flank-charged (funny enough the batalion got a "flanks secure" as soon as I had melee contact! )! But on the other hand, it meant that my plan failed quite horribly early on. If you want to see how the unbelievable Kaunitz managed to defeat the Prussian superior forces nevertheless, watch the video!



Now, of course this is a very long battle. But on the other hand, battles in the NTW III-mod take about the same time (for much larger forces though). My remarks on this video:

• Form proper lines. A hole in your line means: 1) a dead angle for defensive fire, 2) you'll have more flank-zones. Cavalry can exploit these open spots and get really dangerous. You can see that I even tried to exploit the AI's bad deployment with my infantry-bayonet-charge. It "should" have been successfull . A human player in the AIs place should better draw back a force that is in danger of being surrounded.
• Cavalry is very useful to drive back pursuers . Hip hip hurray for the fast riding Eszterhazy Hussars who saved the day and for the stupid Prussians who didn't form square! The brigadier of the Austrian brigade made a good job, sending an aid de camp to call for cavalry support!
• A well-timed cavalry charge can cause mass panic!
• When facing overwhelming enemies, it might be useful to retreat backwards to win time. Sometimes it can even be good to be routed, given that you can make sure that your units are not pursued. I liked the back and forth of this battle very much.
• I was able to use my cavalry in a quite flexible way, which was mainly due to the small size of the encounter. Imagine a line of more than 4 battalions (imagine a multiplayer-game with several armies! ) and how long it would take a cavalry brigade to get from one end of the line to the other.
• Light infantry, although not causing too many casualties, can still be quite handy to threaten flanks! It's so mobile and fast!
• I think that the game was aesthetically pleasing. I prefer to drive back routing enemies rather than having a carpet of corpses at the end of the battle. - okay, don't look at where my cavalry has struck. These guys were....ehrm....captured...they are not dead!
• Consider this tactic against a human opponent who would try to react to my uneven deployment much earlier than the AI. The problem: if you turn on fog of war, you can’t really react much earlier! A good solution: deploy two lines and make use of reserves!
• The AI could have crushed me by advancing against my artillery+grenzers+low strength battalion in a determined way (from about 32:00 onwards). I was very vulnerable at this point. The AI had four battalions (two of them grenadiers!) against my single battalion+grenzers +artillery. Instead the AI opted for a long range-fire fight which, in combination with my tactical retreat, bought me enough time to decide the cavalry-combat on my left and to rally my broken right wing. You can see that time is very important on a 4:1 scale and it might force you to act offensively or defensively.
• Also, I protected my artillery rather bad. There was a moment (ca. 27:00) in which a Prussian cuirassier unit would have been able to catch it. This could have had a major impact on the final result of the battle!
• Cannister shot was still a bit too deadly, I guess....?

[Polishguy 66]

.... I am speechless........this is so sick i dont have anywords to describe this......

[Didz]

Well to be honest if I was designing the game from scratch I would probably keep the varying movement speeds for independant columns of cavalry and infantry, but I would introduce an abstract supply train unit which has to be present in each stack if it is to be considered 'in supply'. The supply train would then be the 'slowest ship in the convoy' as far as movement is concerned and its speed of movement and replacement restrict the faction that owned it to its historical performance.

e.g. Austrian supply trains would move a lot slower than French ones.

This would leave the player with the option to move out of supply if they so desired, but the cost would be attrition due to desertion and poor health, and if they entered a battle they would suffer limited ammuntion and a morale penalty.

Native American tribes are an interesting problem. They obviously needed to be fed on the march and must have carried food and ammunition with them and spent time foraging. However, as I recall even with their women, children and their camps included they managed to out march the US cavalry on every occassion. Therefore, if one was going to stick to the same campaign movement mechanism, it would have to work correctly for every faction and troop class. The solution with Native American Indians is almost certainly that their homes and families were their supply source. Therefore, as long as their campaign movement kept within area's where their was food available then their supply unit would provide them with food and ammunition for their bows. However, they would have no ability to survive in arid terrain as they have no mechanism for a supply chain, thus if you drive them into the mountains or into a desert (or indeed if you force them to move in winter) they begin to suffer attrition quite quickly.

[Actually: That just reminded me that ETW has no 'Winter Quarters' concept. That should certainly be brought back in, but should not last for half a year as it would if bought in with a two turn year.]

A similar model could be used for other special troop classes such as militia, guerrilla's and some of the eastern troops types. In the case of guerrilla's for instance I think their supply depot would be fixed, so that they can operate freely and without supply but have to return to their home area to eat and replenish their ammunition. The same would be true of militia who can only be supplied by their home depots and suffer attrition as soon as they march away from base. Units such as cossacks would have to be given two modes of supply, one for operating as part of the army and one for operating independently. Regular cossacks would function as light cavalry using the armies supply system, whilst tribal cossacks would be tied to their own tribal villages for supply the same as guerrillas.

Ships would also be covered by the same system, except that in the case of ships, every ship has its own built in supply train, which can only be replenshished by returning to a home port or a port belonging to a nation with a trade agreement, or by moving a laden supply ship to join it. Thus ships on blockade would have to be cycled out and back to port, or maintained by a steady stream of supply vessels.

Concerning the beta-preview:
Seven downloads already isn't bad, especially as you haven't really been pushing it at all. I'm ashamed to say I am not one of those downloads, though i have every intention of joining them. My son was home from Univserity this weekend so I was unable to do anything, and I'm still busy testing the DMUC campaign game to see if the latest patch has cured its random CTD problem, so I'm trying not to change anything in ETW which might skew the results. Once I've got that out of the way I'll reset the data folder have a look at your mods.

[Kaunitz]

I agree with you on all points, Didz, and I surely didn't mean to press you in any way.

The system you've mentioned would be a great system indeed, and you can already find it in games by ageod. I'm sure you're familiar with them? For an example in german see my link - I'm planning to do a tutorial in english for the Saratoga campaign while I'm waiting for feedback. You'll find supply trains, attrition and cohesion, harsh winter conditions, pillaging, militia units that dissolve every winter, a replacement system, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, it is impossible for me (or perhaps even anyone) to implement such a "complex" system into ETW. It's really a shame. I think that the best solution would be to set a strict limit on the allowed amount of "light troops" while keeping their movement allowance rather high (which still means lower than it is right now). Line infantry, artillery, and battle cavalry (dragoons and cuirassiers) should be reduced to supply-train-speed, whereas irregular troops such as cossacks can be even faster than light troops. As far as native Americans are concerned, I'd make their units and/or armies (see what's better for the AI) small but mobile. The problem would then be that you can take a regular army and advance easily to conquer their "cities" (easily because their armies should be to small to put up any determined resistance). You won't suffer a lot from supply problems in the wilderness. And I also don't know if campaign movement is slowed down by difficult terrain.

PS: I'm probably going to upload a new version this weekend. Those long melee fights should be eradicated in the new release.

I'm currently working on cavalry. It's very hard/impossible to get what I want but I'm trying to get as close as possible. You can only stop the incredible amount of cavalry-versus-cavalry battle - casualties by having both sides break almost at contact. You can do this by giving all cavalry a "scares horses"-ability, so that any unit will be broken once it is exhausted (happens very quickly in battle) and in melee. Actually this is a quite intereseting thing - having a lot of units draw back from combat without lots of casualties. I'm taking a deeper look and post my result this weekend. I'm not content that cavalry routed in this way take very long to be rallied, which means that rallied squadrons are dispersed over the whole battlefield. I want squadrons to rally quicklier and stay together.

Against infantry, my cavalry (as it is right now, with a melee skill of 0 and a charge bonus of 1) only works via the "flank/rear attacked" and "fighting cavalry" morale-mali. Don't worry! When a squadron (other than hussars) charges an infantry battalion in line frontally, it has enough "mass" to break through the formation, which means that some troopers will be able to attack the rear of the battalion, thereby breaking the whole. But it is a bit risky with diagonal charges, as it might happen that you geet stuck without breaking through. Another bad thing is that "mass" seems to affect the charge-damage done by cavalry. So there will be too many infantry casualties even when the cavalry charges into a square. It's not good, I know, but there's no way around it. I might try to give infantry much higher defensive stats, if I manage to implement infantry melees that are also decided solely by morale instead of recent casualties. This way, casualties will only be inflicted after one side has routed.




Grenzers (as my prototype-light infantry) will be smaller in size (to make better use of their movement speed - turning/pivoting is faster this way) and dispersed rather than in close order and they'll be more accurate.


PS: I believe that morale status might actually affect the accuracy of a unit as well. I'm not 100% sure about it yet. But if you're planning to get close to the enemy in order to shock-fire him, you'll be better off to open fire before your unit is shaken by the defensive fire! I've just had a very bad surprise with a battalion getting close, being shaken and throwing away its fire with "no" effect at all (and then it routed). I don't believe this to be random or a flaw in "my" engine. Under different circumstances (unit is at least steady?), this method works pretty well.

[Prince of Essling]

I agree with you on all points, Didz, and I surely didn't mean to press you in any way.

The system you've mentioned would be a great system indeed, and you can already find it in games by ageod. I'm sure you're familiar with them? For an example in german see my link - I'm planning to do a tutorial in english for the Saratoga campaign while I'm waiting for feedback. You'll find supply trains, attrition and cohesion, harsh winter conditions, pillaging, militia units that dissolve every winter, a replacement system, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, it is impossible for me (or perhaps even anyone) to implement such a "complex" system into ETW. It's really a shame. I think that the best solution would be to set a strict limit on the allowed amount of "light troops" while keeping their movement allowance rather high (which still means lower than it is right now). Line infantry, artillery, and battle cavalry (dragoons and cuirassiers) should be reduced to supply-train-speed, whereas irregular troops such as cossacks can be even faster than light troops. As far as native Americans are concerned, I'd make their units and/or armies (see what's better for the AI) small but mobile. The problem would then be that you can take a regular army and advance easily to conquer their "cities" (easily because their armies should be to small to put up any determined resistance). You won't suffer a lot from supply problems in the wilderness. And I also don't know if campaign movement is slowed down by difficult terrain.

PS: I'm probably going to upload a new version this weekend. Those long melee fights should be eradicated in the new release.

I'm currently working on cavalry. It's very hard/impossible to get what I want but I'm trying to get as close as possible. You can only stop the incredible amount of cavalry-versus-cavalry battle - casualties by having both sides break almost at contact. You can do this by giving all cavalry a "scares horses"-ability, so that any unit will be broken once it is exhausted (happens very quickly in battle) and in melee. Actually this is a quite intereseting thing - having a lot of units draw back from combat without lots of casualties. I'm taking a deeper look and post my result this weekend. I'm not content that cavalry routed in this way take very long to be rallied, which means that rallied squadrons are dispersed over the whole battlefield. I want squadrons to rally quicklier and stay together.

Against infantry, my cavalry (as it is right now, with a melee skill of 0 and a charge bonus of 1) only works via the "flank/rear attacked" and "fighting cavalry" morale-mali. Don't worry! When a squadron (other than hussars) charges an infantry battalion in line frontally, it has enough "mass" to break through the formation, which means that some troopers will be able to attack the rear of the battalion, thereby breaking the whole. But it is a bit risky with diagonal charges, as it might happen that you geet stuck without breaking through. Another bad thing is that "mass" seems to affect the charge-damage done by cavalry. So there will be too many infantry casualties even when the cavalry charges into a square. It's not good, I know, but there's no way around it. I might try to give infantry much higher defensive stats, if I manage to implement infantry melees that are also decided solely by morale instead of recent casualties. This way, casualties will only be inflicted after one side has routed.




Grenzers (as my prototype-light infantry) will be smaller in size (to make better use of their movement speed - turning/pivoting is faster this way) and dispersed rather than in close order and they'll be more accurate.


PS: I believe that morale status might actually affect the accuracy of a unit as well. I'm not 100% sure about it yet. But if you're planning to get close to the enemy in order to shock-fire him, you'll be better off to open fire before your unit is shaken by the defensive fire! I've just had a very bad surprise with a battalion getting close, being shaken and throwing away its fire with "no" effect at all (and then it routed). I don't believe this to be random or a flaw in "my" engine. Under different circumstances (unit is at least steady?), this method works pretty well.

Great work, Kaunitz. I am glad that someone is working on making melee a thing of the past. As you have rightly identified, one side usually broke before there was a collision. Will watch this with great interest.

[Kaunitz]

Here is an updated packfile.
You can delete all earlier files - the new version consists of only one file!

I've changed cavalry a lot, I've fixed spherical case and shrapnel shot, plus I've added some really immersive cannonfire-sounds (imho at least ). Spherical case still is very unrelieable and random - I prefer round shot. I’m afraid there’s simply NO WAY to reduce melees to a “realistic” scale, so melees are still not a thing of the past. But I can assure you that there will be less and shorter melees in my mod.

In cavalry-versus-cavalry battles, cavalry can be made morally fragile by giving it the “scares horses” ability. But the problem persists that if only one side breaks, then the routing side looses all its defence capabilities immediately and about half of the routing unit is slaughtered on the spot while turning around to flee. There are no means to prevent this – neither a boost in defence stats (armor/defensive skill/shield) nor faster turning rate helps. Moreover, the reliance on the “scares horses” ability means that cavalry will always be rather fragile when within about 90 ingame metres (360 real metres) of enemy cavalry. You'll see lots of full-strength cavalry units rout. Remember to keep some units in your backfield to give them something to rally upon. Remember that a single regiment of cavalry is supposed to consist of ca. 5 squadrons (i.e. five cavalry units in my mod). This works well as you can attack with two-three units while keeping 2 as a reserve. You can use your squadrons in a rotating manner. [PS: If single squadrons fight against each other, melees can unfortunately take quite long before they are decided. But up to this point, they're not bloody at all]

Infantry-versus-cavalry works like this: an infantry battalion in line must rely on its firepower. When an infantry battalion in line gets into contact with cavalry, it is bound to break at impact. This is because all infantry units in my mod are “mob” which means that they suffer a huge morale malus when they're in contact with enemy cavalry. A square is pretty much immune to cavalry, but it is very vulnerable to artillery.

THE BIG FLAW of this version: Due to my animation-modding problems, ordinary line infantry uses "irregular" animations. Id est: infantry soldiers carry their muskets over their shoulders, etc. If anyone could help me with this, I'd be most thankful! Please have a look at this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=9103250#post9103250

There are no means to prevent infantry versus infantry meeles from happening. The “attacked in front” factor doesn’t work since it only shows up for a split-second. Even if you set the waver-timeout value to 1, it’s not sufficient to break a unit. So, apart from flank attacks, the only way to make infantry melees a short affair is to transform ordinary soldiers into melee monsters, thereby increasing the casualty rate so that units suffer from “recent casualties”-morale penalties. But I admit that it doesn't really work even half as well as intended *g*. Against cavalry, the melee-monster thing doesn't work because non-suqare infantry who gets into contact with enemy cavalry breaks immediatly. This is the way I went in this version.

I consider this to be the final beta version. This is the best singleplayer-version that I was able to create within the limits of my modding capabilities. Before I make any further changes, I'll wait for feedback.

Installation-instruction:

Unzip the file and put the KaunitzDMUC68a1.pack-file into your data folder (program files/steam/steamapps/common/empire total war/data - or something similar to this).

Then start the DMUC auto-launcher. Choose ultimate campaign (or any other, it shouldn’t matter). In the next launcher-window, click on “edit uc script” and add:

mod “KaunitzDMUC68a1.pack”;

on top of the list, which should then look like this:

mod "KaunitzDMUC68a1.pack";
mod DMUC_CP.pack;
mod DMUC_NoTrails.pack;
mod DMUC_BSM.pack;
mod DMUC_Navy.pack;
mod DMUC_Grenades.pack;
mod DMUC_CAN.pack;
mod DMUC_FORTS.pack;
mod DMUC_Tech.pack;
mod DMUC_Deploy.pack;
mod DMUC_CORE.pack;
mod DMUC_Update.pack;
mod DMUC_Custom.pack;
mod DMUC_SkinPack.pack;
mod DMUC_UnitsPack.pack;
mod DMUC_Natives.pack;
mod DMUC_AUM.pack;
mod DMUC_HUD.pack;
mod DMUC_DFM.pack;
mod DMUC_Sounds.pack;
mod DMUC_Music.pack;
mod DMUC_Arrows.pack;
mod DMUC_Borders.pack;
mod DMUC_Markers.pack;
mod DMUC_Skies.pack;
mod DMUC_Fonts.pack;

Then save, exit, and click “ultimate campaign” to start the game. Go to custom battles (choose “late”) and choose Austria versus Prussia as factions – all other factions are disabled in this preview-version. DON'T USE the default armies! Delete ALL the default units and buy the units yourself! Basically you get line infantry, grenzers (austria), grenadiers (Prussia), Hussars, Cuirassiers and some artillery. I haven’t done any faction-specific differences for the DMUC units yet. Don't look at the unit stats. They say pretty much nothing about the units capability. Just use units as you would as a general . And there's no "general unit". I've dropped it because it doesn't matter how small the unit, you could still threaten flanks with it. So, right now, the "general" is in the first unit you buy, but there are no morale mali if you loose him.

In your options, choose: medium difficutly and medium unit size.

In order to get rid of my mod, just click the “edit uc script” again, delete the “mod "KaunitzDMUC68a1.pack";” -line and don't forget to delete my pack-file in your data-folder.

If you have any troubles, let me know!

Also don't forget about the "fire immediatly"-trick described in this post.
And if you're wondering about low musket casualty-rates: get closer to the enemy to see more casualties! Remember that maximum musket range (the arc of fire that you can see in the game) equals about two American football fields! Another important factor: how tired is your unit? And also remember that shaken or wavering units often don't hit anything at all and throw away their fire!

[Didz]

Yes, I mean I'm not sure in reality whether the Native American's actually had any fixed cities, or any concept of territorial ownership, but thats another concession that we have to make to the TW game engine.

I'm pretty sure that movement is slowed by difficult terrian on the campaign map. I currently have a British Army operating in support of the American colonies and they seem to move much slower when crossing the blue ridge mountains than they did when marching along the Lawrence River valley.

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

Hi Kaunitz,

It's looking good, and as soon as I can get the latest downloads and things I'm definatelygoing to try your excellent mod.

Also, I think the db tables that decide how trained the units is in the units_stats_land_tables and there's a column that you can put well trained, elite, poorly trained etc. This probably isn't what you want but this is the column I use to get my created units to look like trained soldiers so I assume that this mightbe helpful, although of course I don't know what other changes you have made that might cause this

Hope this helps you out

The Cap

[Kaunitz]

Captain Aubrey,

I'm happy about everyone who is willing to give my mod a try!
The problem with the "training level" of units is that non-"mob" units don't suffer the "fighting cavalry"-morale malus, which is a game breaker in my mod as cavalry would be useless against infantry.

[Didz]

Looking forward to trying this mod as soon as i finish my current British DMUC campaign. I'm having really problems in India with the Mughal melee units, as even armed peasants seem to have higher melee stats than my East India Company line infantry and the Mughal infantry move so fast I'm lucky to get one decent shot off before they swamp my lines. If I can get two or three battalions lined up and settled before they charge I can usually rout them, but otherwise its pretty much hopeless. I've even tried forming square in the hope that this would give my men more resilience, but all that does is reduce the firepower as squares seem useless in DMUC, cavalry charge right through them, so infantry just ignore them completely. They also seem to have a strange habit of unforming in mid melee which results in massed slaughter as the men get cut down trying to move back into line.

I'm not really sure of the dynamic's of warfare and tactic's in India, so I can't say how realistic it is for Indian infantry to rush about the battlefield in high speed mobs. However, as things stand its like fighting masses of cavalry, but without the horses. Might have to do some research into battles such a Maida, and see what really happened.

[Kaunitz]

Phew, I'm not sure that there were any "battles" between european and indian forces at all. The battle of Plassey - according to wikipedia - was a minor engagement: a bombardment, some skirmishing and an unsuccessfull cavalry-charge-attempt. There is no metion of mugal melee-infantry at all. And the battle of Wandiwash was a (very small!) affair between french and british troops. Can you think of any other battles? I admit that I haven't preoccupied myself at all with this theatre of war. We could still go for a "what if", but it's hard to make something more authentic when it has never happened.

I fear that the 4:1 scale and battalion sized units are not apt to represent the (more common?) skirmishes in the colonies.

Apart from that, I'm going to have troubles with bow-armed units for native americans. Well, okay, you can say that by the middle of the 18th century, most of the native warriors were already equipped with muskets. My main problem with bows is that their accuracy should suffer heavily against musket-armed troops. Having read a bit more about the battle of Germantown, where fog combined with powder smoke, it seems that visibility was reduced drastically, and there were instances of friendly fire among the Americans (which is another argument why it was recommendable to form a straight line perhaps). Unfortunately, I cannot make accuracy dependent on the target. This is no problem for musket-armed troops as they produce their own smoke, so I can accuracy decrease with fatigue (which decreases by shooting). But it's impossible for bow-armed troops. Another important factor would be that bow-armed troops are very likely to carry much less ammunition. Imagine 60 arrows versus 60 rounds in a single cartrige box. *g*

[Didz]

Doesn't appear there were any according to the web anyway. I suppose an alternative would be to look for information on battles between Austria and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman's seem to have a similar troop mix, at least in ETW.