Hit Points?

[Ullr]

Having newly downloaded and tryed out XGM, i should first say i kinda enjoy it's ideas and where it's taking the game engine. Vanilla was too heavily biased in romes favor (3 factions and the almost certainty that at least 2 or 'em will conquer over half the map beteen them).

The only other mod i've tryed was lusted's one; lands to conquer i think. While it sorlved the roman problem, it always ended up with full stacks after full stacks (literally like 8-10) of armies comming at me from everywhere (not sure whether this was in the mod itself, or part of the "darth mod" ai fixing.

So far with XGM (AI financial bonuses off) i've enjoyed a nice balance, of a few stacks at a time every so often: enough to keep me on my feet, but almost not enough so that a win seems almost meaningless.
Battles on XGM have been long and technical; very enjoyable. Every victory felt like a hard earned achievment: Exactly how they should feel!



But to the point of my first post:

Reading the forums on here, it seems most players are split over the hit points system. I went straight into the 2HP setting, and have generally enjoyed the battles so far: So different to the older style of having 8 or so archers and taking out 2/3rds of the full stack im against before i even bother to melee. Having two hit points seems to fix a lot of this, but the overall effect diminishes other aspects without meaning to.

As noted on other posts, cavalry are effectively "nerfed" in that they cant fully do there job. Any light skirmishers caught in the open could and should be ridden down by cavalry, not engaged into combat long and giving the horses a run for their money.

Also, cavalry charges into the rear of a formation are less effective in both kills ands shock. I'm not 100% certain on this but i think morale shocks are based on a kind of situation and kill effect. When a unit card suffers losses, it's number turns red as it decreases, and the description turns, to "concerned", "worried" or "shocked" etc. I've always found a rout comes from a massive decrease in numbers, i.e a cavalry charge taking out 30 or 40 soldiers within a second or two as it charges the rear. This happens a lot less with 2HP, as the cav wont kill, only take off 1HP; higher charge bonuses don't seem to affect it.

I use the BI.EXE program and also found out (to quite a shock) that a main line of hoplites can literally steamroll through a line of phalangites on even ground, with similar armour/exp. Not certain about the historical accuracy of this, but other posts on here say the same thing about shieldwall hoplites v's phalangites. From what i saw, it's seems the hoplites can literally push past pike line after line, with minmal casualties, until they force the phalangites to ditch the pike and use thier swords. I wouldn't of been too surpired to see it happen with an elite unit, maybe RSG's, or if the hoplites suffered heavy casualties. But i literally had my phalangites destroyed with maybe 30 or so hoplite deaths.




While my modding experience is next to zero, i have modifeed certain unit aspects on both vanilla and lands to conquer, and what wondereing about what people (or even DBH) may think about ideas.

For archers, Vanilla RTw uses 30 ammunition as standard and 60 for many of the mounted archers (elephants, cav's, camels). But even with 2 Hp's some archers in EGM have less amomo. (along with reduced "long range missiles", from 170yrds to 150.

I know defence stats come from Armour value (used for all attacks), Defence skill (used in melee) and Shield bonus (all attacks from front and left). Where experience only increases defence skill, making a unit just as vunerable as always to everything other than melee. Could an increase in some of these stats, across the whole faction board, make more of balance than the 2HP system.

I.E. Upping the shield bonus would still make archers less affective and the melee fights longer and more drawn out, but allow for full cavalry devastation from the rear. upping armour values would do the same for archer fire and melee, but reduce the effect of cavalry in the rear (albeit, not making the rear almost unchargable)


If armour value, defence skill and shield bonus were all increased together by some value, but with attack values left the same: Maybe archers would have little affect on heavy infantry, but be more effective against skirmishers, non-shield wearers and light cav, yet a full cavalry charge from the rear would only have a slight diminished effect from the armour value increase. Even then, a frontal melee, would have to deal with increased armour, defence and shield values, resulting in slower kills and a longer battle?




Apart from the main point, is there any plans to bring in more "entertainment" building for the barbarians. I've always loved to play them most (along with other non-super power factions: carthage, pontus, egyptian), but the two major problems all barbarians have are keeping order in those larger cities and getting a decent quality of ancilliaries. Making this worse is the fact that pubs and taverns give far more negative ancilliaries and general traits than positive; unlike arena's, executiuon squares, odeons, etc.

If the negative traits from certain temples can be fixed, can the pubs be fixed also. While i usually edit in the ability for barb's to build academy's to partly solve this; some new building, like maybe a "druidic/asatric learning centre", could look trully great.

[knguyen_93]

Wow, i love yr ideas but let think about this, for me a freshmen college student, xgm take me 3 hours aday. With 2 hit point system it gonna take at least 10 mins per battle and as u already knew we have to fight 4 battles per turn in late period of every faction. So how many cities or areas can i take in 3 hours? Second cavalry and range units are alot weaker in xgm than the original rtw, if you lower their damage vs heavy infantry, there is no need to play as others faction except Rome. Third, let keep the barbarian where they are, if they have things like paved road, lugus magna, but not tavern, they will be not barbarian for us to conquer. Btw, i love how u talk about modifying xgm, pm me if you want to work together!!!

[Conqistador]

The only other mod i've tryed was lusted's one; lands to conquer i think.

Little correction: Lusted's mod for RTW is Terrae Expugnandae

[Ullr]

re: Knguyen,
i think you might of misunderstood me with your second point. The idea is to let the cavalry unleash their killing potential... but... only from the flanks or the rear. By using the defence stats in the RTW engine it's doable, but would take time to iron out any inbalances. At the mo cav seem weak attacking from the front, but not much stronger up the rear, i hint at leaving the frontal charge about as effective as it is now, but making a rear charge more devastating.

the main way i've always seen the game is in it's stats; the defence stats. Many MMORPG's do the same (my bane is wow, as it happens), the principles very similar in RTW, but im not 100% sure how the rolls to attack/armour checks are made. In RTW, each soldier has 3 defence modifiers: his armour value, a defence skill (imagine a dodge or a parry) and his shield (if he has one); they're always written down in that order. All three of these are combined when attacking in melee from the front, yet only the armour value (the first number) is used when attacking from the rear (a soldier cant dodge/parry nor block an attack from behind). These defence values are what i was talking about, not the attack values or charge bonus from any cavalry.

For example i can take a XGM roman legionary cohort (defence 9, 7, 5) , against a roman legionary cavalry (attack 7 charge bonus 14). If the cavalry attack fom the front, they have to fight against (9+7+5) 21 defence, and then do the same again to kill one soldier (2 HP's). From the rear this becomes only 9, but still it must do the same again for the 2nd hit point. Only trouble is, that lovely charge bonus of 14 won't be around to help take out the 2nd hit point, and because the soldiers at the very rear of the cohort dont die in one fell swoop, the cavalry have a hard time doing anything with its charge to the soldiers who are in front of the rear 2 or 3 ranks.

Now imagine a one hit point system, but with a universal upgrade of defence values across the board (for eg 6 to each value). Legionary cohort would then have (15+13+11) 39 defence against a frontal charge, as opposed to two sets of 21 (around 42 ish). But from the rear, this would be just 15 instead of two sets of 9 (18 ish).

The advantage comes from the fact that the cavalry would outright kill soldiers when it hit the rear (as opposed to simply killing one hit point from each soldier). It would penetrate into the cohort more, giving it the abilty to both mess up the cohorts formation, and also attack more of the soldiers who are in the middle of the square itself.

On the barbarian thing, i was more talking about small ways to put of bit of happiness/law bonus into their cities. Anyones who's took gauls and germans into southern spain or italy know after a while you'll need to empty the city, let it revolt, then re-cap it and extermine; simply because you cant supply enough happiness and/or law to keep the city content. A huge city ludus magna is obviously a stretch too far for real men wearing trousers, but maybe just a small city barbarian version of a learning centre/acadmey style thing would help. Not to mention removing the stupid "drunken uncle" and "slubberdeguillon" ancilliaries.

[knguyen_93]

Omg, this is a brilliant idea, but If you play as one of the eastern factions, cavalry units are very important because your infantry is weak and only able to hold the other infantry in a short period. In reality for the legions, it is also very hard to rout them by cavalry charge on the flank because every unit get update in morale from their faction temple. So its even higher than "excellent morale". For my opinion, we should apply that system on eastern faction and the barbarian because their infantry can be easily overrun by the civilized. For the barbarian, I think they should have "Wonders" in their territory like Stonehenge in England in order to boom the population, increase morale, experience or something like that. For my idea, the bar faction should have "Brothel" building, it is like gentlemen club or whore house to increase the public order!!!!!

[DimeBagHo]

Thanks for the feedback Ullr. With regards to Barbarians and keeping order I'll take a look at what can be done.

There's a an extensive discussion of the 2hp system here, and a bunch of alternative approaches.

Personally I like the current performance of cavalry under the 2hp system. Cavalry charge stats in XGM have been increased considerably so if you organise good charges, and charge repeatedly, then you can get good results. However, cavalry can get into trouble in a prolonged melee, even against light infantry if they are outnumbered, as they will be if you send only one cavalry unit against one light infantry unit, and especially on scrub terrain. But I think that's the way it should be.

There are things that can be done using attack/armour/shield/defence stats. The reason I decided against taking this approach to nerfing ranged units is that it tends to adversely affect the AI while making things too easy for the human player. If units have high armour or shield stats the AI won't even bother to use its ranged attacks; it will just send its ranged units into melee. Meanwhile if units are much more vulnerable from the rear, that fact will easily be exploited by the human player, while the AI will keep playing the way it does with vanilla stats. XGM is focussed on the single player campaign game, so I've always taken the view that it is important to make the most out of the limited abilities of the AI, even if that means sacrificing some realism. Mods that focus on player vs player battles, quite rightly take a different approach.

[DimeBagHo]

Some advice about barbarian family members: when they are young it is a bad idea to have them hanging around in settlements. They need to get out and fight battles until they mature and gain reputation. Then it becomes much safer to use them as governors.

[Ullr]

Yeah, speaking of the bar factions: I've been plaiyng a germania campaign on XC, having taken up to the Vistula to prepare stone walls and good garrisons in Ascaucalis and Corrodulum (yay; a 59 year old genreral here just hit his 3rd gold cheveron for experience) for this "orange death", which hasn't been as deadly as expected so far. It's now 228bc and the marians hit in about 2 years ago now, so finally i've got the infantry to hold up Rome. Gaul and Britian are both in my hands, save for gauls having Noricum and Rhaetia as a buffer against a roman frontal assault. I've just taken Massilia and plan to invade from the west.

Empire wise, i do like the redued population growth a lot, it really kicks in after 10-12K, gettign to a large city, and keeping most cities happy and content around 12-17K population, except for Colchester with it's stonehenge, which is now like 20K and still rising. Not sure how well i can keep it above 70%, but a good half-stack of garrison may well be needed. I wonder if the trouble with camulodunum's to be expected from the italian ecomony baskets like Capua and Tarentum, if so, i may be dependant on what rome might have built for happiness.



As for helping the bar factions, XC does take some good steps. The "circle of elders" at a small city level gives 5% law for just three turns, as well as "watchmen" and "guards". The idea of being able to build the same garrison troops across my whole empire may not fit in with the core ideas in XGM; but the concept of a building for bars which reduce tax and income, yet provide a law/happiness boost in return is a solid idea, and very balanced to the point any player won't built further into the structure than they really need to for each city.

They still get literally screwed, when it comes to the core happiness buildings of each faction. Taverns are alongside structures like an arena, an execution square and an odeon. Yet where an ex square gives a "torturer" (very good for law bonus), and an odeon gives many good ancilliaries (along with being needed for a school to give out an "orator" to a general), the taverns do just as much bad as they do good, effectively cancelling them out as useful. Ancilliary-wise, "slubberdeguillon" and "drunkern uncle" come out far too much, as well as most general v and v's won't stop at "casual drinker" or "likes a drink", instead going all the way to "drunkard". Consider the very real possibility of a bardic circle giving 15% happiness, yet the general in the city has "drunkard" and a "slubberdeguillon"; -3 influence is enough to cancel out the bardic circle, not sure whether it happens most of the time, but in truth the pub structures simple dont do much to a city in the long run.



regarding ranged units though, i don't see too much of an issue, they have been rightfully nerfed a bit by the 2 hp system; but not all equally. As many will mention on the forums, the emphasis now is on "slingers" and not "archers", so many can keep a similar strat and just switch units for the job. With "longe range missiles" range decreased from 170 to 150, and the ammo reduced from 30 to 25, it becomes more effective to use an 80yrd silnger with 45 shots (especially with the AP bonus). either upping the long range back to 170, or bringing up the ammo in line with slingers would help to make both units more balanced: making a reason to bring a unit or two of archers as well as slingers to the battle, instead of just all slingers.

If a major issue is with the AI on the battlefield, is there nothing that can be modded inside of RTW, to change what the AI would do under certain circumstances (the battle plan scripts?). suppose im thinking like chess here, with an army split up into 8 types of units (long/short ranged, hvy/lgt inf, hvy/lgt/mis cav and siege), deploy in a typical faction formation (roman short line and depth, greek long line and no reserve), and almost splitting up the battlefield into chess squares, i.e if a player moves a unit into one area, then AI will always coumteract with the equivalent units it has.

I'm not sure whether the darth mod made a better AI or not, but wondering whether it's all hard coded or scripted in a (export) description file somewhere.

[vivv Kraken]

Would it not be better to just reduce skirmisher/archer hit points to 1 on the 2 hit point system?
I agree with ammo it makes archers abit inneffective on 2 hit point system (and 1 hit point system). Mutch better getting 4 javelin men than 4 long range archers at the current state I blame armor penetration for that still javelins need it to have the intended effect on elephants.
Btw if you want to try something fun try to give gastraphetes boddy piercing ability (bp) in the script.
Its like having 16 ballistas go off at ones with just one unit it is godly vs infantry lol.