TROM2 - Feedback and Suggestions

[jbet]

I love this mod. CAI has been improved very much and playing battles is a great pleaseure! However, I considerer, in battle, enemy infantery take advantage of melee. This could be improved?
Regards!

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

I love this mod. CAI has been improved very much and playing battles is a great pleaseure! However, I considerer, in battle, enemy infantery take advantage of melee. This could be improved?
Regards!

Melee combat can happen by accident (units run into each other) or by purpose. I have no problem with the latter. Historically, assaulting the enemy with the bayonet was a common and often successfull tactic. Drawn out firefights would only lead to disrupted units. However, endless melee fights like in NTW were uncommon. Usually the less determined side would give way before contact if not in a fortfied position. The problem with the BAI is, that it often stumbles accidentaly into melee combat. That's something no mod got under control yet. Even if the BAI forms a perfect line, after some volleys its unist will start to change targets, move around, run into each other and and up in your line.

[KamilW]

Yeah, but I found that in many many battles in TROM II the enemy AI overlaps and this even much more than in vanilla, I must say. Sometimes units just kind of get lost and 'accidentally' run into my unit and then they automatically switch to bayonets, without charging or so. It's really stupid to watch it. Or a part of the enemy AI's line, wants to close in on my line, but is not closing in on me in the same angle (if you know what I mean). And so the enemy keep closing in, until the closest part of their line touch, yes touch , one side of my line. And again bayonets. Without charge, just accidentally. Just marching around, accidentally bumping in on my unit. The AI says: "Hey, I didn't see you there . Ooh well, we'll get our bayonets. "

Also one cavalry unit, I don't know if it were the Light Horse French Hussars or the French Mameluks of the Guard... They don't charge an enemy. A few times an enemy unit formed a column (don't know why... it was stupid of them, they just stood there in their column) and I ordered the Hussars and Mameluks to charge their flank, while the enemy column was fired upon by light infantry. One of the cavalry units did its job. The other one wanted to circle around the enemy. Why? Why? Why?

[removeduser_86732453]

This mod is quite nice. The only trouble I had with it is that close range volleys aren't effective enough in my opinion.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

This mod is quite nice. The only trouble I had with it is that close range volleys aren't effective enough in my opinion.

I close range volley of a line unit with 40 accuracy can cause around 25-35 casualities to another line unit close up. Didn't try elite units, but I guess they do even more damage. I think thats pretty good. I would think that historically the numbers were even worse. Accuracy of infantry in real battles was realy bad (and is still today), otherwise the French attack column tactic would have never worked.

[removeduser_86732453]

Ah, strange. My friend and I were testing this mod in custom battles, he came close with his 88th Foot Connaught Rangers, very close actually, and they just killed 3 men. I'll test it again and if it's as you say, I'll be glad. But I will have to do it some other time maybe, since there are a lot of mods I'm switching to and from.

[freelancerX]

I gotta say i am really loving the navel aspects of the newest build. i just had one of the best and nail biting naval fight I've ever had from any mod. I started a British campaign and was moving my nelson fleet around, when i noticed that the orange faction (dont remember name) had an 8 ship fleet with some lighter ships of the line and 4 trade-ships, i knew they were headed to my trade nodes to the north west of england. So i quickly moved in to attack but then i noticed that Napoleon's powerful French fleet (the one that starts off the western coast of France) was just out of reinforcement range, so i took a risk and attacked anyway, but unfortunately the French fleet WAS in reinforcement range, so now i was facing 12 ships, 6 of which could actually give me trouble. After a super long battle it all boiled down to my 122 gunship, (which was down to 25 guns on each side) and one of the heavier French ships. every other ship had either sunk or was routing, the French ship and mine were shooting volley after volley and we were both probably about to go down, but i was able to demast him and get behind the ship, a couple of minutes of firing into the captains quarters and the French ship finally surrendered. I Mean WOW what a great battle, and now i have pretty much complete control of the ocean and things are looking good! :-)

[Huberto]

Enjoying the mod -- keep up the great work!

[rossw]

Not sure if this would have been brought up before, but would it be possible to include shrapnel shot for long guns in the game? The British army used shrapnel (as spherical case shot) from the early 19th century, including use in the Peninsular war and at Waterloo

Love the mod by the way. Had thought vanilla was a bit lacking in unit variety coming from TROM for Empire. Haven't managed to try any AOR units from other nations yet, Kutuzov has ground to a halt in Northern Italy against a combined French and Italian army (Who worked together!) and my Ukrainian and Belorussian armies are tied up in some heavy fighting in Bulgaria. Looking forward to try out the local units when the Sons of the Motherland triumph

[A.Suvorov]

I was trying to get ai using canister at closer ranges by editing battle_entities no luck so far . How come in vanilla ai uses canister and in trom they dont? or at list i haven't seen it they should switch to canister at max canister ranges for sure.

[hippacrocafish]

I've noticed that, in large battles, A.I. armies sometimes concentrate too much on one flank. They will move their entire army to face one or two units and suffer unecessary casualties because of this. Do you think there might be a solution to this Yarkis?

[qvint]

First I want to tank for this great mod. I have only one question. I've never played vanilla NTW so I don't know AI behavior there but I've noticed that when playing Austria campaign twice on hard, after about a year I was the only one at war with France and I couldn't persuade anyone to join me. Also BAI is never protecting its artillery. So is this normal AI behavior or its TROM2 specific?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Not sure if this would have been brought up before, but would it be possible to include shrapnel shot for long guns in the game? The British army used shrapnel (as spherical case shot) from the early 19th century, including use in the Peninsular war and at Waterloo.

I will look into that. First if shrapnel works at all in NTW and then how to implement that. Do you have any links/quotes about the use of shrapnel? Did other nations also use it up to 1815?

I was trying to get ai using canister at closer ranges by editing battle_entities no luck so far . How come in vanilla ai uses canister and in trom they dont? or at list i haven't seen it they should switch to canister at max canister ranges for sure.

Hm, I didn't notice that the BAI does not use canister in TROM2. I am pretty shure it does. But it may not happen at maximum canister range, because the ranges may be hardcoded. An interesting question. So, thanks for bringing this up.

I've noticed that, in large battles, A.I. armies sometimes concentrate too much on one flank. They will move their entire army to face one or two units and suffer unecessary casualties because of this. Do you think there might be a solution to this Yarkis?

I only noticed this in custom battles. The BAI likes to shift the whole army to one flank. Never found out why. However, in the campaign I haven't seen this.

First I want to tank for this great mod. I have only one question. I've never played vanilla NTW so I don't know AI behavior there but I've noticed that when playing Austria campaign twice on hard, after about a year I was the only one at war with France and I couldn't persuade anyone to join me. Also BAI is never protecting its artillery. So is this normal AI behavior or its TROM2 specific?

On hard and very hard the AI tends to gang up on the player. That's why I made the economic difficulty independent from the diplomatic difficulty. The difficulty levels in TROM2 will only affect the diplomatic behaviour of the AI. If you want a more "reasonable" AI with less bias against the player start a game on Normal. For the battles I recommend at least hard difficulty.

The BAI protects artillery only with one unit of cavalry, which gets released from this duty after some time. That's all hardcoded. Sadly the BAI in NTW is still unfinished in many ways.

[rossw]

I will look into that. First if shrapnel works at all in NTW and then how to implement that. Do you have any links/quotes about the use of shrapnel? Did other nations also use it up to 1815?

Only from Wikipedia. I'll go and look some more when I can get away from my campaign

Wiki Link

And from Cornwell's Sharpe (Reliable, I know) it was a British thing, the French engineers couldn't make the fuses or something to that effect

Found this :

Interesting piece on British artillery in general

The bit on shrapnel (5th page) seems very similar to the wiki. There's an interesting bit at the end on rockets as well

[Huberto]

Hi Yarkis,

Please allow me to toss a few impressions your way about this mod, which I am enjoying playing and find quite challenging (playing TROM historical campaign, France on normal/hard, utilizing the even easier economy submod). I've concluded for now that the cumulative effect of your changes making army creation and maintenance -- e.g. increasing unit recruitment and maintenance costs, increasing build times, extending research times, and making money more scarce overall -- has knocked the game a bit too much off-balance. On the bright side, I've found the AI much improved and really like what you've done there and in many other areas.

But the campaign seems unbalanced. Using my 1805 French campaign as an example, I was unable to build a full stack army for Napoleon as well as find adequate troops to defend France and northern Italy and create the necessary supporting forces for Napoleon's invasion of Austria.

Instead, by early September 1805 I was able to raise only 1 3/4ths stacks for the invasion of Austria + 3/4 stack for Italy + 3/4 stack for France. This simply isn't enough to deal with the 5 or 6 full stacks that Austria is able to throw against the player plus dealing with the forces of Austria's Russian and British allies.

At the same time that it was harder and more costly to build units, I found the French player drastically limited economically -- despite making numerous economic improvement. The additional economic pressure was diplomatic,caused by (i) losing trade with the Ottomans in September 1805 (who also declared war at that time) ; (ii) getting blockaded in one or two ports by Sweden and Britain, crippling overseas trade; (ii) becoming invaded by by Britain in the Fall of 1805 with a full stack army commanded by Wellington; (iv) and losing trade by early 1806 and being declared war on by Prussia. This meant in fairly short order that Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Ottoman Empire, Austria, and Russia all became enemies, and that as a consequence Spain was the only effective major trade partner.

I am not saying that the diplomacy is unfair. Rather, I am arguing that the player cannot build the armies necessary to compete with the powers arrayed against it, and that is due to the cumulative impact of all the changes you've made with the economy and army costs.

In my case as France, invading Austria in the fall of 1805 with 1.75 stacks with some support from Massena in Italy, and winning every battle, I simply was unable to prevail and conquer Austria with the 5-6 full stacks ultimately thrown against me. Although Prussia did not confront France during this time, my recollection from playing vanilla and NER is they are even harder to overcome in the game than Austria.

My recommendation is that you make it easier to recruit and maintain armies. Not only are larger armies historically accurate, it will help balance your mod more.

[A.Suvorov]

Hi Yarkis,

Please allow me to toss a few impressions your way about this mod, which I am enjoying playing and find quite challenging (playing TROM historical campaign, France on normal/hard, utilizing the even easier economy submod). I've concluded for now that the cumulative effect of your changes making army creation and maintenance -- e.g. increasing unit recruitment and maintenance costs, increasing build times, extending research times, and making money more scarce overall -- has knocked the game a bit too much off-balance. On the bright side, I've found the AI much improved and really like what you've done there and in many other areas.

But the campaign seems unbalanced. Using my 1805 French campaign as an example, I was unable to build a full stack army for Napoleon as well as find adequate troops to defend France and northern Italy and create the necessary supporting forces for Napoleon's invasion of Austria.

Instead, by early September 1805 I was able to raise only 1 3/4ths stacks for the invasion of Austria + 3/4 stack for Italy + 3/4 stack for France. This simply isn't enough to deal with the 5 or 6 full stacks that Austria is able to throw against the player plus dealing with the forces of Austria's Russian and British allies.

At the same time that it was harder and more costly to build units, I found the French player drastically limited economically -- despite making numerous economic improvement. The additional economic pressure was diplomatic,caused by (i) losing trade with the Ottomans in September 1805 (who also declared war at that time) ; (ii) getting blockaded in one or two ports by Sweden and Britain, crippling overseas trade; (ii) becoming invaded by by Britain in the Fall of 1805 with a full stack army commanded by Wellington; (iv) and losing trade by early 1806 and being declared war on by Prussia. This meant in fairly short order that Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Ottoman Empire, Austria, and Russia all became enemies, and that as a consequence Spain was the only effective major trade partner.

I am not saying that the diplomacy is unfair. Rather, I am arguing that the player cannot build the armies necessary to compete with the powers arrayed against it, and that is due to the cumulative impact of all the changes you've made with the economy and army costs.

In my case as France, invading Austria in the fall of 1805 with 1.75 stacks with some support from Massena in Italy, and winning every battle, I simply was unable to prevail and conquer Austria with the 5-6 full stacks ultimately thrown against me. Although Prussia did not confront France during this time, my recollection from playing vanilla and NER is they are even harder to overcome in the game than Austria.

My recommendation is that you make it easier to recruit and maintain armies. Not only are larger armies historically accurate, it will help balance your mod more.

Economy is fine I was able to get 3 full active attacking stacks by year 1807 without easier economy submod your not doing something right use trade ships, raid enemy trade routes and loot enemy strongholds.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Only from Wikipedia. I'll go and look some more when I can get away from my campaign

Wiki Link

And from Cornwell's Sharpe (Reliable, I know) it was a British thing, the French engineers couldn't make the fuses or something to that effect

Found this :

Interesting piece on British artillery in general

The bit on shrapnel (5th page) seems very similar to the wiki. There's an interesting bit at the end on rockets as well

Thanks! It looks like I can get shrapnel shots to work. I will have to make seperate artillery batteries that use shrapnel ínstead of roundshot though. This makes shure, that the AI will also use it.

[A.Suvorov]

Yarkis, how do i make minor nations more aggressive?

[hippacrocafish]

Well that sucks. :/

Something else I wanted to bring up is the agressiveness of the A.I. nations, the only factions I ever see expand are France, Austria, and Great Britain (Mostly into each other's territories) but big nations like Sweden, Denmark, Russia, the Ottomans, Spain, and Portugal almost never expand at all (There was one odd game where Russia took Switzerland though). Is there a way to make the nations more aggressive towards one another? Portugal and Spain and Denmark and Sweden are the most in need a change IMO, I don't think they fight at all.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Moding when drunk can be dangerous for the files. Take care. I don't know what the maximum amount is, but there is a limit to the width of a unit and also pathfinding can go nuts if units are too big. Currently I stick to a moderate 25% increase.