Is this mod harder & more complex than platinum ?

[JohnDoe5x5]

This thread is for the advanced player only who looks for a challenge.

RTR platinum is cool and a lot of fun, but i'm wondering.. what is the best mod for RTR. I think only Platinum and ExRM is worth mentioning ? But which..

Also, non RTR mods ? Any suggestions ? I'm looking for harder and more complex mods, the only restriction is that they don't have any huge or more than huge mods for unit size (because of crappy computer). Also no Byg's Grim Reality type of mods except maybe supply systems.. on my Pentium 4 it will take ages for the AI factions to compute their turns.

Also.. (optional): tell me how you play platinum or any other mode for the extra challenge. Thanx.

[crude dude]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=536

[Sadistic Magician]

I'm sure ExRM will show something great in 4.0. (we must wait...) But what do you mean by complex?
I think ExRM is the best mod now, but there are some other goods mods highly detailed. Search in preview threads

[Dunadd]

I prefer ExRM to Platinum because it's more balanced and more historically accurate - e.g cavalry have high charge bonuses but their defence (especially armour) is relatively low to represent their horses being vulnerable.

For some reason the people who make Platinum itself believe that cavalry should be able to charge phalanxes from the front and win - and stand in melee against them and win - based on no historical examples that i've ever read.

Having said that ExRM is a mod of the Platinum mod, so i can't complain too much - Platinum is still a huge improvement on the original RTW.

[JohnDoe5x5]

Well by 'complex' I mean historically accurate, realistic warfare (as close as possible), and not very straightforward battles all the time, and also some nice surprises once in a while (gameplay wise - be it good or bad).

Well Dunadd, I know what your saying, but unupgraded heavy cavalry can't really win against phalanx by charging from the front, at least from my experience.. but bodyguards can do that with a little micro and also stand in a melee with upgrades =) Also I think high quality heavy cav(non bodyguard) can kick quite hard a mediocre phalanx unit (charge or melee), so you may be right.. but what do we do when the hellenistic factions mass phalanxes.. in ExRM it may be a bigger challenge, I don't know. Btw, I hate the elephants in RTR, they are too imba, I think it's somewhat historically accurate but they should be in fewer numbers and much more expensive (they can be game breaking). Also troops should get chevrons much much harder, like reaching +4 after they get the same amount of xp of the currently +8. The Medieval 2 model I think it's better and there you don't have that much overpowered experienced units.

After I finish my current campaign, I may install ExRM..

Edit: I made a few tests.. even high quality cav doesn't really stand a chance vs a mediocre phalanx unit after charge then melee without micro or support.. so sorry, but I think cav is not overpowered. If you wanted the cav unit to not manage to kill even just one man in the phalanx unit, then ExRM may be insane if it's like that rofl. But if you talk about the bodyguards, then yes, they are op vs phalanx.

[Dunadd]

Edit: I made a few tests.. even high quality cav doesn't really stand a chance vs a mediocre phalanx unit after charge then melee without micro or support.. so sorry, but I think cav is not overpowered. If you wanted the cav unit to not manage to kill even just one man in the phalanx unit, then ExRM may be insane if it's like that rofl. But if you talk about the bodyguards, then yes, they are op vs phalanx.

Well that's not so bad then. I just remember arguing with people on either the RTR or RTRPE forums about how high cavalry unit's melee and defence ratings were. Some of them were claiming that historically cavalry could charge pikemen to the front and win.
I was asking for examples, but they couldn't give any but kept insisting on it. That was a couple of years ago though.


Elephants have an upkeep of almost 3,000 a turn in ExRM, so if i'm playing Carthaginians i usually disband the ones you get at the start of the campaign to avoid bankruptcy.

Any unit that can form phalanx is way overpowered in RTW - especially in their invulnerability to missiles fired to their front. Historically they should be very tough to the front, but if charged in the flank or rearthey should usually fold pretty fast.

The only solutions are to reduce their stats in mods or else take away the phalanx ability altogether.

With phalanx it balances them a bit against legionaries, but it makes it far too hard for other units to fight them.

When the Hellenistic factions have a tonne of phalanxes i agree it's hell on earth to beat them with the only thing doing them much damage being attacking them in the flank or rear or using javelins on their backs - but you'll run out of javelins long before you kill most of them - only solution i can see would be to improve their stats a bit but take away the phalanx formation from them in the export_descr_unit file (one of the few files i know anything about )

[Quinn Inuit]

Well by 'complex' I mean historically accurate, realistic warfare (as close as possible), and not very straightforward battles all the time, and also some nice surprises once in a while (gameplay wise - be it good or bad).

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what we've done in 3.5.3c. The units are balanced carefully, the AI generally recruits balanced armies (all hypaspist armies annoy the heck out of me), and the battle AI is as good as I could get it (we use Sinhuet's formations, modified carefully by me and a few others).

Well Dunadd, I know what your saying, but unupgraded heavy cavalry can't really win against phalanx by charging from the front, at least from my experience.. but bodyguards can do that with a little micro and also stand in a melee with upgrades =) Also I think high quality heavy cav(non bodyguard) can kick quite hard a mediocre phalanx unit (charge or melee), so you may be right.. but what do we do when the hellenistic factions mass phalanxes.. in ExRM it may be a bigger challenge, I don't know. Btw, I hate the elephants in RTR, they are too imba, I think it's somewhat historically accurate but they should be in fewer numbers and much more expensive (they can be game breaking). Also troops should get chevrons much much harder, like reaching +4 after they get the same amount of xp of the currently +8. The Medieval 2 model I think it's better and there you don't have that much overpowered experienced units.

After I finish my current campaign, I may install ExRM..

I think we've rebalanced the elephants properly...mostly cost balancing, little work on the secondary HP. You'll also see fewer all-phalanx armies--they're much more well-rounded now.

Edit: I made a few tests.. even high quality cav doesn't really stand a chance vs a mediocre phalanx unit after charge then melee without micro or support.. so sorry, but I think cav is not overpowered. If you wanted the cav unit to not manage to kill even just one man in the phalanx unit, then ExRM may be insane if it's like that rofl. But if you talk about the bodyguards, then yes, they are op vs phalanx.

I had to mess around with phalanxes before I got the balance quite right (a few versions back). The trick is that a set phalanx is going to do a lot of damage if something attacks it from the front. It's very weak from other directions, though, and that includes a cavalry charge if you can get the unit into the lines. (I'd try a wedge formation for that.) It was fairly complicated because of unit mass issues, but I found that an additional spear_bonus did the trick.

[Quinn Inuit]

It shouldn't crash much, but I recommend saving every few turns to be on the safe side. 3.5.3c is pretty darn stable...if there were serious CTDs, we'd have updated it more recently, but there were few enough problems with the 3.5.3 release that we've been able to spend pretty much all of our time on 4.0.

I'm pretty sure wedge will work very well against phalanxes in 3.5+. If you can get a horseman into the phalanx line, he's going to cause serious damage. That used to happen too easily due to the unit mass disparity, but I think I made it less likely by adding the spear_bonus. That way, a phalanx will kill most cavalry before they have a chance to muscle their way in, which I think is reasonable.

As for AP projectiles, I've no reason to doubt that works. We've limited those to Roman legionaries (and similar Italics), Spanish non-skirmishers, and pseudo-legionaries, though, since everyone else was just using plain javelins.

[JohnDoe5x5]

It shouldn't crash much, but I recommend saving every few turns to be on the safe side. 3.5.3c is pretty darn stable...if there were serious CTDs, we'd have updated it more recently, but there were few enough problems with the 3.5.3 release that we've been able to spend pretty much all of our time on 4.0.

I'm pretty sure wedge will work very well against phalanxes in 3.5+. If you can get a horseman into the phalanx line, he's going to cause serious damage. That used to happen too easily due to the unit mass disparity, but I think I made it less likely by adding the spear_bonus. That way, a phalanx will kill most cavalry before they have a chance to muscle their way in, which I think is reasonable.

As for AP projectiles, I've no reason to doubt that works. We've limited those to Roman legionaries (and similar Italics), Spanish non-skirmishers, and pseudo-legionaries, though, since everyone else was just using plain javelins.

That's very good then. I don't think there's another mod with such nice features and balancing. Before choosing which mod I will install for RTW, I researched them all (the best I could). And RTR sounded the best.. and now RTR gets even better with ExRM You guys bring life to the Total War series for those who have a crappy computer and can't play the newer ones.. I played M2TW SS for example which was a blast, but with poor graphics and small unit size.. it just killed half of the fun.. and after I wanted even more (Big Grim's Reality), things were unplayable even on the campaign map so I decided to switch back to RTW and mod it. And it is was worth it. So thank you very much.. This is my last post in this forum until I switch to ExRM. Last curiosity.. when does 4.0 ~ come out, I didn't see anything in the stickies.. ?

Have a nice day and have fun working on 4.0 And thanks for actually answering my questions.

[Quinn Inuit]

You're quite welcome. 'm glad you like the sound of it. One of our goals is actually to ensure that people on older computers will have no trouble playing the mod--in 4.0, we took even 256^2 skins over 512^2 skins, ceterus paribus.

4.0 won't be out for a few months yet, at this rate. We're nearly done with the units and the map itself. Now we need to finish placing all of the resources and redo the recruitment system to allow for client kingdoms and colonization. After that, we'll probably be in beta for awhile, checking balancing (although Carados has done an amazing job with the units, so I don't anticipate any trouble there beyond cost tweaking) and watching the AI deal with the map. This is an entirely new map, so I'm anticipating there are going to be AI difficulties with it in places we don't expect. That's one thing I'll miss about the old map--I spent a lot of time watching the AI on it, so there shouldn't be any places left that the AI just gets stuck in. It's hard to quantify that for a promotional piece, though, you know? With FoW on, most players would never see the AI get stuck, so all they know is that Bactria is a real push-over in all of their games. They wouldn't realize that it's because of a little spot near the Indus River that the Bactrian AI sends huge armies to and then just leaves them there, leaving itself defenseless and draining its economy. (True story.) It's just one of those things we have to keep an eye on.