Levy Pikemen too strong?

[Revan The Great]

Hi.

I've been playing a Roman campaign and my encounters against the Macedonians so far have been a little troubling. So far the field relatively well-composed armies with thureophoroi, an elite here and there, a few line infantry, and a good deal of levies (which I think is probably 'historical' since they've raised something like ten armies and are throwing a great deal of bodies at me). The problem is that I think Levy Pikemen stand their ground for way too long, and given the limiting-mechanics of Rome: Total War.

To emphasize my point I want to first point out that my comments are exclusively pointed towards Macedonia, though they could probably apply to any phalanx-wielding nation. Macedonia in particular has Levy Pikemen whose models are unarmored aside from a helmet (despite having four armor on their stat sheet, which over half of the chainmail-armored, also-helmeted Polybian Legionaries). They are also theoretically given minimal training (being levies), but instead have the attribute highly_trained, making them of the same caliber as Polybian Legionaries, and better trained than Allied Legionaries. Their morale is also 17, which is relatively low, but I am wondering does the highly_trained attribute give them a bit too much staying power?

Here is a screenshot of a Levy Pikemen unit in an army without a general surrounded by a Polybian Cohort and flanked by Latin Medium Cavalry.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There they are, having been continually flanked and basically surrounded from 200-some men all the way down to 38, and still they haven't routed. Historically, in Roman times, a phalanx which was flanked or surrounded was very quickly dispatched and routed or was outright destroyed. I mean, a levy unit that is completely surrounded and cut down to almost 10% of its fighting strength is soldiering on as if they were Spartans or some of Caesar's boys.

Here is another picture I took a little later in the battle.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Figure 1. - Here is the same cavalry from before (the Levies in the first picture broke a few seconds after the picture was taken) charging into the back of unsupported Levy Pikemen who were engaging Polybians on guard mode, being flanked by Triarii who had just eaten up a unit of Thureophoroi who were trying to flank the Polybians in Figure 1. You see that the Levy Pikemen here are Shaken (and Exhausted), but just a few seconds ago they were at 230-ish soldiers, and between then and now they lost 60-70 men. I actually thought they'd rout because my cavalry charged from behind and the Levies went to Wavering, and stayed there for a long time, losing men. They almost, almost almost any second now... were going to break, but they just didn't quite go that extra step and now they've recovered a little bit to 'Shaken' rather than 'Wavering'. To be honest, historically better Macedonian pikemen than they broke when attacked from behind from worse cavalry than mine.

Figure 2. - I've shown so far what happens when isolated, low-quality pike units are isolated and surrounded, but Figure 2. is an example of what happens when they get clumped together. Essentially a box forms of spears shooting out everywhere, and since nothing ever routs (ugh) they saw away at legionaries rather than hinder one another and get cut apart.

Basically I think that at least Levy Pikemen need a kick in the nuts to their morale, or have their highly_trained attribute struck down at least two levels. Would anyone out there like to share their own experiences or confirm my observations? I have seen a few threads lately complaining about pikemen...

Oh and the kicker is that I'm playing on medium battle difficulty, whereas I believe the mod still recommends hard battle difficulty. Therefore, by all rights things should be routing pretty fast for me, but they really aren't.

[Rex Basiliscus]

I think all units morale should be lowered. I understand the wish for longer battles, but this is just ridiculous. A unit will just not break! Surrounded or decimated, they still fight on four tens of minutes... I guess that is good for elite units, such as Spartans or maybe Hypaspistai, but those units like Levies, Thureophoroi, lesser cavalries, light infantries and whatnot, should have their morale lowered.

[Revan The Great]

I've actually noticed that Thureophoroi rout fairly quickly, but in general you're right. Morale is definitely too high, certainly compared to the lethality in the game. I think that on average a surrounded unit should rout very quickly if it's not A. Elite or B. only surrounded by poor quality troops they aren't physically compressing the surrounded unit's ranks (where unit mass comes in). And, on average, a unit that loses half of its soldiers should be pretty close to routing if the battle is going down hill, unless it's an elite unit.

The main issue with levy pikemen, I believe, is a combination of morale being too high across the board, the fact that they have the highly_trained trait (which is ridiculous for a non-elite unit, pikemen or not. I'm sure this was given because of an erroneous notion that anyone in a Macedonian phalanx has to be highly trained), which are married to the deadliness of their phalanx formation, which means that no matter what they get a lot of kills even if they're surrounded and being cut apart, which is much more than any other unit would be able to kill if surrounded and compressed and slaughtered.

[rory o'kane]

Perhaps more importantly, why don't the allied Polybian units have the same attributes as their Roman counterparts...?

[Revan The Great]

That's actually less importantly. Anyways, they're generally a little bit worst (One less morale, one less attack skill, lower level of mental discipline).

...Hmph... Personally I think they should be a little more similar to Roman Cohorts, though admittedly they do need to be a bit worse too. Arguably they'd be less committed to fighting in Rome's name than actual Roman, therefore they should at least have one less morale.

[rory o'kane]

You say that, but there's no evidence that they performed worse in battle than their Roman counterparts, so, why make them worse on the basis of conjecture?

[dvk901]

You say that, but there's no evidence that they performed worse in battle than their Roman counterparts, so, why make them worse on the basis of conjecture?

Rory, of course there's ample evidence they were worse than their Roman counter parts.....they lost the Socii War.

@Rex Basiliscus
@Revan The Great

The issue of battles and\or individual units being to long or fighting like they were elites is one I'm aware of. Tone did ask me at one point if I was going to make one of his sub-mod EDU choices the new default....and I suppose I could. It's just that there are so many different views on this issue. Some people like the stats the way they are. Others don't mind the stats but think units should be more expensive. Still others think the stats needed 'fixing' AND the units needed to be more costly.....it's just difficult to choose what everyone would like. So I have left the defaults as they are, and included Tone's variously modified EDU's in the _Important_Stuff folder as options that anyone can choose. I think they sufficiently give people a number of good choices...unless I'm wrong?

[Aristotle's Folly]

Rory, of course there's ample evidence they were worse than their Roman counter parts.....they lost the Socii War.

@Rex Basiliscus
@Revan The Great

The issue of battles and\or individual units being to long or fighting like they were elites is one I'm aware of. Tone did ask me at one point if I was going to make one of his sub-mod EDU choices the new default....and I suppose I could. It's just that there are so many different views on this issue. Some people like the stats the way they are. Others don't mind the stats but think units should be more expensive. Still others think the stats needed 'fixing' AND the units needed to be more costly.....it's just difficult to choose what everyone would like. So I have left the defaults as they are, and included Tone's variously modified EDU's in the _Important_Stuff folder as options that anyone can choose. I think they sufficiently give people a number of good choices...unless I'm wrong?

I've started to write this twice, and deleted it. I'd like to share my opinion but feel free to ignore it (with no hard feelings). I openly admit I'm no expert.

This is one of those issues people feel passionately about. I recall back when I first started playtesting, I suggested changing unit stats and another playtester ranted at me about leaving settled issues alone. So again, I'm reluctant to say anything but ...

This game takes an insanely long time to play.

Yes, I use Tone's sub-mod (thank you SO MUCH for making it) and I love it. But even this afternoon, there were some people on the general forum touting this mod because of how many battles there are and how long they take. Some people live for those thirty minute to an hour long battles. How they find time in their day for more than a few of these is beyond me. But they like it and, more importantly, they have time to play it.

On the other hand, almost everyone I've seen finish a campaign has admitted to auto-resolving the battles.

If the game design is for people to NOT fight every battle on the battle map or if the goal is to have players enjoy extended campaigns, then leave the game the way it is. These are questions only you can answer. But unmodified, it can take me as long as eight hours to play twenty years (of course, I do micromanage ... ).

As someone told me recently about a mod I was working on for another game: You can't satisfy everyone, so satisfy yourself. I'd certainly offer Tone's sub-mods as alternative, for those of us with busy schedules, but that's just me.

As to morale, Rex and Revan are right: units don't route. Certainly not like they did in RSI or RTW. I've seen routes, but only a very few units at the very end of a battle. Even levy units will not route with 50% or 60% losses. I don't have light cavalry getting 300 kills per battle because they ran down entire units of hoplites so maybe that's a good thing ...

I've always assumed the lack of routing had to do with general's stars. I mean, usually the AI has more stars than I, and doesn't that effect when the units will route?

Anyway, it could be seen as realistic, though. If I know that I'm sure to be killed if I run, because some horse is going to run me down or some archer is going to shoot me in the back, I'm much more willing to stand and fight to the death - until the death is an absolute certainty.

There. I'll be quiet now.

~ Dani ~

[Revan The Great]

No one says that they were necessarily worse or less skilled soldiers. But it's simple logic that says that non-citizens would, on average, all other things being equal, fight a little less harder for the nation they're off soldiering for than someone who is actually a first-class citizen of that nation. Obviously there would be exceptions - lazy Romans vs. extremely patriotic allied Italians who want to become Romans - but we need to work on, what I feel is a, very sound generalizations.

[rory o'kane]

Conceded. I assume that doesn't extend to the triarii, as their veteran status should compensate? Now, what's being done about these levy pikemen?

[Revan The Great]

I think you don't understand the premise.

Allied Triarii should infact be better than their Allied Polybian Cohort buddies, and for that matter better even than Roman Polybian Cohorts - however you need to be comparing apples to apples. Roman Triarii should have at least one more morale, even if all other stats are completely equal, to reflect that Allied Triarii have the same dilemma as their Allied Polybian Cohort friends - namely that at best they're second class citizens, and at worst their Italian 'allies' fighting for the glory and in the name of a country that doesn't allow them to vote in elections, benefit from grain or monetary dispensations all citizens are entitled to, and so on. That would also extend to Allied Velites and Allied Equites. I don't believe that in Allied vs. Roman units there's necessarily a reason to say that their fighting capabilities shouldn't be the same (or for that matter different, either is plausible to some extent), but their morale certainly should be at least a little different.

We won't know what's being done about Levy Pikemen until someone important weighs in =P

[Rex Basiliscus]

Well I hope it's not just levy pikemen morale that's gonna be changed...

[Revan The Great]

Well I think that part of the problem was the latest update increased lethality and unit costs, but didn't lower morale to be in line with the new lethality.

I just think that levy pikemen are the most egregious example of having become overpowered because their naturally strong formation ensures that, with the increased lethality, they manage to score a lot of undeserved casualties while surrounded when infact they should be routing rather quickly, and being slaughtered if caught unsupported and sandwiched between two legionary cohorts. This would probably apply to other pikemen too, who might also be a bit too 'steadfast' in their mental outlook on a given battle, but levy pikemen at least certainly need to be 'fixed' a bit.

[Rex Basiliscus]

Indeed.
dvk, tone etc any thoughts?

I believe I read somewhere that most of the battles in that period were decided in a matter of minutes when the deciding manouvre was made (reinforcements, hammer and anvil, surrounding units etc), as morale dropped enormously among enemy and increased a big deal among friendly units. Most of the units would then start to waver/retreat/run and only the elite ones continued to fight.
I may be wrong but in the Macedonian wars, when Mac pikemen were surrounded, they would break in a matter of minutes, lift their sarissas and surrender. That was the way of the Greeks, when they'd surrender (lifting their spears/sarissas)... ofc Romans didn't know that and continued to slaughter them.

As it is now in RSII, pikemen (even if surrounded) continue to fight on as long as 30 minutes! I hate when I know I won the battle, but a completely decimated unit(s) still fight on for no apparent reason...

[rory o'kane]

I may be wrong but in the Macedonian wars, when Mac pikemen were surrounded, they would break in a matter of minutes, lift their sarissas and surrender. That was the way of the Greeks, when they'd surrender (lifting their spears/sarissas)... ofc Romans didn't know that and continued to slaughter them.

Didn't know? More likely didn't care - a retreating force was, to the Romans, a valid (and easy) target, and the Romans had no inclination of allowing those troops to withdraw. Kill 'em all!

[Revan The Great]

@Rory: Not necessarily. Basiliscus says that they were surrendering, not retreating in rout (the latter being a perfectly acceptable reason to keep killing). Really the average Roman soldier would have no idea that something like the ceremonial 'lift our sarissa = white flag' would mean it was time to stop killing and start taking prisoners. I believe the island of Aland (between Sweden and Finland) has a story about how the island was occupied by Russian soldiers but the citizenry rose up and, with help from Swedish soldiers, overwhelmed the Russians and forced them to surrender. Except, when the Russians hoisted a white flag the Alanders kept fighting because they didn't know what a white flag meant until the Swedes explained it to them.

@Dvk: Mmm. Well, ultimately some views are held by only a couple of people, and some are outright stupid - from people who used to check the 'Arcade-style Battles' button before starting a campaign. You can't allow yourself to be 'locked down' by differences in gameplay philosophy. Polls would be useful, if you were really concerned about coming up with a broad-consensus solution - and the only poll I've ever seen agrees that there are too many stacks. Maybe you should make a poll about battle mechanics?

Ultimately a unit of Levies being surrounded, cut down to 10% men, and still not routing on medium difficulty (as opposed to the hard difficulty like this mod proscribes as recommended) is incontrovertibly, undeniably something that is not what we would want in battle balance. I really don't think anyone would disagree with that, or if they do their perceptions are so wrong-headed that their opinion shouldn't be valued. I know that doesn't sound nice, but out of the thousand-some people who play this, some are bound to be idiots, or prone to playing the game on easy or very hard when they give their opinions, and neglect to mention this discrepancy. I'm currently playing on medium battle difficulty because I feel that there is a problem, and that units hold on to their morale for too long - but even then my pictures prove that on medium battle difficulty there is still a problem.

I'm not sure if you should make tone's EDU the default or not, but at the moment I'm using RS2 beta last updated sometime...I think this last Saturday. Which EDU does that use?

[Revan The Great]

Well historically speaking most battles were relatively bloodless affairs that became substantially more bloody after the rout, where the largest number of casualties generally occurred.

I feel like when I play RS2 right now that I'm playing with Arcade-style battles checked, and that everyone thinks he's some Spartan holding out against the Persians. And, truth be told, Dani (Aristotle's Folly) is right - battles last too long and the game takes quite a long time. Every battle I fight feels indecisive because even if I totally dominate the battlefield I take horrendous casualties because the enemy forces don't give up, they fight to the death. Then, after a Pyrrhic victory I have another enemy stack of similar death-defying-dare-devils show up to fight on the corpses of their equally obstinate now-dead allies.

[dvk901]

TBH, I have not had much time to play this myself, so I've always had to rely on what people told me. During testing, I know a few people mentioned that battles were pretty long, but I guess I wasn't concerned, because, for the most part, it seemed people were happy. I do know that the battles I have fought did seem pretty long....but you know, you don't get much of a feel for things if you aren't really 'getting into it', so to speak. I apologize if I was 'un-listening' about this. Just doing a bit of comparison between RS1.6 and 2, it may be that the morale for some units is too high. For instance, in RS1.6, the morale for a Levy Pikeman was 10, but in RS2 it's 17......in fact, I'm seeing a lot of differences in morale between the two.

[Aristotle's Folly]

TBH, I have not had much time to play this myself, so I've always had to rely on what people told me. During testing, I know a few people mentioned that battles were pretty long, but I guess I wasn't concerned, because, for the most part, it seemed people were happy. I do know that the battles I have fought did seem pretty long....but you know, you don't get much of a feel for things if you aren't really 'getting into it', so to speak. I apologize if I was 'un-listening' about this. Just doing a bit of comparison between RS1.6 and 2, it may be that the morale for some units is too high. For instance, in RS1.6, the morale for a Levy Pikeman was 10, but in RS2 it's 17......in fact, I'm seeing a lot of differences in morale between the two.

Yes, well, seven points is a fairly substantial increase.

I don't mean to suggest you were un-listening (at least not to me); quite the opposite actually, considering how busy you were. As I noted, this is a subject that people feel passionate about - and there are number of people that love the morale settings, weapon lethality, and so on just the way they are. Whenever I raised this subject during playtesting, the roar of the playtesting crowd was "Leave it be." Unfortunately, playtesting in a rush to get a mod out is not the same as playing through for enjoyment.

And maybe it should be left alone - or at least left as the default. There are any number of people who love this mod for it's long, drawn out, battles.

Perhaps you could offer an alternative as a packaged part of the release (like Force Diplomacy)? Or maybe simply refer people to Tone's submod? I'm using the 15%/15% (lethality increase and increase in unit cost) and it's produced a very nice game. The only thing I would change is slight increase in unit routing (across the board, of course). Making that change and merging the two would be wonderful.

I promise you, though, you adjust the battle morale (and in doing so shortening the battles) and you'll get howls on the forum.

~ Dani ~

Edit: Okay, I'm going to volunteer to do something ... if you want me to, I can adjust the morale settings in Tone's sub-mod. Everything else would remain the same, I'd just drop all the morale settings an agreed upon number of points. Then you could refer people to that mod and you wouldn't have to adjust this one. You could package it if you wanted.

If you told me what to change, and how much to change (maybe pick a "happy" medium), I assume it's just a matter of changing numbers on a spreadsheet.

We may even want to leave some units the way they are. Just a thought.

~ D ~

[Rex Basiliscus]

I think the "roars on the forum" would just be the case of the starting "euphoria" among the players. Atm they all love the mod, the units, the length of battles etc, but I bet that in two, maybe three months, this "euphoria" shall fade. Then they would prefer the battles to be shorter, they would complain on units not routing etc

As someone said before - you can't please everyone, so please yourself. I mean, I don't know how you (dvk) feel about this, but I believe you are a kind of person that likes historical accuracy at least as much as being able to have fun in your mod. Again, I'm not the expert on history myself, but I agree with everything that's been said in the previous posts, regarding lowering lethality/morale.

Mark my words on this