Amazon: Total War 8.0 Release

[parthian shot]

damn, been forever since i played this mod, glad to see some updates over the months/years since i was last on this forum. Thank you for continuing to improve this already great mod. This has always been one of my favorites

Thank you for your encouragement. The latest 8.0C is quite a departure from the old releases. I hope you find it interesting.

[Macrath]

Thank you for your encouragement. The latest 8.0C is quite a departure from the old releases. I hope you find it interesting.

Just played around with the Eastern Celt faction campaign, my first impression varies quite a bit. It has been so long since i played this mod so this was a fresh take for me as i have forgotten much of the previous releases features that differ from this version. That being said, i love the campaign map, very well done. This Eastern Celt faction is just awesome, what a great addition to the roster. Faction descriptions are very well done and detailed giving the player a great sense of the overall starting economic and military status. An amazing amount of unique unit types giving each faction a HUGE roster to choose from. And i imagine there is much more to come the further i get into the campaign.
However in the end after i have turned of Amazon Total War i am left with a bit of confusion. Confusion as to why units vary so dramatically in skills. As the Eastern Celts the amount of overpowered cavalry and wagons you start with is just crazy, battle after battle i run through every enemy like a hot knife through butter. I understand the need for ELITE units but these select units really make all other units useless. I have done many custom battles with these chain linked horses and war wagons and they just seem so ridiculously overpowered, just a few units of these chain linked armored horses can route entire armies like nothing. Seems some units in this game have basic stats like 8atk 13def 1hp, then you have other units with like 40atk 35missle 20charge, 60def and 6HP. To me it seems infantry are almost useless as a few of these specialty cavalry units can just decimate entire forces with ease.
Overall an enjoyable experience just not a fan of the overpowered units, i felt as tho i was a race of gods rising out of our hidden valley to discipline the silly mortals lol
And yeah i understand each faction has "specialty" units and i suppose the goal is to use your best units to combat the overpowered units of the AI which is surely a change of pace, to me however these wagons and chain linked horses as well as a few other units with insane stat values are so good, so legendary, so epic that they seem so unreal and then fall more under a fantasy category.
And that would be my final thought after reflecting on my experience so far, it feels like a fantasy mod more so then a possible historical account of the amazons and Eastern Celts...which by no means is a bad thing just wasn't expected. I will likely attempt to edit some of the unit stats to my preference, but other then the overpowered stats i see only greatness in this mod, easily one of my top 5 RTW/M2TW mods.

[parthian shot]

Just played around with the Eastern Celt faction campaign, my first impression varies quite a bit. It has been so long since i played this mod so this was a fresh take for me as i have forgotten much of the previous releases features that differ from this version. That being said, i love the campaign map, very well done. This Eastern Celt faction is just awesome, what a great addition to the roster. Faction descriptions are very well done and detailed giving the player a great sense of the overall starting economic and military status. An amazing amount of unique unit types giving each faction a HUGE roster to choose from. And i imagine there is much more to come the further i get into the campaign.
However in the end after i have turned of Amazon Total War i am left with a bit of confusion. Confusion as to why units vary so dramatically in skills. As the Eastern Celts the amount of overpowered cavalry and wagons you start with is just crazy, battle after battle i run through every enemy like a hot knife through butter. I understand the need for ELITE units but these select units really make all other units useless. I have done many custom battles with these chain linked horses and war wagons and they just seem so ridiculously overpowered, just a few units of these chain linked armored horses can route entire armies like nothing. Seems some units in this game have basic stats like 8atk 13def 1hp, then you have other units with like 40atk 35missle 20charge, 60def and 6HP. To me it seems infantry are almost useless as a few of these specialty cavalry units can just decimate entire forces with ease.
Overall an enjoyable experience just not a fan of the overpowered units, i felt as tho i was a race of gods rising out of our hidden valley to discipline the silly mortals lol
And yeah i understand each faction has "specialty" units and i suppose the goal is to use your best units to combat the overpowered units of the AI which is surely a change of pace, to me however these wagons and chain linked horses as well as a few other units with insane stat values are so good, so legendary, so epic that they seem so unreal and then fall more under a fantasy category.
And that would be my final thought after reflecting on my experience so far, it feels like a fantasy mod more so then a possible historical account of the amazons and Eastern Celts...which by no means is a bad thing just wasn't expected. I will likely attempt to edit some of the unit stats to my preference, but other then the overpowered stats i see only greatness in this mod, easily one of my top 5 RTW/M2TW mods.

I think you are right about the mod is a lot more than just overpowered units.

That is the overall first impression of fans playing this mod, if they play further, or use different campaign, however, they will find out that EVERY UNIT has its nemesis. Even the Linked Armor-clad Cavalry.

For example, if you try to pit the Linked Armor-clad against the thermite incendiary units, the cavalry probably won't last very long.

No, this is not a fantasy mod, it is an anthropology mod, which might describe units or things that seem improbably, but definitely possible.

As for the infantry, in the modern mod, like the Great War mod, we can say the same about the infantry vs. tanks. But you would still need the infantry units. The appearance of tank does not preclude the continued deployment of infantry.

The point is, you can use the top tier unit like the linked armor cavalry to gain a lot of advantage, and if you choose the easy campaign, it even shows a dominating advantage, but there are quite a few units out there which can wipe out the linked armor-clad cavalry.

I guess you might want to play on to find out.

[parthian shot]

Just played around with the Eastern Celt faction campaign, my first impression varies quite a bit. It has been so long since i played this mod so this was a fresh take for me as i have forgotten much of the previous releases features that differ from this version. That being said, i love the campaign map, very well done. This Eastern Celt faction is just awesome, what a great addition to the roster. Faction descriptions are very well done and detailed giving the player a great sense of the overall starting economic and military status. An amazing amount of unique unit types giving each faction a HUGE roster to choose from. And i imagine there is much more to come the further i get into the campaign.
However in the end after i have turned of Amazon Total War i am left with a bit of confusion. Confusion as to why units vary so dramatically in skills. As the Eastern Celts the amount of overpowered cavalry and wagons you start with is just crazy, battle after battle i run through every enemy like a hot knife through butter. I understand the need for ELITE units but these select units really make all other units useless. I have done many custom battles with these chain linked horses and war wagons and they just seem so ridiculously overpowered, just a few units of these chain linked armored horses can route entire armies like nothing. Seems some units in this game have basic stats like 8atk 13def 1hp, then you have other units with like 40atk 35missle 20charge, 60def and 6HP. To me it seems infantry are almost useless as a few of these specialty cavalry units can just decimate entire forces with ease.
Overall an enjoyable experience just not a fan of the overpowered units, i felt as tho i was a race of gods rising out of our hidden valley to discipline the silly mortals lol
And yeah i understand each faction has "specialty" units and i suppose the goal is to use your best units to combat the overpowered units of the AI which is surely a change of pace, to me however these wagons and chain linked horses as well as a few other units with insane stat values are so good, so legendary, so epic that they seem so unreal and then fall more under a fantasy category.
And that would be my final thought after reflecting on my experience so far, it feels like a fantasy mod more so then a possible historical account of the amazons and Eastern Celts...which by no means is a bad thing just wasn't expected. I will likely attempt to edit some of the unit stats to my preference, but other then the overpowered stats i see only greatness in this mod, easily one of my top 5 RTW/M2TW mods.

Also in 7.0-80 series, we introduce wagon to allow panzer like battles. Like you mentioned about the stat being very dramatically different, however, it can be very misleading, because try to play the same "overpowering" unit in different terrain or situation, or aginst other specialty units, you will see that no unit is invincible.

Also, in a WWI scenario mod, if you provide an infantry unit a rating, and then assign the tank unit a rating, I think you will find the numbers are not too far off from the stat currently in the mod.

So I would recommend that you play a different campaign further, there will be some big surprise waiting for you.

[parthian shot]

A new upload has been initiated, this time correcting the problem with LOD bugs for Amazons Mercenary Peltast and similar units.

Will post when upload is complete.

In the flurry of trying to help Lani translating three papers, I was not able to check the upload, and it was aborted on its own because one of the destination server was down.

In any case, that may be a blessing in disguise, because we just discovered an animation issue with the Amazon peltast in the latest un-release mod. Once Pea resolved the problem, we will re-upload again.

[parthian shot]

In the flurry of trying to help Lani translating three papers, I was not able to check the upload, and it was aborted on its own because one of the destination server was down.

In any case, that may be a blessing in disguise, because we just discovered an animation issue with the Amazon peltast in the latest un-release mod. Once Pea resolved the problem, we will re-upload again.

The changes to resolve the animation problems have been completed and uploaded.

Changes are
- new Level Of Detail (LOD) files to resolve Amazon foot units
- newly revised Priestess Guard animation for both foot and mounted units
- new Amazon Elite Scout skins
- new Amazon Standard Bearer skins
- new Amazon Warband, serf militia skins

You can download through access at the OP.

[Macrath]

It's Custom battles like this that makes me think some units are just too much. And yes i am well aware that there are a few troops that can decimate this unit but for the other 90% of the units i have put up against these chain linked horses they all die soo fast and can do absolutely no dmg to this unit. I understand wanting an elite unit but this is crazy..lol
I was able to do this same battle with just one unit but after around 5000 kills my single unit starts to run amok..not that they lose any soldiers really. That is some amazing armour these horses are wearing..and their riders must be armored to the tits too because they ride through a hail of arrows and javelins like its nothing, and forget about pikes we run through them too. This is an impossible outcome for this battle if we are looking at realistic and historical accuracy. Also when tying your horses together and fitting a heavy metal spiked plow to the front, undoubtedly there will arise some serious complications. On a clear and open plain they would be alrite, but running top speed and catching on a boulder/large rock or simply a semi steep hill would cause serious dmg, Not to mention the fact that horses in the back line would slam into the ones in front of them, and lets not forget that a few horses running into a packed group of 1000 men will only plow so far before they are unable to move, unlike the current unit that literally bulldozes every unit into the ground more efficiently than modern day vehicles. But all that aside simply killing the two riders in each group would make the units useless, and this would be easy enough to do with pikes, javelins, and arrows.

I love this mod and honestly i love this unit, but if that isn't far too overpowered i don't know what is. No ONE single unit of 100-200 men was EVER, in the history of man, able to cause such devastation. In the time period this mod is based in there were many forces made up of mostly infantry with "specialty" units being in short supply, this mod kinda shows the opposite with "specialty" units making up the bulk of my Eastern Celt forces. As suggested i played further into the campaign and have done many MANY custom battles against pretty much every other unit type. And from what i can see it's as if there are two races at play here the GODS and the men. And the example given earlier that just because you have a tank doesn't mean you do away with infantry i agree with, but let's keep in mind here these are men on horses, a big difference from a tank... but not really because they certainly are as effective (perhaps more so) then i would expect a WW1 or WW2 tank to perform in the same situation. Within seconds i route entire forces with thousands of men simply by running into them with horses that have a plow.. i don't know how powerful these horses are supposed to be but they sure can plow through more human corpses than one would think physically possible.

192 Vs 7000+ battle really only has one outcome in my opinion. And no these armies were not filled with peasents, they were full infantry armies with top tier infantry units, many designed to fight cavalry. I was playing on Very Hard also.

[parthian shot]

I can have tens of thousands of troops and if these units are outclassed by their opponent, they would all got slaughtered.

This has to do with terrain as well.

Also, please keep in mind that some elite units are not available at the custom battle, perhaps making the linked armor cavalry available in the Custom battle is a mistake. Because if that is the only thing a player tried (i.e. playing the CB), he or she would walked away with serious misgivings.

It's Custom battles like this that makes me think some units are just too much. And yes i am well aware that there are a few troops that can decimate this unit but for the other 90% of the units i have put up against these chain linked horses they all die soo fast and can do absolutely no dmg to this unit. I understand wanting an elite unit but this is crazy..lol
I was able to do this same battle with just one unit but after around 5000 kills my single unit starts to run amok..not that they lose any soldiers really. That is some amazing armour these horses are wearing..and their riders must be armored to the tits too because they ride through a hail of arrows and javelins like its nothing, and forget about pikes we run through them too. This is an impossible outcome for this battle if we are looking at realistic and historical accuracy. Also when tying your horses together and fitting a heavy metal spiked plow to the front, undoubtedly there will arise some serious complications. On a clear and open plain they would be alrite, but running top speed and catching on a boulder/large rock or simply a semi steep hill would cause serious dmg, Not to mention the fact that horses in the back line would slam into the ones in front of them, and lets not forget that a few horses running into a packed group of 1000 men will only plow so far before they are unable to move, unlike the current unit that literally bulldozes every unit into the ground more efficiently than modern day vehicles. But all that aside simply killing the two riders in each group would make the units useless, and this would be easy enough to do with pikes, javelins, and arrows.

I love this mod and honestly i love this unit, but if that isn't far too overpowered i don't know what is. No ONE single unit of 100-200 men was EVER, in the history of man, able to cause such devastation. In the time period this mod is based in there were many forces made up of mostly infantry with "specialty" units being in short supply, this mod kinda shows the opposite with "specialty" units making up the bulk of my Eastern Celt forces. As suggested i played further into the campaign and have done many MANY custom battles against pretty much every other unit type. And from what i can see it's as if there are two races at play here the GODS and the men. And the example given earlier that just because you have a tank doesn't mean you do away with infantry i agree with, but let's keep in mind here these are men on horses, a big difference from a tank... but not really because they certainly are as effective (perhaps more so) then i would expect a WW1 or WW2 tank to perform in the same situation. Within seconds i route entire forces with thousands of men simply by running into them with horses that have a plow.. i don't know how powerful these horses are supposed to be but they sure can plow through more human corpses than one would think physically possible.

192 Vs 7000+ battle really only has one outcome in my opinion. And no these armies were not filled with peasents, they were full infantry armies with top tier infantry units, many designed to fight cavalry. I was playing on Very Hard also.

[Macrath]

It's not all i played and i have tried other factions and many other units, and yes the chain linked cavalry if overwhelmed seem to run amok quite easily (which is their only feature you could call a weakness) but the simple fact is no matter how "outclassed" an army is, 200 men in open field combat will not destroy 7000+ men while taking 0 casualties. Also how are they firing missles soo fast and frequently when there are soo few men in the unit. Actual why are they a devastating Missle unit when they are already a crazy melee force. With this unit i don't even need to Target enemies i just point and click a direction for them to run and they simply roll over thousands of men in seconds.. none of this is over exaggeration. A very select few units will destroy this unit (mostly other high end cavalry or explosive type attacks). But currently these battles are not close to historically accurate and i stand by my statement that this unit in particular is pure fantasy. If Their stats were lowered and unit # decreased they would be great.

I can easily rig a custom battle that will see this unit destroyed by this was just an example of what the unit does to 7000 infantry, many of which designed to fight cavalry. Just far too unbalanced

[parthian shot]

Instead using the conventional wisdom to set the limit on your own force, perhaps we should re-exam and see maybe it is the AI who is not a smart as we like it to be? And if we arrive at that understanding, there are plenty of ways the AI can be defeated, not just by this unit alone.

One question is, if it is AI playing the linked Armor-Clad Cavalry, would you still be getting the same result?
Yet Another question is, have you tried online against another player in the custom battle and can still validate your statement with the online battle?

Also there are units which can outclass the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry, and your own statement supports that claim, I just want to say that there are not just a few units, there are plenty such units. From my perspective, Linked Armor Clad Cavalry is not even the top tier weapon or units.

Slaughter will ensue if one side kept bringing in outclassed units to the battlefield .

As far as battles where a few can be defeat far superior numbers with little casualties, there are plenty in history,

How about Battle of Rorke's Drift?
Battle of Thermopylae?
Battle of Raseiniai?
Battle of Slim River?
Battle of Petschany?

It's not all i played and i have tried other factions and many other units, and yes the chain linked cavalry if overwhelmed seem to run amok quite easily (which is their only feature you could call a weakness) but the simple fact is no matter how "outclassed" an army is, 200 men in open field combat will not destroy 7000+ men while taking 0 casualties. Also how are they firing missles soo fast and frequently when there are soo few men in the unit. Actual why are they a devastating Missle unit when they are already a crazy melee force. With this unit i don't even need to Target enemies i just point and click a direction for them to run and they simply roll over thousands of men in seconds.. none of this is over exaggeration. A very select few units will destroy this unit (mostly other high end cavalry or explosive type attacks). But currently these battles are not close to historically accurate and i stand by my statement that this unit in particular is pure fantasy. If Their stats were lowered and unit # decreased they would be great.

I can easily rig a custom battle that will see this unit destroyed by this was just an example of what the unit does to 7000 infantry, many of which designed to fight cavalry. Just far too unbalanced

[Macrath]

lol This unit would not kill 7000 men in open field combat, it's not realistic by any means. Pure Fantasy. Fun fantasy i will give it that. Steamroll 7000 men in under a minute and im the crazy one for saying this is no where near realistic..lol alrite then, fun mod best wishes for the future merry x-mas

[parthian shot]

lol This unit would not kill 7000 men in open field combat, it's not realistic by any means. Pure Fantasy. Fun fantasy i will give it that. Steamroll 7000 men in under a minute and im the crazy one for saying this is no where near realistic..lol alrite then, fun mod best wishes for the future merry x-mas

Merry Christmas to you too!

Still recommend you try playing it with AI using the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry. Or play this online.

[parthian shot]

This is trying out what we recommended Macrath to do.

With not even a thousand (872 to be exact) infantry, including two archer units, two line infantry units, and two peasant militia, vs one troop of Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry. according to the battle report of 7,000 vs two troops of Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry. This should have been fairly one-sided with favor squarely in the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry side.
It is not a complete annihilation of the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry, but it sure was on the verge of it. It is not an annihilation only because the horses panicked and decided to run-away.

[parthian shot]

The above simulation is just one way to defeat an "invincible unit", notice on the infantry side, there are field concealable units, the infantry would use the archers to draw the enemy, when the Linked Amored-Clad Cavalry approaches, the line infantry in shield wall formation and the hidden units simply attack from all three sides simultaneously. Timing and troop placement is everything in such battle.

[Stath's]

Yes, but the A.I. does not have the brains to deal with such a ubit (if the player has it on his side).

I don't know, but this result (90 beat 7000) imo is too unbalanced.

[Vilica]

THIS IS SEX TOTAL WAR

[parthian shot]

Yes, but the A.I. does not have the brains to deal with such a ubit (if the player has it on his side).

I don't know, but this result (90 beat 7000) imo is too unbalanced.

You are right, I sure hope there is a way to re-write the AI on this. Human player would not just let their troop standing there and got slaughtered.

[Macrath]

This is trying out what we recommended Macrath to do.

With not even a thousand (872 to be exact) infantry, including two archer units, two line infantry units, and two peasant militia, vs one troop of Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry. according to the battle report of 7,000 vs two troops of Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry. This should have been fairly one-sided with favor squarely in the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry side.
It is not a complete annihilation of the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry, but it sure was on the verge of it. It is not an annihilation only because the horses panicked and decided to run-away.

Really doesn't show much.. i never said i could not deal with some of the AI's "special" units. But as Stath's said the AI can't deal with units the same way the player does and therefore a balance needs to be reached, Currently the AI can't stop me for 2 reasons, 1) they are not smart enough and do not react the same to this unit as the player does. So yeah as a player with 800 units can stop a unit of the linked armor cavalry, so? The AI still can't do the same with 5000+men, clearly a balance issue if there ever was one, If anything this post proves my point better then i did. 2) Some of my units can route and or kill thousands upon thousand of enemies in seconds.. To me it's almost funny that this is even a debatable topic. Any person who plays or has played every/most RTW/M2TW mods it becomes quite easy to see balance issues and how to exploit them. And currently there are many balance issues here that the player can exploit to make battling the AI easier then ever.
Also the only reason i bring up what i see as a balance issue is because i have been a fan of Amazon Total War since it's initial release, and i truly believe it's one of the most Original ideas for a mod on TWC. Seriously aside from these balance issues i have this mod is epic, the map is great, the new factions are just plain fun to play, the new units look spectacular and the jam packed roster is a clear improvement from older versions. Best wishes to the Development team, and thank you for all your hard work. Long live Amazon Total War!

[parthian shot]

Really doesn't show much.. i never said i could not deal with some of the AI's "special" units. But as Slath said the AI can't deal with units the same way the player does and therefore a balance needs to be reached, Currently the AI can't stop me for 2 reasons, 1) they are not smart enough and do not react the same to this unit as the player does. So yeah as a player with 800 units can stop a unit of the linked armor cavalry, so? The AI still can't do the same with 5000+men, clearly a balance issue if there ever was one, If anything this post proves my point better then i did. 2) Some of my units can route and or kill thousands upon thousand of enemies in seconds.. To me it's almost funny that this is even a debatable topic. Any person who plays or has played every/most RTW/M2TW mods it becomes quite easy to see balance issues and how to exploit them. And currently there are many balance issues here that the player can exploit to make battling the AI easier then ever.
Also the only reason i bring up what i see as a balance issue is because i have been a fan of Amazon Total War since it's initial release, and i truly believe it's one of the most Original ideas for a mod on TWC. Seriously aside from these balance issues i have this mod is epic, the map is great, the new factions are just plain fun to play, the new units look spectacular and the jam packed roster is a clear improvement from older versions. Best wishes to the Development team, and thank you for all your hard work. Long live Amazon Total War!

I am not sure we can agree to "...the AI can't deal with units .... therefore a balance needs to be reached" comment, for the past two years, Bibi, our assistant team leader has been investigating the open source game engine for precisely this observation. But the approach you described and what the dev-team is taking is quite different, instead resolving or improve the AI, you want to dumb the mod? We just can not go backwards to accommodate a 10 years old game engine short of asking CA to open its AI to allow for custom plug-in modules.

As far as balance issue due to AI stupidity, you can see them in every battle and every mod, not just the Amazons Total War, my personal feedback is that, if AI's play is not as powerful as human's, then it is a known issue, not a big issue. The Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry with front plow is designed to maul-down ranks after ranks of enemy. Saying AI can not deal with such tactics is like saying AI can not handle two pronged attack in the battle, therefore every mod is out of balance, because every human vs AI will be a win, once the player mastered the tactics.

Like our prior discussion, there are numerous units in Amazons Total War which can soundly defeat the Linked Armor-Clad Cavalry, with or without human players. And there is special monitor on the strategy campaign in place to monitor the Far East Celt to make sure it is not out of control. Those mechanism work quite well.

So to re-cap, the original claim is that the mod is out of "balance", now, after clarification from both ends of information exchange between you and me, the claim is that it is out of "balance" only if human is using the units against AI with low level units. If you compare what you claimed initially and what the claim is now, there is a huge discrepancy as well as mis-information, given what was said in the initial post.

[parthian shot]

THIS IS SEX TOTAL WAR

I removed this comment because it is inappropriate and out of context, but un-removed so we can point out that, if you ever visited Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelo's paintings in the chapel from wall to wall far exceeds our "18+ mod" in every way. There is nothing sexual about the mod, we only include the necessary models to portray what is stated in the mod's anthropology thesis.