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Thread: Roma Invicta - Update 3 Available 16/09/2013

  1. #1

    Icon12 Roma Invicta - Update 3 Available 16/09/2013

    This mod was originally my own personal attempt to fix and change various flaws in the vanilla game, as well as enhance some bits of gameplay that I didn't want changing as radically as is done in the Radious Mod. It has become much bigger as I work, however, and in the absence of basic fixes from CA, it may prove useful as well as interesting to some of you on the boards who desire some changes without major overhauls to the economy. So, I've given it a name: Roma Invicta

    This mod overhauls quite a lot of things in the Roman faction - but it should make the faction more challenging to play, not easier! It also changes gameplay universally in a few ways, that hopefully shouldn't be as intrusive as some of the popular mods of the moment, but should help have longer battles and overall a more enjoyable time, without making the game too easy. I don't change any AI - this is currently beyond my expertise - so I would recommend using another AI mod to supplement Invicta - check the 'Compatibility' section, as this is only compatible with certain parts of Radious.


    Download Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qxtafndojaor0yn/Invicta.pack


    Update 3, 1035 16/09/2013:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    • Hopefully fixed the AI army compositions. New changes to basic army formation algorithms should hopefully make the 'skirmishers everywhere' composition not just unlikely, but impossible. AI should (all going well) actually have no choice but to make variations on balanced proportions of units.

    • Hopefully fixed javelins effect versus elephants: elephants all have 10 (15 for armoured variants) armour on the elephants themselves, the 'mounts', which should help offset some of the extra damage added to javelins. To keep melee balanced, all versus elephant boni (spears, pikes) have been increased by 10 and all other melee weapons in general have been given a +5 bonus versus elephants.

    • Rationalised Spartan Hoplites, as they were mysteriously inferior to bog standard hoplites in every respect, cost more and were recruitment limited. They're still recruitment limited, but now are superior hoplites. Their defence, armour and weapons are identical to those of standard hoplites, however Spartan Hoplites have better melee attack, morale and a bigger charge bonus. Also minor buffs to Royal Spartans and Spartan Heroes.

    • Reduced the upkeep cost for Slingers across the board; whilst they received some buffs in the original release, they should be considered 'lighter' units than javelin-equipped forces, who have a lot more raw firepower than slingers, albeit with less range and far less ammunition.

    • Further increased the range of all bows (proportional to their existing type's range) based upon feedback. Ranges now vary between 130-165 for most bows, and up to 190 for longbows.

    • Attempted to change some unit spaces to discourage 'mobbing' behaviour whenever melee combat occurs. This is largely untested, please check this out, can't guarantee the results right now. Ultimately, until CA get their act together, the most elite formations of the ancient world are going to act like garrison mobs whenever they attack, but this might help.

    • Increased the penetration values of Scorpion and Polybolos bolts. Interested to see how this turns out!



    Update 2, 0900 14/09/2013

    Lots of things:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    • Improved Campaign AI. I'm not saying it's foolproof, but the AI should be at least a bit more reactive and competent. Play 'Very Hard'.

    • Mildly reduced food burden. All entry-level buildings that use food still use the same amount of food, but the food inflation for each subsequent stage isn't as extreme. This means you'll still be having to plan out proper food provisioning, but you don't end up with your high-tier buildings requiring two farms each to maintain them... For reference to compare food consumption in building stages fromvanilla > Invicta:
      • 2 > 2
      • 4 > 3
      • 6 > 4
      • 12 > 9
      • 14 > 10


    • Moderately increased edicts, agents, armies limits. I stress 'moderately'; you're not going to find yourself swimming in slots. The Agent slots are now asymmetrical; so you get more of different types of agent at different levels.

    • Enhanced battle pacing. Mild further tweaks, this time not affecting morale but the base melee hit chance: this slightly reduces the melee hit chance all-round, making head-on battles longer, but maintaining the huge damage inflicted by charges, missiles and flanking.

    • Less stragglers on the Campaign map. You should have less enemy armies with silly units with only 8 men remaining in them now; the threshold at which defeated armies units are disbanded is increased. Side-effect seems to be that the upkeep and slots are freed up for the enemy to actually recruit more fresh troops or mercenaries, too.

    • A dozen or so unit balancing tweaks; see my posts in the thread so far for some details.



    Update 1, 1305 12/09/2013:

    Revised siege attrition - attrition for both defenders and attackers has been reduced by 66%, allowing much longer sieges and chances to make siege engines without ridiculous amounts of losses on both sides.





    Major (read: new) Features:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    • Citizen troops for Romans are only available for recruitment in the Italian provinces - legion barracks still provide garrisons elsewhere, but the actual citizen troops of Rome can only be recruited in Italia, Magna Graecia and Corsica et Sardina. This includes not only the pre and post Marian reform infantry, but also Velites and Equites. You're either going to have to raise and reinforce your legions from Rome, or supplement them more heavily with auxilia support. This applies to your naval units too, by the way.

    • Squalor penalties from buildings have been universally cut in half, however food consumption by order buildings remains just as high, and there have been no increases to the wealth produced by buildings, and no global reductions in unit upkeep. For those who find the (current) Radious economy much too easy, this may be the setup for you; there's some more freedom in your city management, but you won't be swimming in gold.

    • Less routing, longer battles. This is not to the same scale as Radious Mod, but should provide longer engagements; all units are 20% more resistant to morale damage from combat losses, so should not rout early in a battle. The short-term shock from cavalry charges has been increased to prevent these changes from making flanked units - particularly skirmishers - resistant to routing in appropriate circumstances. I have not made any AI enhancements, as those changes are beyond my expertise - I'd advise using Radious' AI or another one of the fine mods for this.

    • Overhauled transport ships for all factions. These things are now much slower and much, much more vulnerable to hull damage from ramming and naval artillery. Never again should you need to worry about losing your fleets to transport ships - and you should start to think about escorting your transports, too. They will typically be holed, destroyed or capsize with only a few rams from actual assault ships. Oh, they're much more flammable, too.

    • Improved fortifications. Fortified cities are now tougher nuts to crack:
      • Walls are, on average, twice as durable
      • Gates are just over twice as durable
      • Torches thrown by infantry are now pathetic, and if you want to torch a gate, your men will be sat there trying to ignite it all day whilst the enemy rains down death upon you. Go get some siege engines and come back.
      • Update 1: Siege attrition for both attackers and defenders has been slashed down by 66% for each - you can now actually besiege a city and build equipment without all your men dying at a ridiculous rate.


    • Re-balanced ranged weapons. In short:
      • Slingers now more valuable, reduction in range leaves them 'medium' range skirmishers. Depending on the shot type, have varying armour piercing qualities. Damage in general is up slightly, but only lead shot really gets any boost to its AP value.
      • Javelins are now more deadly, but are 25% shorter ranged. All have slightly more damage; depending on the type, they will have significant armour piercing capability now.
      • All bows are now longer ranged; archers are archers instead of glorified skirmishers. No major damage changes as yet. The range of unit depends on the bows they are equipped with - longbows have the greatest range, but less armour piercing capability, whereas a composite bow has slightly lower range but greater AP, for example. All mounted archers are also ranged depending on their bows, with a mild (10) malus to their range for being mounted.




    Fixes for Vanilla game issues:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    • Auxiliary-crewed naval units no longer cost extortionate upkeep. In vanilla, all Roman auxilia-manned vessels cost 300-1000 upkeep per turn; CA has erroneously set them up with the same upkeep as mercenary units. This has been fixed, with the unit upkeep scaled compared to the upkeep of the auxiliary unit on land, with modifiers to that cost depending on the size and type of warship; just as with legionary-equipped ships.

    • Sprinting around will tire your infantry out faster. Filthy casuals . It's not an extreme change, but you do accrue fatigue from sprinting about 50% faster than you did in vanilla, which is seemingly non-existent.

    • All spear and pike weapons now have appropriate bonus vs cavalry. Many pikes and spears had no bonus versus cavalry in vanilla rome, for what reason is unknown, but apparently just developer failing to actually put in the right data. For example, your pikes will now be exceptionally deadly against cavalry; moreso than short spears. Previously, pikes had no vs cavalry bonus at all, would you believe!?

    • Fixed the inability to recruit veteran legionary hexaremes because 'unit limit reached'.




    Other changes (many important ones here, too):

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    • Velites have 25% increased morale and +1 accuracy; this goes along with the restriction of their availability only in the Italian peninsula as Roman citizen troops. Skirmishers can be recruited elsewhere as auxilia - Celtic and Barbarian skirmishers in general are identical to Velites, so the restricted Velites have a slight advantage in morale and accuracy. They have also had their upkeep increased by 15%, to reflect that these are Roman citizens you're having to pay, even if they're low class... But they're not auxilia.

    • Socii troops have had price and upkeep reductions. These pseudo-citizen auxiliaries are better than the average auxilia, but in vanilla cost practically the same as actual Hastati and Equites to recruit and upkeep. At the same time, they were quite significantly worse soldiers - they also could only be recruited from the Italian provinces where you'd likely have legion barracks anyway. They are now cheaper to recruit, and quite a bit cheaper to upkeep - providing an interesting core auxiliary alternative for those who are struggling financially. Basically, I've tried to give you a reason to use them. (These changes don't generally apply to the Extraordinarii, which are actually quite good already)

    • Prętorians of all kinds are now number-limited. You can maintain up to 6 units of Prętorians, 4 of Prętorian Cavalry and 4 of Prętorian Guards at once now, maximum. No more abusing them as God-units, I'm afraid.

    • First Cohort is now limited to 4 units - I was going to choose 1 or 2 as the limit, but instead went for 4. This is so that you can have a First Cohort for each 'front' you may be maintaining, quite simply - if you have armies fighting North, East, South and West, each of them theoretically can have their own First Cohort. The First Cohort has had a significant morale increase and extra melee defence, as otherwise they're just worthless compared to Veteran Legionaries. This now makes them an excellent cohort to hold the core of your line, as they'll hold fast and defend better than the average legionaries, making them a true 'leadership' cohort.

    • Gladiators and Spear Gladiators are now capped at 8 units each. They're for use as highly specialist shock-troops, not the backbone of an army.

    • Veteran Legionaries now have a recruitment cap - it's quite generous at 20, but it means you can't hope to build armies that consist solely of Veterans instead of the normal legionaries. Naval units using Veteran Legionaries are capped at 12 per ship type, so there should be still plenty of them to go around.


    [*]Roma may/should now be a 6-slot city, even though it's not coastal. Please check this out, I haven't grown Italia enough to check this in any of my games.




    Compatibility:


    Not compatible with most of Radious Mod, as it overlaps with many effects.

    It is compatible with specific sub-mods of Radious, however! This should be compatible with:

    Radious Graphics mod





    I hope those who choose to try out what is my first mod for a Total War game enjoy it, and please do feed back if you do try this out. Until then:


    Lusuri vos saluto!
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 16, 2013 at 04:52 AM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  2. #2

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Seems like exactly what I was looking for. Will give it a try! Thanks!

  3. #3

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Will try this tonight. Lots of cool stuff that other mods do not (yet) have.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Updated it already - revised the attrition values for sieges. Amazingly, attrition would drain 15% of defending forces and 10% of attacking forces each turn which - apart from the ridiculous gate-burning torches and lack of necessity for siege weapons spoiling sieges - made the use of siege engines quite improbable, as you'd be losing 10% of your army for each one you made...

    I would make it possible to build 2 siege engines per turn, but sadly I can't find a way of doing this. And also, the game allows a maximum of only 4, what the actual hell!

    Changelog, on original post, too:


    Download Link:Attachment 294002


    Update 1, 1305 12/09/2013:

    Revised siege attrition - attrition for both defenders and attackers has been reduced by 66%, allowing much longer sieges and chances to make siege engines without ridiculous amounts of losses on both sides.

    Also updating the changelogs below: they excluded the fact that I've attempted to make Roma a 6-slot city, despite its lack of a port. Would love to know if this is working for people; I haven't got far enough to test it out.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 12, 2013 at 07:33 AM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  5. #5
    billydilly's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Sounds very interesting. Have you considered adding 2 or 4 turns per year? And of course change research to fit to the turns.
    CPU: Intel i7-8700. GPU: MSI GTX 1070 Armor 8G. RAM: Corsair Vengance, 16Gb HD: Kingston SSD 240Gb (System), Samsung 850 Evo SSD 500Gb (Steam), Western Digital 500Gb. PSU: Corsair CX600W

  6. #6

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by billydilly View Post
    Sounds very interesting. Have you considered adding 2 or 4 turns per year? And of course change research to fit to the turns.
    I'd encourage everyone to use the 2 turns per year mod, actually, but nothing in Invicta depends on it. I know a lot of people will use different setups 2, 3 and 4 turn years being the most common, so I'm not sure re-configuring research to one specific setup is the best idea, lest half of the players are using a different preset.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  7. #7

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Great work, Chris.

    Much better and balanced mod that Radious' imo. (not knocking Rad, just not my cup of tea)

    Looking forward to more changes by you -- perhaps some AI/diplomacy when possible?

  8. #8
    Biggus Splenus's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Nice, I think I'll give this a try +rep
    | R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |

  9. #9

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Reichmar12 View Post
    Great work, Chris.

    Much better and balanced mod that Radious' imo. (not knocking Rad, just not my cup of tea)

    Looking forward to more changes by you -- perhaps some AI/diplomacy when possible?
    Thanks


    I'm looking into the AI carefully, as I don't want to start changing things grossly to try and achieve a broad aim; as these things are ultimately all equations that have to balance differently depending on the circumstances in-game, and what is more often needed is small tweaks of variables which ultimately have significant knock-on effects.

    Once I'm happy with some basic workings, I'll be trying to make some basic changes to supplement things I've already implemented. Unfortunately, it's slow work; I'm not familiar with the AI setup in Total War games in general, so I'm looking at quite a huge number of rather opaque components.


    So far, I have been able to work out some basic 'how much the AI favours x' behaviours, which I'm probably going to start toying around with soon and testing - this is mostly with regards to what they're building, and what proportions of units they recruit, but I'll see if I can sort out some extra aggressiveness, who knows


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  10. #10

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Sounds good. I think that currently you can only change recruitment and build preferences. I remember reading something that suggested that it was possible to encourage the AI to protect their borders -- possibly encouraging more field battles and not the siege fest that R2TW is currently. Even with those limited options its, at least theoretically, possible that AI behavior could be changed significantly albeit kind of indirectly.

    I haven't used the mod tool yet, so I haven't seen the text files myself though. I might be wrong on all that.

  11. #11

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Sounds good. I think that currently you can only change recruitment and build preferences. I remember reading something that suggested that it was possible to encourage the AI to protect their borders -- possibly encouraging more field battles and not the siege fest that R2TW is currently. Even with those limited options its, at least theoretically, possible that AI behavior could be changed significantly albeit kind of indirectly.

    I haven't used the mod tool yet, so I haven't seen the text files myself though. I might be wrong on all that.

  12. #12

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Just been looking into the basic AI variables, and have come up with some changes that might be quite useful. Can't say for sure yet - I need to do a lot of testing, probably on a fresh campaign.

    If anyone wants to beta test it with the AI changes, let me know.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  13. #13
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    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    ill test it if you want. i have no life so i have plenty of time lol.


  14. #14

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Most of the changes sound good. But I dont like the First Cohort Change. Historicly every legion had one first cohort. Now we only have 4. Could yoy maybe tie the first cohort limit to the max army limit wich I think is 24. That way you can have One first cohort per army.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Most of the changes sound good. But I dont like the First Cohort Change. Historicly every legion had one first cohort. Now we only have 4. Could yoy maybe tie the first cohort limit to the max army limit wich I think is 24. That way you can have One first cohort per army.

  16. #16

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Gaius Octavian View Post
    Most of the changes sound good. But I dont like the First Cohort Change. Historicly every legion had one first cohort. Now we only have 4. Could yoy maybe tie the first cohort limit to the max army limit wich I think is 24. That way you can have One first cohort per army.
    I'll probably double it up to 8.

    These cohorts are now effectively 'Veteran Legionaries +'; they lack some of their melee attack skill, but have morale comparable to Praetorians and similar defensive skill. The problem with making it 24 is that you could then simply fill armies with them.

    For realism's sake, I'd personally justify this with saying the max armies is 24, but more of Rome's armies were auxiliary formations than actual legions, so you're looking at less than 24 legions with first cohorts.


    Next release also tweaks some units slightly, current change-list for what I'm working on so far:


    • Subtle changes to AI variables; should encourage AI to build economy and military, to deploy armies that are fuller and better formed and to hold them back until they are ready, and to react more to you expanding towards their borders.

    • Mild reduction in food consumption by buildings; all buildings that consume food consume 25% less food on average, with the exception of the first tiers of these buildings which all originally consumed 2 food each: these still consume 2 food each, so the penalty for breaking into a particular branch of building is still the same; it simply doesn't become as steep as you upgrade them thereafter.

    • I'm looking at the edicts, army numbers and agent numbers. It's likely these will get increases for each stage, but only very small ones; Invicta does not aim to open this up to the same degree as Radious.

    • Unit 'minimum strength' is likely to increase from 5% to 15%, to prevent armies with 10 men in them still remaining on the campaign map. The actual figure is subject to change and testing; as in all things in Invicta I'd prefer subtle changes to achieve the desired goal.

    • Minor nerf to Celtic Noble Horse, as I've watched these things charge level 8 (2 gold chevron) spear infantry head on and come out with quite literally 1 casualty 2 minutes later having shattered the spears.

    • Minor change to Triarii, Auxiliary Infantry etc weapon setup - standard Roman spears reconfigured. No overall buff, weapon damage remains at 40 weapon total, however 2 damage was re-assigned from standard damage to AP: 30/10 becomes 28/12, and the elite spear changes from 33/12 to 31/14. This still doesn't make these spears as threatening as hoplite spears and pikes by a long way, but makes them marginally more effective against cavalry.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 12, 2013 at 12:59 PM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  17. #17

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    That sounds legit. Looking forward to your changes. is there any chance you can work in some of the naval changes from the http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...tic-Combat-mod.

  18. #18

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Gaius Octavian View Post
    That sounds legit. Looking forward to your changes. is there any chance you can work in some of the naval changes from the http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...tic-Combat-mod.
    I'll take a look and see if I can incorporate at least some of the broader naval changes with regards to boarding and ramming in particular, though things like realistic ship mass is well beyond my knowledge of ancient warships!


    Just testing out something which should slow down melee combat a little bit whilst still preserving the relative strength of all units melee; which would globally slightly reduce the rate at which successful blows are dealt in precisely equal proportion for all units. The result should be that the balance of power between any units on the battlefield is still exactly the same, but the time taken to reach the conclusion of that balance is longer.

    Along with the changes to morale, this should hopefully mean that the melee combat itself isn't so quick and over in moments, but ultimately 'who wins' isn't grossly affected. The longer battles mean that exertion/stamina and what you do with your other units and flanking should be more relevant to the outcome, however, as the melee itself should continue longer.


    This will be ready for testing in maybe half an hour, anyone who fancies the test version with the AI and battle changes, just drop me a PM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  19. #19

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Friar Chris View Post
    I'll probably double it up to 8.

    • Subtle changes to AI variables; should encourage AI to build economy and military, to deploy armies that are fuller and better formed and to hold them back until they are ready, and to react more to you expanding towards their borders.
    • Mild reduction in food consumption by buildings; all buildings that consume food consume 25% less food on average, with the exception of the first tiers of these buildings which all originally consumed 2 food each: these still consume 2 food each, so the penalty for breaking into a particular branch of building is still the same; it simply doesn't become as steep as you upgrade them thereafter.
    • I'm looking at the edicts, army numbers and agent numbers. It's likely these will get increases for each stage, but only very small ones; Invicta does not aim to open this up to the same degree as Radious.
    • Unit 'minimum strength' is likely to increase from 5% to 15%, to prevent armies with 10 men in them still remaining on the campaign map. The actual figure is subject to change and testing; as in all things in Invicta I'd prefer subtle changes to achieve the desired goal.
    • Minor nerf to Celtic Noble Horse, as I've watched these things charge level 8 (2 gold chevron) spear infantry head on and come out with quite literally 1 casualty 2 minutes later having shattered the spears.
    • Minor change to Triarii, Auxiliary Infantry etc weapon setup - standard Roman spears reconfigured. No overall buff, weapon damage remains at 40 weapon total, however 2 damage was re-assigned from standard damage to AP: 30/10 becomes 28/12, and the elite spear changes from 33/12 to 31/14. This still doesn't make these spears as threatening as hoplite spears and pikes by a long way, but makes them marginally more effective against cavalry.
    Thanks for taking a look at this stuff.

    Personally, I think that 3, 6, 9 works pretty well (also because it caters to the limited family politics system we have) -- if the AI would just field armies with more infantry/cav than their current assortment of rock throwers, the campaign would feel quite different Having the fleet number match the army number would be a really good improvement though. Another mod that I tried raised it from 3,6,9 to 4,8,12 and it felt a little excessive -- nevermind Rad's mod. Of course this is all just opinion, so take it for what you will.

    When you say that they'll react more towards your expanding borders, does that mean enemies would be (hopefully) more likely to station armies at theirs?

    Since you're looking at the Noble Horsemen, any thoughts on the LOLoathsworn?

  20. #20

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    do i need to start a new campaign when i instal hte mods?

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