[STIM] Silven Total Improvement Mod [Version 4.0] - DOWNLOAD HERE - Updated September 28th 2014

[Champlain]

@Silven
"bonus hit-points attribute I see in the files" was attributing this to CA, my error I was unclear in my statement. If my grammatical formatting is problematic I will use Morse Code in any future posts.

Spear wall, Phalanx etc very effective in my battles. 30 minute plus battles are the norm. Increasing armour bonus vs arrows in the table would render arrows less effective but have no effect on shields as the shield table lacks a versus arrows column, that would have been the simple fix making Testudos act as Pliny described them. Unfortunately arrows in this version seem to be coded as their much deadlier Bodkins or Needle Bodkins from the 1300's.

[Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf]

A friend of mine lost a complete cavalry unit to fleeing celtic spearmen. Is there an issue with the anti-cavalry-bonus?

By the way, Radious started his famous unit packs. But his units still got the special abilities you cut out of the game. Are these abilities completely gone, so that Radious' units won't have them, or do I have to do this myself?

[Vinicam]

Ok, played some more, and them suddenly the factions I declared war started moving again, my ally too. But was +/- 10 years(2tpy) of no movement at all between factions. Never seen anything like this in this game. lol

[Vinicam]

I can't edit, so, sorry for the double!

Feedback on the 1.2, besides my AI stopping for 20 turns:

- Morale is good now, BUT, I think some units are taking too much to rout: some skirmishers fought until nearly extermination in my battles. Maybe a slight decrease on morale for skirmishers? After all, they're not meant to be engaged in close combat.
- Charge/running speed for light infantry should be increased a little more.
- Is there any way to improve diplomacy? It's the only thing that bugs me the most in all my campaigns. The AI is so random on it's diplomatic relations, almost never making sense. They don't trade AT ALL between themselves, and just accept my trade agreements with gold in exchange, LOTS of gold, what makes trading useless. Maybe there is a way to make the AI work like in normal difficulty(but I don't know if that is the problem) while playing at a higher difficulty?
- I think naval combat needs some tweaks. I got my fleet destroyed by a transport fleet of Club Levys that boarded my assault ships(ok, it was tier 1, but they're naval trained units and club levys might be the worst unit in the game haha). Maybe a morale/defense hit for common infantry fighting in the water? To represent that they're not trained at naval combat?


Besides that, are you familiar with the Suebi faction? You said you're planning some units balancing, so, could you explain to me what's the purpose of Club Levys and Bloodsworns? Playing as them I find that these club infantry serves for nothing, and bloodsworns aren't even cheap so you can't use them as cannon fodder.

[Silven]

@Jackal2233
Ya, you've got to be careful playing with those AP numbers, otherwise you'll get results like you mentioned.

@Vinicam
-Frozen AI; That's bizarre, I've never seen anything like that happen nor have I heard anything like that happening from anyone else. Do you by chance have the savegame from when the problem started?

-Morale Changes; Version 1.2 changed the conditions and effects of morale shifts. Version 1.3 will address the issue of individual unit base moral, as well as all other stats like attack, defense, charge, etc for every unit. Expect to see an improvement in certain quality units (levys, professionals, elites, etc) behaving in a more intuitive way (breaking earlier, holding steady, fighting to the death, respectively). These changes will vastly improve the variety between unit performance, but will also take a long time to complete. I go on vacation this Friday until Monday, so I'm trying to get it finished before then, but its a lot of work and I don't want to rush incorrect changes, so I can't make any promises.

-Running speed and naval combat; Things like this will continue to be tweaked and balanced. I can definitely tell you I'm no where near done with naval adjustments. The most recent release was simply to bring Transports down to a more tolerable level. Thank you for reporting your observations!

-Diplomacy; This is a tough one. Currently, the tables that we have access to only give us values for attitude thresholds (when they like you, and when they don't). We can't yet see what effects these attitudes actually have (if they DO like you, how likely they are to agree to trade deals, etc). So far, any other changes I attempt to make beyond the current ones in effect only seem to break the logic of the AI even further. It's something we have to hope CA will fix, I'm afraid.

@Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf
Ya the way the game handles units interacting with fleeing units is completely broken, and thats a bug from vanilla. I can tell you I didn't give celtic spearman any extra bonuses beyond what they have in vanilla, so that issue isn't coming from my mod.

As for Radious extra units, if they have abilities then he will have specifically assigned them to the units, so they would have to be removed from his mod file. Once his unit roster is more fleshed out I might look into asking him if he minds me making a compatibility patch for my mod, because there are certain factions (namely barbarians) that have frustratingly small unit rosters.

[Jeebum]

Quick test in a custom battle and I prefer this over Radious due to the lower morale. The units don't fight till death, which is way better. Will test next the campaign play.

[Steel*Faith]

Silven, thank you so much for making this mod and putting your time and effort into it!I wanted to ask you if you would please consider adding this other submod to your own - currently theres no mods like your own that really add a very important feature like this - especially for the Romans. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...n-armed-unitsI hope you would consider, as this mod will become nearly perfect with it!

[Vinicam]

Really great you're goin to change units individually. I'll try to find the savegame of this period, but I don't save very often, mostly always quick saving.

One thing I noticed, a problem in the game combat mechanics... When you charge, you can't disengage and charge again without losing almost 30%~50% of your unit. This is even a bigger problem with cavalry that can't sustain a long melee fight. This makes me lose all my light cavalry and, sometimes, generals when trying to regroup for a second charge. They probably get a debuff to defense when running away... This happens a lot when you try to disengage infantry to regroup, you end making your units rout almost every time.
The only way to effectively use cavalry in the current situation is charging only for the final blow or skirmishers, and even skirmishers, if they use javelins, you have a great chance of losing most of your unit in the retreat.

Can you check if this is a problem with units being hit in the back or if it really has a debuff when you disengage combat, and how big it is? Or I am the only one experiencing this and I'm just a noob? lol

(it's not a problem with your mod, I have seen this since the game release)

[Vinicam]

I did the topic about clubs in the official forum, here is the problem with the unit:

Clubs are broken, they do 10 ap damage and 5 normal damage. (15 total)https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=2The next lowest is ShortSwords which are 20 Damage.Thats the weapon Mobs and generic Archers use...

lol

[wrcromartie]

@Vinicam - I'm experiencing the same difficulty when it comes to disengage. For infantry, I wish they actually had a button for "fall back" where your units would try to disengage and retreat a few steps without turning their backs. For cav maybe its just called "disengage".

[Vinicam]

@Vinicam - I'm experiencing the same difficulty when it comes to disengage. For infantry, I wish they actually had a button for "fall back" where your units would try to disengage and retreat a few steps without turning their backs. For cav maybe its just called "disengage".

Looking into the official forums, it's a know issue, but not so commented, you can find a few topics about it. Probably because people aren't relying too much on cavalry? I don't know... But it's there. To make it worse, the engaged unit isn't so responsible, so you have to smash the button 20 times for it to retreat. lol

[wrcromartie]

Yea, I think that since most people play Roman 1st, the issues coming up are still mostly roman-centric. I just finished my Roman campaign and would like to play a Macedonian & Parthian campaign, but both phalanx and cavalry are a bit buggy right now so I might wait until patch 3 comes out later this week.... lots of good updates coming.

[Croesus]

I just fought my first battle and by Jupiter it was a meat grinder. It was glorious! As the Romans, as per usual, I added 3 hastati to the ridiculously unbalanced northern army they start you off with and marched north. I attacked the Etruscan town there after softening it up a little with a spy. I didn't have any spears to counter their cavalry, and my own cavalry was not sufficient to go toe-to-toe with theirs, so I was conservative with my skirmishers. Ultimately it ended with my line of infantry against theirs, skirmishers behind each line throwing things, their cavalry charging weak points in their own line, my cavalry running amok among their skirmishers. 2920 men went in, 520 walked out.

It was much better in many ways, but I do have some feedback of weird things I saw. One, is that their slinger levies stood to the last man. I'm glad they don't break when glared at anymore, but flanked, with a dead general and 3/160 men left after repeated cavalry charges with no friendlies around, and they only wavered for a minute and then went back to slinging. The other, and this may not be related to your mod, but no matter what formation I had my general in, when I ordered him to charge he spread out into a single rank and swept across the field. It would be pretty sweet for mopping up units, but instead it kept getting me caught up in infantry fights that I didn't want to be in. Speaking of which, is there any way to make it easier to disengage cavalry from a fight? They are very stubborn about wanting to stay and fight, no matter that they're surrounded by spears or pikes and are dropping like flies.

[Vinicam]

Speaking of which, is there any way to make it easier to disengage cavalry from a fight? They are very stubborn about wanting to stay and fight, no matter that they're surrounded by spears or pikes and are dropping like flies.

Read my posts in this same page. I don't know if Silven can mod this, but I hope so... hehe

[RedXIII]

@Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf
Ya the way the game handles units interacting with fleeing units is completely broken, and thats a bug from vanilla. I can tell you I didn't give celtic spearman any extra bonuses beyond what they have in vanilla, so that issue isn't coming from my mod.

As for Radious extra units, if they have abilities then he will have specifically assigned them to the units, so they would have to be removed from his mod file. Once his unit roster is more fleshed out I might look into asking him if he minds me making a compatibility patch for my mod, because there are certain factions (namely barbarians) that have frustratingly small unit rosters.

I would certainly also like to see a patch for his new unit mod that was recently released.

Silven, thank you so much for making this mod and putting your time and effort into it!I wanted to ask you if you would please consider adding this other submod to your own - currently theres no mods like your own that really add a very important feature like this - especially for the Romans. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...n-armed-unitsI hope you would consider, as this mod will become nearly perfect with it!

He previously mentioned that he didn't want to because it replaces throwing while charging for the modified units. Although I would second the request as I consider fire at will a better mechanism for disciplined and elite units. An alternative version or an add-on with this feature could be nice. Since the only conflict between the two mods is a single column, it should be pretty easy to do.

[Silven]

One thing I noticed, a problem in the game combat mechanics... When you charge, you can't disengage and charge again without losing almost 30%~50% of your unit. This is even a bigger problem with cavalry that can't sustain a long melee fight. This makes me lose all my light cavalry and, sometimes, generals when trying to regroup for a second charge.

@Vinicam - I'm experiencing the same difficulty when it comes to disengage.

Speaking of which, is there any way to make it easier to disengage cavalry from a fight? They are very stubborn about wanting to stay and fight, no matter that they're surrounded by spears or pikes and are dropping like flies.

As a few of you noted, this is indeed a problem present in vanilla. It seems that the problem wasn't as noticable before because kill rates were already on turbo speed no matter what the situation was, so you wouldn't have noticed it as much. Now that I've dramatically reduced kill rates for standard face to face combat, the kill rates for face to back combat didn't change for some reason. I started rummaging around in the tables and I've found 3 or 4 very promising potential solutions. When I find the fix, expect to see it in Version 1.3.

Also @Croesus
Welcome to the forums! Glad to hear you enjoyed your glorious battle. Morale adjustments to individual units are coming.

[prithupaul]

Silven, may be you can look into this. Fire at will for javelin armed melee infantry - I am yet to test it out. The good old "fire at will" will bring more glory to your already glorious mod.

[prithupaul]

Double.

[Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf]

Quite enjoying my game now (finally!). Just had a 35-minutes-battle with around 4500 Romans against 2700 Acernii. Lost just about 1000 men and destroyed the enemy army completely, but at least my AI-opponent fought back! Yay! Thanks for this mod!

[Steel*Faith]

He previously mentioned that he didn't want to because it replaces throwing while charging for the modified units. Although I would second the request as I consider fire at will a better mechanism for disciplined and elite units. An alternative version or an add-on with this feature could be nice. Since the only conflict between the two mods is a single column, it should be pretty easy to do.

What? Throwing on the charge is so stupid and unrealistic; how can hundreds of men throw their Javelins while charging full speed, perfectly in synchronization, and not hit each other? I mean, it just looks really bad and in no way comapres to Roman units holding formation and throwing their pillum both offensively or defensively - which is major - whereas the charge only allow you to use it (poorly) in an offensive charge.

Disappointing to hear it won't be in this mod then.