[Feedback] Suggestions, Critiques & Requests

[Selea]

RE: Shattered: Respectfully, I'm going to agree with rjacko10. A shattered unit is a unit that has broken & can no longer recover. When the little unit flag goes away & there is no hope for the unit, the engine reports them as "Shattered". @Selea, I think you're thinking of "Shaken".

Steady -> Shaken -> Wavering -> Broken -> Shattered

Some feedback: I think Roman legions should have a higher benefit from veterancy than other units. Is this possible? Is it possible to make legions gain greater bonuses from veterancy to fatigue, melee defense, and morale relative to other units?

In general, professional / disciplined units should gain more bonuses from veterancy than levees. I would say Romans should get the highest benefit, followed by Phalangites and hoplites, and then other elite units. IMO, elite barbarian units should get higher bonuses to attack, vs higher bonuses to fatigue and defense for Roman/Greeks.

Basically what I'm saying is that the difference between green, untrained legions, and veteran legions should be HUGE. Caesar really proved this in the civil war against Pompey, where his veteran legions were able to beat Pompey's inexperienced legions despite a huge numerical disadvantage. Of course, Caesar was a great commander, but without his staunch legions to carry out his commands, there's no way he could've won.

Secondly, I'm saying that while a green army of Romans is going to have a tough time against the barbarians, if the Romans can hold on and grind their green legion into veterans, the tables will turn.

The problem as of now is that those units are too easy to get for certain factions.

Without proper timed "reforms" making elite units much more powerful will just turn the factions that can get those units early with a too strong advantage.

Consider for example Oathsworn. I made them very powerful in the last two updates but to do this I also had to reduce the cap drastically, elsewhere with an army of 10 of them you can win other factions easily if they have not other elite units to come by (and some of them take more to get the same elite units). For them it is fine because Oathsworn should be very rare, but in other cases it is not so. Making for example Armored Legionarii or Evocati much more powerful than normal Legionarii would turn the end game into a walk in the park for Romans.

If you rework the system so that every faction works similar to Romans (naturally with proper reforms) then it's a thing, but as it is now certain factions are too advantaged because they can get their elite units too early in comparison to others.

We are already planning to do proper reforms for all factions (because many should historically have them) and when this will be done then we can start making the update really worthy of it (since it will also take some time to get them, differently from now) but as it is now making some elite units more powerful than they are now will unbalance things too much for certain factions. Already it does because Elite units are already very powerful.

As for Shattered, yes, you are right, I was actually talking about "Shaken". However for the part of units getting Shattered being a matter of total casualties, that part was correct.

[wrcromartie]

The problem as of now is that those units are too easy to get for certain factions.

Making for example Armored Legionarii or Evocati much more powerful than normal Legionarii would turn the end game into a walk in the park for Romans.

Hey Selea, thanks for the response. I think there was a little bit of confusion/miscommunication.

What I was suggesting is that Roman infantry units should gain more bonuses from experience chevrons relative to standard infantry units of other factions. To keep things balanced, I think elite (& your designation of "well trained") units should probably scale at the same or a similar rate as the Romans.

I'll make up some bonuses (which I'm making up right now & are 100% inaccurate) as an example:

Roman Legionnaire who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance.
Egyptian Infantry who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance.

What I'm suggesting is:
Roman Legionnaire who gets +1 chevron, gets +2 morale and +2 melee defense, +2 fatigue resistance
Egyptian Infantry who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance

In this way, Romans have a higher incentive to keep their units alive and earning experience relative to other factions. Roman units start out relatively weak, but if you can keep them alive, they will be extremely powerful as gold chevron veterans. As I stated, I think that elite units of any culture, and professional armies like greek hoplites and phalanx units should also have strong bonuses to reflect the fact that it makes a huge difference how much actual combat experience will make. These units start out with tremendous potential, but it is only truly unlocked by the battlefield.

The history that I have read leads me to believe there was a huge difference between battle-hardened veteran legions and a legion with a freshly raised standard. Caesar's commentaries relate that Caesar was loathe to rely on new recruits & when he did he often mixed them with veterans because he was so unsure of their ability to withstand the Gallic charges. However, he was far more secure with his veterans. There is no more clear example than the civil wars, where Caesar's veteran legions defeated the incredible numerical & terrain advantage that Pompei's forces enjoyed.

You've done a great job of tuning down the experience gain rate & made it more difficult to gain cheese experience through heroes/champions/etc. so I think this mechanic can be rebalanced a bit to make even more of a dramatic difference.

[jamiedp88]

Hey Selea, thanks for the response. I think there was a little bit of confusion/miscommunication.

What I was suggesting is that Roman infantry units should gain more bonuses from experience chevrons relative to standard infantry units of other factions. To keep things balanced, I think elite (& your designation of "well trained") units should probably scale at the same or a similar rate as the Romans.

I'll make up some bonuses (which I'm making up right now & are 100% inaccurate) as an example:

Roman Legionnaire who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance.
Egyptian Infantry who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance.

What I'm suggesting is:
Roman Legionnaire who gets +1 chevron, gets +2 morale and +2 melee defense, +2 fatigue resistance
Egyptian Infantry who gets +1 chevron, gets +1 morale and +1 melee defense, +1 fatigue resistance

In this way, Romans have a higher incentive to keep their units alive and earning experience relative to other factions. Roman units start out relatively weak, but if you can keep them alive, they will be extremely powerful as gold chevron veterans. As I stated, I think that elite units of any culture, and professional armies like greek hoplites and phalanx units should also have strong bonuses to reflect the fact that it makes a huge difference how much actual combat experience will make. These units start out with tremendous potential, but it is only truly unlocked by the battlefield.

The history that I have read leads me to believe there was a huge difference between battle-hardened veteran legions and a legion with a freshly raised standard. Caesar's commentaries relate that Caesar was loathe to rely on new recruits & when he did he often mixed them with veterans because he was so unsure of their ability to withstand the Gallic charges. However, he was far more secure with his veterans. There is no more clear example than the civil wars, where Caesar's veteran legions defeated the incredible numerical & terrain advantage that Pompei's forces enjoyed.

You've done a great job of tuning down the experience gain rate & made it more difficult to gain cheese experience through heroes/champions/etc. so I think this mechanic can be rebalanced a bit to make even more of a dramatic difference.

I don't see why only roman legions should get better benefit from experience? Al soldiers no matter where they were from should get the same as it would have been like that for any veteran from any race/faction.

[Dresden]

I have been reading reports of Romans getting lots of negative traits again. TTT should have that fixed, so I will look into why it isn't. It could also be really bad luck for those reporting it (we used TTT's same scripts and triggers).

[wrcromartie]

@Dresden, I have noticed my Romans go mad quite a bit in cities, so count me in on the ones reporting negative traits.

[Dresden]

@Dresden, I have noticed my Romans go mad quite a bit in cities, so count me in on the ones reporting negative traits.

In the script files, it is set so that Romans will only go mad if they already have a negative trait like paranoid or mad from the start (or religious). If you guys are getting Romans with the mad trait but they don't already have a precondition for that, then the script isn't functioning properly.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

The speed at which you're implementing some of these suggestions is really good. Glad that all factions now have 2 positive and 1 negative trait. It's a little thing, but all those little things add up.

[auboy]

Great mod! I see you guys want to eventually make larger unit sizes the standard for this mod? But making unit sizes larger bugs out naval battles unfortunately. Silven tried this in his mod and had to revert back for this reason. So this is a humble request to also keep making a version with vanilla unit sizes please...

[Cope]

@ Selea,

I know that the problem with not being able to run down routing units is endemic within the game engine. Therefore you can't do anything about it. However, would it possible to perhaps change the AI's losses at the end of a battle anyway even if you don't run them down? That way you'd fix the problem of battles being less significant than they should be.

Moreover, I do think work needs to be done on the 'broken' and 'shattered' states. If it would be possible, I feel as though some units just shouldn't have a 'broken' ability, but just go straight to shattered.

I'm unsure what your options are given the fail of parts of the base code, but do your best!

[ahog]

Could you please nerf transport ships, i.e. make them very vulnerable to ramming while at the same time not being able to ram themselves?

[Socktu]

Could you please nerf transport ships, i.e. make them very vulnerable to ramming while at the same time not being able to ram themselves?

Pretty sure that's a vanilla bug, and DeI hasn't planned on smoothening out naval warfare yet. It's incredibly janky and shoddily implemented to be honest, even if it looks pretty it's hard to maneuver that and actually retain some of your sanity. Although it is fun landing on the shores of a coastal city and besieging it.

[GnaReffotsirk]

I see melee cavalry throwing spears or something upon charging. Using version 0.5d. Is this intentional?

[KAM 2150]

This is from day 1 in Rome 2, nothing added by DeI team.

[KAM 2150]

Plus I don't think this is possible with current engine.

[loukylouk]

I just played a few turns of your new v0.5f with the increased size and I think the improvements were great. I played a few battles that were really nail biting and made me really have to think things through. Good stuff, plus the added size is nice, and for those who prefer smaller unit size you can easily reduce it by using the unit scale slider. One thing I saw and wanted to ask about was the removal of the testodu formation. (I think that's how you spell that) I don't mind it and I think I already know the reason why you removed that, but I was hoping you could explain it to me.

Thanks.


I also noticed that forced march now gives a 15% melee defense bonus to all units and a 0% morale bonus. Is that to help the AI since its common to catch them in a forced march stance?

[Selea]

I just played a few turns of your new v0.5f with the increased size and I think the improvements were great. I played a few battles that were really nail biting and made me really have to think things through. Good stuff, plus the added size is nice, and for those who prefer smaller unit size you can easily reduce it by using the unit scale slider. One thing I saw and wanted to ask about was the removal of the testodu formation. (I think that's how you spell that) I don't mind it and I think I already know the reason why you removed that, but I was hoping you could explain it to me.

Thanks.

I removed Testudo from Hastati and Principes because the formation got adopted only on Marian reform.

I also noticed that forced march now gives a 15% melee defense bonus to all units and a 0% morale bonus. Is that to help the AI since its common to catch them in a forced march stance?

LOL.

I forgot to remove the bonus. It was a test to see if increasing the defense would have been good or not, but it is not necessary IMO so I should have removed it, instead I forgot...

[Craredan]

Excellent work, DeI team!

I thought I'd swing by and put in my two cents about a certain general ability.

Before I continue, let me first apologize if my wording is a little iffy, it's been a very long 28 hours and I'm writing this before clocking out for the night

The ability in question is "intimidate", it's a great ability, until you remove all of the magical abilities afforded to enemy units. Now it feels like it has such a specialist role on the battlefield that it's become near useless in most cases, as it seems the only units that will now be affected by it will be the enemy generals, who don't seem incredibly keen on using their abilities anyways.

My suggestion is to change intimidate to an ability that lows some combat related states of enemy units, like melee attack and defense, for example. This would make it a suitable counter to the inspire ability given to authority generals.

Thanks for all your time and effort in making this great mod!

[Selea]

The ability in question is "intimidate", it's a great ability, until you remove all of the magical abilities afforded to enemy units. Now it feels like it has such a specialist role on the battlefield that it's become near useless in most cases, as it seems the only units that will now be affected by it will be the enemy generals, who don't seem incredibly keen on using their abilities anyways.

My suggestion is to change intimidate to an ability that lows some combat related states of enemy units, like melee attack and defense, for example. This would make it a suitable counter to the inspire ability given to authority generals.

Actually Intimidate is even stronger now because many troops are tied to formations for working properly. For example have your General use Intimidate against some Phalangitai before they can enable their Phalanx and watch them fall as flies.

Same for Roman units not being able to use Fulcum.

The only factions that are not much influenced by Intimidate are Barbarians but this can actually be a realistic counter-side of the thing since Barbarians are frearless for nature and so less intimidated.

Now, if abilities did work in a way than when you cannot use them also if active they will stop working (as it should) the thing would be MUCH better, but since this is another of the discrepancies of this engine there's nothing I can do about it. So the point is on using Intimidate at the right time; if you do it is a very strong option still.

Having said this, I can study something to improve Intimidate utility a little; I will have to think about it and come up with something. But later because now I have to focus on adding the new units. I waited even too much for the problems of morale etc. and now I cannot postpone it anymore.

[Craredan]

Actually Intimidate is even stronger now because many troops are tied to formations for working properly. For example have your General use Intimidate against some Phalangitai before they can enable their Phalanx and watch them fall as flies.

Same for Roman units not being able to use Fulcum.

The only factions that are not much influenced by Intimidate are Barbarians but this can actually be a realistic counter-side of the thing since Barbarians are frearless for nature and so less intimidated.

Now, if abilities did work in a way than when you cannot use them also if active they will stop working (as it should) the thing would be MUCH better, but since this is another of the discrepancies of this engine there's nothing I can do about it. So the point is on using Intimidate at the right time; if you do it is a very strong option still.

Having said this, I can study something to improve Intimidate utility a little; I will have to think about it and come up with something. But later because now I have to focus on adding the new units. I waited even too much for the problems of morale etc. and now I cannot postpone it anymore.

Oh! How foolish of me, I didn't even consider that it could affect formations! Thank you for pointing that out, it should have been obvious, but it went completely over my head.

Thanks for the quick response, and good luck on getting the new units introduced!

[Falco]

I think Legionaries and Legionary Cohorts should get a unit cap of 9 per army since there were 10 cohorts per legion.