Aeimnestus Ancient Battle Realism submod (Version 1.3.1 - compatible with DeI 0.75c))
Good day all! On this cold winter morning, I bring you this submod for your amusement (hopefully!). Out of all the overhauls currently being worked on, I like DeI the best by far. The historical focus of the team fits closely to what I want to see in a Rome TW game, and they do an absolutely amazing job with inventive methods (example: Formation Attack mechanics in DeI) to try and get some semblance of realism in the game to replace the arcade aspects of vanilla.
As a modder myself, I have tailored every previous version of DeI extensively to better fit my own idea's, but for personal use only. For 7.0 however I've decided to share some of my changes with the community.
The core goals for this submod:
1. Making the battles (even) more realistic. Historically, battles were no quick affairs and could last the better part of a day. Battles usually consisted of a skirmishing phase (which could last days or minutes), after which the heavy infantry lines engaged: the goal of the heavy infantry was not just to kill the enemy, it was to literally break the enemy formation. When this happened (usually a flank crumbling) the defeated army would rout. It was during this rout that the most casualties were made: casualties in pitched battles were not especially high, during the fighting itself only about 3-7% of both armies was expected to have died, but during the rout the casualties could mount up to about 30% for the loosing army, though it was usually well below 20%. Only when armies were surrounded with no escape would the famous total massacres occur that are in our history books.
A resemblance of this is achieved by the following (rough) changes:
- Melee kill rate has been drastically reduced. And I do mean drastically. Battlelines will engage and stay engaged for a good long while (easily 30 minutes if you don't pull off any hammering rear-charges), allowing for tactical maneuvers and the spectacle of seeing the battle slowly unfold.
- Ranged kill rate has been greatly reduced as well to compensate for the slower melee. No longer will your unit of hastati kill a quarter of the enemy unit with a single pila volley.
- Morale has been tweaked: units will break much faster from casualties and rear charges, but since positioning units for rear charges and taking casualties takes much longer, units still hang on much longer than before.
- This has been accomplished by a complete overhaul of the offensive & defensive stats of all units, plus various tweaks to the battle mechanics.
- Armour piercing attacks have been all but removed. Only in some specific cases have weapons retained this trait, but in a greatly diminished form.
- Movement speed of men and horses has been reduced to more realistic levels.
Related balance changes:
- Hoplites overhauled to make them less immortal especially in combination with the kill reduction changes.
- Certain units from the new DeI factions have been hit with a nerf bat to make them less overpowered, but still very powerful.
- Roman units have been tweaked downwards somewhat. They are still awesome, but just a little less than before.
Misc. changes:
- tweaked the battle camera to zoom in and out further.
2. Making the campaign both harder and more realistic.
"It's your last settlement puny AI nation. I have just crushed your two puny armies. My legion is on your doorstep, ready to sack your city, to pillage and murder. To annihilate any trace of your civilization from the annals of history! And the sad thing is, AI nation, that all of this happened because YOU BROKE A TRADING AGREEMENT WE HAD GOING FOR 30 TURNS WITHOUT REASON!! - But I am a merciful Imperator. Sign this peace treaty & this new trade agreement, and I will spare your people and your city. And as a token of my friendship I will even donate 10.000 dena....NO???! WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO??"
So, having a more...plausible diplomatic AI is something I've been trying to tweak for a good long while. It's still hit or miss, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. I made a lot of changes though that should hopefully make it more often plausible. And less often....retarded
- I have made many modifications to the diplomacy system. Nations should now be more inclined to offer/accept peace, and less inclined to declare war without cause. When they do declare war, they are much more aggressive however!
- New system to allow the player to build positive reputation with factions at war: sacking a settlement now gives that city's faction a boost in diplomatic relations with you to simulate your actions striking fear in your opponent. Sacking multiple settlements (or the same one multiple times) should make the AI more receptive to offers for peace. (Note that your allies do not like you sacking cities...It's considered barbaric and who is to say they are not next!)
- Numerous changes and tweaks to help aid in the game developing along a plausible historical path.
- Minor cities can now build the market(forum) & military training building chains, so smaller cities can be individualized a bit better.
- Certain important city states have received a minor food bonus so they can focus on their military at the start of the game instead of being forced to build farms in their single settlement.
- Sparta has been tweaked to better reflect its declining status. If you are up for a challenge, play them at your own peril!
- Agents have been capped. Agent movement has been changed and differs between the agents.
- Army stances have been tweaked. Raiding and ambushing are now more usable. (can be activated with much less movement, though it will still use the associated movement cost after you have activated it.
- New army and navy ranges. With each turn being a season, an army could theoretically move from Rome to Scotland in a single turn. However, the game is not designed for this. I believe I have made a suitable compromise with the new army and navy ranges. Reinforcement range has increased as well to simulate forces marshalling to face the invading threat.
- I have reworked the transport ship mechanics. To simulate the need for an army attached to a fleet to regularly make land for supplies etc. transport fleets have less than half the range of proper navies. In addition to this, the "intercept" radius for navies has been greatly increased. Together with the greater range, this should allow nations to defend their territories vs naval invasions much more effectively. (I had Carthage intercept a full 30-stack legion with one of its fleets in my campaign yesterday. 0 survivors...outch)
- To compensate for this, transport ships have been slightly buffed. They can now ram with some effectiveness, and can survive 1 or 2 rams from small ships. They still get easily annihilated by a proper navy though.
Well that was all I could think of, I have changed much more but simply can't write it all down. Hope you enjoy the submod!
Recommendations:
Campaign:
- For the best experience, I recommend a Very Hard difficulty for the campaign.
- Sparta has been made significantly harder to play. Only advised for veterans.
- Epirus, Sparta, Athens, Syracuse, Pergamon and Massilia have a passive food bonus, mostly to help out the AI. However the player benefits from this as well, making those factions (except Sparta) slightly easier to play as before.
- Several factions also receive a little bit more income where appropriate. To compensate for this for the player, when playing as Epirus, Macedon, Carthage or the Seleucids I recommend playing the campaign on Legendary.
Battles:
- For the battles, use normal battle difficulty. Normal has the most 'realistic' behavior, and at harder battle difficulties the AI gains a morale boost so high that it pretty much breaks this submod.
- Unit chase behavior is hard-coded as far as I can tell. I'm using the following house rule: when the enemy army completely routs, do not manually chase individual units down. Just allow your units to automatically chase (or not) for a minute or so and enjoy the show, then end the battle. This will result in fairly realistic rout-casualties. Ideally your battles should end with the victor suffering less than 10% casualties, and the defeated army with less than 40% casualties.
A note on unit sizes:
Playing on Ultra unit sizes like DeI is intended, Pike phalanx units have their correct historical sizes (256 men) but Roman units consist of 2 maniples, reducing the historical flexibility of the legions. Still its a decent compromise.
Should your PC however not be able to handle the large unit sizes, I recommend going for Medium unit sizes. At this size, roman units consist of a single maniple and thus play more historical. However, pike phalanx units will be half their correct size (128 men) and thus be more flexible than they historically were.
Download link: (current version 1.3.1):
http://www.filedropper.com/aeimnestu...lism131release
http://www.speedyshare.com/mxzrN/Aei...1.release.pack
1.3.1 changelog:
- Fixed garrison units not reinforcing.
- Rebalanced fatigue penalties: rather than only reducing the offense of units as they tire, defenses are now greatly diminished as well. Fresh inferior units will be able to overwhelm exhausted elite units.
- Rebalanced some odd unit match-ups.
- Increased bow and sling ammo, to allow ranged units to keep a more active role in the longer battles. Reload time is slightly increased.
- Reduced javelin accuracy slightly, increased javelin damage slightly.
- A big nerf to warhounds: they are now a very small, very vulnerable support unit, mostly effective to chase down routers. To compensate, their cost and upkeep has been reduced.
1.3 patchnotes:
Campaign:
- Overhaul of the auto-resolve function, to give casualty numbers more in line with field battles actually fought by the player.
- Renamed most of the Italian cities to more important cities in roughly the same physical location:
1. Ariminum wasn't founded yet and has been renamed to Ancona.
2. Velathri has been renamed to Arretium, an Etruscan city that grew to be the third largest Roman city in Italy.
3. Neapolis has been renamed to Capua, the second city in Italy that has no reason not to be represented.
4. Cosentia has been renamed to Croton, a far larger and more important city.
5. Brundisium has been renamed to Tarentum. While Brundisium was a large city as well, especially in the first 150 years of the game it doesn't hold the same importance as Tarentum.
Battle:
- Bow and slinger units (but not javelins/pilums etc.) have been overhauled. Their ranged weapons are now slightly less damaging, but provide a barrage debuff to any unit under fire. When a unit is under fire (doesn't need to suffer casualties, just arrows/stones hitting their shields/armour is enough) the following effects happen that last for 30 seconds:
1. The men in the unit under fire take cover behind their shields/eachother, reducing their movement by 30%.
2. They suffer a penalty to their charge bonus as their momentum is disrupted by the urge to defend themselves from the threat of projectiles.
3. They have reduced weapon initiative (initiative decides who strikes first in melee) for the same above reason.
4. When equipped with shields, they gain a blocking bonus versus future incoming projectiles.
- Overhauled weapons. Reduced the difference in power between various weapons. Reduced the effectiveness of spears vs cavalry. Increased the effectiveness of cavalry weapons vs cavalry.
- Overhauled armour values. Armour is now less effective in melee, but performance vs ranged hasn't changed.
- Overhauled cavalry stats. Generally speaking, heavy cavalry charges are now pretty much guaranteed to cause some casualties even frontally vs bracing heavy infantry unless said infantry is prepared in a dedicated anti-cavalry formation. Versus unprepared infantry cavalry charges can be devastating. Cavalry also has more staying power after the charge due to the changes to infantry spears. In a direct fight all cavalry is still outclassed by heavy infantry however.
- Overhauled infantry charge effectiveness. Most infantry units will be able to cause at least some casualties on the charge. Not 100% of the charges will result in casualties due to random chance & obviously completely outclassed units won't be able to effectively kill professional troops charge or not, but usually there are some casualties between roughly equal infantry.
- Slightly reduced movement of all units.
- Several formations tweaked:
- Anti cavalry formations provide mostly defensive bonuses but no longer cause infantry to slaughter cavalry. The formations slowly tire the infantry units, so if you just park your infantry in repel cavalry formation and go for coffee, the cavalry may still emerge victorious due to exhaustion + rear charge by cavalry having a significant chance to break infantry even if no casualties are sustained.
- Cavalry formations are reduced in effectiveness. The various wedge formations give a slight charge bonus, significant penetration bonus, but slightly slow down non-charge movement due to having to stay in a difficult formation.
- Morale reduced across the board, with elite units with high morale having received a bigger morale reduction than units with already low morale.
All of these changes together result in more active combat casualties, so battles are more interesting to watch and play out a bit more realistically on a local level. Since units still break after sustaining fairly low casualties, this means battles do take slightly less time to play out, especially when there are mostly troops involved with high attack values.
Cavalry vs cavalry fights are especially bloodier and faster to play out, which is in line with many historical accounts where cavalry routs (long) before infantry. This also means the side with superior cavalry can more effectively break an infantry deadlock when the infantry is matched, as cavalry is no longer as easily tied up in a long combat even vs inferior forces.
Misc.
- Capturing a gate now takes longer (up from 20 seconds to 2 minutes).
- Slightly reduced the tidiness of cavalry units. They are no longer 100% perfect triangles/wedges and whatnot.
Patchnotes 1.2:
Battle changes:
(melee)
- Reduced the effectiveness of Hoplites. In general, Hoplites now do a fair bit more damage, but are far less survivable.
- The Hoplite Phalanx has been changed considerably. It now only provides a slight bonus to frontal shield defense & shield armor, at the cost of a some offensive power (they gain more defense than they loose in attack however). The formation also provides a bonus to missile deflection from the front. However, the Hoplite Phalanx slightly tires the unit while it is active.
- All other defensive formations similar to the Hoplite Phalanx (i.e. shield wall, spear wall, testudo, fulcum etc.. ) also slightly to moderately tire the units when active.
- Phalangite (pikemen) overhaul. Their formation is now slightly more compact, they are better able to prevent other melee units from penetrating their pikes, and they do more damage. My goal has been that normal pike units are able to beat Hastati frontally, and can hold their own against heavier units. Elite pike units are pretty much unbeatable from the front. All pike units now destroy equivalently tiered Hoplite units.
- The Pike Phalanx formation has a 15% chance to deflect incoming missiles from the front, but fatigue regeneration has been reduced to 40% of what is was. The bracing value has been reduced to reduce cavalry units 'bouncing off' when charging in the rear.
- The fatigue regeneration of cycled line has been reduced to roughly 30% of what it was.
- Unit bracing decreases the more a unit tires. This makes cavalry charges more effective the more tired their target is.
- Infantry movement has been decreased across the board.
- All barbarian unit stats have been tweaked. Significant charge boost, and high attack value, but not so much staying power. Their looser formations and less armor allow for higher running and especially charge speed than the infantry units of 'civilized' nations. As a result, armies loosing vs barbarians are also more easily chased down, resulting in higher average casualties.
- Barbarian formations are now much less orderly. They still fight in formations as they did historically, but within the formations there is less regularity.
(ranged)
- Slingers and Archers have received a slight damage boost to compensate for the Phalanx changes.
- Poisoned arrows are now much more effective, but less units have them. Look for them on 1 nomadic unit, 1 african unit, and 1 gallic unit.
Campaign changes:
- Overhaul of army/navy replenishment: Your army will only replenish in friendly territory, and will only replenish units that can be recruited in the province your army is in. Even when this condition is met, normal replenishment is very low, but it increases when your army is garrisoned in a city. It further increases when your army is mustering. Your navies will follow the same principle, but will only replenish when docked in a port, and never when at sea.
- Armies in raiding stance will disrupt replenishment of armies in the same province. Enemy armies in muster-stance will still replenish, but at roughly 50% efficiency. This simulates enemy reinforcements getting intercepted by raiding parties from- and the vanguard of the invading army.
In practice, these changes mean you will almost all of the time end up with mostly understrength units in your armies just like it was in history. By how much depends on how well you do in your battles, but if you fight battles far away from your military recruitment centers, your armies will eventually erode unless you hire mercenaries to compensate.
Patchnotes 1.1:
- Reworked all armor & shield values.
- Reworked morale of elite units. (They break easier now, whereas before they would fight on pretty much until the rest of the army routed)
- Massive balance overhaul: rebalanced the defense and attack of most units. There is less of a gap between elite and "normal" units, and elite units will take more casualties (though it is still quite possible for some elite units to barely suffer any casualties when fighting "duels" with units that have a low attack value.)
- Further reduced running speed for most units.
- Tweaked various faction bonuses that have diplomatic penalties attached to them such as the "political underdog" & "hellenistic rivalry" traits. These penalties have been reduced in potency.
Compatibility:
Compatible only with mods that change skins.
Compatible with both DeI 0.71a and DeI beta 9.
Install instructions:
Put the file in the Rome2 Data folder. -> Launch the mod manager, and make sure my submod is above DeI in the load order (i.e. overwrites DeI). -> Launch the game through mod manager.
Screenshots of what to expect:
Rome vs Averni:
Just before the first javelin volley hits the Gallic archers:
First blood: the levies score 2 kills with their opening volley:
The levies receive a fair bit more return fire than they had bargained for:
29 casualties. Outch:
The Principes securing the flank take a direct heavy cavalry charge:
Well prepared for it, they only suffer 2 casualties:
The Gallic infantry reaches the first Roman line of Hastati, their iron throwing spears causing minor casualties:
The Hastati hold the line:
8 minutes after the lines first touched, the Hastati are slowly being driven back by the sheer mass of Gallic troops,
especially the center buckles and the Gauls break through and reach the Principes:
11 minutes after the lines made contact: When a unit of Gallic heavy cavalry charges in, the Hastati which already took heavy casualties fighting off the elite Gallic swordsmen break:
They fall back behind the Principes before rallying:
14 minutes of contant fighting: The Hastati buckle under the Gallic assault. The Gallic skirmishers that joined the fray after using up all their ammunition are however the first to break.
After 15 minutes of constant fighting, these Averni warriors have yet to gain the upper hand against the well entrenched Hastati, suffering 7 casualties:
The outmatched Hastati hold the higher ground, and have only suffered 6 casualties:
18 minutes in, and the Hastati holding the center finally break. The Gauls pour through only to be counter charged by the Principes of the second line:
The counter charge by the Principes breaks the Averni's center, and a chain-rout is about to start as the exhausted Gauls get steamrolled by the fresh Principes:
While the Averni center routs, the chain-rout is broken as the Gallic flanks stubbornly continue to fight:
After 20 minutes of fighting and taking extreme casualties, the Hastati on the Roman right flank finally break:
Due to the routing of several Gallic units, a gap has been created in the left center which is exploited by the Hastati who
wheel through to unleash a devastating pila volley followed by a charge on the rear of the Gallic line:
Meanwhile the Gallic center has rallied, and rushes to rejoin the fray:
However it is too late, and the Hastati's devastating charge breaks the Gallic morale:
A chain rout occurs as panic grips the Averni ranks:
And the result after 25 minutes of fighting: 10,8% casualties for the Romans (which is high for a victorious army, but not outrageously so) and 31,6% casualties for the Averni (which is perfectly in line with expectations)
Vs Macedon:
Forgetting about a unit of Principes facing off vs 2 units of Peltasts for 3 minutes = bad:
The Tracian falx is one of the most dangerous weapons in the game, as is evident from the heavy casualties sustained by these Hastati after 7 minutes of fighting:
A massive route after 10 minutes, when the -incompetently used by the AI- Macedonian phalanx gets sandwiched between several Roman units:
A quick victory, only 12 minutes of fighting (15 minutes was the total battle incl. manoeuvring ): 7,14% casualties for the Romans, and a massive 48,4% casualties for Macedon due to sheer incompetence by the AI.
ProtoBo's commentary using version 1.2b of this submod: (note, there have been significant changes to this submod since that version, but it gives a general idea.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT1l-N52Ue4
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Originally Posted by Black9
