Aeimnestus Ancient Battle Realism submod (Version 1.3.1 - compatible with DeI 0.75c))

[ProtoBo]

10% losses wouldn't neessarily be the case, its quite possible units would fight for hours loosing only a handful of men, depending on various factors of course. Historically it is likely troops fought completely differently from the way portrayed in Rome2: men can only fight intensively for a short amount of time, so there would probably be several luls in the fighting where both sides would (locally) withdraw voluntarily a small distance to rest. So its not as if units would be locked in a continuous deathmatch for hours grinding one another down.

I recently found out the issue with certain units like hoplites: its not the units themselves that are off, but their defensive formations that have some crazy bonuses like +20 defense which breaks the intended killrate. That said, I have done some adjustments to the overall killrate, that will hopefully give some more realistic active combat casualties without changing the overall casualties much.

It does make sense when you put it like this. I guess its just the disjoint between the visual representation of the fighting, and what the numbers behind the fighting are intended to represent. It seems much more reasonable thinking of it as simulating the unshown breaks in combat.

When do you think the next version will be released? I'm eager to try it out with the new changes you've mentioned!

Also I was wondering what effects this mod is going to have on naval combat? I haven't testing it at all, but I imagine it puts a greater emphasis on ramming, as boarding is going to be very slow, as would be killing crew with missles. I don't know much about classical naval combat, so I don't know whether this focus would help the historical realism. Just thought I would raise the topic to hear what you thought about it!

[Aeimnestus]

It does make sense when you put it like this. I guess its just the disjoint between the visual representation of the fighting, and what the numbers behind the fighting are intended to represent. It seems much more reasonable thinking of it as simulating the unshown breaks in combat.

When do you think the next version will be released? I'm eager to try it out with the new changes you've mentioned!

Also I was wondering what effects this mod is going to have on naval combat? I haven't testing it at all, but I imagine it puts a greater emphasis on ramming, as boarding is going to be very slow, as would be killing crew with missles. I don't know much about classical naval combat, so I don't know whether this focus would help the historical realism. Just thought I would raise the topic to hear what you thought about it!

Hard to say, atm I'm still on wintersport. When I get home this weekend I'll need to make it compatible to the last DeI update, which potentially can be a lot of work. Then I need to re-test some changes I made last week, tweak some new things and test those....So lets say about 10 days from now, but I won't pin myself to that.

As for naval content: currently the only stat that affects boarding combat is unit hitpoints. Not sure if that is a bug or if there is some hidden database somewhere with naval stats, but atm non of my changes should affect naval combat.

[ProtoBo]

Hard to say, atm I'm still on wintersport. When I get home this weekend I'll need to make it compatible to the last DeI update, which potentially can be a lot of work. Then I need to re-test some changes I made last week, tweak some new things and test those....So lets say about 10 days from now, but I won't pin myself to that.

As for naval content: currently the only stat that affects boarding combat is unit hitpoints. Not sure if that is a bug or if there is some hidden database somewhere with naval stats, but atm non of my changes should affect naval combat.

Sounds good, I look forward to it. Currently it seems be compatible with latest DeI for me. Or at least it doesn't cause crashes or anything. Perhaps you just mean balance-wise. Interesting that the naval combat has its own system! Or lack of a system I should say. There must be something to the actual combat stats of the borders playing into it. Do you plan to try and affect naval combat? If the boarding actions can be drawn out and ship hit points increased against ramming, I imagine a similar long-battle style could be achieved. But I guess it depends whether ships actually suffer morale penalties for being surrounded and the like: the game engine might not be suited to having maneuvers be the basis of naval combat!

[Aeimnestus]

Just a quick reply as I'm on my holiday on a terrible wifi connection: thanks for the suggestions & observations everyone. I fully agree with them. Thanks also for the commentary video Protobo! Will definitely include it in the original post when I'm back!

[Hetairos]

Very interesting mod! I just tried it on a small scale custom battle with a handful of melee and cavalry units vs the AI.

I could summarize the mod as:
Winning by MM (Morale & Maneuvering) compared to Vanilla and DeI where it is winning by DD (Damage Dealt / Casualties / Annihilation).

However did anybody ever try it out in a long term campaign? I could imagine that the low casualties inflicted that are very interesting for tactical battles might be a problem in a campaign as you will need to fight the same stack over and over again. I believe this mod is great and historically accurate concerning its mechanics, but than again taking into account the current game design its mechanics would probably break the campaign mechanics & battles due to everlasting armies with only a few casualties per battle, having to find them over and over and over again. Any experiences on this one?

[Cidalsleepwalker]

Very interesting mod! I just tried it on a small scale custom battle with a handful of melee and cavalry units vs the AI.

I could summarize the mod as:
Winning by MM (Morale & Maneuvering) compared to Vanilla and DeI where it is winning by DD (Damage Dealt / Casualties / Annihilation).

However did anybody ever try it out in a long term campaign? I could imagine that the low casualties inflicted that are very interesting for tactical battles might be a problem in a campaign as you will need to fight the same stack over and over again. I believe this mod is great and historically accurate concerning its mechanics, but than again taking into account the current game design its mechanics would probably break the campaign mechanics & battles due to everlasting armies with only a few casualties per battle, having to find them over and over and over again. Any experiences on this one?

I've been playing the campaign with it. It's fairly easy once you route the enemy to kill them now as routing troops aren't invulnerable any more. If you manage your cavalry right, after the battle you can generally chase down the remains of the army on the campaign map and wipe them out pretty easily once you've defeated them in the first battle.

[Aeimnestus]

I've been playing the campaign with it. It's fairly easy once you route the enemy to kill them now as routing troops aren't invulnerable any more. If you manage your cavalry right, after the battle you can generally chase down the remains of the army on the campaign map and wipe them out pretty easily once you've defeated them in the first battle.

To compensate for the lower casualties, units disband when they have less then 1/3rd remaining, so there is no need to completely chase down units.

Armies also replenish slowly, and suffer a morale penalty in the next turn after being defeated. All of this combined I believe minimizes the problem of having to fight the same army multiple times. (Historically, there are some examples of armies being beaten but returrning to the field soon after and winning the next battle though)
But if there are still issues let me know

[Hetairos]

To compensate for the lower casualties, units disband when they have less then 1/3rd remaining, so there is no need to completely chase down units.

Armies also replenish slowly, and suffer a morale penalty in the next turn after being defeated. All of this combined I believe minimizes the problem of having to fight the same army multiple times. (Historically, there are some examples of armies being beaten but returrning to the field soon after and winning the next battle though)
But if there are still issues let me know

haha, really a very elegant solution around the problem. gonna try it out a bit more. seems to work just perfectly fine concerning the content of the OP. thanks!

[Joseph The Great]

This looks great, and I am excited try it out!

[Joseph The Great]

Played a few battles, and they were great. The mod manager says there is 18 conflicts between Dei and this mod. Usual? Maybe I have the wrong version of DeI.

[Kurisu Paifuaa]

Played a few battles, and they were great. The mod manager says there is 18 conflicts between Dei and this mod. Usual? Maybe I have the wrong version of DeI.

Conflicts are normal with most sub-mods. So long as the sub-mod's tables or other assets have priority over the base mod, you're ok. That would be achieved either through load order (via user script or mod manager) or by alphabetical ordering of table names (for db tables, load order is irrelevant EDIT - unless they have identical names). Mod authors should have this figured out in advance, so you typically don't have to worry about it. Just follow the directions in the OP in case of non data content that requires load order priority via MM/script.

Also, the conflict check in Mod Manager (Mitch's) isn't designed to check for conflicts where data tables are re-named (i.e. table fragments) which is very common. It only compares file names, so it isn't an absolute method of spotting conflicts. For example, it won't flag land_units and my_land_units asconflicts, even if they both modify the same record(s).

[Joseph The Great]

I see now. Thank you for the reply!

[Aeimnestus]

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 to compensate for the slightly higher kill-rate.

- 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.

[mightnight]

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 to compensate for the slightly higher kill-rate.

- 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.

Thank you for the update . I can't find the download link tho. Please is there any chance you could make a version with vanilla movement range? I know it is pretty damn realistic the way you have it set up, but for game play sake it is a little annoying how you have pretty much two cities fight each other once you attack a city lol. I enjoy the reduced movement range for transports and higher intercept range for navies tho.

[Crappy]

Please upload version 1.3! Looking forward to using it!

[Aeimnestus]

I'm currently testing some last minute pike balance changes, if they are working out well I'll upload the 1.3 file in an hour. (Edit: you can now find 1.3 in the OP)

Please is there any chance you could make a version with vanilla movement range? I know it is pretty damn realistic the way you have it set up, but for game play sake it is a little annoying how you have pretty much two cities fight each other once you attack a city lol. I enjoy the reduced movement range for transports and higher intercept range for navies tho.

Cities reinforcing one another has nothing to do with the movement range of armies, but is determined by the reinforcement range under the campaign_variables database file. It is easily modded for personal preference. (I have it set to 6 iirc, lower is a reduced radius). The added reinforcement range means you can defend multiple settlements/regions with a single army. The downside of reducing the reinforcement range is that due to the increased range of armies, the AI will be able to attack and capture undefended settlements with impunity, circumventing your armies. (and it does so religiously). I don't like cities reinforcing one another either, and tested many different settings that unfortunately didn't work. With lower reinforcement radius it simply wasn't fun as the game turned into a cat & mouse game of loosing/recapturing settlements non-stop.

In many cases you can prevent cities from reinforcing one another by wisely choosing your direction of attack though. (i.e. attacking Rome from the northeast prevents Neapolis from reinforcing Rome)

[Joseph The Great]

Loving 1.2 and looking forward to 1.3. The difficulty-to-fun ratio of this mod is superb.

[Rozwell_2004]

question, If I missed this in the thread I am sorry, I did re-read: Is the campaign movement rate designed this way? It seems to be better balanced for the 1 year per turn an not 4 year per turn. I am really enjoying the battles, but the campaign movement speeds seem really out of step from the main mod. Am I just crazy? But thanks for the nice battles. I like a mod that allows me time to setup a battle and really plan battle movement.

[Aeimnestus]

question, If I missed this in the thread I am sorry, I did re-read: Is the campaign movement rate designed this way? It seems to be better balanced for the 1 year per turn an not 4 year per turn. I am really enjoying the battles, but the campaign movement speeds seem really out of step from the main mod. Am I just crazy? But thanks for the nice battles. I like a mod that allows me time to setup a battle and really plan battle movement.

The campaign movement is designed that way, and is a compromise between realism and game-playability. A roman army could march from Rome to northern England in a season (= 1 turn) but such movement range breaks the game. The current campaign movement I found is the most realistic we can get without the game breaking. The added range has the bonus of making the AI more aggressive during war, as its armies/navies are easier within striking distance.

[ProtoBo]

Woop 1.3 released, many thanks, I look forward to trying it out in the near future.

Here's a thought I had: it is possible to increase the rate as which missiles become effective as range decreases? For so example, a volley of javelins thrown into the back of a unit at point blank range would cause moderate losses and probably a quick rout? I was playing a settlement defense and using levies to ambush heavier units in such ways, but it doesn't inflict any losses. I like them being mainly just a 'threat' at long range, as the new version encourages, but at very close range I would expect a volley of projectiles to really impact the unit's men and morale, i.e. they realise that if they keep fighting while being blasted from behind with arrows, they will lose, and hence chose to retreat.

All just thoughts I had recently. Anyway, keep up the awesome work, this has quickly become my favourite way to play Rome, so thanks for bringing this fine submod to us!