Re: Aeimnestus Ancient Battle Realism submod (Version 1.3.1 - compatible with DeI 0.75c))
While those are fair points, with the recent changes the victorious army *usually* suffers between 5% & 10% casualties, which is already higher than it was historically. Obviously we must take historical accounts of battles with a pile of salt, but since its pretty much impossible to confirm/deny those accounts through the archaeological record (ancient battlefields are never preserved in a way that we can use to corroborate things like casualty reports) the choice is to either use the written sources as a basis but with the knowledge that they may or may not be very accurate, or just making things up ourselves. In any case whatever the reality may have been, the casualty numbers I'm basing this submod on are the current standard of <5% for the victorious army vs <30% for the defeated army (in both cases this is an average).Originally Posted by Carl Jung was right
Since the casualties in this submod are on average already a little bit higher than this average, there is no chance that I will be substantially increasing killrates across the board.
As for the wounding thing, Rome 2 has a rather simplistic system in place for wounded men, and visually they are either dead or alive. Men do have hitpoints, so its quite possible that the unit of Hastati which only took a single fatality has a further hundred men critically injured, but you have no way of knowing this.
I would personally prefer modding the campaign so there are less battles, but the battles have more of an impact.That's why I think for the sake of balance and gameplay the kill rate should be increased (less than in vanilla and DEI though), especially considering that you have to fight many dozens of battles throughout a campaign, as opposed to how in real history, a "faction" would only fight one major stack on stack pitched battle every couple of years at least, with most fighting in warfare taking place between skirmishing groups over lines of supply or besieging a settlement. In Rome 2, there's a battle usually every couple of turns or so (every 3-4 months at DEI 4tpy). I'm just saying that the slow pace of battles coupled with their high frequency can get a tad tedious, especially in drawn out campaigns. While this is not necessarily something that I can't live with, I still think there should be ways available to the player to speed up the casualty rate units inflict DURING battle, as opposed to simply speeding the rate at which units are killed by tweaking their defence values.
Those changes would basically mean undoing everything I changed and going back to an unmodded DeISome workarounds I recommend, with which a greater battle kill rate could be achieved without breaking the vastly improved battle immersion which this mod succeeds in delivering would be the following:
-Increase the damage caused to flank and especially rear of formation.
-Increase the value of cavalry and infantry charges
-Lower morale of all units overall so they would rout faster
-Significantly increase missile damage (especially javelins), decrease ammunition. Skirmish infantry, dressed lightly, carried only a few missiles anyway. They could inflict significant casualties in just a few volleys, on a very tightly packed formation, especially when targeting it from the side or rear. Keep in mind not all of these were necessarily lethal, a javelin piercing the leg or wrist of a soldier, would render that soldier incapable of fighting in the near future. Archers do less damage, but cause enemies fired upon to lose fatigue and morale faster (from the exhaustion caused by defending against a constant hail of missiles). Finally, slingers, carry the most ammo and cause the least casualties, but are still quite deadly against unarmored (without shield) units, usually enemy javelin throwers.
This is already in my submod, when units tire the following effects happen (the effects increase exponentially the more tired a unit gets):-Make fatigue (if possible) play a much greater role in how many soldiers a unit loses, and how likely it is to break. For example, a unit at full stamina receives few casualties when fighting, whereas a tired out unit would get a large penalty to melee defence or hitpoints, making it more prone to morale shock and cavalry charges. I'm not sure if this is possible, but if implemented successfully, it would be a great gameplay feature that I long waited for.
- Running speed reduces slightly
- Charge bonus & melee attack reduces
- Melee defense reduces (by more than the melee attack reduction, so units will end up taking more casualties the more tired they become even when fighting equally tired units)
- Unit cohesion reduces, making them more vulnerable to cavalry charges
When exhausted, units also suffer a massive morale penalty
To make the most of this, keep some fresh units in reserve to replace/reinforce your exhausted units, and 'cycle' your units.
If you wait till the main battleline gets very tired/exhausted, then hammer their flank/rear with 'clever maneuvering' by fresh troops, you get exactly that in my experience. If you do it straight away vs fresh troops, your flanking units will just get bogged down in melee. Timing is everything.That way a player who wants to break the deadlock would have to rely on clever maneuvering and flanking cavalry to surround and annihilate the opposing force, rather than just waiting for superior strength of arms or the battle timer to carry the day. On the other hand, units fighting head to head, in formation, SHOULD generally speaking, cause very, very minimal casualties, as is already the case this mod.
I always assumed the tooltips were automatically generated from the true unit stats, however quite recently someone told me they don't. I never really look at the ingame tooltips as I know exactly which unit does what as I gave them their stats, so I never noticed before.
I assume there is a separate database file, which has all the units + their stats, and this database file is used only for the tooltips. At first glance this seems like a lot of work unless I can simply copy/paste the stats, but I haven't really looked into it yet.
For the moment, you can assume that every unit that you think logically should be better than another unit, actually is. So principes > hastati (principes are in fact significantly better, not just the +1 defense. They also have better attack, charge and armour), spartan hoplites > triarii, italian cavalry > equites, Hellenistic companion cavalry > italian cavalry, citizen pikemen > any and all hoplite units, etc..etc..
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