Poor balance and terrible battle AI

[Aliquis]

This is a very interesting mod and I am impressed by the amount of time you have put in it. However a few very important things could easily have been done a lot better.

1. Cavalry is too cheap and charges, especially from behind, are too powerful. I wonder how realistic it is to destroy a unit in seconds by charging it from behind. And it takes a lot more time to kill an unit by surrounding it with infantry.
Cavalry is also too strong without the charge. Good spearmen can barely beat a good cavalry unit in normal combat.
If the AI doesn't recruit enough cavalry, then you can easily solve that by letting the player recruit different cavalry units than the AI.

2. Slingers are too strong and probably historically inaccurately represented in this mod. Because their bullets are armour piercing, they are too good at shooting enemies from behind. Experience affects their strength too much. I suggest that you remove the AP attribute. Perhaps units should get less shield and more armour in general.
A lot of sources claim that they can shoot farther than bows in that time. Perhaps they should be a unit with longer range than bowmen, but less damage. You should do more research there.

3. Buildings have got different bonuses in different regions. I don't understand why for example tribal justice has got -5% tax in some regions, but -15% in others.
Also the tax bonuses of the wine/olive oil tree are different than the description says.

4. Buildings with positive tax bonuses are often useless in foreign cities, because the tax income has reached its minimum. Not very realistic.

5. I can't find any overview of building trees and what units I can recruit where.

6. The battle AI performs terribly. It doesn't keep its units together and tries to attack my cavalry with infantry. I can easily attack its units with missile or cavalry units from behind. It would perform a lot better if it would do a frontal attack and use part of its army to defend the back. I don't know if you can change this. Changing its starting formations doesn't help at all.

[Alavaria]

4. Buildings with positive tax bonuses are often useless in foreign cities, because the tax income has reached its minimum.

Yeah, it's odd like that...


Slingers are hilarious, since you can't have two ranged weapons, I think the guys in RS2 are stuck with the short-range slings instead of the long-range slings.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Some interesting points for a first post. Whilst some are valid, I must ask how long you have played the Mod to form a comprehensive picture? That queried:

1 - If you do review old posts then you will see that this has been discussed many times. It is up to the Player to exercise control (the system can always be abused); for the Cavalry costs are pitched so that the AI recruits sensibly. Individual EDUs for each campaign have been discussed (that would address that partially), but too many units are shared between Player & AI to be viable. I do agree with you on your view of the fact that cavalry is too powerful - and I have argued that myself several times. However, so many people are wedded to the idea that 'Heavy Melée Cavalry' both actually existed and have all the potential attributes of the Medieval Knight to have that argument win. If an enemy unit is tired out and has been in contact for a good while, however, then a charge in the back will often break it - and that's not unreasonable. Some tweaks may be possible.

2 - As I understand it the AP attribute for slingers was added to particularly account for their effectiveness vs armour - which is accurate. We are also up against equal views from many that ancient bowfire was akin to a machine-gun, but a lot of that has been addressed. I must admit that I had never really reviewed sling range as I just don't like them very much, but I know that whilst you are correct the range advantage of sling vs bow is for a maximum, and not necessarily the effective range for unit fire. Again, there could still be some tweaks. In both these cases there has been lots of work and discussion long before even I got involved and there is resistance to too much 'realism'.

3 - There are differences - and most for reasons.

4 - Bonuses do not affect Tax Income directly, but act on the Governor's Admin. I have not seen this be an issue before.

5 - No, there isn't a comprehensive picture and the in-game tree is limited in view (nothing can be done about that), but there is a lot - and units - in the stickies if you care to read. That said - why not have fun exploring?

6 - Nothing can really be done with any mod when it comes to the AI - it's fixed code. It can be helped a great deal, however, and I can assure you that RSII has provided me with the most 'realistic' battle experiences I could hope for. Attacking cavalry with infantry is just fine - both cavalry and infantry are even better. That the player can often manoevre units behind, yes, it does remain too easy - but the AI is not that bad. The Bonuses the AI receives help. 'Hard Battles' should be pretty hard. The way that the 'too easy' for the player to perform complex tactics can be countered, however, is to use the 'Restrict Camera to General' option - but many find that a bit hard core (including me!) and it detracts from the visual enjoyment too. Make sure you fight battles with default settings and use the timer - if you can't win within 45mins, then you should lose.

[CatoTheYounger]

Agree with everything but the timer.Out of the question for a battle to be stopped because a timer went off. But to each his own.

Also i think ai siege defense is pretty damn good. I had about six different breaches that the AI quickly log jammed and i just could not get an easy route to flank anybody. And taking the walls is my style but that leads to slow slug fest and taking heat from the arrows from the towers. Give the AI some credit when they have a good size garrison and are defending a city. Forces me to slowly starve them out most the time because storming a city can be huge casualties.

[Alavaria]

Also i think ai siege defense is pretty damn good. I had about six different breaches that the AI quickly log jammed and i just could not get an easy route to flank anybody. And taking the walls is my style but that leads to slow slug fest and taking heat from the arrows from the towers. Give the AI some credit when they have a good size garrison and are defending a city. Forces me to slowly starve them out most the time because storming a city can be huge casualties.

No, it isn't very good at siege defense, actually. With stone walls, or with wooden walls, it has peculiarities that are obvious if you've been told what they are. If you're using Rams and don't have siege weapons (like massive Ballistae) that can kill towers or rapidly break the wall, then yeah, it gets a little more suicide-chargy for the first guys into the breach.

Full stack, or more than a full stack (reinforcements) doesn't change much, besides the fact you have to kill more or less guys. Especially obnoxious with Romans.


I'm not sure if I prefer fighting everything in settlements because
1. I have to take the settlements anyway, and settlements don't run away/are always on roads etc
2. It's less risky to assault settlement.*

Completely the opposite from what you expect, and indeed I think in some cases, I lose more men assaulting than if we had fought on field, but the chance of being wiped out is much smaller (replacing a couple more units isn't a problem, whereas having the while stack wipe is more annoying). It isn't hard to win against stacked odds, but if that enemy force is in a settlement, you pretty much can't lose anything important (well, by which I mean pretty much the general and elite ranged units, or just the general if you spam your missile troops and don't care if they die).

[CatoTheYounger]

No, it isn't very good at siege defense, actually. With stone walls, or with wooden walls, it has peculiarities that are obvious if you've been told what they are. If you're using Rams and don't have siege weapons (like massive Ballistae) that can kill towers or rapidly break the wall, then yeah, it gets a little more suicide-chargy for the first guys into the breach.

Full stack, or more than a full stack (reinforcements) doesn't change much, besides the fact you have to kill more or less guys. Especially obnoxious with Romans.


I'm not sure if I prefer fighting everything in settlements because
1. I have to take the settlements anyway, and settlements don't run away/are always on roads etc
2. It's less risky to assault settlement.*

Completely the opposite from what you expect, and indeed I think in some cases, I lose more men assaulting than if we had fought on field, but the chance of being wiped out is much smaller (replacing a couple more units isn't a problem, whereas having the while stack wipe is more annoying). It isn't hard to win against stacked odds, but if that enemy force is in a settlement, you pretty much can't lose anything important (well, by which I mean pretty much the general and elite ranged units, or just the general if you spam your missile troops and don't care if they die).

I NEVER recruit siege weapons and bring them with me. I build whatever alowed when i get to the city. Try it that way. Much more difficult. Dragging around siege weapons slows me down. Takes up a slot or two and doesn't make sense. They would build what they needed on the spot. Either way if you can fight without bringing weapons and you find it easy you are far better then I. My casualties sky rocket storming largely garrisoned cities with rams and towers.

[Alavaria]

Dragging around siege weapons slows me down.

I've never been able to use a single stack to take multiple settlements in a turn by sieging them one by one.

Either way if you can fight without bringing weapons and you find it easy you are far better then I. My casualties sky rocket storming largely garrisoned cities with rams and towers.

Not too hard, it comes down to knowing how the AI behaves when you have a unit in the settlement and planning appropriately. It involves shooting the stack in the back over and over until they're all dead.

Make holes in wall, more is better, but you can do with as little as one. Walk in, and ensure you can shoot (from outside the walls) soldiers attacking your guys in the side (or better yet back). Attacking at corners or bends is the best, if you can't take down the towers, look for corners or bends without towers. Don't ask me about what happens to your own guys who are also standing in the middle of a storm of arrows/stones (they also die horribly).


You would think after Phillip of Macedon started taking cities by means of siege involving ranged siege engines, assaults and whatnot, people would do it more. But no, they also just decided to go pike heavy and forgot how his beautiful army structure worked. And then a bunch of short guys with little swords started murdering everyone.

Try it that way. Much more difficult.

So is using nothing but the lowest levy troops and relying only on them to melee the enemy to death by outnumbering them 10-to-1.

Oh yeah, your archers or whatever are pretty damn cheap so yeah you can run them into the walls behind the enemy fighting your first unit and just shoot them in the back point-blank. You -might- end up losing them, but really who cares, war is bloody and you're losing a bunch of guys anyway.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Agree with everything but the timer.Out of the question for a battle to be stopped because a timer went off. But to each his own. .......

I shall always recommend the timer, because:

1 - The Player gets so many advantages - this is a, as designed, limitation that means the Player is under one more pressure - time is the Player's friend!

2 - Siege assaults are also much easier than they should be - the timer ensures that the Player must pursue a plan/strategy that will meet this time limit.

3 - There are instances, mostly in sieges, where, without the timer, the battle will just never end - perhaps resulting in the wrong final decision (drastic if an army is on instant destruction if losing).

......

Don't see it? Well the javelin guy throws short-range strength 14 javelins, but the supposedly weaker horse archer shoots strength 16 arrows, carries more arrows, and does all this at a greater range (well out of foot javelin range).......

You are correct - this is something I brought up with the Roman equivalents and got changed - it looks as though there are more!

Tedric, you've complained many times about the cavalry mechanics. Have you experimented with alternate settings? Do you have any ideas about how a better system might be realized? I'm curious what you think it should look like. Mass/Radius? Attack/Defense parameters? Charge bonuses? Speed/Animation tweaks? The disparity between player- and AI-controlled cavalry has always been one of the very worst parts of the battle system in my opinion, so I'd love to see a discussion of a possible paradigm shift.

As I've been saying for years, I think that because charge bonuses are nearly unattainable for the AI, they should be removed completely as they drastically empower the player...............

Indeed I have - but that's been a whole part of the testing and querying department (which the role I took - particularly for the, main, Roman campaign that I know most about). It was not then my place to insist on change. Two of the things I would like to do, however, that could possibly be tested are lowering or perhaps even removing the charge bonus and reducing the size of the units a little (on the hope that no one chooses 'Small' I would like to see 'Large' cavalry units at '50' and not '60' as this would better represent the Scale Factor (1:12 is probably best), but also reduce their effect somewhat.

I NEVER recruit siege weapons and bring them with me. I build whatever alowed when i get to the city. Try it that way. Much more difficult. Dragging around siege weapons slows me down. Takes up a slot or two and doesn't make sense. They would build what they needed on the spot. Either way if you can fight without bringing weapons and you find it easy you are far better then I. My casualties sky rocket storming largely garrisoned cities with rams and towers.

The real sense of bringing siege weapons for RSII is dealing with the Garrison Script option. This means you do have the option to bring them and assault immediately; or settle down to the siege and wait them out. The Garrison script helps the AI and makes the campaign less easy for the Player, but does result in a complete lack of using the 'siege-constructed' weaponry (there seems no way of giving instant equipment, which I asked for, but which we now see in Rome2), which is a loss I can accept for the additional work required by the player.

[High Fist]

Perhaps units should get less shield and more armour in general.
A lot of sources claim that they can shoot farther than bows in that time. Perhaps they should be a unit with longer range than bowmen, but less damage. You should do more research there.

Booya, someone agrees with me.

Agree mostly with points 1 and 2, but little can be done about them without effort - and I sure ain't got enough of that.

[neep]

1. Cavalry is too cheap and charges, especially from behind, are too powerful. I wonder how realistic it is to destroy a unit in seconds by charging it from behind. And it takes a lot more time to kill an unit by surrounding it with infantry.

I don't see that cavalry charges are too overpowered. Agreed, charging (or any attack) from behind is hitting the enemy at their weakest point - which is exactly why one does this.
Even heavy cavalry charges are not automatic 'Wins' since a fresh enemy unit still takes a while to grind down.
I would never do a cavalry charge until the enemy unit has already been worn down by a frontal infantry attack for a couple of minutes.
Otherwise my cavalry ends up getting too much damage and potentially routes.

Similarly (I always play Roman so I'm biased by that perspective) cavalry attacking my Poly cohorts usually get a face full of pila which tends to discourage them.
After 5 minutes of infantry vs cavalry the enemy cavalry usually ends up routing as they get hacked down - so again, I don't see them as being overly high powered.

Obviously cavalry attacking archers or skirmishers is a non-contest, but that's expected.

6. The battle AI performs terribly. It doesn't keep its units together and tries to attack my cavalry with infantry. I can easily attack its units with missile or cavalry units from behind. It would perform a lot better if it would do a frontal attack and use part of its army to defend the back. I don't know if you can change this. Changing its starting formations doesn't help at all.

I disagree with this, I think the battle AI is actually pretty good.

Agreed, if there's an inbalance between the opposing forces the AI will be put into a poor position where it has to throw cavalry at infantry, or vice versa.
Yes, I can usually manouver to out flank or get behind the enemy lines - but that's because I'm smarter than the average AI
But it still took me a while to learn the appropriate tactics, so it's not a slam dunk to just roll over the AI from day one.

I've had numerous battles where I've been pleasantly surprised at the AI's ability to flank me with his cavalry and I've seen pretty good use of hoplites and phalanx to get me enmeshed while other units pick me off or outflank.

Yes, the AI can sometimes do dumb things - it's a 32bit engine from 10 years ago and I know enough programming to realise how tough a challenge this is.
Developing a battle AI that never does dumb things is incredibly tough.
Given the limits put on the dev team, I'm amazed at how well they improved the AI behavior over the vanilla code.

[meerkatology]

on 1. has been long discussed before , by including myself.

the problem is less so that the individual cavalry unit is too strong but rather than its too cheap for how much power it brings.

the most unrealistic part is that you can preform multiple charges in quick concession. in real life their spear gets stuck in the enemy or broken quite often after a single charge anyway.

solution:
1. limit # of cavalry units u use, i.e 2-3 max per stack for romans to maintain historical army composition
2. after you charge your cavalry make them stay and fight for at least 10seconds, instead of pulling them back immediately. this plays more into realism anyway. better yet, after you charge an infantry, you stay and fight until the infantry routes or your cavalry routes. thats probably more inline with what happens in real life anyway.

[Alavaria]

Hilariously there was a type of Tarentine that throws javelins and then withdraws.

Doing that is pretty useless in the RTW engine, since usually you don't accomplish much with just javelins. However, RTW also allows even horsemen with really short spears to effectively charge even heavy infantry... take a look at Roman bodyguards charging infantry, it's ridiculous.

the most unrealistic part is that you can preform multiple charges in quick concession. in real life their spear gets stuck in the enemy or broken quite often after a single charge anyway.


2. after you charge your cavalry make them stay and fight for at least 10seconds, instead of pulling them back immediately. this plays more into realism anyway. better yet, after you charge an infantry, you stay and fight until the infantry routes or your cavalry routes. thats probably more inline with what happens in real life anyway.

Nah, after you charge and break your spear, actually you then quickly withdraw and get more spears. Horses are handy.

What is odder/more amusing is how any random skirmisher cavalry with short spears can somehow charge in perfect order against anything and have a pretty devastating impact.

That and how all your lancers will be stabbing away with the xyston in melee (apparently, according to EDU in many cases, the xyston actually is a better choice to melee with than the sword which AI never uses anyway, haha)

In fact, these two highly amuse me!



Ok, sure I realize now from the description, but it clearly isn't true in RS2-world.



Don't see it? Well the javelin guy throws short-range strength 14 javelins, but the supposedly weaker horse archer shoots strength 16 arrows, carries more arrows, and does all this at a greater range (well out of foot javelin range).

Now obviously, the mounted javelinman will have less range than the foot javelinman. He does have a shield though. And more armor. But really, you're gonna charge them, which is massively more effective than it should be I think.


For whatever odd reason, the mounted archer charges as well as the other horse troop, I think... I didn't actually take them out to compare (don't use any of those troops). Early on I still had the starting unit of those tarentines, and they did pretty decently, wheeling behind some Romans, throwing javelins and then charging with spears, sending romans FLYING above the heads of the thureophoroi they were fighting.

[romanius24]

Are prices for cavalry universal?

If not then is it possible to increase the prices of the player faction's cavalry while keeping AI faction prices the same(to maintain current recruitment rates)?

For example, if i play as Rome then just increase the prices for Roman Cavalry in that campaign but in other campaigns they should remain the same.
Then do this for all individual factions.

[Alavaria]

Some horse units are for a single faction, but a lot of the units are used across many different factions. (RS2 maxed out all the EDU slots)

Now in fact, in some campaigns, you can see your factional units are somewhat nerfed, but anything shared with enough AI factions (eg: Thureophoroi, Levy Pikemen) will not be. So throw away all your Roman Cavalry and just get Appropriate-AOR-Heavy-Cavalry

Hilariously, the AI can perform REALLY well with horse as just charging head on is pretty effective... if it was to ever not be fooled by the small unit size, it would probably just spam endless waves of heavy horse and murder us all.


Note: For the upkeep of one unit of Polybian Cohort (200 men), you can support 2.5 units of Aetolian Thureophoroi (500 men) which will behave quite respectably. Now I don't claim it's the easiest to amass tons of these guys (though pretty doable), but having 2 stacks instead of 1 stack sure is handy...

[MacBlain]

Tedric, you've complained many times about the cavalry mechanics. Have you experimented with alternate settings? Do you have any ideas about how a better system might be realized? I'm curious what you think it should look like. Mass/Radius? Attack/Defense parameters? Charge bonuses? Speed/Animation tweaks? The disparity between player- and AI-controlled cavalry has always been one of the very worst parts of the battle system in my opinion, so I'd love to see a discussion of a possible paradigm shift.

As I've been saying for years, I think that because charge bonuses are nearly unattainable for the AI, they should be removed completely as they drastically empower the player.

I'd love to see a discussion of concrete house rules. "Only use as many cavalry as you think is historical." is too vague. I don't want to play a videogame that's like boxing my little brother, where I let him win a little bit to make it seem fun. Conversely, could there be a script that would penalize a cavalry-abusing player? Maybe deducting extra upkeep only from the player faction?

On the topic of slingers: I'm curious, why are we all so certain that slings are purely a low-trajectory weapon? Even if this is "realistic" it doesn't do the AI any favors.

[ooji]

I felt the same thing when I first switched from EB to RS2. To add on what you already said, I feel that barbarian units are little too tough. Medium spearmen that have half the upkeep of my legions should not be able to beat my legions on frontal assault. However, unless I place my legions in defensive mode to tire the enemy out, I end up losing a lot of troops. Without my flanking maneuvers, I'm actually pretty sure those spearmen would take down my legions in 1 on 1 situation. Generic barbarian units of this era shouldn't be this organized. Perhaps they should have less armor or shield or have looser formations. Unfortunately, I do not have the modding skills to adjust that.

[Aliquis]

I felt the same thing when I first switched from EB to RS2. To add on what you already said, I feel that barbarian units are little too tough. Medium spearmen that have half the upkeep of my legions should not be able to beat my legions on frontal assault. However, unless I place my legions in defensive mode to tire the enemy out, I end up losing a lot of troops. Without my flanking maneuvers, I'm actually pretty sure those spearmen would take down my legions in 1 on 1 situation. Generic barbarian units of this era shouldn't be this organized. Perhaps they should have less armor or shield or have looser formations. Unfortunately, I do not have the modding skills to adjust that.

I tested some barbarian units against spartan promachoi. I don't get why arverni heavy swordsmen can beat them.
Especially belgic champions are strong, because their weapons are ap. I managed to beat two units of spartan promachoi with one unit of belgic champions.
This isn't Sparta!

[CatoTheYounger]

Souds like we just play different.

don't use archers when im the Romans until the Imperial era. Velites are my only missle weapons. Or the occasional slinger. And i never have more thenn 3 cav in an army. My Romans have to be the Romans against different armies and figure out how to deal with it instead of chamging army composition. As for conquering several cities in one tern i usualy don't steamroll either. I capture,hold, stabilize and repeat. I don't want to have to recapture anything. But everybody plays different so it's all good.

[Alavaria]

I capture,hold, stabilize and repeat. I don't want to have to recapture anything.

I love your assumption I constantly lose settlements. Because no, not often are they lost to rebellion. It's just less bothersome to sort it out afterwards, though then again organizing a stack of peltasts to garrison isn't really high effort.

I suppose that one way to do it is not make use of the tools available, goodness knows I suppose the roman way is to stick to what you have or something. Rather funny since I'm sure under the player they would not actually need to advance past the hoplite style armies in RTWland, since hoplites function pretty well. They'd probably end up with pikes since those are pretty great in RTWland.

But again, not adapting.

[CatoTheYounger]

I love your assumption I constantly lose settlements. Because no, not often are they lost to rebellion. It's just less bothersome to sort it out afterwards, though then again organizing a stack of peltasts to garrison isn't really high effort.

I suppose that one way to do it is not make use of the tools available, goodness knows I suppose the roman way is to stick to what you have or something. Rather funny since I'm sure under the player they would not actually need to advance past the hoplite style armies in RTWland, since hoplites function pretty well. They'd probably end up with pikes since those are pretty great in RTWland..

Cmon now don't get defensive. i hear you but im just saying the Romans rolled out their Infantry heavy armies over most the Republic era with small Cav as compliment and some auxilaries. I stick to that as loading up on cav or missle weapons seems like a copout or even a cheat to me personaly. So i keep my army the same and adjust it's tactics not it's composition. For me it's more fun and emersive. The point is the Roman army is supposed to be flexible enough to handle all situations so i do my best to deal with being out horsed or out gunned by the missle and horse factions. And still prevail.

To me thats the fun of it.