Garrison Suggestion: Mobs

[McCarronXLD]

Do you think it would be possible to replace all of the Mobs in a Garrison with actually useful units, like militia, and then replace the current militia units with a higher tier of unit? Mobs are just.. such a waste of space. I'd rather they just not appear on the battlefield at all so they didn't clog up my unit cards.

[rem123456]

When mobs are on your side they are useful to absorb missile damage and to send in suicide missions, like go out the gates and attacking units carrying siege equipment. On the other hand, enemy mobs are very fun to massacre. IMHO they also add immersion, not everybody could afford training and proper equipment. But I guess its moddable.

[McCarronXLD]

I doubt they would just throw citizens out in the defense of the city, though. They'd at least give them the barest equipment available.. thus low tier militia units.

[rem123456]

I doubt they would just throw citizens out in the defense of the city, though. They'd at least give them the barest equipment available.. thus low tier militia units.

That's right, probably not respectable citizens, but the poor, the slaves and the foreigners were probably considered much more expendable.
"In ancient Greece, the psiloi usually belonged to the poorest citizen classes; sometimes even unfree conscripts would be employed, such as the Peloponnesian helots. They were armed with a variety of missile weapons, such as the bow (toxa), javelin (akontia), sling (sfendonai) or even stones (lithoi). For defense, they had no armor and usually no shield, but would be equipped with a dagger or shortsword."
Also in sieges the women fought too, throwing stones and tiles from rooftops. I guess if the mob unit could pick stones from the ground and throw them they would be historical.

[Maetharin]

hmm at least in roman villages there should be big enough weapon storages to equip most of the male population of any sizeable town, with their kind of militarized state...

[Butan]

Do you think it would be possible to replace all of the Mobs in a Garrison with actually useful units, like militia, and then replace the current militia units with a higher tier of unit? Mobs are just.. such a waste of space. I'd rather they just not appear on the battlefield at all so they didn't clog up my unit cards.

I'm pretty sure all the actual garrisons units (which are given by buildings) have been made like this by the modders themselves, so if you knew how to and wanted to you could do it.
Maybe a sub-mod?



Personally I like mobs and I think they can have a place in a siege defense, I wouldnt like them to disappear but that wasnt your question

[ABH2]

That's right, probably not respectable citizens, but the poor, the slaves and the foreigners were probably considered much more expendable.
"In ancient Greece, the psiloi usually belonged to the poorest citizen classes; sometimes even unfree conscripts would be employed, such as the Peloponnesian helots. They were armed with a variety of missile weapons, such as the bow (toxa), javelin (akontia), sling (sfendonai) or even stones (lithoi). For defense, they had no armor and usually no shield, but would be equipped with a dagger or shortsword."
Also in sieges the women fought too, throwing stones and tiles from rooftops. I guess if the mob unit could pick stones from the ground and throw them they would be historical.

This is what always confused me about mobs in TW games. If anything, they should just be replaced with missile levies (which are already present) or really weak slinger type units that deal less even less damage and have less range.

What bugs me most about mobs, though, is that it only applies to the 'civilized' factions. Barbarians tend to at least get low level units so they have much stronger garrison units. They tend to be larger, as well, because of their building style. Combined with the larger size of their units, and they have a massive advantage the way the AI competes against one another (auto-resolver).

It's harder to conquer some barbarian capital city typically than Rome.

[Ygraine]

Several people have asked for mobs to be removed or replaced before, but to no avail. To me they're just a waste of space, something that flees just by having enemies nearby.

[zonks40]

Several people have asked for mobs to be removed or replaced before, but to no avail. To me they're just a waste of space, something that flees just by having enemies nearby.

I agree, they are just a liability, and I usually hide them away so the enemy can't get at them, considering they break easy and will contribute to lowering the overall army morale while doing little of worth to the enemy.

[Ygraine]

I agree, they are just a liability, and I usually hide them away so the enemy can't get at them, considering they break easy and will contribute to lowering the overall army morale while doing little of worth to the enemy.

Yes, my point exactly. And some cheap better levies can do everything the mobs can, just better - so there's no real point in them existing at all.

[McCarronXLD]

Yes, my point exactly. And some cheap better levies can do everything the mobs can, just better - so there's no real point in them existing at all.

Agreed. If I knew how to I would make a submod for it.

[Moonflower]

Agreed. If I knew how to I would make a submod for it.

When a city was assaulted everybody joined in because anybody could be enslaved or massacred if the assailants won. Therefore I think mobs have a place in sieges, to represent the populace fighting for their lives. The problem is that the game treats them as melee infantry while in reality they threw rocks and tiles from the rooftopss and behind friendly soldiers.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

To DeI devs:

Any plans on more comprehensive garrisons? If not I might put a little sub-mod together myself

I think their might be a mod already out/in development moonflower, not 100% sure just letting u know.

I'm pretty sure Bacon is right about the garrison mod. Though IIRC, the only one I remember seeing is one that is only for the Romans. "Authentic Roman Garrisons" or something like that. You can find it on the workshop.

Well from what I can gather there aren't any comprehensive, all-inclusive garrison mods for DeI, my only apprehension in putting one together now is the fact that .9 will be out shortly... so maybe I will wait til that is released, give it a few tests, see how the ai plays out with expanding its borders, then proceed from there.

My main goal for the submod would to be to prevent steam-rolling/blitzing early game that happens so often, and to supplement the ai and player alike when they're warring abroad bc the ai can't properly defend their settlements--carthage being the prime example off the top of my head.

And the secondary goal would be to give settlements a basic structure for defense-- a small contingent of horse, spear, and bow defenders, with maybe a sword or two, with some attention to culture differences.

Generally speaking to the differences, hellenic: more (hoplite) spear defenders; eastern: more bow (maybe horse too); barbarian: more swords/axe; roman: more sword/ auxilias (but bc rome is a very strong faction in DeI as we all know, the garrison additions for them would be a bit sparse in comparison, but we'll see. I've already seen that boosting garrisons frees up standing armies to go out and conquer much faster, bc before the standing army was to be used to some degree as both defense and offense--so in that case rome may face stronger hordes of enemies and may require a more equal garrison boost as well.

So DeI brothers, thoughts?

I completely agree and would like to see garrisons boosted. However I will say that it probably will benefit the player as much or more as the AI. I can hold off quite a lot of enemy stacks if I had a decent Garrison army. Ai Garrison is just as dumb as the rest. But it would definitely make taking walled settlements more costly which I like.

Tldr, maybe make AI garrisons stronger vs player garrisons if possible?

Unfortunately I think that would require either a script or a whole new set of db data designated specifically to the ai... or even both, as im not sure how the latter would work without, i.e. script triggers for who gets which set dependent on whether or not the faction is human. I think that would be a lot of work as im unfamiliar with R2 scripting and updates tend to break scripts...so I think the best we can do is give a somewhat fair standard for all factions with major cities having a slight advantage vs minor settlements in terms of garrison makeup.

Proposal:
--Major cities will have a medium strength base garrison overall with a few strong units representative of the city culture (the idea--a peace keeping/repelling force lead by select veterans that head the military institutions of the city),
--Minor settlements will have a fairly large garrison of basic/medium units with a veteran elite unit, the makeup of the garrisons will be determined by the resource of the village (the idea--the artisans and hunters and farmers and fisherman arming themselves to defend their homes lead by veteran administrative/mercantile retainers)
--All military, port, religious, trade, administrative buildings will yield small numbers of elite units--1-2 max + 1-3 additional light supports-- at high tiers, 3+.
(the idea--each of these buildings has now grown in size and power with the city--they have become investments of the people and the organizations of men who operate/maintain them and thus warrant protecting. some examples: tier 3 barracks-->soldiers-in-training and their armsmasters-->militia hoplites + elite hoplite; tier 3 port-->shipwright's warship + patrol ships + fishing ships-->heavy tower penteres, pursuit and raider hemiolas... etc etc, I think you get it)

ALL BUILDINGS WILL PROVIDE SOME SORT OF GARRISON relative to what the building is and will evolve with the building--e.g. outskirts--> 4 politai hoplitai (the idea--local men recruited into the militia of the settlement); amphorae kiln--> 4 politai hoplitai, 1 theurophoroi (the idea--local men + private guard of the kiln(s) owner(s)); tier 3 amphorae--> 4 politai hoplitai, 1 theurophoroi, 1 swordsmen/marine (the idea--local men + private guard of the kiln(s) owner(s) + escorts/guards of the shipments/stores of amphoraes); and so on and so forth.

Mobs will be for the most part non-existent except for a few in cities... I find the utility of the mobs to be unrealistic... mobs would fight out of desperate self-interest/self-preservation but wouldn't really stand toe-to-toe with soldiers thus would break easy but always come back in hopes of victory IF and only if the odds were in their favor.

With these changes each settlement can have a unique diversity in its defender makeup and I think it being balanced is plausible, but if not, then at least conquering a territory will seem to have been logical; oh, this settlement was easy to conquer because it was a tier 1 fishing village with 2 economic buildings and a fishery, I was fighting fishwives and tradesmen! Gee that sure makes sense, and feels a lot better than, woop another basic tier 1 garrison to autoresolve, yawnnnnn. I want the garrisons to be comprehensive, that's all.

Thoughts? I think I'd enjoy throwing something together.

Do Etttt

Edit: Id wait for .9 though, the team might surprise us with the AOR system doing something with the garrisons.

good point! I'll hold off until I see what .9 offers

I think the dei team could tweak them in two ways to make them more useful and realistic:
1. The one strength the mob is supposed to have is numbers, I don't know why CA only gave them 120 men. They should have 300 men per unit, if not more. They should be the most numerous unit in the game to compensate for the low quality.
2. They should remain very weak in melee but should also be turned also into weak missile units, to represent the stones they threw at the enemy. Ideally they should throw stones by hand as using a sling required training, but that will probably require a new animation so they perhaps could be very weak slingers, with the same range as javelin throwers.

I would agree with a general numbers boost, but low range slingers would just look silly.
I think a morale tweak (see spoiler post) would work great to address the mob issue, don't you?

[adambomb1]

I send the mods out to harass the enemy, they work for me. Just use them to out flank the enemy or make them get in the way so they have to stop and fight them. They can be useful if you "try" to use them. Towns always have had mods in real life anyway.

[Butan]

Mobs can be a liability, because of the "friends routing" and "army losses" morale debuff. But if you use them in a way that those 2 flags arent a problem that will snowball your army in a mass rout, they can be useful in tiring the enemy out - pining - flank/rear charge and double stacking.

In walled settlement defense, they are very good to send on the walls as a first meat grinder, then when they rout you replace them with a strong and fresh unit which will have less problems dealing with the enemy unit.

[antred]

I may be wrong, but personally I doubt that Rome routinely sent practically unarmed and untrained people into combat to act as meat shields. They can be used somewhat effectively in the game - as missile sponges, to activate fire balls or just to give the enemy something to temporarily occupy him, but overall I'd like to see them removed.

[ABH2]

In the case of the Romans, land owning citizens were all trained. The lower classes were used in emergency situations. So, I, too, doubt the mob is anything close to an accurate depiction of the sort of force an army would have met had the attacked Rome itself. The male citizens were a trained fighting force that could be called up at any time.

[rem123456]

This quotes are from the book "Makers of ancient strategy" and while they refer to Greek urban warfare I think they could be applied equally to Roman urban warfare.

“Plataean soldiers rushed down the streets,
while women and slaves threw stones and tiles from the rooftops.
Fighting in a city, whether
as a result of invasion or civil war, typically involved the whole populace,
not just regular armed forces.”
“It is notable that accounts of urban battle prominently mention
the active participation of women and slaves.85”
“Women and children, along with combatants, were fair game. Treachery,
massacres, and fights to the death were commonplace.”
For example the great general Pyrrhus managed to defeat the Romans twice but was actually killed after a woman threw a tile at him.

When a city was assaulted everybody joined in because anybody could be enslaved or massacred if the assailants won. Therefore I think mobs have a place in sieges, to represent the populace fighting for their lives. The problem is that the game treats them as melee infantry while in reality they threw rocks and tiles from the rooftopss and behind friendly soldiers.
I think the dei team could tweak them in two ways to make them more useful and realistic:
1. The one strength the mob is supposed to have is numbers, I don't know why CA only gave them 120 men. They should have 300 men per unit, if not more. They should be the most numerous unit in the game to compensate for the low quality.
2. They should remain very weak in melee but should also be turned also into weak missile units, to represent the stones they threw at the enemy. Ideally they should throw stones by hand as using a sling required training, but that will probably require a new animation so they perhaps could be very weak slingers, with the same range as javelin throwers.

[rem123456]

Yeah, turning the mob into a missile unit would be difficult, but giving them large numbers is a no brainer in my opinion, 300 men at least.

[antred]

Yeah, turning the mob into a missile unit would be difficult, but giving them large numbers is a no brainer in my opinion, 300 men at least.

I'm not a fan of very large units. There are some towns that have such narrow roads that one can hardly squeeze a tightly packed 220-men triarii unit through them without the unit losing cohesion and dissipitating into a disorganized mess without any semblance of formation. It's especially bad with cohors primas and cohors aquilas (with 400 men).

[luck_ponte]

Actually, this guy here did just what most of you were asking for: turning mobs into a somewhat missile unit that throw bricks and rocks. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=251082687
It has no DeI integration (at least when I tried it, it caused some conflicts), but the team could incorporate the idea or maybe someone in the submod community could adapt the idea (with the proper credits given, of course)