Great Campaign Mechanics, Horrible Battles

[ooji]

So, I've recently downloaded EB2 and played for several hours. So far, diplomacy and a lot of other gameplay mechanics have improved when compared to EB1. However, field battles are really turn off for me. I'm not sure if it's the animation that makes it look stupid, but cavalry charges don't do much damage at all. It's not just cavalry, but all charges in general are non-existent. Units that charge from boths sides softly rub their bodies against each other and start fighting slowly. The battle mechanic just feels awkward. Whenever I click attack on an enemy unit, only the first row of my units attack and the rest stay all the way in the back until much later. And don't even get me started on siege battles.
Anyhow, enough of my complaining. Is there a way to fix these broken battle mechanics? EB1's units had fierce charges and the battle felt much more alive. Without it, it is very hard to enjoy the mod

[Thuycidides]

Whenever I click attack on an enemy unit, only the first row of my units attack and the rest stay all the way in the back until much later.

Yes, we've been talking about that a lot. I sometimes discover that 5 men out of 100 are pursuing an enemy half way across the map, while 95 just stand there as if they were still fighting.

[QuintusSertorius]

We had a lengthy thread discussing the bizarre physics of battles, some of it is the engine, but a lot of it is things that can be tinkered with. General cohesion is something that does need work, in RTW units mostly stayed together, in M2TW they drift apart and string out really badly.

Cavalry charges are improved by having tighter formations and faster movement (a lot of them are unrealistically slow at the moment). It's one of the things being worked on.

In the meantime, have a try of my unofficial hotfix (just one file which improves the secondary spear-users, makes javelins work and sorts out underarm lancers), and see if that addresses any of your complaints.

[TinyGeneral]

sadly, i feel the same way op does.
i love what the team have done, the strategy map is more than awesome, and everything in battle looks fantastic.
but actually playing the battles turns me off a lot. its not only about speeds which can easily be changed obviously, but things just feel....off. i'm not a modder or anything so i cant really provide much feedback about what needs to be changed. but its the same reason i got turned away from playing vanilla mtw2 and its mods before-the battles are just a cluster. unit cohesion is bad, charges dont work properly, nothing feels like the rock-paper-scissors combat of rtw, something is off about the connection between morale, stamina and positioning, unit positioning in and around towns is horrible, it just feels like the engine itself somehow cant deal properly with anything melee related for some reason. i'm eager to see what these talented people come up with to improve battles, but i fear it will never be anywhere close to the epicness of rtw battles, due to hardcoded limits?
i have extensively tested several campaigns, and after the first few battles i always slowly went back to auto resolving every battle, and once you do that theres really not much point anymore
wish we could play eb2 campaign with eb1 battle physics (?) and eb2 looks :/
sorry if i offended anyone.

[WAD81]

There is nothing wrong with the models / animations.
It ALL can be tweaked quite easily into a very good battle experience in a relatively short period of time.
There are however a couple of problems:
1) tooooo many foot melee units use javelins. It creates HUGE problems for battle cohesion & BAI. It nowhere as clean as RTW and will never be. I'd gladly see skirmishers as the only units that use javelins.
2) 'spear' attribute is still all over the place causing havoc (as if we didn't suggest anything... it's fixable in 10 minutes)
3) ridiculously low kill rate

Also, it's not like the EB team is much interested in their EDU at present.

[Dago Red]

Agreed 100%. Great game, with not-so-great battles. And it's not the engine, it's the mod, as evidenced by 8 years and at least that many other major mods (if not 100's) having great battles on the same engine. See Broken Crescent.

The conceptual aspects of EBII, mostly affecting the campaign experience are well beyond even a 2.0 release of most games and as such even the unfinished, sometimes buggy campaign, feels well along into the latest beta stage (mechanically). The units are obviously well along and I give high marks, except the issues with animations that play a significant part of battles playing out poorly. The battles themselves are glaringly alpha. It's shocking to see how little polishing work went into the under the hood mechanics after so many initial achievements.


From an outside perspective, it appears that two things occurred which the team has not recovered from -- 1. the very cool javelin throwing animation, and 2. the insistence that hoplites fought over handed.

1. While functional and many times better than what we got in Rome II, a multi-million dollar so called "AAA" title, the javelin throwing animation makes any battle line come apart within moments of any engagement. This needs fixing. Thoughts:

-Keep it the way it is for true skirmisher units, it's great.

-For all others (Makedon Peltastai, Peltastai Logades, Hastati, Sabelli hastati, theurophoroi, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...) the unit must be able to throw javelins while defending, without running forward way out of its line. I had hoped that engaging the "Guard mode" button would somehow alter the behavior -- that would be mind blowingly good. Short of that, they need a different animation, simple as that.

2. Hoplites can't fight right. Without digging up a big over/under hand cluster, suffice to say that the issue is not settled among scholars and it's as varied as the depictions on all the pottery and mosaics we have. The EB team has always been on the over-hand side of things and it makes the game at the very least, different from others. I don't mind the approach, nor even the silly spear tip pointing into the ground side effect of it all -- but the fighting animation is botched. Watching 2 units of hoplitai fight (or any units where one is a variety of hoplitai) is not fun or entertaining. Worse, it's not satisfying any sense of realism. They seem to just shove and shield bash each other in spastic, coked up movements (that reminds me of battles from Rome II unfortunately). LOTS of blobbing. They also seem to run as fast as light cavalry. Thoughts:

-Someone makes a submod that reverts hoplitai units to fighting underhand, as it seems that they did either 50%ish of the time, or some did in some places and some didn't in others.

-The animation is polished so that units fighting with an overhand spear, actually use that spear for some semblance of realistic thrusting and maiming/killing. There's altogether too much shield bashing / animation interrupting occurring that's rendering the whole thing into a mess. We've seen these animation issues with M2TW before. Several iterations of Broken Crescent had all swordsmen units with a similar problem -- all bashing with the attack animations constantly being interrupted. The animation needed to be changed (I believe it was swapped out for something different).

3. Physics, and 4. unit cohesion. Overall, the physics need work and units do not stay together cohesively. These are EDU issues, easily fixable problems with unit mass numbers and spacing as others have said. Even phalangitai blob up too much, too many sarrissas clipping into nothingness... units need to keep much better spacing and position all across the board. I'm glad there's some chaos (after all who wants to play a game with stiff, plastic men who robotically duel one on one? NO ONE), but when you add up all these issues, you get battles that are not up to snuff.

Again, I suggest seeing battles in Broken Crescent. There's no reason this community can't help each other get some EDU and animation issues ironed out.

PS. The submod by QuintusSertorius is indeed an unofficial hotfix that makes many necessary changes to skirmishers and javelin armed units (and horse speeds). You currently need this to play EBII battles otherwise javelin armed units don't even function. The issues stated above are beyond the scope of the hotfix.

[Hummer]

I have seen several comments about the low kill rate. I don't have a problem with the kill rate. I believe it's realistic.

[WAD81]

^QS sub-mod is a must for any sane person

1) I'm not worried about the 'fast' animation, it's very nice.
What is bad about 'prec' javelin units is:
-unit gets caught in melee in the middle of animation, freezes, and gets slaughtered
-unit throws, engages, but there are a couple of soldiers who didn't throw their javelins and the whole unit switches into reload
-BAI doesn't know what to do with 10 or more units that have just thrown their volleys

I will look into how javelineers behave in SSteel. Maybe there are some nice ideas...

2) OMG Dago, you're the man. Great points. Overhand spear grip... I strongly believe it was not the way to use your spear... But it's beyond the scope of this thread.
Plus the animation (EB_Hoplite and EB_Overhand_spear) is such a passive one.
Plus underarm spear is so much weaker in the game. Why? It's a spear. In how many ways can you use it really? Why is an Armenian veteran spearman so inferior to a Lugian one?

[Wulfburk]

Agreed with most said but absolutely NOT with making hoplites fighting underhand. They need to be more cohesive, that is all.

[QuintusSertorius]

I do have to agree that at present I think the team haven't focused enough on battles. The campaign is very well advanced, and I think it's fine that new units trickle in slowly (regardless of the whining of Romani fanboys), but battles really stand out as something nowhere near as polished as those other elements. Furthermore, I think it has much greater potential to sour people's experiences than faulty campaign mechanics do.

Agreed with most said but absolutely NOT with making hoplites fighting underhand. They need to be more cohesive, that is all.

Agreed, more cohesion, but retain the overhand grip.

[Dago Red]

I do have to agree that at present I think the team haven't focused enough on battles. The campaign is very well advanced, and I think it's fine that new units trickle in slowly (regardless of the whining of Romani fanboys), but battles really stand out as something nowhere near as polished as those other elements. Furthermore, I think it has much greater potential to sour people's experiences than faulty campaign mechanics do.

Absolutely... EB II needs an emergency team on the battle side of the game. It's not "horrible" as the thread says, but also not up to spec with mods that have been out for half a decade already. These are not the toughest fixes, but they need a concentrated effort especially since some of the issues are animation related and could take a bit of time/specialized work to correct (ie. you and I cannot easily correct them -- the universal "you").

I'm stunned by some of the depth and breadth of the experience, but the mod would be much better off with realistic battles that blow people's minds, rather than campaign mechanics and collegiate historical essays on every panel (both awesome). Even a balance/work effort of 50/50, between battle & engine mechanics versus campaign & features would be great, but once gets the distinct sense it's 30/70 at best.

Agreed, more cohesion, but retain the overhand grip.

Overall more cohesion yes, and whatever is making the front few hoplites blast off like rockets, while the rest of the unit sits and does nothing too. But more cohesion won't help the broken attack animation, which is probably the more serious issue really.

[Thuycidides]

Overall more cohesion yes, and whatever is making the front few hoplites blast off like rockets, while the rest of the unit sits and does nothing too. But more cohesion won't help the broken attack animation, which is probably the more serious issue really.

Not to me. I don't play battles zoomed in so much that I can observe the attack animation very well. I'm usually trying to keep an eye on the big picture. Unit cohesion affects battle mechanics. Attack animations are cosmetic.

[QuintusSertorius]

Absolutely... EB II needs an emergency team on the battle side of the game. It's not "horrible" as the thread says, but also not up to spec with mods that have been out for half a decade already. These are not the toughest fixes, but they need a concentrated effort especially since some of the issues are animation related and could take a bit of time/specialized work to correct (ie. you and I cannot easily correct them -- the universal "you").

I'm stunned by some of the depth and breadth of the experience, but the mod would be much better off with realistic battles that blow people's minds, rather than campaign mechanics and collegiate historical essays on every panel (both awesome). Even a balance/work effort of 50/50, between battle & engine mechanics versus campaign & features would be great, but once gets the distinct sense it's 30/70 at best.

As far as I can tell, there's abou looking at the unit costings, and Ibrahim looking at everything else in the EDU. Which, no matter how talented the two of them are, isn't a lot of bodies working on a pretty vital part of the game.

Not to me. I don't play battles zoomed in so much that I can observe the attack animation very well. I'm usually trying to keep an eye on the big picture. Unit cohesion affects battle mechanics. Attack animations are cosmetic.

Unfortunately, in the M2TW engine, attack animations aren't purely cosmetic. Some genius thought it was a good idea to tie it to the actual battle mechanics. Inefficient/lengthy animations result in poorer battle performance, efficient/short animations in better performance. One of the necessary parts of the javelineer fix in my EDU tweak was to replace all the customised, individual animations specific to each unit with the four most efficient ones for all skirmishers, depending on their weapon mix.

[Garensterz]

I have concerns on battles here also. Whenever you make 2 swordsman units fight each other most of the time they just stand there, but they are on a battle stance though there's just no fighting animations happening much often, most of the time they just stare at each other. If you play vanilla MTW2 you will see alot of stabbing and slashing more often but in EB2 there isn't much. I was thinking this might be related in the differences of their unit spacing, but i might be wrong.

[WAD81]

Strange... They work fine for me. Very close initial formation and the 0.3 radius (versus standard 0.4). Plus their animation is quite passive. There's not much you can do more.

However.... Low kill rate and looong charging status of the units means that a couple of enemy soldiers will penetrate your ranks and will keep on fighting forever inside your ranks, causing mess and tangled spears.

[Thuycidides]

I learn something new every day!

[Achilles Lacedaemon]

I've made the Spartan hoplites in my mod to fight underhand, what I can say is that their animations are way more detailed ( since they are from vanilla M2TW ) and the fighting look more realistic overall.

[QuintusSertorius]

I've made the Spartan hoplites in my mod to fight underhand, what I can say is that their animations are way more detailed ( since they are from vanilla M2TW ) and the fighting look more realistic overall.

If by "more detailed" that means they take longer to complete an attack action, then they'll perform worse than any comparable unit which has a shorter attack animation.

[Thuycidides]

If by "more detailed" that means they take longer to complete an attack action, then they'll perform worse than any comparable unit which has a shorter attack animation.

Is this why some units that have an advantage on paper lose to weaker units in EB2? Those epilektoi hoplitai are some of the worst performing elite units in EB2.

[QuintusSertorius]

Is this why some units that have an advantage on paper lose to weaker units in EB2? Those epilektoi hoplitai are some of the worst performing elite units in EB2.

Precisely, the engine doesn't care how historically accurate or lovingly detailed or realistic an animation is, just how long it takes it to get from start to finish. Shorter/faster animations are better than longer ones.