Battle Speed.. Wtf?

[Reigner]

Did some Custom Battles earlier... It took several minutes for Praetorian guards to kill 10% of a swordbearer unit, both units were exhausted by this point. Is this a joke? I even streamed the fight if anyone is interested..

[Reigner]

Is anyone else experiencing this?

[diego007]

I laughed so much at your joke, hahaha

[KAM 2150]

Frontal combat is slow, only flanking can deal big kills. Also exhausted units are super weak, that is why you should cycel your lines if possible. Welcome to the real world.

[Reigner]

Frontal combat is slow, only flanking can deal big kills. Also exhausted units are super weak, that is why you should cycel your lines if possible. Welcome to the real world.

Get those Battle speed mods up soon! I'm on .96 with speed mods until then. 1.0 is just too slow, not action-packed enough
Thanks for the mod, too. Its great and viewers love it. My stream name is Legionheir

[Ygraine]

Frontal combat is slow, only flanking can deal big kills. Also exhausted units are super weak, that is why you should cycel your lines if possible. Welcome to the real world.

There's little point to try to cycle now since for some reason units die way faster in 1.x than in the 0.9x version when they try to retreat out of combat.

[Mavrik347]

Frontal combat is slow, only flanking can deal big kills. Also exhausted units are super weak, that is why you should cycel your lines if possible. Welcome to the real world.

Bare in mind frontal combat was Rome's thing. They specialised in "stab stab stab". So for Preatorian Guard of all Romans to be so ineffective in frontal combat?

[DakkaDon]

Battles are perfect for me, if anything some of the early non-elite units can get gutted a little too quickly! I actually played around with Rome in some custom battles, doing one unit on unit fights and was very impressed by the pacing. I also like the way their 'deadly' point begins to rack up kills against otherwise equal units, very historical. 10/10 mod team!

[KAM 2150]

Thanks buddy Levies should be a bit more durable with next pack.

[Butan]

If you pit two very high melee defense units against each other, they will probably exhaust themselves before maiming themselves much. But try to send one of each against someone with (a lot) less overall defense and you could easily kill 1/4 or a half before the unit is exhausted.

I didnt check the stats of the two units you have mentionned, as a general matter of fact, combat fatigue will overwhelm units fighting frontally before they break (and it plays a large role into the breaking), except if there is a very large combat efficiency difference between the two.

[Old_Rome]

I love it! Strategy matters now! Positioning also matters now! No more simply running two armies into each other!

Of course, there will be a small but vocal group that only like to play games that are always on quick/easy arcade mode.

[KAM 2150]

I think it is already fixed for next patch (lowered hit Chance and matched combat, so units will be less stuck in animations during pulling back).

[Ygraine]

I think it is already fixed for next patch (lowered hit Chance and matched combat, so units will be less stuck in animations during pulling back).

That's great news! Thanks a lot!

[KAM 2150]

You can actually test it here, my post on the top, with small changelog and pack with fixes.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?675653-Feedback-Impressions-Critiques-and-Requests-for-1-0/page5

Pulling back from combat should still deal some casulaties (since it wasn't that easy in reality) and in order no too abuse it too much by the players (AI will never pull back it's units) and to make hammer and anvil harder (you can't do 20-30 charges with single cav squad).

[KAM 2150]

That is why Romans get deadliness for better units, they are better with prolonged combat, but this does not mean they are supermen who can fight with full skills while being exhausted Plus ROmans have on average a bit higher damage.

[Stonebonez]

So far I've found the infantry battle speed and balance to be superb! KAM I commend you for your work, I know this is no easy task to accomplish. With time I'm certain the entire system will be tuned to perfection. I happen to find levies more or less right on the money now, comparisons between levy phalangites and phalangitai make sense, for example. The kill rate is similar, but there is a significant difference between the 2 in battlefield survivability which is exactly what you'd expect from comparing drafted levies vs trained soldiers.

In regards to the OP, you have to remember elite units are exactly that, elite. Men who spent their lives training to be effective killers on the battlefield, but also survivors. Pitting elite men against each other head-2-head should always be a difficult struggle, no highly trained soldier is gonna give up his life easily on equal terms. You have to put them at a disadvantage. Think of it like 2 highly skilled boxers in a big prize fight, neither of them are gonna immediately rush in and risk making a mistake which could get them KO'd.

I will suggest however that cavalry vs infantry speeds be looked at again, cuz I feel that cavalry has been a little overly marginalized with the speed nerfs. The problem I think comes from the charge speed of some of the lighter infantry (as opposed to running speed), because the AI is always cycling between charge states or precursor javelin states when closing on cavalry, both of which increase their running speeds significantly. Considering that the charge distance for most infantry is 60 this means that some lighter infantry units can close on heavier cavalry because their charge speeds are 5+ and heavy cavalry running speeds are too slow to effectively pull away from them far enough to break the charge or cause it to timeout. This often results in significant losses for cavalry units that are maneuvering around the battlefield cuz the way it is now any mount that's even touched from behind gets pretty much instantly killed.

*Edit* - Spoke too soon about the cavalry speeds, I see it's already been addressed in the update!

[KAM 2150]

I changed cav speed so that the slowest cav can run with 6.5 and fastest infatry can chargé with 4 (and much slower regular run of course) so it should not happen.

And thanks for the feedback

[Shaggy1973]

Having started a game as Rome on Normal difficulty, I'm kind of agreeing on the mismatch of kill rates. I agree that frontal infantry kill rates should be slower than a cavalry charge, but you must remember that this is a game and gameplay balance must be remembered. As Rome, if I bring 6 hastate, I can generally hold any infantry line long enough to hammer and anvil. I just need to ensure I win the cavalry battle to enable myself to do this. I realize this is a very historic way of winning battles, but it wasn't Rome's way. There should be other ways to win. If I try and create a meat grinder with my infantry I find myself having to fast forward the battle (this is especially apparent in the early game where I only have 7 unit armies and few cavalry).

I'm not saying things are massively wrong, but infantry combat should produce more effect? A small increase in kill rates of infantry combat would put more pressure on players to ensure their lines do not fold before they can bring their cavalry/missiles into action more.

I wouldn't have said that either hastate or early gallic units would be that great defensively anyway.

[KAM 2150]

Early Hastati are spear unit, they are supposed to be more defensive.


If you want to see realistic meat grinder, use heavy units like Legionares vs lighter units and see how it goes. What most of people do now, is that they use defensive units vs the units of pretty much the same grade and then they don't get the result. It should work that way. Now it is mostly about which grade of unit fights vs other grade of unit. Previously everyone complained that it did not matter which units were used, because even light spears could hold of Spartans before cavalry can rape them from behind. If you want fast infantry combat try to use better units vs much worse units. When you put two elite units against eachother, combat will be even slower, since they are elite and won't go down easily.

If all that you need to do with Romans is to put you hastati in line and win simply win by it, what is the point of this game then?

Also exhausted units fight with 0.4 or 0.5 of their melee stats, cycling units or putting fresh unit into combat makes a difference.

[Shaggy1973]

Early Hastati are spear unit, they are supposed to be more defensive.


If you want to see realistic meat grinder, use heavy units like Legionares vs lighter units and see how it goes. What most of people do now, is that they use defensive units vs the units of pretty much the same grade and then they don't get the result. It should work that way. Now it is mostly about which grade of unit fights vs other grade of unit. Previously everyone complained that it did not matter which units were used, because even light spears could hold of Spartans before cavalry can rape them from behind. If you want fast infantry combat try to use better units vs much worse units. When you put two elite units against eachother, combat will be even slower, since they are elite and won't go down easily.

If all that you need to do with Romans is to put you hastati in line and win simply win by it, what is the point of this game then?

Also exhausted units fight with 0.4 or 0.5 of their melee stats, cycling units or putting fresh unit into combat makes a difference.

Yea, like I said it is the very early game, so I take on board your points. Shame the early game plays out the way it does and I have to wait to turn 100 to see the true game balance