[WIP] 1.02a Fix Pack

[Dresden]

*Updated Jan 7 9PM EST
This will be part of the next update. I figured I would make it available for those who want to try it. Load it before the main mod:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/xc...datefix3b.pack

*This is not currently in the main mod. It is a fix pack that is a work in progress and will be added to the mod in the next update.

Campaign Changes
- Custom Culture Public Order values: Cultures that are more closely related will cause less public order negatives. Cultures that are historically at odds will cause more.
- Fixed new cultures not having public order penalties from presence of foreign culture.
- Slave revolts should now have lower tier units. They will still have high exp and a full stack, can't seem to find the variable for that.
- Added advisor message for navies causing PO negative when docked. Navies/armies in docks will lower public order, it just isn't reflected in the UI.
- Added army unit caps for Roman veterans post-Marian reforms (5 cap).
- Reduced bonuses to morale, attack and defense from various campaign sources (was causing battle balance issues).
- Fixed various unit ability descriptions.
- Cyrenaica and Egypt now start at peace (new campaigns only)
- Spartan Hoplites now recruitable from tier 2 barracks.
- Fixed tier 4 major city buildings listing too many effects to be seen.
- Fixed Egyptian medicus buildings giving wrong culture.
- Fixed required technologies for tier 3 slave forum buildings.
- Copper/iron node upgrades now shown in tech tree for Grand Campaign.
- Fixed tier 3 training buff buildings not being buildable by Eastern factions.
- Removed elephants as commander option.
- Fixed technology effects in WoS campaign.
- Changed Sicily in Turmoil text to better reflect what is happening.
- Fixed Egyptian Archers and Greek Skirmisher Cav not being recruitable.
- Added more variation between minor township types (civil/trade/farm etc).


Battle Changes
- Reduced cavalry casualties from disengaging infantry.
- Removed chant ability for now to fix a battle crash resulting from its use.
- Lowered melee defense of Falxmen units.
- Lowered wardogs attack and defense.
- Fixed defensive siege deployables for various minor factions.
- Fixed various unit stats.
- Increased cavalry and elephant speed.
- Fixed AI not using shield wall and improved shield wall effects.


Minor fixes
- Fixed historical battles other than Teutoburg (not sure why this one is having issues).
- Fixed a skin variant with a shadowed face.
- Fixed a Pontus unit with missing mounts.
- Fixed Arevaci Lancers combat animations (they are actually spear/shield, not lance).
- Fixed Ancyra historical city description being triggered by Nicomedia.
- Fixed CiG Rome starting units to use DeI units.
- Fixed British spy unit card.
- Fixed GC Armenia starting army tradition (new campaigns only).
- Fixed starting unit sizes of some Parthian units (new campaign only).
- Fixed Cyrenaica commander options.
- Changed starting general units of Seleucids, Egypt and Baktria to mounted versions.
- Fixed Pontic Thorax swordsmen being recruited prior to Thorax reforms.
- Fixed Ligurian Spearmen Roman auxiliary missing unit name.
- Removed remnant vanilla mercenaries from Syracuse factional merc pool (new campaign only).
- Fixed Royal Scythia commander options and starting units.
- Fixed Sparta having access to normal Thorax Pikemen (since they have their own version).
- Fixed Odryssia and Getae starting unit sizes (new campaign only).

[Kirsch27]

- Custom Culture Public Order values: Cultures that are more closely related will cause less public order negatives. Cultures that are historically at odds will cause more.

- Fixed new cultures not having public order penalties from presence of foreign culture.

- Slave revolts should now have lower tier units.

- Cyrenaica and Egypt now start at peace (new campaigns only)

- Spartan Hoplites now recruitable from tier 2 barracks.




That all sounds awesome!

[Dresden]

The custom culture system can be made even more drastic, but for now its just a small difference. Although, it should be noticeable!

[Pavlik the Rus]

Hi Dresden!
First of all i want to thank you and entire team for this great work. 1.02 version is my first experience with DeI.

I have two issues to fix.
1. Roman triarii and their allied counterparts (sorry, forgot their name ). Early and late both. They have extremly close formation. As result they pushes each other constantly, their walk and run speed is lowest amongst troops i've seen till now. Maybe they should have same formation size as principes or other heavy spearmen?
2. Roman flagship (fleet from the start) can not be upgraded with Polybyan reforms. Their crew are early principes.

[zonks40]

Hi Dresden!

1. Roman triarii and their allied counterparts (sorry, forgot their name ). Early and late both. They have extremly close formation. As result they pushes each other constantly, their walk and run speed is lowest amongst troops i've seen till now. Maybe they should have same formation size as principes or other heavy spearmen?

This same thing s happening with Hoplite units as well, it's causing a kind of jittering when the men march and when they try to form up, I also think this is impacting on performance, with the battle lines closed, they are that compacted it's similar to when 5000 men all try to pour onto a bridge at once.

[toshiki]

Cavalry suffers heavy loss when pulling out after a charge, is it supposed to be like this?
In a custom battle I charged Parthian cataphracts into the back of Athenian royal peltest, killing 40 but lost 15 or so when pulling out
Also, the cavalry walking speed seems a bit too slow, the horses almost looked like walking in slo-mo

[Master.Mind]

I'm sure that it has been mentioned before, but my best cavalry is suffering brutal losses when attacking a (pike)phalanx from behind.

[stevehoos]

I'm sure that it has been mentioned before, but my best cavalry is suffering brutal losses when attacking a (pike)phalanx from behind.

Yep same thing here: Calvary getting destroyed when exiting from a charge even from behind hindering their effectiveness.

Also, I wish that the occurrence of assassination attempts could be lowered on hard campaign setting; my Massilia general was injured 5 times before reaching the age of 24 even with a base cunning of 5 and a spy in his army making his cunning 9.

One other thing, When playing as Massilia, one of the general household traits (the ones beside your non-existent wife) reads "+3 Celtic Culture." I would not want this if it effects my ability to recruit my core units right?

Thanks, Dresden... for the update!

[Zonac]

Cavalry charge works as intended in my opinion! You only need a good timing for the charge and for pulling your unit back. also they shoud not used fatigued... otherwise tehy get destroyed (seems logical ). also full cataphract cav is very heavy armored and therefore really slow... that is logical aswell... use light cav to see the logical difference. I never lose more than half of a cav unit and get kills between 200 and 1000... The only thing which would be nice is that melee cav should have a tiny anti cav bonus like +5 or so to beat shock cav more easily

[geala]

... I never lose more than half of a cav unit and get kills between 200 and 1000... The only thing which would be nice is that melee cav should have a tiny anti cav bonus like +5 or so to beat shock cav more easily

Maybe it is like intended but that sounds so arcade that I would prefer to not read about "realistic battles". The casualty rate is not resembling anything near the reality. An unit like this that suffered 50% casualties would be finished maybe for ever. No elite force consisting of wealthy nobles would fight in such a way. I'm unfortunately not at all impressed by the new battle mechanics.

[KAM 2150]

Maybe it is like intended but that sounds so arcade that I would prefer to not read about "realistic battles". The casualty rate is not resembling anything near the reality. An unit like this that suffered 50% casualties would be finished maybe for ever. No elite force consisting of wealthy nobles would fight in such a way. I'm unfortunately not at all impressed by the new battle mechanics.

Actually that does not sound arcade, granting cav ability to do 10 charges into the back is the arcade one. Cav should be used as finishing force, not mauling force. If we would make it even more realistic, Romans should ride on ponies, not on proper mounts etc ; P

Anyway, I will check some more about it tomorrow, since I am out of modding PC for past few days.

[largejack]

Actually that does not sound arcade, granting cav ability to do 10 charges into the back is the arcade one. Cav should be used as finishing force, not mauling force. If we would make it even more realistic, Romans should ride on ponies, not on proper mounts etc ; P

Anyway, I will check some more about it tomorrow, since I am out of modding PC for past few days.

Finishing force or a defending the flanks against other cavalry force, or a mauling missile units into the ground force?

[Zonac]

Ah and I forgot to mention: Really awesome and fast work of you guys! I am constantly impressed!!!

[Zonac]

Don't get me wrong: Cav. now can easily rout before you lose 50%! You just have to use them right . They are always a secondary force which make the final blows in a battle. Cav. back then were no medevial knights! So if you want to be 100% reallistic you should dismount half of the time your cav to flank...

[Lamias]

Guys all those patches/fixes, including this one which is about to be released, are save compatible?

I have just started a new campaign in 1.0 and i don't wanna restart if it's not necessary.

Thanks.

[Alu10]

You also need to fix Abbir Farasin, Sabaen Unit having ammunition and "firing" symbol without having any ranged weapons and actions.

[KAM 2150]

Thanks, propably wrong animation assigned.

[Ritterlichvon86]

The cavalry losses sound a lot like user errors to me. If you retreat the cavalry, undo their wedge-formation first, then on the retreat command you drag them wide. This has always been the way to retreat cavalry since R2 was released in all remotely challenging (multiplayer) battles. If you retreat them in formation, they will first ride through the enemy infantry and hand-shake with a lot of hostile entities that will apply a lot of damage. It has always been that way, so it seems very weird that this came up now, you guys posted this in this thread and the other one before. I've talked to people I've played MP and MPC with about these, and noone agrees to that cavalry should take less losses when retreating... but apart from one, these people are not vocal on the forums. And I'm sorry, but neither do I agree here. I even got people that said cavalry would be too strong. Three units of free, unchecked cavalry can even decide the battle of an entire army.

As KAM said, cavalry charging 10 times during a session seems like the arcade way. It would make cavalry way too important and decisive in battle (which means in gamer terms - overpowered). If you charge cavalry into melee capable troops (in your example, even spear troops in phalanx formation), they will always take losses in vanilla or any mod because that is how Rome 2 works.


Please try to disable Wedge Formation before retreating your cavalry. You will see that the horses will turn individually, instead of the entire formation riding through the enemy in an attempt to turn, and you will take much less losses. That's a micro thing that even most famous Youtubers use. Also, please try to avoid to charge into spear units, even into the back of Phalanxes - that can never be done in a normal battle without heavy losses. In MP for example, they will simply turn around in seconds and fully attack your cavalry force, ripping and shredding the cavalry in seconds. The BAI sometimes forgets this, but often does it too. Thus, I recommend doing this thing only when the Phalanx is shaking - that's the moment you can charge cavalry into spear units or Phalangites.

[geala]

Cavalry did not charge ten times during a battle (indeed squadrons did charge quite often in some modern battles, you know) because a charge into the flank or rear was usually enough to break the enemy. From the front against an unshaken unit was nearly useless of course. When I talk about my ingame experience it's about charges in the back of as unit attacked from the front and flank by two infantry units near the end of the battle. Too many casualties in my opinion. In reality if the enemy did not break or waver the cavalry usually retreated and regrouped before a big melee happened, so casualties were always low. Unfortunately no TW game ever got cavalry warfare right, so we have to deal with what is possible. I don't play MP, so I cannot judge the difficulties and balancing needs you get from this. I will try to get better used to the new System of DeI.

BTW cavalry was often decisive for battles. And the early Roman cavalry was never as bad as often said and never used ponies. They acted as shock cavalry in many battles, it was only for social reasons that post-Marian cavalry was so few and bad. It's strange that I have to defend cavalry, I'm actually more the defensive infantry guy in my play.

[KAM 2150]

I know about repetitive charges a lot, since I am Polish and our Winged Hussars mostly did around 5-7 frontal charges before routing entire army by themselves ;D But that was done with different weapons, horses and equipment then in ancient times (like saddles and stirups).

My point is exactly what you said, use cavalry in DECISIVE moments, not just for kills. Do you really want to end the battle once you do your first charge? Mostly 2-3 charges on fully healty unit in DeI are enough from my experience, since shock cav can rank up to 50-60 kills per rear charge.

I really, really would like to have more realistic cav, but since AI is super dumb, you can fully encircle enemy army after 1 minute of melee. If AI would actually pay attention to cav duels and hold reserves like it did in Medieval 2, then sure, single cataphracts charge into the rear and boom, they rout. But with warscape engine and unmodable battle AI, this would make this game the easiest one there is in TW history.