Warriors of Faith - Ancient Empires Combat Overhaul Preview

[geala]

The entended version (WOFE), has it vanilla or bigger units? I like to play with more than 160 soldiers per unit. (Edit: ok, I see, downloaded the newest and: no)

Or, a different approach: I currently use FOTE with my own projectiles and battle_entities tables and KAM's main_units_table. Would you see big problems to use the foreign main_units_table (with 240/180/120 soldiers per unit) in WOFE? Only balancing conflicts could be with unit weights, couldn't it?

Edit No. 3, sorry: in the WOFE battle_entities table the charge speeds of cavalry are too big for my taste. Would it be terrible to balancing to lower it? I used your battle_entities table as a base for my own trial packs since some time but lowered walk speed for infantry (to 1.2) and charge speed for cavalry to some degree and it seems ok, but maybe it's a bad thing to do.

I saw that att_infantry_very_heavy has run speed of 2.7, while heavy and medium infantry have 2.3 and 2.4. Is this intentional or a bug? Medium and heavy infantry also have less charge speed than run speed.

[geala]

I make a new post to make it not too confusing.

I don't get the ratio behind some stats in your projectiles table. You lowered bow range considerably but let slings range at vanilla? Bow range is between 85 and 140 metres. While I could accept to keep the longest range for longbows (for game purpose, although there isn't the slightest hint from reality that longbows shot further than composite/recurve bows) for me javelin range (55 metres) is then too high compared to bow range. What is really good is that you gave flaming projectiles less range; the flaming material would indeed do no good to the ballistic performance.

There is no spread. At least with flaming arrows I could imagine some tension for the archer with negative results for accuracy.

I also think crossbow reload time is not high enough. I did not look yet what weapon had what missile allocated but I will remove flaming crossbow bolts, flaming horse arrows and all whistling stuff anyway.

In my own projectiles table javelins have 50 m and bows have 150/160/170/200 m range, heavy shots have a lot less range, but I don't have used your 1 hp system yet, so I don't know.
Would it kill your system to give bows higher range again? And lower range for javelins? And give some spread to some projectiles?

Another thought. What I did not understand generally is what is the terrible stuff that makes stones and rocks burning? I can only imagine some incendiary stuff wrapped and/or smeared around, hardly very effective. There are reports of flaming projectiles for onagers or similar throwing machines but they presumably were not stones but special lighter constructions with a lot of flaming materials and perhaps liquids. Therefore I would lower the normal damage of flaming rocks.

[Petellius]

The entended version (WOFE), has it vanilla or bigger units? I like to play with more than 160 soldiers per unit. (Edit: ok, I see, downloaded the newest and: no)

Or, a different approach: I currently use FOTE with my own projectiles and battle_entities tables and KAM's main_units_table. Would you see big problems to use the foreign main_units_table (with 240/180/120 soldiers per unit) in WOFE? Only balancing conflicts could be with unit weights, couldn't it?

Edit No. 3, sorry: in the WOFE battle_entities table the charge speeds of cavalry are too big for my taste. Would it be terrible to balancing to lower it? I used your battle_entities table as a base for my own trial packs since some time but lowered walk speed for infantry (to 1.2) and charge speed for cavalry to some degree and it seems ok, but maybe it's a bad thing to do.

I saw that att_infantry_very_heavy has run speed of 2.7, while heavy and medium infantry have 2.3 and 2.4. Is this intentional or a bug? Medium and heavy infantry also have less charge speed than run speed.

All infantry medium and above have charge speeds slightly lower than run speed, this is a mechanic that isnt quite finished yet. Basically it means once a unit routs the pursuing unit cannot catch it unless supported by fast light troops or cavalry, leaving a routed army much higher in numbers which is fun for the campaign battles as you have to fight them about 3 times to completely destroy them. the run speeds Im not entirely sure on, probably a bug which I honestly havent noticed in game.

Also walk speed should be around 1.2 anyway as I made all walk speeds the same as I cannot stand my armies walking out of pace.

Cavalry charge speeds could be lowered for sure but I feel no need to and the effect of the charge is quite appealing to me.

larger 240+ units will eventually be released but I've been real busy recently and the Ancient Empires Overhaul takes precedence over WOFE and no there shouldnt be any conflicts.

Projectiles and such the spread doesn't do all that much and me and Philip prefer calibration area. Also slings should be able to fire further because for a start, the missile will travel faster. I know that the bow range is a tad small right now and I probably will up it a little bit. I feel javelins are about the right range, any shorter and they wouldn't be able to fire a shot off before retreating on skirmish mode.

Edit: I am almost 95% sure camels are slower than horses (having ridden a horse xD)

[Go0lden_Archer]

So, started new campaign with Geats, and now it's clear that auto-resolve really favors the onagers. I really hope that when dlc+patch comes out, this thing will also be tweaked when the mod is updated. Thankfully I'm playing with Better Aggresive AI, cuz if not for it, every AI's army would ran off as soon as they see my fleet atm

[Sheridan]

Generals dying are incredibly important to the balance of the game, pretty much all roman and sassanid units are balanced around "not" needing a general with their disciplined trait, but having lower morale across the board, while the barbarian units often have more morale or extra effects like scare.

Generals being almost impossible to kill is something that mus be changed until then I'll refrain from playing the mod.

It's pretty subjective, but I'm inclined to agree that it's an important thing. It's not mod-breaking though and you're only missing out on the good parts with that attitude.

Also I don't understand why the speed and morale were removed from the unit cards

Morale was removed to make it more authentic, essentially. Only going by eventual information from the bullet points (e.g. poor morale/excellent morale), units that are exceptional in some way have that as some sort of background story/reputation instead. Speed - just unnecessary information. It's something you can figure based largely on the weight of a unit in either case.

what is the avantage of the 1 hp system ?

With a 1-hp system, any weapon is capable of killing a soldier with a single strike - though that is often not the case. But every such outcome is possible. The big advantage with the system is the consistent damages throughout a battle, your troops are never shielded to damage early on in the fight only to lose that invisible advantage at a later stage, dropping in great numbers. Actions like charging into enemy troops may and often will render direct casualties on both sides. Another selling point with it is the highly consistent missile damages, which makes ranged combat look reasonable as opposed to vanilla. In summary, the 1-hp system enhances the prescence of both entities and their actions.


@Geala

That's some lengthy posts. I can't answer all of the specific questions you have as you're using the extended version, Petellius knows the changes there best. What I will say however is that this is a work in progress; the mod here is just a preview of what to expect and isn't complete by any means.

On projectile range, the regular version uses the same ranges as vanilla - the exception being javelins which have their range reduced by 20. Increasing or tampering with the range wouldn't break the balance of the 1-hp system, no. As for spread, that's generally used for multi-projectile weapons as far as I'm aware. It can be used with a similar effect as marksmanship, but then again why not directly reduce the latter. The accuracy is already low for most small projectiles, so lowering it further might render funny visual results. Crossbows could do well with slower reload rates, it's a small change we can add for the next update (its focus will be on morale and collision damages however). Anyway, as always, appreciate your feedback.

So, started new campaign with Geats, and now it's clear that auto-resolve really favors the onagers. I really hope that when dlc+patch comes out, this thing will also be tweaked when the mod is updated. Thankfully I'm playing with Better Aggresive AI, cuz if not for it, every AI's army would ran off as soon as they see my fleet atm

Will see what can be done about it as soon as possible. I have an important exam coming up next week, so chances are there won't be an update until after then. Anyway, thanks for providing the information, now we know the problem with certainity at least.

[geala]

Tried some custom fights and overall it feels good. I think I overdid it with cavalry charge speed decrease (put it to 7 to 9), made them too ineffective perhaps, I will try to increase to 9 to 11. I think you should give camels more speed, as far as I know camels can run faster than horses, but I'm no camel expert.

Missile combat is not as bad as I thought with the lower ranges. I will up them and lower javelin range only a bit. Spread does not seem to be necessary to make missiles not too powerful.

I noticed some strange unit formation behaviour that I never saw before. A general unit attacked my crossbowmen, then during combat parts moved back and formed a kind of long senseless column vertical to the line of the missile men, so that only 4 or 5 guards actually fought the crossbowmen. Parts of the crossbowmen could still shoot at the attackers.
Then I had a wedge of shock cavalry idling 10 metres at the back of my spear line that faced in the other direction. The cavalry did nothing till I attacked them.
Don't know wether it is vanilla or do some units have problems with the new spacing?

With the weapons and shields stats I'm ok, I just gave some shields a little bit more defense and heavy spatha 1 more damage and infantry spears 2 range (like two-handed axes) instead of 1 (like swords).

I adapted my modded units to the WOFE stats and will use the mod when I'll start a campaign in the far future, I think.

[KAM 2150]

Tried some custom fights and overall it feels good. I think I overdid it with cavalry charge speed decrease (put it to 7 to 9), made them too ineffective perhaps, I will try to increase to 9 to 11. I think you should give camels more speed, as far as I know camels can run faster than horses, but I'm no camel expert.

Horses are faster then camels but camels can maintain speed over longer period of time which in the same situation would cause a horse to die. It is a bit like sprinters (horses) and marathon runners (camels) : P

[geala]

Horses are faster then camels but camels can maintain speed over longer period of time which in the same situation would cause a horse to die. It is a bit like sprinters (horses) and marathon runners (camels) : P

But there was this documentary I remember that said the opposite. It was actually a western movie or so, to be honest, but movies don't lie, do they? Isn't here a player from Oman or other camel racing countries around who can defend the poor ugly beasts? Except in zoos there are rather few camels in my country, so I cannot compare. On what distances one can beat the other?

[KAM 2150]

But there was this documentary I remember that said the opposite. It was actually a western movie or so, to be honest, but movies don't lie, do they? Isn't here a player from Oman or other camel racing countries around who can defend the poor ugly beasts? Except in zoos there are rather few camels in my country, so I cannot compare. On what distances one can beat the other?

Top speed of racing camel is at 65 km/h, while top speed of racing horse is close to 90 km/h, but the deal is that horse can run at full speed for a 1-2 kilometer, while camel can maintain 40km/h for an hour! And can constantly run at 15-20km/h for 18 hours! So like I wrote, horses are sprinters, while camels are marathon runners Also if you will race horse and camel on a dessert, camel will be obiously better due to how their bodies are built.

[Khorney]

This was refreshingly violent - I particularly enjoy how ranged attacks now actually do something again. good show, I think this is what I've been after, it basically replicated shogun 2. will definitely be playing my Hun campaign with this

[Petellius]

Myself and Philip are tied up right now with real life things so you may have to wait a short while until we update the mod to the latest patch. Apologies for any inconvenience.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Once you guys update this wonderful mod, is their a chance a small submod could be made to put the range back in the unit cards? Between me trying different overhauls, multiplayer, and this mod with its wide changes to range I would greatly appreciate if someone could do such a thing.

Thanks!

[$oldier1616]

i'm looking fowardto the update guys!

[batufb94]

Update please

[Petellius]

Update please

Like I said me and Philip are busy IRL so apologies but you will have to wait for a while as I am off on holiday and Philip has an exam today in fact.

I'm sure we will be up and running as soon as we can be.

[Sheridan]

Just a heads-up for those of you who've eagerly been waiting for the update - it's on the way. I have a tendency to be unable to deliver updates on promised schedule, therefore I won't make the mistake again of promising or estimating a specific time or date at which the update will be launched. The reason why is often that it becomes more complicated than originally thought or, rather, you just want to address as much as possible while you're at it.

Anyway thanks for your patience all. I hope it'll be worth your while waiting.

[Wintercross]

Really hanging out for the mod update! Wish we could stop Steam updating games... I'd lock out my updates till the next version of this mod was released each time =P


Oh something I noticed earlier too, you might need to go through some of the ancillaries and traits/effects etc. I ended up with a negative trait on one General that reduced his units' melee attack to 0 =(

[Sheridan]

Really hanging out for the mod update! Wish we could stop Steam updating games... I'd lock out my updates till the next version of this mod was released each time =P


Oh something I noticed earlier too, you might need to go through some of the ancillaries and traits/effects etc. I ended up with a negative trait on one General that reduced his units' melee attack to 0 =(

It's almost done, should be ready by tomorrow or possibly later tonight (at least the standard version).

These traits, do you know what they were called? Also, were they modifiers or flat penalties, and if the latter is true, did all units in the army get 0 attack or just the really low-end troops like skirmishers/archers? Would help a lot to know what to look for.

[Wintercross]

It's almost done, should be ready by tomorrow or possibly later tonight (at least the standard version).

These traits, do you know what they were called? Also, were they modifiers or flat penalties, and if the latter is true, did all units in the army get 0 attack or just the really low-end troops like skirmishers/archers? Would help a lot to know what to look for.

From memory it was a flat penalty and it only effected the Generals unit, not the whole army.

[Sheridan]

Original post updated with the patch 2 compatible version. Take note that some balance related things may be a little off but it should run fine. This is just the basic version, Petellius' extended will be updated later.

Also, thanks to Saitta for helping me out with new troop spacings for all the Celtic units.