Realistic Battles for Imperial Destroyer 1.0

[Axland]

Greetings to everyone.

I present my first version of the overhaul of battles for Imperial Destroyer. The aim is to give realistic feelings in battles by lowering the casualties overall and removing the heroic stands until last men for most units. Players must be more careful about mistakes because troops can break easily, specially new recruits.

I realized not having time nor desire to deep revision. But I opted to make the most important changes which the player will feel immediately.

-Armour: removed from all units except cuirassers and old fashioned units in plate or mail armor. As a passive substitute of melée defence is an unrealistic buff to elite units, if needed new stats of melée defense would be introduced.
-Ammo: 20 shots infantry and cavalry. 40 shots light and sharpshooter units. 50 shots artillery. Tested in long battles, units, can run out of ammunition.
-Unit Morale: Standard Russian, British and Prussian line infantry morale reduced from 8 to 7. Reduced price accordingly, except for the british. Their training is reflected in aim/reload stats.
-Morale: Changed modifiers for several factors, mainly because loses, but also fatigue. Green troops will break easily. Battle overall loses reduced considerably, the destruction of an army is much more difficult.
-Fatigue: More severe punishment for tired troops. Walking actually tire troops, but very mildly.
-Ships: Reduced acceleration and speed in some cases, specially in lighter ships.

Notes:
The overall increase of moral penalties by loses try to reflect the reality of greener recruits, so until an unit gains some chevrons it is unwise to try frontal attacks or sustain fire without flank support. Normally, the unit breaking will be not recovered for the rest of the battle.
The morale and fatigue changes make harder to be in attack, in contested battles is advised to be in defensive unless you are a true genius.
The ammo can be spent in a battle, but normally are not that long as one side will break. Persecution is mandatory because with less casualties will be more difficult to wipe an enemy stack.
The mod was tested with the following options: Increased income (for larger battles), Less accurate shots (for less casualties), Square formation (cavalry is deadly in rear charges), Religion conversion (without churches or agents), All diplomatic options (exchange of regions was a feature of XVIIIth diplomacy)

Enjoy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HwD...ew?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wA-...ew?usp=sharing

[Frotzy]

This looks good, but you need to set your google drive files to public. Also, please add installation instructions. I'll try this out once I can, looks really promising.

[Axland]

Simply replace the two files with the same name (Lord_Core.pack and Lord_dbunits.pack) in your Empire/Data directory.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...d0?usp=sharing

[Frotzy]

Thanks, all works well now. You should look into increasing the size of the artillery for your submod (more cannons per unit), as I feel artillery was an integral part of warfare during this time period. Besides, one howitzer gun per howitzer unit..? That's ridiciolous, imo. Just a thought.

[Axland]

It's not that simple. By 1750 the ratio of cannons/soldiers was about 1/500 or 2/500 in the best scenario. In 1800 this ratio was firmly in 2/500 range. The problem here, in my point of view, are two. First, the doctrinal differences between nations, we can see how austrians tended to give small guns to infantry (2x3pdrs.) and group higher calibers in batteries. (6-9pdrs.) The russians adopted another path creating licornes. The second problem is that battalions are undersized, so more cannons will be not so proportionate. Ideally battalions must be set to 200 men plus 1 cannon, or 400-500 men for two cannons.

[Axland]

One thing I want to check are the different stats of artillery, because I suspect they are not very realistic. But that is planned for an upgraded version of the mod which would include new stats for practically everything. To be clear, when I find help/the way to raise the numbers of each unit to realistic ones (ultra unit size around 500-600) not using preferences script.

[Frotzy]

Oh interesting, though do you not feel that you need to strike a balance between realism and gameplay, at some point? I feel like I won't even bother with cannons currently, they are far too slow and have little impact once they finally get set up (even at later starting dates) imo. It's weird, in TW it's either a) cannons shred literally every unit on the battlefield, dominate the map and make you focus your entire army around them, or b) cannons are just a fun thing to have and look at, but that's about it. Perhaps I just need to try out the mod some more, with more advanced tech.

Having said that, unit sizes aren't too hard to edit. You can edit the files using ESFeditor. The number you input is modified by the preference script, so set it for 500 and preference script to 1, for example. It's under land/units, if memory serves. You'll figure it out, there's guides online.

[Axland]

I've opened startpos and savegmes, but nothing found at the moment...

[Frotzy]

Oh , my bad, use DBEditor instead. Been so long since I last touched this that I forgot what program it even is. Open Empire folder, go to unit/stats/land_tables. It's pretty self-explanatory from there, size is size and is multiplied by the preference script, if it's at 2 and the standard for line infantry is 160 that's 160*2 = 320, and so on. I thought you were in this area since you edited morale, but I suppose not? Also, I've heard some stuff that you should always make a new .pack file instead of editing already existing ones (whatever that means..? CA only or modder .packs as well??), so be careful here. Take all of this with a grain of salt, I am by no means a modder in Empire, you'd be best of consulting a real modder or reading up on some guides online.

[Axland]

Oh , my bad, use DBEditor instead. Been so long since I last touched this that I forgot what program it even is. Open Empire folder, go to unit/stats/land_tables. It's pretty self-explanatory from there, size is size and is multiplied by the preference script, if it's at 2 and the standard for line infantry is 160 that's 160*2 = 320, and so on. I thought you were in this area since you edited morale, but I suppose not? Also, I've heard some stuff that you should always make a new .pack file instead of editing already existing ones (whatever that means..? CA only or modder .packs as well??), so be careful here. Take all of this with a grain of salt, I am by no means a modder in Empire, you'd be best of consulting a real modder or reading up on some guides online.

Well, I guess these tables are what i'm modifying, but the work was done by ID team with all the Lord.pack files, so I just read and figure what values are the most realistic or plausible... for a game.

Yes, I searched how to edit the values of unit strength, without touching Preferences Script, also the number of cannons, but not luck.

Anyone know how?

Thanks.

[Axland]

Oh, found it!

Like morale or armor, each unit has set their strength in the tables. The thing is I was confused because some units where showing different, non standard, sizes. Likely units not used by the mod.

Same history with cannons, so, I must think about the final numbers and their multipliers, to get nice and balanced numbers... Guess that will be the 1.1 version of the submod.

[Frotzy]

Glad to hear it, I'll patiently await the next update then, best of luck!

[scaniavikings]

Awesome! Will try it out

[Jety Wawoo]

Munster's roster still has a bunch of melee defence.

[Axland]

Munster's roster still has a bunch of melee defence.

I will see their stats...

[Axland]

Try this file, I found a file with defense not set to 0.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eI2...ew?usp=sharing

[Frotzy]

How's progress?

[JirroC]

Do you plan to add a torrent link for the mod?

[Axland]

Do you plan to add a torrent link for the mod?

I'm working on 2.0 version.

[Axland]

Actually i'm working on the 2.0 Realistic Battles submod for Imperial Destroyer.

This is the full featured submod and it's likely a mod by itself, because I touched many aspects of the original. You must be patient, I must revise more than 4000 lines to get all balanced.

Units: I was trying to get some realistic approach, but 80 CAV x squadron, 600 INF x battalion and 8 ART x battery is not very playable. So I decided to play around each level of game unit size. 400 INF - 200 LIGHT INF - 100 CAV and 8 ART are the new largest units. You have a nice fractions of that ULTRA units, in my weak computer I can play with large units without problem.

INF 100/200/300/400
LIGHT INF 50/100/150/200 LIGHT
CAV 25/50/75/100
ART 2/4/6/8

As you can see, ultra units represent rougly a full squadron and battery and half battalion. If your computer can handle the ultra size the only problem is that Empire battle maps are not big enough to play comfortably if you have much infantry battalions in your stacks. That's a tip for EMPIRE II, the maps must be twice or more the actual size, but you can bet CA is more interested in ray tracing than providing realistic, huge and nearly unmanageable battles, the wet dream of hard wargamers.

I reduced the cost of recruiting units overall, you can muster bigger armies, but beware because unkeep is increased as follow:

LAND UNITS unkeep = 1/2 recruiting cost
NAVAL UNITS unkeep = 1/4 recruiting cost

So, recruiting is easier, maintaining the standing army is not.

The aim/markmanship is reduced, except for rifled weapons because in tests is demonstrated that they provide double the precision.

The reloading skill is also reduced, and is the key factor to differentiate the training level. So, prussian and british troops are the best in this aspect.

I killed the russian bias. Russia have some good elite troops, but the mass is european standard. Their advantage is numbers, as always.

Countries with low manpower have their units reduced in size, as historically accurate. INF 320, LIGHT 160, CAV 80. They normally must overcome this problem with better quality units. Sweden and UK are at the moment the affected.

Some guard units had bigger regiments, but i'm using the standardized 2 battalions x regiment, some have their own grenadier battalion, all grenadiers are one battalion. Tip for Empire II, employ the regimental system, each regiment have 2 batt fussiliers, 1 batt grenadiers and later 1 batt light troops.

Suppressed the armor, except for those units bearing ancient armors or plates.

Suppressed horse armors in the same way, horses have now more hitpoints, historically you needed 4-8 shots to stop them.

Reduced the melée stats of amerindians, and accordingly the prices, by the time of the French and Indian War relied basically in firearms with good reasons. Poor indians, but this is an historical wargame.

Rakes can assassinate, this is a bug that only allowed AI to assassinate.

Morale tables are revised, more punishing, but also rewarding different aspects like charge and protection.

Fatigue is more punishing, you must prevent to tire the troops too much.

This is important because some effects on morale and fatigue are not linear but a stepping curve.

I rounded the speed of all land units to 1.5 to keep the pace, but I adjusted the numbers for running and charging. Don't forget these speeds are modified by terrain and fatigue. Sadly we don't have "double pace" for infantry or "on the trot" for cavalry. But anyway it's not a deal killer.

Actually i'm changing the stats of the units. As I said in another post, I must scan 2200 units to find who is who in the game, and modify their cost and stats accordingly. So, be patient because sometimes I break the files and must start again.

Thank You.