Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[OJ33DA]

This isn't for the bodyguards, but the general himself.

Well yeah I got that part. I’m asking if the base bodyguard unit has two hitpoints? The Ai is less likely to throw away a General if the bodyguard unit has only one hit point according to some reports i read.

[QuintusSertorius]

Well yeah I got that part. I’m asking if the base bodyguard unit has two hitpoints? The Ai is less likely to throw away a General if the bodyguard unit has only one hit point according to some reports i read.

No unit in EBII, bar elephants, have more than 1 hit point.

[Lusitanio]

Oh right, as I wrote, I changed the AIGeneral Hit points to +5 in all three levels and started a new Roman campaign with Campaign difficulty in Very hard, BAI in Medium and units on Huge. This is my report:

Battle 1: Apulli rebels
Defeated the rebel army and while engaging the enemy general (cavalry unit), he began to route (with 55 BG units left) and left the battlefield alive (with 27 BG units left). Gave me the impression that if his Hit Points were lower, he may have been killed.

Battle 2: Attacked by two barbarian armies near Felsina. 2736 Romans against 3802 barbarians ( 2 AI Generals)
The first army attacked mine while I was in a good defensive position, the barbarian general went after some of my skirmishers that began to route and I sent my cavalry and a unit of hoplites to catch him. He routed and escaped the battle (with 27 BG units left). Again, I had the impression that had his Hit points been lower, he had died.
After destroying the first army, the second army began to slowly approach me and our troops engaged in a hard fight. The combat ended a bit later when the 2General died fighting on the center of the battle with support from his troops, after that, a massive route began. I must note that the second General was killed with only seven of his BGs left, that may mean that, had he had fewer Hit Points, he had died earlier and the battle would be easier (not good).

Siege/Assault of Felsina
This was the first time that I really saw the effects on the AI General Hitpoints. This time, the AI General BG unit was holding one unit of Principes and one of Triaris (I had the rest of the general army trapped behind him with the city center covered with my troops), while the General BG unit was managing to hold the ground against my units, I sent my General on cavalry to join the fight. A few moments later, I saw how tough the AI General was when he became the last survivor of his unit and tried to go back to the rest of his army (not routing). My cavalry went after and killed him. After that, a rout began and I won the battle.

Siege of Taras
Had two units fighting the General BG, after a good time fighting, they routed and my troops killed the General. Despite that, I saw that the General managed to fight some of my units, kill them and continue fighting, all that before the route.

Battle of Albabagenna - I sieged the city in order to be attacked by the armies nearby and fight at least two armies. 2510 Romans vs 5273 Ligurae. Three Generals, one BG unit composed of Etruscan Hoplites and the other two of West Celt Light Cavalry.
The first army to attack me had the two Generals on cavalry. The first General died with a cavalry charge while he was fighting against my skirmishers and a hoplite unit. Note that this General BG unit was almost intact since it was in the very beginning of the battle.
The second General died while routing when his army was already routing.
Finally, the third General was killed during the second battle, while his BG unit was fighting on the center supported by the rest of his army. Although he managed to hold out for some time, he got killed because he was at the front of the battle (even his BG unit only had lost 30 soldiers from a total of 160).

Conclusions:
It seems that Generals are harder to kill but still realistic. Although having more Hitpoints may not be realistic to some, it serves to compensate for the dumb decisions that AIGenerals normally do, like suicide charges to the center of the army, fighting on the center without retreating, etc.
If the Generals had fewer Hitpoints, the battles would be less fun and I think most of my battles would have finished a lot earlier with the traditional route.
However, after doing this battles with +5 Hitpoints on AIGenerals, it seems enough and more HitPoints than that would be too much and would make the battles highly unrealistic. In my opinion, +5 HitPoints should be the limit.

Note for QS: Before doing this tests on EBII I was playing a lot of TATW DAC and after returning to do battles in EBII I must say that AI reinforcements behave in a very different way on the two mods. While in TATW DAC the norm of the AI reinforcements is that they will try to attack me as soon as they can or join forces and attack me, in EBII the norm seems to be that one army will engage me and after defeating the army, the reinforcement will then proceed to attack me. While I respect this chivalry, I think you could ask z3n to review the AI and maybe ask the DAC team what they did in TATW DAC.

[OJ33DA]

ahhh okay. Thanks for clarifying.

[brucewaynegao]

First of all, I want to say I love this mod very much ,but I find in the EBII2.3 file "descr_skeleton.txt" ,all the fatality.cas and victim.cas animations have been REMOVED FATALITY ,that means we can't see any Execution action in the battle. This is a very pity thing. I hope to bring all the fatality.cas and victim.cas file back ,becase the execution action makes the battle more real and interesting。can you do this ? thanks very much ,love you guys
for example
mod/ebii/data/descr_skeleton.txt
; REMOVED FATALITY ;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_c_stab_v0_fail data/animations/MTW2_Mace/MTW2_Mace_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_fail.cas -fr
; REMOVED FATALITY ;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_c_stab_v0_fatality data/animations/MTW2_Swordsman/MTW2_Swordsman_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_fatality.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/MTW2_Swordsman/MTW2_Swordsman_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_fatality.evt
; REMOVED FATALITY ;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_c_stab_v0_success data/animations/MTW2_Mace/MTW2_Mace_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_success.cas -fr -id:0.058,0.409,2.337 -if:17 -evt:data/animations/MTW2_Mace/MTW2_Mace_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_success.evt
; REMOVED FATALITY ;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_c_stab_v0_victim data/animations/MTW2_Swordsman/MTW2_Swordsman_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_victim.cas -fr -evt:data/animations/MTW2_Swordsman/MTW2_Swordsman_at_mid_c_slashlr_v1_s0_victim.evt

[QuintusSertorius]

Fatalities are bugged, graphically, and they mess with the performance of the units. You'd have men being killed while they were faffing around performing their "victory" move.

[Domaje]

Hey, I have a suggestion regarding armor upgrades.
There is a thing that bothers me a bit : the fact you can upgrade your units only if you are playing the faction that unlock those upgrades throught reforms. Isn't there a way to make all the factions capable of recruiting units with their most current panoply ?

[QuintusSertorius]

Hey, I have a suggestion regarding armor upgrades.
There is a thing that bothers me a bit : the fact you can upgrade your units only if you are playing the faction that unlock those upgrades throught reforms. Isn't there a way to make all the factions capable of recruiting units with their most current panoply ?

Changed months ago in the development build; armour upgrades are now tied to the city walls and are universal:

				armour 1 requires factions { all, } and event_counter ecThorakitaiReform 1
				armour 2 requires factions { all, } and event_counter ecCarthage_Reform 1
				armour 3 requires factions { all, } and event_counter ecPanoply_Reform 1
				armour 4 requires factions { all, } and event_counter ecMarianEra 1
				armour 5 requires factions { all, } and event_counter ecCelticTwilight 1

I also sorted out the chronological progression of them in the campaign, no more strangeness with some factions getting an upgrade before others. So in 2.35 already.

[Domaje]

Ow! so cool.
I really felt bad for my batoroi fighting their counterparts, with grandpa's helmet.

[OJ33DA]

I just had the awesomest idea and I hope this is possible with some fancy script work.

Idea: Set more perma forts around the map. Give these forts the village model. Give these villages (forts) a name. Setup script so that if just one unit occupies that fort, an unspecified amount of money will be added to that faction's treasury. Setup script so that Ai prioritizes occupying these forts with at least one unit.

Result: A workaround to the settlement limit. BOOM!

[Genghis Skahn]

I just had the awesomest idea and I hope this is possible with some fancy script work.

Idea: Set more perma forts around the map. Give these forts the village model. Give these villages (forts) a name. Setup script so that if just one unit occupies that fort, an unspecified amount of money will be added to that faction's treasury. Setup script so that Ai prioritizes occupying these forts with at least one unit.

Result: A workaround to the settlement limit. BOOM!

No, not worth it at all--forts screw with the CAI like no tomorrow. They were specifically removed from the mod due to the fact that the CAI is obsessed with them, to the point of ignoring when the main settlement is under siege. They stack a load of troops inside these forts and then...Nothing happens, they just garrison their troops there, wasting minai, and won't come out until you besiege the fort. You just don't even understand how much better the CAI works without forts on the map anymore--but I still remember those early days of EB, and the CAI was atrocious due to this "fort obsession" the CAI has.

So yeah, no chance of that happening. Forts in M2TW are fundamentally broken due to the way the CAI treats them as being more important than they actually are. Forts are gone from the mod and never coming back, the exception being the forts which are tied to wonders such as Stonehenge, The Lighthouse of Alexandria or etc. Good riddance.

[Jurand of Cracow]

the exception being the forts which are tied to wonders such as Stonehenge, The Lighthouse of Alexandria or etc. Good riddance.

This is actually interesting: how does the AI treat those "forts" aka wonders?

[OJ33DA]

No, not worth it at all--forts screw with the CAI like no tomorrow. They were specifically removed from the mod due to the fact that the CAI is obsessed with them, to the point of ignoring when the main settlement is under siege. They stack a load of troops inside these forts and then...Nothing happens, they just garrison their troops there, wasting minai, and won't come out until you besiege the fort. You just don't even understand how much better the CAI works without forts on the map anymore--but I still remember those early days of EB, and the CAI was atrocious due to this "fort obsession" the CAI has.

So yeah, no chance of that happening. Forts in M2TW are fundamentally broken due to the way the CAI treats them as being more important than they actually are. Forts are gone from the mod and never coming back, the exception being the forts which are tied to wonders such as Stonehenge, The Lighthouse of Alexandria or etc. Good riddance.

Surely there must be some way in the script to teleport a “fort garrison” outside of its fort, specifically when an enemy faction comes close to the main settlement. It’s not unreasonable to keep a whole army in a fort, but I do recognize the issue of pacifism it forces on th CAi.

[Wulfburk]

treats them as they treated the forts, though them being like 7 in the whole map and 1 (or 2 for the ptolemaioi) for a faction makes it not have any noticeable impact on the AI

[Kull]

In my experience it ignores the "Wonder Forts" completely. The only time I've seen the AI use them is (rarely) that a defeated stack will sometimes retreat into one (but only when owned by the retreating faction)

[QuintusSertorius]

No, you can't move a stack out of a fort or settlement with the script. Even if you could, without knowing that character's name (impossible to predict in advance), you can't move them. So doubly impossible.

[Mr. Blob]

Seleukids should have their victory condition changed. Currently they need to destroy Parthia, Egypt, Pontus and Armenia. The last two are small factions which are in reality not a big problem for a faction which starts with 21 settlements. Parthia, I am OK with because they've contributed extensively to Seleukid downfall. I would replace Pontus with Rome, after all Rome crushed Seleukids interest in Greece and Asia Minor, while stopping Seleukid invasion of Egypt proper and in the end annexed Syrian provinces into its empire. The need for destruction of Rome would make Seleukid campaign more difficult, at the moment it simply isn't with so many starting regions.

[Lusitanio]

How about making it easier for Carthage to build siege engines like the onagers (I don't remember the name in the game)? I have read that Carthage used catapults on its defence from, for example, Phirros assaults on their cities, so how about enabling to recruit in some cities like Carthage?

[Lusitanio]

Some more suggestions:

Before starting the battle, when we are deciding where to position the troops, when we click on a unit to see the info card, we can't see the attack stat of the unit because the interface (start the battle) covers it. Could you make the unit info card appear on a lower position in the screen to allow us to read it better Its just a small thing that has a good effect (I hope I made myself clear enough).

In TATW DAC, when a faction is at war and looses all its settlements besides one, on the next turn, the faction gets a one time full army with an event card saying something like after being beaten the faction has risen and called all their capable man to fight for their survival. What do you think about this?

[Wulfburk]

In TATW DAC, when a faction is at war and looses all its settlements besides one, on the next turn, the faction gets a one time full army with an event card saying something like after being beaten the faction has risen and called all their capable man to fight for their survival. What do you think about this?

Too much railroading i think? The reemergence script and rebellions and what not are this but in an immersive way and doesnt feels forced.