Ancient Empires: Divide et Impera - Upd. 2/13/2016

[vpapako]

ABH2 Don't mention it, I love trying out the goodies you make. I tried a few turns as Egypt. Everything was ok. I played a battle and I think i noticed sth. Their pantodapoi look a bit Persian and their greek peltasts look a bit Bosphorian. The skirmisher cavalry looks a bit gallic - greek but I dont know if it was intentional.

BTW how did you get Sparta to have 3 subfactions?

[Maetharin]

I quite like the pace of frontal combat, but I dislike a few other elements of combat.

1) rear charges do nigh to no extra damage compared to frontal ones and have no real impact on morale.

2) romans don´t have formation attack resulting in blobs

3)exhaustions has a devastating effect on morale, IMO it should affect two things only, unit attack and unit speed, unit defence and morale debuffs are IMO unrealistic...
These men are fighting for their life, I don´t think anyone would ever be too tired to lift his shield...

[KAM 2150]

Umm...exhaustion has huge impact on how you can defend yourself ; P And I tell you that from a point of a person who is involved proseffionaly in combat sports and has some experience with weapon and armour combat. Basically when you get tired you lose strength, speed and balance, sure you can hold your shield, but you won't be fast enough to block all the attack or you won't have enough strength to hold your shield up (which is tougher then it looks for prolonged time in combat). Sure, adreanline helps a lot, I have good cardio and mostly do not feel that much fatigue during a match, but just after I come back to the backstage I just fall on the ground or find something to sit. Watch some boxing matches, you will notice what happens when one guy is blown out of stamina and is not even able to hold guard or react to incoming punches.

[Maetharin]

I´ve just recently tried out amateur training with roman equipment, a scutum is damn heavy, but I think the romans knew that too ^^

I´d say shields would have been held in a way that covered the body without moving about too much.
What i tried out with the scutum was leaning it on my knee so the shield was angled slightly backwards unto my shoulder.
Thus the only movement needed to defend my face was lifting it just a tiny bit. Everything else was covered the whole time.

Additionally, in this position it was easier to launch my shield boss into the face of an imaginary enemy ^^
But that´s beside the point...

As you said, adrenaline helps, or, as I think, rather dictates your every movement in such a situation...
Additionally, mortal fear tends to direct one´s focus on defence rather than offence...

IMO the more exhausted a unit is the less agressive/more conservative it should act, without affecting defensive performance too hard.

Best regards

[KAM 2150]

Yes, once you start to lose your breath you are more on a defence rather then offence Although I partially agree with you that fatigue should not completly reduce unit capabilities to zero as AI is unable to cycle its units in order to regain stamina.

[Maetharin]

I´m arguing more on a historical standpoint, rather than from a balancing standpoint, but at least we came to some conclusion^^

[ABH2]

ABH2 Don't mention it, I love trying out the goodies you make. I tried a few turns as Egypt. Everything was ok. I played a battle and I think i noticed sth. Their pantodapoi look a bit Persian and their greek peltasts look a bit Bosphorian. The skirmisher cavalry looks a bit gallic - greek but I dont know if it was intentional.

BTW how did you get Sparta to have 3 subfactions?

Sparta merely has 3 political parties.

The unit variants should really be fixed this time. I had it done days ago, but somehow the table got erased at some point. It's back in as of this morning.

1) rear charges do nigh to no extra damage compared to frontal ones and have no real impact on morale.

2) romans don´t have formation attack resulting in blobs

3)exhaustions has a devastating effect on morale, IMO it should affect two things only, unit attack and unit speed, unit defence and morale debuffs are IMO unrealistic...
These men are fighting for their life, I don´t think anyone would ever be too tired to lift his shield.

The battles are going to remain a work in progress. As Dresden made reference to earlier, it took DeI quite some time to balance their units. Putting in a new combat system, and then scaling units down made it playable.

It really is a pity. I'm biased, but I loved our battles before. They are now back to being a work in progress, but petellius and Philip will continue to work.

Some things are hard to represent well in game. In real life, the Romans cycled men in and out of lines. They had a tiered formation and kept reserves for a reason.

[Maetharin]

you mean the battles you had in the original version of the submod?
Completely rebalancing a whole game from the spot has to be a nightmare, and I deeply respect you guys, KAM even moreso since his system already stands functioning

Many of the roman´s advantages were neglected by CA in giving all factions in depth control & insight over their forces even modern generals do not have...
Of course CA never claimed historical credibilty, but with all their stupidly hardcoded systems in place, it makes it increasingly harder to actually do things the more you want to change...

Something I´d like to try once would be to increase unit sizes for levy or poorly trained units, with them costing the same as more trained units, this way one would have to decide between manpower or control
Eg: 1 unit of levy hoplites 2000 men
1 unit of Phalangitai 800 men
1 unit of Hypaspitai 200 men

As much as i like the unit system in DeI now, I am conflicted about it´s historical accuracy. We know how both Alexander and Philips Pezhetairoi seemingly acted as distinctive units in battles like fe. Gaugamela and Chaeronea.
But since the days of the Diadochs I never ever read of a Phalanx structured into distinct units and acting as such on battlefields. Same with "barbarian" hosts, their levy troops certainly didn´t attack with as much precision and control as the romans did^^

AFAIK the word Syntagma comes from writs concerning the military reform of Antiochos IV, in which he arranged Phalanxes in units of 256 each, but then silence, as he died rather soon and his successors quarreled amongst themselves.
The last great battle with Phalanxes I read of had by then already been fought, by Antiochos III no less...

In every great battle in which Phalanxes fought they were described as single mass coming upon it´s enemy, very frightening, as Aemillius Paullus allegedly said, but highly immobile.
The only distinct actions in any such battles are made by either elite or skirmishing units...

If any of you find fault with what I have written here please do answer, I´d really like to read more about the subject.

I wish you the best

[GatoVolador]

Hi, just started a cimmeria campaign, found this:




I have the steam version of DeI and AE, although I am still on patch 16.

Cheers

[vpapako]

Hi again, update on my Egypt Campaign. The Egyptian rebels that emerge from Aegyptos are labeled "Egytian". Also the temple of Ammon Zeus gives +5 germanic influence.

[vpapako]

Hi again, update on my Egypt Campaign. The Egyptian rebels that emerge from Aegyptos are labeled "Egytian". Also the temple of Ammon Zeus gives +5 germanic influence.

[TFCAliarcy]

An issue I have found is that casualties sustained has to much of an effect on morale as AI controlled Triari only need to be taken down 20 men and have a fear unit nearby, another effect of that is that pretty much when ever Calvary take even a few casualties they have a serious dip in morale making them very fragile. Another thing was that in a fight between Trirari and an African War Elephants the elephants had lost two elephants and started wavering before going beserk and having only been fighting for about 5 seconds. During the same battle I had ran a Libyan Peltast into a shaken Trirari and it seemed to have very little effect on morale until the Peltasts killed a few of them and they routed.

[PurpleScotch]

An issue I have found is that casualties sustained has to much of an effect on morale as AI controlled Triari only need to be taken down 20 men and have a fear unit nearby, another effect of that is that pretty much when ever Calvary take even a few casualties they have a serious dip in morale making them very fragile. Another thing was that in a fight between Trirari and an African War Elephants the elephants had lost two elephants and started wavering before going beserk and having only been fighting for about 5 seconds. During the same battle I had ran a Libyan Peltast into a shaken Trirari and it seemed to have very little effect on morale until the Peltasts killed a few of them and they routed.

Yeah I've noticed that. When I chase down routing units with cavalry they end up routing themselves. Is this intentional?

[FlashHeart07]

Yeah I've noticed that. When I chase down routing units with cavalry they end up routing themselves. Is this intentional?

DeI had that problem aswell. I believe it is due to the fact that routing units still at some point keep their stats even though they are routing and therefore is able to induce casualties to you, up to the point where low tier cav will rout.

[Maetharin]

In my experience the 1^hp system makes routing units very vulnerable to cavalry, but it was very expensive generals unit which hasn´t fought anything that battle yet

[ABH2]

As much as i like the unit system in DeI now, I am conflicted about it´s historical accuracy. We know how both Alexander and Philips Pezhetairoi seemingly acted as distinctive units in battles like fe. Gaugamela and Chaeronea.

The more I know about ancient history, the less confident I am to say anything certain like this. I would have shared your assumption about the phalanx at one point, but looking at some battles, it doesn't hold up.

Pyrrhus in Italy seemed to mix his pike in with Italian native forces. Literally just alternated them. At the Battle of Sellasia in 222BC, Philip used a mixed force of Illyrians and bronze shields in a phalanx (most likely - we can't say this with certainty) to attack an enemy position on a hill. The bronze shields forced the enemy back and the Illyrians occupied it. His other phalanx was deployed on his other wing in a double line.

The Hellenistic states would intermix elephants in between parts of the phalanx.

Alexander the Great before he died was apparently developing a very odd mixed combat system with the Persians using spears and javelins. His soldiers mockingly called them his Persian war dancers.

Against the Romans, you are right. The phalanx attacked in a great mass when it was wielded by Macedon. Not always the case in some other battles like Pyrrhus, and at Magnesia the phalanx never engaged. It was over before they even had a chance.

Yeah I've noticed that. When I chase down routing units with cavalry they end up routing themselves. Is this intentional?

As mentioned by Flashheart, modders have been trying to address that for a very long time with no luck.

[KAM 2150]

The more I know about ancient history, the less confident I am to say anything certain like this.

Yes I concur that One of the very first things professors taught me at my university is that historians do not recreate hisotry, but they create history and spreading dogmatism is one of the worst crimes historian can make as to be honest we are almost not certain of anything. For example if you combine all written sources about Bactria you only get single page of text.

[tikijoetots37]

Thanks AE team, I'm really looking forward to playing this mod! The only problem is that I'm about 100 turns into a D.E.I. campaign using the 12 turns per year mod, so I've got a really long way to go I've been a beta tester for AE BAI and absolutely love the 1 hp system. I was wondering if their are any planes to release a battle only submod for D.E.I while the main AE sub-mod is still being worked on. I'd love to use it in my current campaign. I know you all are really busy maintaining and working on two huge mods but my mother all was told me that "it never hurts to ask". Anyways, I can't wait to finish my current campaign and test yours out.

[ABH2]

I'm going to release our map data when I get a chance to put it together with a tutorial. I've toyed with making the whole mod for DeI modular. But right now we could only really break up a few features, and I don't want to be updating 5 mini-mods all the time, to be honest. I have my hands full with these two projects we are running.

A battle submod would be easy for someone to do. Just would have to keep the battle tables from our pack along with the ones related to units outside unit_variants.

[Draewn]

You may want to consider toning down the Instability public order penalties, because as is it's not particularly tenable to do things other than razing settlements. Instability is really tricky to balance, because it's semi-exponential, giving roughly 1/2N (More accurately, average of 1 to N) * N actual public order penalty over time. So if the lump sum penalty is only, say, 3 times the instability? You'd be increasingly foolish not to take it at any N above 5 or so. At really high values, you're just choosing to have multiple sequential rebellions rather than just the one.

So now let's look at the case of my taking Patavium turn one with the magic of mercenaries, as the Romans.

24 Instability
92 conquest bonus to PO


Loot:
48 (!) instability
148 conquest bonus to PO


Raze:
8 (!) instability
75 conquest penalty to PO

That's nets roughly of (12.5*24)-92 = 208 total penalty for occupy, (24.5*48)-148 = 1028 (!) total penalty for loot, and (4.5*8)+75 = 111 penalty for razing.

I get wanting to have rebellions be a thing that are inevitable in conquests, that's pretty cool, but the current way it's set up just makes being a mass-murdering tyrant by far the most successful strategy, which seems odd.