[SUBMOD] Pikes revisited (updated: 25/11/15 DEI1.1c1)

[eferos93]

Two Version, one with formation attack the other without

Hello everyone,

the aim of this submod is giving a better historical-looking pike behaviour.

Here's the changes:
-the pikes will have more push back force, but that depends on the balance between the pike melee attack and attacker defence;
-light units that tries to pass through pikes will suffer heavy casualties; heavy units will suffer less and can win the fight if against a weaker pike unit
-removed formation attack for all units, except for pikes

Database changes:
-increased the impact_reflection_attack_cooldown_timer to 2.5 (time before the same defender can be attacked by the same pikeman)
-decreased impact_reflection_final_damage_modifier to 0.45
-decreased pike_attack_zone_cosine_angle to 0.75 (larger cone of attack)
-increased lower_delay_combat to 15
-increased the weapon leght to 5 for all pike units (except for those who have short pikes)
-decreased bonus vs cavarly to 3

I hope you will enjoy the changes and Iwould really appreciate your feedback.

WITH FORMATION ATTACK
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxX...s4elVaaUk/view

WITHOUT FORMATION ATTACK
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxXTXgIrQLXzMGdRTHB6dm1CQUU/view?usp=sharing

Cheers!

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Ι will play test soon...

Cheers

[Andrew1994]

why did you removed the formation attack?

[Sanatyr]

Hello fellow phalanx enthusiast!

There are some technical problems with the currently uploaded modpack:

1. The db tables are not in a db subfolder, which means nothing will be loaded at all.
2. To successfully remove formation attack, you have to rename "EF_DeI_unit_attributes_to_groups_junctions" to "DeI_unit_attributes_to_groups_junctions" so that DeI's table is overridden outright.
3. For all the other tables to load after DeI, I would add @ to the beginning of the table name ("EF_Bar_land_units" to "@EF_Bar_land_units", etc) to ensure the changes are loaded last.

As for the gameplay:

I definitely noticed a nice Rome 1 style force-field with the enemy fruitless trying to come to grips with the phalanx.
Pikemen grind up light units like hamburger... but they are unable to inflict (any) casualties on heavy units.
In a battle, my white shield pikemen could not kill a single Getai Ordesci (elite swordsmen) after 10 minutes of combat. Of course the only casualties the Ordesci inflicted were from a few lone wolfs who got in among the formation.

I know that if you just increase the length of the pike and nothing else, they will steamroll any unit in the game in a minute or two.

[eferos93]

Hello fellow phalanx enthusiast!

There are some technical problems with the currently uploaded modpack:

1. The db tables are not in a db subfolder, which means nothing will be loaded at all.
2. To successfully remove formation attack, you have to rename "EF_DeI_unit_attributes_to_groups_junctions" to "DeI_unit_attributes_to_groups_junctions" so that DeI's table is overridden outright.
3. For all the other tables to load after DeI, I would add @ to the beginning of the table name ("EF_Bar_land_units" to "@EF_Bar_land_units", etc) to ensure the changes are loaded last.

As for the gameplay:

I definitely noticed a nice Rome 1 style force-field with the enemy fruitless trying to come to grips with the phalanx.
Pikemen grind up light units like hamburger... but they are unable to inflict (any) casualties on heavy units.
In a battle, my white shield pikemen could not kill a single Getai Ordesci (elite swordsmen) after 10 minutes of combat. Of course the only casualties the Ordesci inflicted were from a few lone wolfs who got in among the formation.

I know that if you just increase the length of the pike and nothing else, they will steamroll any unit in the game in a minute or two.

Fixed the DB folder and names problems, thanks.

As regards killrates, I base my balance on campaign: units receives boost to damage, melee, armour, etc. However yes, pike units will not able to inflict a lot of casualties to heavy units, but with flanks covered they will hold them.

[Maetharin]

I´m not at my home PC right now os I can´t really test it out, but I experimented with giving Pikes their own battle entities (heavy, medium and light), to give them smaller radii.
This enabled me to make their formation tighter with less clipping happening, and had the additional effect of tightening the area of attack for pikes.

This made them ridiculously OP in my submod, but seeing as you know more about how the engine handles pikes, you might be able to use this information to make pikes more consistent.

The changes I made were in battle_entities, land_units and unit_spacings.

Btw why did you get rid of formation attack? Now every single soldier tries to get himself speared as fast as possible^^

Best regards

Edit: I just noticed it would be easier to just reduce radii across all infantry entities, might decrease unit stuttering as the engine wouldn´t percieve them as crashing into each other.
Sadly this also reduces the visible circles when trying to drag&drop units during battle, but IMO this is negligible^^

[FlashHeart07]

Just a little something something to help unless you already know this.
Tables with the exact same name as in the original DeI files, will overwrite everything. So with the current submod you have created you may have removed all special abilities.
If you name the tables differently than those in DeI they will load in alphabetical order. So if the DeI table is called DeI_special_ability.... you can just add a_DeI_special_ability to have it load before and only overwrite the rows that are identical. Meaning that all the rows you didnt want to change will remain the same as in DeI and only the rows you want to change, in this case all concerning pikes, will be overwritten and use your new values.

[eferos93]

Yes, I already know that, just a small mistake Thanks for letting me know.

As regards formation attack, it is well know that it is bugged (it is not the same thing as the guard mod in rome 1) which makes units without formation attack performs better in terms of melee and sometimes you can also see the formation that "slips" in an irrealistical way. So I decided to deactivate formation attack and see how it works, seems better to me for now.

However I've just corrected the technical issues in the database.

[eferos93]

I´m not at my home PC right now os I can´t really test it out, but I experimented with giving Pikes their own battle entities (heavy, medium and light), to give them smaller radii.
This enabled me to make their formation tighter with less clipping happening, and had the additional effect of tightening the area of attack for pikes.

This made them ridiculously OP in my submod, but seeing as you know more about how the engine handles pikes, you might be able to use this information to make pikes more consistent.

The changes I made were in battle_entities, land_units and unit_spacings.

Btw why did you get rid of formation attack? Now every single soldier tries to get himself speared as fast as possible^^

Best regards

Edit: I just noticed it would be easier to just reduce radii across all infantry entities, might decrease unit stuttering as the engine wouldn´t percieve them as crashing into each other.
Sadly this also reduces the visible circles when trying to drag&drop units during battle, but IMO this is negligible^^

I already tried to make a closer spacing to pikeman together with the 4th pike rank lowered but in this case they would be stronger. As regards the radii, i will take a look.

[Maetharin]

you don´t even need to lower the 4th rank, they´re OP regardless^^

[KAM 2150]

I will check it tomorrow

Remember guys that their killrates are not the problem, this one is the easiest part to increase...the part when you want them to both hold enemies at a distance and not make even levy pikes OP versus super heavy infantry is the tricky one.

So far my ideas failed, increasing their damage while decreasing melee attack (so they had damage to almost one hit kill but their attack was around 2-3-4 points), they were OP.

eferos, with some of those changes remember that they might affect all other parts of combat, not only pikes.

[Maetharin]

maybe we could try to lower their attack speed

[eferos93]

maybe we could try to lower their attack speed

Already done by increasig the impact_reflection_attack_cooldown_timer and lower_delay_combat.

[eferos93]

By the way, I suggest to try the mod by playing a campaign, not just custom battles.

[eferos93]

Mod updated for DEI 1.1b.

[eferos93]

Mod updated for 1.1c1

-Impact_final_damage_modifier set back to 0,45
-Bonus vs cav 3

[Grigal]

I dont like how pike units in DEI work (they are just holding pikes and doing nothing while enemy can walk freely and engage the front line in melee) so I decided to look for a mod that can fix this issue ( I understand that DEI team made this change to balance pikes, but looking at what the pike units have become I would rather have imbalanced but "working" pikes).
I found this mod but "removed formation attack for all units, except for pikes" keeps me from downloading it. I just want the pikes to work like they worked before without nerfing other units.

[eferos93]

I dont like how pike units in DEI work (they are just holding pikes and doing nothing while enemy can walk freely and engage the front line in melee) so I decided to look for a mod that can fix this issue ( I understand that DEI team made this change to balance pikes, but looking at what the pike units have become I would rather have imbalanced but "working" pikes).
I found this mod but "removed formation attack for all units, except for pikes" keeps me from downloading it. I just want the pikes to work like they worked before without nerfing other units.

I have just uploaded a version which don't modifies the formation attack, however formation attack is bugged, ugly looking (units don't push, they stay and wait for the enemy, while units without form attack search for the enemy and try to push) and generally units with formation attack are not so performing, turn it off and you will see they will do better.

Alternative solution could be giving a units with formation attack a lower base and shield defence and set the melee_defence_formed_attack_bonus to an higher value, so i think that if you turn off the formation attack, the unit will lose that bonus.
(For example decrease melee defence by 30 and increase the formed attack bonus to 35)

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

I have just uploaded a version which don't modifies the formation attack, however formation attack is bugged, ugly looking (units don't push, they stay and wait for the enemy, while units without form attack search for the enemy and try to push) and generally units with formation attack are not so performing, turn it off and you will see they will do better.

Alternative solution could be giving a units with formation attack a lower base and shield defence and set the melee_defence_formed_attack_bonus to an higher value, so i think that if you turn off the formation attack, the unit will lose that bonus.
(For example decrease melee defence by 30 and increase the formed attack bonus to 35)

That's not a bad idea mate...
Thanks for the extra version

Cheers

[eaenidu]

.....So, Do I Just Download and Play or What?