Combat System has only got worse since release

[Autaritus]

I know how difficult, complex and time absorving mod making is in general, particularly combat values balancing; that's why I want to make clear that all my criticism -obviously subjective- is made from the most absolute gratitude and respect to the AE modding team.

Well, the fact is that the first release of AE left quite a good impression on me when it came to combat system: it was realistic and fun to play, though the AI had its usual flaws -hardcoded I'm afraid-, like breaking its own line when moving or cavallry frontally charging against spear-pike units in formation. All in all, the projectiles were well balanced, frontal melee casualties were scarces and moral penalties were reasonably proportional -once surrounded, an army was likely to panic, just like in real life. However, with the successive updates and changes the moral penalties have been reduced, specially those for flanking and rear attack which,, after the last update, have been reduced to -1. That is, a unit being attacked from the rear and the flank will only suffer -2 morale penalty. On the other hand, morale penalty for casualties is remarkably low as well. If the units are of a lower tier, with lower morale values, the reduced penalties are not such a problem; but facing elite units makes the combat too long and unrealistic. An example: I'm playing Macedon against Odryssians, and I am defending with my phalanx +light inf.+cavalry against an army where 80% of the infantry is elite tier 3; I get rid of the enemy cavalry and light infantry and finally I move my phalanx, cavalry and hypaspists in order to charge against the thracian infantry line from behind while it is engaged with my pikes; not a single enemy unit panics, and it takes few minutes till some of them start wavering; I see thracian units that are exhausted, surrounded and outnumbered, that have lost 70-75% of their men having still 5-6 morale left and causing a lot of casualties to my army; after a while, my units, decimated, start fleeing while the also decimated, surrounded and exhausted enemies keep on fighting without problems, still with good morale level. We are talking of pikes in formation (4'5m-6m) against phalx and 2'5 m spears. But the highest damage was suffered, in the end by the pikes. Even a phalx unit run through the ranks of a formed pike unit and then attacked it from behind, routing it after a while. Sometimes, in other battles, after surrounding the enemy I had to set super-fast time compression on because routing the rounded up units took literally an eternity. I am afraid thet either morale penalties are too low or morale values for units -specially tier 3- are too high.

I don't want to always finish the battle by performing the old hammer and anvil but, at this point of AE's evolution, I think that maneouvering to isolate the enemy is less important for the final outcome than the defense-attack-armour unit values that will allow them to fight longer and longer, which reduces the creativity element when fighting a pitched battle.

[Sheridan]

I have to make a slight confutation here, as the premise of the thread strikes a little off the mark. The combat system has been refined in almost every aspect since release; from projectile damage, to charge damage, to unit balancing and unit behaviour. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the overall combat system has deteriorated since release, although I don't think that was the intention.

With that said, I think you are ultimately right in your analysis of unit morale balance. Strictly speaking flanking bonuses haven't been changed as much from release as another thing - AI morale bonuses. These were implemented due to criticism that the AI offered essentially no challenge, and these bonuses are quite significant. I'm personally against giving the AI cheats as far as possible and was skeptical towards this myself. With that said, flanking penalties were also reduced slightly and, like you say, retain impact on low tier units while having little to none on elite units. Which is of course problematic from a balancing point of view - simply increasing them will make low tier units very unreliable. I think there needs to be a more in-depth rebalancing, partly lowering the AI's morale cheats and partly adjusting morale effects (including flanking). Appreciate this topic being brought up, however

[Petellius]

I'll be working on a complete overhaul of the combat system to bring it back to what we had with the Rome 2 combat mechanics of AE.

[Maetharin]

I think KAM 2150 should be a great help, as he has recently overhauled the DeI combat system along the lines of AE, but retained their own morale system.

[Autaritus]

I have to make a slight confutation here, as the premise of the thread strikes a little off the mark. The combat system has been refined in almost every aspect since release; from projectile damage, to charge damage, to unit balancing and unit behaviour. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the overall combat system has deteriorated since release, although I don't think that was the intention.

With that said, I think you are ultimately right in your analysis of unit morale balance. Strictly speaking flanking bonuses haven't been changed as much from release as another thing - AI morale bonuses. These were implemented due to criticism that the AI offered essentially no challenge, and these bonuses are quite significant. I'm personally against giving the AI cheats as far as possible and was skeptical towards this myself. With that said, flanking penalties were also reduced slightly and, like you say, retain impact on low tier units while having little to none on elite units. Which is of course problematic from a balancing point of view - simply increasing them will make low tier units very unreliable. I think there needs to be a more in-depth rebalancing, partly lowering the AI's morale cheats and partly adjusting morale effects (including flanking). Appreciate this topic being brought up, however

I'm sorry if my criticism looked harsh and I wrote the title of the thread without giving a thought first -I wish I could change it , if I knew how to do it, for "Issue with morale system". My only complaints, as the text of my post shows, are about the tweaks on morale made after first release - as you have confirmed, they create some awkward and unrealistic situations when higher tier units are involved- and, maybe, about the bit too high melee casualties rate. As for the charges and other aspects of the combat, I find them ok -even AI has improved, often paying much more attention to flanks than it did in vanilla.

Thanks for the quick answer, Sheridan, and thanks to the rest of the team for this wonderful present that AE is.

[Autaritus]

I'll be working on a complete overhaul of the combat system to bring it back to what we had with the Rome 2 combat mechanics of AE.

As far as I remember, the first versions of AE combat system, much before the release of the campaign, were really good -according to my personal taste, at least.

In the kind of system that I like, where casualties stay low till the flanking is done or the line collapses and units start fleeing, we can find that battles become too easy because the good old hammer-anvil tactic always gives us a quick victory. After reading what KAM wrote once about this in DEI forum, I thought the challenge would be weakening the "anvil" a bit, making a possible breaching of your own infantry line easier so you would have to beat the enemy wings faster in order to complete the flanking before your center gave up. In my opinion, such "weakening" of the center should not be done by increasing the melee casualties so eventually some part of the line was wiped out, but using the mass and charge values so the power of the charge was able to push back the defenders, breaking their formation and eventually leaking through their rearguard without necessarily inflicting too many casualties, but causing a devastating morale effect. If AI, in addition, reinforces its wings as it is already doing pretty often in AE, all in all the challenge would be bigger, I believe.
Let's not forget that, due to the cool and necessary AI campaign bonuses, the enemy is usually going to field a higher number of troops than the player; the danger of having the infantry line collapsed would force the player to keep a good reserve after the first line, which would also reduce the amount of units that could be sent to the flanks in order to perform the flanking manoeuvre , making things even a bit more difficult.

All this piece of text is just filled with my especulations and personal opinions. I am fully aware that there are as many possible combat systems as Total War users, and all of them are respectable. You are the expert, you know what can and can't be done, and you can see the consequences on gameplay of this or that tweak much better than I can. I know what fudging mess is Attila vanilla combat and how difficult is modding it, with all the value changes, the hours of tests, etc. This post is aimed to give my amateurish opinion about the fight mechanics, just that.

Excuse my English, it's not my native language