Losses in the battles in the EBII

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi Guys,
I've played a Pergamon campaign and I've got some second thoughts about one aspect of the game - the losses.
- the casualties in the victorious battles are very low. They are low not only because most of them come from catching the prisoners during a rout, but because there's a high rate of healing after the battle (my observation: 20% is healed), and this is more pronounced with the ability of the general to heal (33% with, eg, a Doctor ancillary).
- the result is: you recruit one army, you go to war, you win battles with very few losses, and you keep on using the same troops for further conquests (be frank: the players don't lose battles frequently).
- what follows, it makes the elaborate recruitment pool system irrelevant: you very rarely need to come back for replenishment (or you merge units). So why to have this carefully crafted system while you simply don't need all those recruits?
- furthermore, in many other mods the loses make a natural limit of expansion: your wins may be Pyrrhic: you need to come back to your core provinces for replenishment. And you care about the losses as you may have your pools emptied by a reckless command in the battles.
- actually, it makes a strong resemblance to the bad Warscape system (R2TW, ATW) where you just get a steady inflow of the new recruits into the line without bothering about the recruits;
- a side effect of the system is that the units gain the experience chevrons very quickly. As they are granted on the basis of the differences between killed/captured enemy soldier and lost own soldiers, the EBII system makes it much faster (much fewer lost soldiers than in the other mods). You can have golden ones very quickly.
So what do you think? I personally think that a kind of mechanism of "losses while on the offensive" should be somehow introduced to prevent the endless conquests.
For now, the availability of the recruits is not a significant obstacle for such conquests.
JoC

More recent thoughts:
1) the armies would always lose troops while on the march. The numbers I can give out of head are for the 19th century. In the France-Prussian war of 1870 the Prussian armies that arrived to siege Paris fielded only 50% (or so) of their initial numbers. The extreme case was of course the Napoleon 1812 campaign when the number of troops who reached Moscow was only 30%. The M2TW doesn't have such a mechanism at all.
2) the normal situation for the EBII timeframe would be to come home after a campaign and disband units. The M2TW cannot provide for such a mechanism.
3) data for losses in 2.35 at Very Hard is in this thread

[Wulfburk]

i still think the battles are over too quickly, hence the minimum losses when winning. Rarely i get a battle where i deploy all my units and need to wait just a wee bit for the battle to develop through attrition.

A stalemate in a battle for just a minute or so in my epeiros campaign has never happened, and im on turn 339. Its either complete victory for me and like... 200 losses and slaying 2000 (and that is me trying to not game the AI), or (the rare few times) complete defeat where my line breaks apart with few units even engaging due to morale stuff.

[tentaku]

No you are just pretty good at the game. For me, I suffer pretty horrible casualties. And since I use a lot of ethnic units, I have to send them all back to where they came from to get retrained. That has been a pretty fun logistic experience for me.

The only ones gaining fast experience in my army are the cavalry units because they always responsible for chasing routed enemies. The regular infantry suffer a lot of casualties in grind battles that last a long time and result in bad k/d ratio.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Even if I were so good, why I do have much more losses in the other mods? It's really something slowing down expansion: I make an incursion but after defeating the enemy army I don't have enough forces to take the settlement. Pyrrhic victories perfectly possible.

I also use the ethnic units a lot - and here's another observation. Large availability of good local units makes factions having very good all-round armies. Again, in the other mods one may struggle with having no access to some types of troops - it forces you to employ different fighting styles. In the EBII I always had local troops fill the holes in my native roster (it might be though due to having played with a limited number of factions). In the other mods even if you do have such an access, you suffer losses and you're losing this plughole. In the EBII once you recruit one unit, you play with it for a long time.

Furthermore, with the AoR units, there're many units possible to be recruited. The long pool-refreshing times (for some units like 25 turns) make then little difference as there're some many (often similar) units and you suffer little losses.

All in all: to my mind, there are too many soldiers available around what makes the game easier (too easy? again, this might be just the experience of the factions I'd played. I'm wating for 2.35 to play Lugiones, for instance).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pergamon, hard/hard

[QuintusSertorius]

Interesting that you're playing on Medium (?) Unit Scale. I only play on Huge and find I suffer a lot more attrition in battles I win than that. I don't get as many casualties recovering, either. So I wonder if Unit Scale has an unaccounted for impact on this phenomenon.

[Hellenikon]

I agree with Quintus, i also suffer lots of losses when facing strong armies, when fighting levies or low morale enemies who chain rout, it's obviously much safer. Those galatians euletheroi aren't really a match for hellenic troops pound by pound, much less controlled by the player. Try playing Sweboz and see how many casualties you get for each victory. I play on huge too, but i'm not sure if that has any effect.

[Lusitanio]

EBII casualties system is right and won't change. In fact, it would not make sense (in ancient battles) to win a regular battle with more than 20% casualties. You should play with Large or Huge Unit Scale. I play with large and manage to have good battles with casualties around 10% to 25%. It really depends on the battle. Sometimes I even manage to win battles with 60% casualties on my side (mostly sieges and some battles that didn't turned out how I planned)
And remember to not have more than 2/3 elites in your army, with a good composition from other types of troops. Give AI a fighting chance. Don't try to exploit the AI faults.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I play on Large, not Medium, IIRC. What you see in the pic are depleted units (only sphendonetai are full, ie 90 soldiers). It might be well the case that healing in the battles is counted in nominal terms (how many soldiers are resurrected), but not in percentage terms (what %% of those fallen are resurrected). I don't know.

it would not make sense (in ancient battles) to win a regular battle with more than 20% casualties. You should play with Large or Huge Unit Scale. I play with large and manage to have good battles with casualties around 10% to 25%. It really depends on the battle. Sometimes I even manage to win battles with 60% casualties on my side (mostly sieges and some battles that didn't turned out how I planned)

I fully agree that regular casualties in a regular battle shouldn't be more than 20%. However, what about the other argument: that during any march the armies suffered much desertions, illnesses, accidental wounds, brawls, petty mutinies and other march-casualities - so that it should melt away on the campaign?
(and the issue of all-golden armies remains anyway)

And remember to not have more than 2/3 elites in your army, with a good composition from other types of troops. Give AI a fighting chance. Don't try to exploit the AI faults.

I think I do. And I'm rather harsher - just 20% units of elites, the rest should be middle and lower level troops (the pic I've shown was actually an emergency). However, the composition of an army should not be dictated by home rules, but through the availability of the troops and their relative prices. I think there should be a lack of elite recruits and they should be so expensive that the players would in a natural way compose a balanced force. It's the issue of design and balance - I think we do want a player to role-play and feel the difficulty of the choices to make.
(let's take the Byg's Grim Reality submod as an example: from a certain size of a faction, the player is restricted by filling the recruitment pools of the elite and professional units only in three places - dictated by the presence of the generals with a PTF (professional training staff) ancillary. His armies will - by a modder's design - consist only of few elites on top of the other types of troops. He also need to choose the places for those generals to station, usually in the direction of an attack (actually, there're even more restrictions in the BGR: religion requirements, castle - but forget about it)
I think the EBII is doing a really good job in this respect: the level of government restricts access to the elite units, and their replenishment rates are much lower. Also the colony system and the AoR provide for restrictions. They make the player indeed using other types of troops. However, the low campaign losses (up to 20% in the battles, the very high rate of healing after the battle, no march casualties) make these restrictions a void, in my experience.

I just wanted to draw your attention to this observation.

[Cryoshakespeare]

I've found the solution is just to use armies with low tier units, get plenty of casualties and attrition then. But honestly, that makes the logistical issue even less prevalent, as you can recruit these low tiers almost anywhere.

It's a tricky thing to balance. I do play on medium unit scale too so perhaps it's a factor. But I'd say it's mostly that you've optimized battles so well to probably cause the morale break earlier and position troops effectively. I think the only likely help you're going to get with this is recommendations for house-rules, rather than game wide changes.

[Lusitanio]

About the lack of attrition, you're right, Medieval Total War does not have that (I think it was only introduced in Napoleon Total War), so yes, your armies don't suffer that much but still raising the casualties number does not seem to be the right answer... But EBII also has armies turning to rebel so that compensates a little.

Well elite units are already expensive and have lower replenishment rates so there is not much we can do about that. I think the only thing you can also do is stop retraining units and just merging them. It kinda makes sense because the AI doesn't do it to.

[Septentrionalis]

I play on huge unit size and medium battle difficulty, the latter because it doesn't make sense to have your own troops weaker than the equivalent of the enemy. I suffer losses that are logistically painstaking and financially difficult to recover.

Both seem, however, historically accurate. Breaking the enemy is a harsh reality. When one side realizes that they are losing more than the opponent, morale begins falter and once individuals begin to flee in panic, the rest are unlikely to tolerate the continuously worsening odds. If you take Cannae as an example, even Roman historians admitted that Carthage lost slightly over 10% of their force while destroying the larger Roman force almost entirely.

I personally think that the system is awesome. It also allows for those rare battles in which neither side gains the advantage and the losses mount extremely high, producing the Pyrrhic victories mentioned by the original poster.

[ramsesii]

Some help you can give the AI are maybe houserules. That help to give the AI anedge.
Some of mine are:
1 I never have more then 17 units in a stack.

2 I use eliteunits very sparingly, and never more then 1 or 2 units in one stack (never of the same type).
In my current macedon campaign My max for faction elites is: 1 unit of Hypasides and 2 units of MAK peltasts and 2 unt of hetaroi.
The hetairoi hurts especially becaus I modded the eprirote BG cav (Molosasn Agema)in as my own BG cav (Epirus is deadanyway) and put their size on max 20 (huge unitssize) man so my generalunit cant provide real support in battle.

3 I Always meet the enemy in the field so that i dont fight in perfect defensive position.

[tentaku]

2 I use eliteunits very sparingly, and never more then 1 or 2 units in one stack (never of the same type).

Hard to do as Romans though, there is no clear cut definition of an elite unit. The whole triplex system is filled with "elite" units compared to the rest of the world.

[QuintusSertorius]

Hard to do as Romans though, there is no clear cut definition of an elite unit. The whole triplex system is filled with "elite" units compared to the rest of the world.

Easy to do if you ensure half your army is non-Roman.

[tentaku]

Easy to do if you ensure half your army is non-Roman.

Fine I just wanted to keep my army nice and shiny

P.S. the non-Roman unit recruit pool replenishment rate is kind of slow, especially considering the crappy barbarian peasants also take as long as the elite ones in replenishing.

[QuintusSertorius]

Fine I just wanted to keep my army nice and shiny

P.S. the non-Roman unit recruit pool replenishment rate is kind of slow, especially considering the crappy barbarian peasants also take as long as the elite ones in replenishing.

It's not slow if you're using Allied Governments. It's only slow if you're trying to rush the Romanisation process by dropping Civitas Libera governments everywhere.

[ramsesii]

I dont agree with using allied goverments in Tarente and Rhegium.
This is italy proper and shouldnt have mini kingdoms.
Any thing north off your Original holdings is free game though.
Sicily I done both ways.

Merc pool also helps to keep the alea units replenished.
I use the folowing army for the romans, Quintus will recognise it I think

1 x Generale
2 x Cav, max 1 unit equites
2 x Triarii
2 x principes
2 x Hastati
4 x skirm (2 x javelins and 2 x slingers) Leginu dont count as skirmishers because of their stats.
4 x alea, max 1 unit Pedites or Hustates (both elitelike), i use a lot off sabelli and ligurians.

BTW I modded the Cohors Sociorum back to 180 men, this makes them less overpwered compared to other alea units.

[QuintusSertorius]

I dont agree with using allied goverments in Tarente and Rhegium.
This is italy proper and shouldnt have mini kingdoms.
Any thing north off your Original holdings is free game though.
Sicily I done both ways.

Taras was definitely not "Roman" or "Italic" in 272BC, it was a Greek city. It's a perfectly viable candidate for an allied regime, rather than immediately imposing a Roman administration. Rhegion is a different case, given it had already been taken by the Romans, then lost to a revolt.

[ramsesii]

Taras was definitely not "Roman" or "Italic" in 272BC, it was a Greek city. It's a perfectly viable candidate for an allied regime, rather than immediately imposing a Roman administration. Rhegion is a different case, given it had already been taken by the Romans, then lost to a revolt.

I think it depentson your roleplaying angle.
Ik like to see alied regimes as real independent, I cant see Rome allowing Taras enough autonomy to run the risk of being again a steppingstone for a hellenic power, thats why I give it roman government.