Mass Rebalancing

[Shoebopp]

Normally I'd post this in the unit balancing thread, but unit mass is a pretty weird topic that I'd like to talk about in depth.

Mass's most important characteristic IMO is giving units the valuable ability to not get steamrollered like bowling pins by cavalry charges. In fact, since frontal cavalry charges tend to cause about 30-40% of your army's casualties in far-East battles, having a frontline comprised of high-mass units is essential. To prepare for this, you could choose units that "look" like they have high mass due to intuition (their discipline, armor, spear vs sword), but it's a lot more confusing than that. Units can have pretty strange mass values and the only way to know for certain how durable they are is by looking through export_descr_unit.txt. Here are some units with unintuitive mass values.

Noric Swordsmen (1.05) vs Libyan Swordsmen (1.0): I believe the reason for giving the Noric Swordsmen a little but much-needed mass is their higher armor (4) than other 1.0-mass X-swordsmen units (Gallic Swordsmen, Cisalpine Swordsmen, East Celt Swordsmen). If that's the case, why do some other professional grade units (defense skill of 9) with armor of 4 or above have a mass of only 1.0? Some that come to mind are Thureophoroi, Machairaphoroi, Numidian Late Infantry, and Galatianised Swordsmen. The most glaring offender is the Libyan Swordsmen, which despite having an armor of 6 (7 post reform) still have the ubiquitous mass of 1.0.

Levy spearmen units in general (0.8-0.9): Being a levied mob does not bode well for their ability to stand fast against cavalry charges, yet, despite wielding spears, these levy units have such low mass that a *frontal* cavalry charge levels them completely.

Thorakitai (1.05): Despite wielding spears, boasting a whopping armor of 8, being professional grade, and representing the epitome of Hellenistic innovation, these heavy spearmen barely fare better than their predecessor Thureophoroi against cavalry charges. Fortunately the EBII team buffed their mass to a healthy 1.15 in 2.35a, but this 2.35 quirk is part of the issue I'm addressing.

British Retainer Swordsmen/Indian Macemen (1.1): Despite their light armor and loose formation, these units have enough mass to stand fast against cavalry charges like no other. It's especially strange to see a mob of British Swordsmen stop a Gallic Bodyguard frontal assault dead in its tracks, or a loose collection of Indian Macemen NOT get completely knocked over by a Saka Cataphract charge.

To address these inconsistencies, I'd like to propose a system of calculating a unit's mass. The exact values are up to the EBII team, but the factors and some suggested values are:

Base: 1.0
Nonspear vs spear: Spear (+0.1) Sword (+0.0)
Discipline: Impetuous (-0.1) Low (-0.05) Normal (+0.0) Disciplined (+0.05)
Training: Untrained (-0.05) Trained (+0.0) Highly Trained (+0.05)
Morale: 1-4 (-0.05) 5-6 (+0.0) 7-12 (+0.05)
Armor: 1-3 (-0.05) 4-6 (+0.0) 7-12 (+0.05)
Defense Skill: 3 (-0.05) 6 (+0.0) 9 (+0.05) 12 (+0.1)

Thus the lowest possible mass would be 0.7 while the highest 1.4. If this sounds too extreme you could cap the highs and lows to 1.2 and 0.8 respectively. Hopefully this will make it easier for players to judge how well certain units respond to cavalry charges without resorting to scanning through export_descr_unit.txt like a nerd

[QuintusSertorius]

This is a good idea and systematising mass with a formula would be an improvement on the current system which is mostly eyeballed and uses equivalent units to gauge.

Note the cap at 1.2 is intentional - more than that at they just bull their way through phalanxes by mass alone.

[Shoebopp]

This is a good idea and systematising mass with a formula would be an improvement on the current system which is mostly eyeballed and uses equivalent units to gauge.

Note the cap at 1.2 is intentional - more than that at they just bull their way through phalanxes by mass alone.

Good to hear! This can be accomplished with a simple sed program that reads from export_descr_unit.txt and calculates mass from different stats, then replaces the current mass value with that calculation. If you would provide a list of stat modifiers, then I will gladly attempt to program it and run it through export_descr_unit.txt