[Army Compositions] Feedback requested

[QuintusSertorius]

As a general rule, a foot archer can use a larger/longer bow with a heavier pull. Which is why foot archers have a longer range than horse archers.

We've already factored in the ankyle/amentum into foot and mounted javelineers. If you browse the EDU, do a search for "akon", those are the units which use it.

[Airos]

I try to have "realistic" army compositions so yes i use them quite a bit, one per stack or more for more cavalry oriented factions.
Jav Cav are usually the cheapest so they make great bait or garrison troops. Or for running down fleeing ennemies.


They are outclassed by bow cav in every way, including "nimbleness" (due to their poor range). If they reacted more quickly they may be more useful.

[Krampus]

That's an interesting approach to dealing with the abundance of light cavalry.

As a long time fan of the EB mods, who is also a min-maxxer, I've finally come around to the benefit of cheap javelin-armed missile units. Because (1) I like having many large-ish armies around the borders of my empire to attack and defend, rather than a few big expensive armies, and (2) death stacks of expensive and elite troops are hard to maintain due to AOR and M2TW's recruitment recharge mechanic. I can recruit and upkeep 2-5 units of cheap javelin skirmishers for the cost of a single unit of professional or elite troops. And they are a super cost effective way of inflicting casualties on more expensive enemy units, soaking missiles, soaking charges, and bogging down cavalry so that my more expensive units can counterattack. Even if I lose 1-2 units in a battle, they're cheap and easy to replace. Same with cheap jav cav, except they are a bit more expensive but offer more utility.

Has cavalry always felt unthreatened by missiles in EBII, or has that changed with any of the rebalancing we've done over time? It should always be the case that light cavalry (even the vaunted horse archers, if unarmoured or lightly armoured) should be at risk when facing foot archers (and if they come in range of javelineers). Historically, that's the only way settled civilisations were able to fend off the roving horselords, by putting their (foot) archers behind heavy infantry or walls.

Admittedly I'm coming back from one of my many hiatuses from this game. I moved to Tbilisi last year, visited Mtskheta, and I always remember how it's been my favorite region to play around in in EB and EB II. ...Hence my experience fighting steppe armies as civilized factions.

I remember initially trying to use the old spear infantry line in front of foot archers method that I used to use. It works great against cav that charges, like steppe nobles armed with bows and lances. Your ranged units won't kill tons of them, but they may help bait them into a charge. It's a challenge because your spear unit will take casualties, and you need to manage them right to make sure they don't break on the charge.

But pure bow cav seem to just sit in skirmish forever. As discussed above, I found that pure missile battles don't do much to thin the numbers of bow cav. I also increased the missile hit rate against cav for my games, and still notice this. The only reliable way I found to defeat them is to corral them with your own light cav and repeatedly rout them until most of them are dead.

But I don't know if I've played since some of the cav changes that you mentioned. Going to install the new mod and manually port over all my usual changes (if I can remember them) and start up another Pontus or Hayasdan game to give them a whirl.

[Sint]

Siege battles are more important than field battles so I tend to use mostly infantry with enough heavy cav on the flanks to counter the enemy cav and then route the infantry during field battles.

[bordinis]

Very excited for this release. This will be the first release when the playerbase had no idea what units were created for the game and hopefully more quality for battles and density of action for the campaign. Javelin changes are intriguing. It s like Christmas morning present, you do not know what you ll get and gets your mind tingling.

[QuintusSertorius]

Standardised light javelins for cavalry; regular ones now have a range of 65m and those with an ankyle 70m. Ammo standardised at 8. No change to the heavier ones.

[QuintusSertorius]

I note the missile hit-rate against cavalry of 0.45 is the lowest it's been (they all used to be 0.6). Also lower than that against infantry (which is 0.55). Going to test it at 0.5.

This is producing the desired results in testing - lightly-armoured and unarmoured cavalry have reason to fear archers/slingers (and javelineers if they get close enough).

[QuintusSertorius]

Any more feedback? We're deep into playtesting the current build to gear up for a release.

[Bast39]

I tend to ignore javelin cavalry when playing steppe nomads because of the obvious superiority of horse archers. But I use them quite a lot in my Hellenistic or Celtic armies, mostly for RP reasons. They are quite useful for chasing enemy light cavalry and skirmishers, and assisting heavy cavalry in charging the flanks or rear of enemy infantry. But I agree that they are a bit lacking overall, especially as skirmishers.

They could use a buff to their javelins (range and ammo, maybe) to make them more effective at harassing the main army. They could also use a buff to their speed and agility, because right now I think it's too easy for heavier cavalry (like medium lancers) to catch them and destroy them in melee (same for horse archers by the way, even if their range mitigates this).

Very excited for the next release! It's good to know that this will happen soon enough.

[bordinis]

Please buff somehow the chariot units in game. Especially those javelin throwers.. Higher accuracy for javelin chariots? They feel like a waste of a unit slot in the army.

[stupides Throwawayoui]

I've said it once and I'll say it again, remove prec and make the infantry throw their javelins normally. I've made that change a long time ago and never thought of going back to prec
with prec, units stand there in the "reloading" phase, and dont fight, without prec, they throw their javelins if they can(sometimes they might not so as to close in to melee, based on the general's judgement)
its always fun before the lines clash where everyone unloads their javelins and cause much devastation, and then close in for melee.

to change it is super simple, open export_descr_units and replace "prec" with "no" and tada, thank me later : D

[Shoebopp]

I've said it once and I'll say it again, remove prec and make the infantry throw their javelins normally. I've made that change a long time ago and never thought of going back to prec
with prec, units stand there in the "reloading" phase, and dont fight, without prec, they throw their javelins if they can(sometimes they might not so as to close in to melee, based on the general's judgement)
its always fun before the lines clash where everyone unloads their javelins and cause much devastation, and then close in for melee.

to change it is super simple, open export_descr_units and replace "prec" with "no" and tada, thank me later : D

Already fixed in the dev build . Fun fact, the history of EBII's relationship with the prec attribute is really tumultuous

1. EBII had prec at first. The reloading bug was present
2. EBII removed prec, but that caused units to never throw their javelins. The reason was the battle_config.xml configuration using ReallyBadAI's defaults
3. EBII restored prec, but kept the ReallyBadAI defaults
4. EBII started using z3n's custom battle_config.xml, which is compatible with non-prec setups
5. EBII removed prec, and now the dev build is stable where units throw both javelins without the reloading bug

[QuintusSertorius]

I tend to ignore javelin cavalry when playing steppe nomads because of the obvious superiority of horse archers. But I use them quite a lot in my Hellenistic or Celtic armies, mostly for RP reasons. They are quite useful for chasing enemy light cavalry and skirmishers, and assisting heavy cavalry in charging the flanks or rear of enemy infantry. But I agree that they are a bit lacking overall, especially as skirmishers.

They could use a buff to their javelins (range and ammo, maybe) to make them more effective at harassing the main army. They could also use a buff to their speed and agility, because right now I think it's too easy for heavier cavalry (like medium lancers) to catch them and destroy them in melee (same for horse archers by the way, even if their range mitigates this).

Very excited for the next release! It's good to know that this will happen soon enough.

Yep, they have range and ammo boosts. Selected "elite skirmishers" have more damage and can hide better.

That's the first someone's mentioned speed, rather than reaction distance.

Please buff somehow the chariot units in game. Especially those javelin throwers.. Higher accuracy for javelin chariots? They feel like a waste of a unit slot in the army.

There's nothing more we can do for them. They are "elephants" as far as the engine is concerned, but really badly implemented ones.

[randy_cat]

Make battles less a " flank and encircle " sure way to win. The AI doesn't manage well it's units and they often end up mobbed by the player. It could be accomplished by making infantry somewhat more powerful, so that by the time you mob them, a lot of casualties already are made. Or make cavalry charge weaker... as for light cavalry It Is close to be useless. They can Attack from behind and flank of course but heavy and medium cav are much Better at this. They cost more, true but they male light cav worthless.

Infantry Killing ratio Is somewhat too low, so that even for a true elite like hypaspistai It takes time to rout another unit, even the cheapest ones. This makes numbers prevail over quality, as It Is Always Better to have a lot of average infantry than a few picked ones.

[QuintusSertorius]

Sorry, but if you're using light cavalry to charge into the flanks of formed-up line infantry, you're using them wrong. That's not what they're there for.

[Sint]

In my current KB playthrough I'm using pure cavalry armies in the north and 15 inf+5 cav(1 gen+2 scythian and 2 sauromatian nobles) armies for the south.The armies for the steppes are mostly scythian and sauromatian light horse archers with some nobles to give some extra meele power.The infantry armies are mostly Hoplites+Peltastai Logades in the early game and Thorakitai + Bosporitai Logades after the reforms,at least when I have enough time to prepare them.In practice there often a few mercs or lighter native melee units instead.The support is usually 2 units of peltastai or something simliar and 4 foot archers.

[Rad]

Infantry Killing ratio Is somewhat too low, so that even for a true elite like hypaspistai It takes time to rout another unit, even the cheapest ones. This makes numbers prevail over quality, as It Is Always Better to have a lot of average infantry than a few picked ones.

While I don't think that the killing ratio is too low (I'm quite happy with it), I agree that something should be done with the numbers of elite troops. Most elite troops have fewer soldiers than regulars, and I think that's a mistake because their smaller size limits their punching power. Essentially, they don't have the necessary numbers to bring to bear upon the enemy, and not only does that prevent them from truly standing out, it can sometimes lead them to be chewed up in situations where they really shouldn't be getting chewed up. My suggestion is to make elite troops the same size as regulars. If the team feels that doing so would increase their campaign presence in an unrealistic manner, the issue could be solved with longer unit pool refresh rates.

[randy_cat]

While I don't think that the killing ratio is too low (I'm quite happy with it), I agree that something should be done with the numbers of elite troops. Most elite troops have fewer soldiers than regulars, and I think that's a mistake because their smaller size limits their punching power. Essentially, they don't have the necessary numbers to bring to bear upon the enemy, and not only does that prevent them from truly standing out, it can sometimes lead them to be chewed up in situations where they really shouldn't be getting chewed up. My suggestion is to make elite troops the same size as regulars. If the team feels that doing so would increase their campaign presence in an unrealistic manner, the issue could be solved with longer unit pool refresh rates.

In EB2 it is not really convenient to train elite infantry unless it is needed for specific purposes like assaulting the walls of a city. In any other case you might want to just train medium quality troops and don't even bother with the strongest ones.... but when it comes to cavalry it is really a matter of quality. Light cav sucks and also horse archers don't do much damage to armored targets. Heavy lancers is the best choice, so much so that training any other sort of cavalry is pointless at least from my point of view.

[Sint]

Light cav sucks and also horse archers don't do much damage to armored targets.

Have to disagree.If you use them correctly they will kill almost everything.They can still kill heavy armored targets if they flank and shot in the backs of the unit.A unit of sauromatian horse archers can kill more than half a unit of Cohors Reformata before running out of ammo when shooting at the back of the unit.HA's are all about micro.

[Rad]

In EB2 it is not really convenient to train elite infantry unless it is needed for specific purposes like assaulting the walls of a city. In any other case you might want to just train medium quality troops and don't even bother with the strongest ones...

That's what I've been doing, I had my regulars do most of the hard work (as they should). I just feel that elites are too limited by their smaller size, they should be good at more than just specific tasks like holding choke points, attacking walls etc. What I'm trying to say is that that the best way to demonstrate their better stats is to have them be the same size as other units - 160 on huge unit size, instead of 120.