Balanced Macedonia Mod for RTRPE

[Turk]

Hi all,
I am here to announce a little mod which will make macedonia more balanced and not so strong


What will be changed:


-Macedonia begin with 500Money
-Macedonia will start at war with the greek cities and the Seleucid Empire
-Armies and Buildings are more expensive
-A rebel city in macedonia which will stop macedonia and greek cities to expand too fast
-New Unit Stats(especially for Hypatistes)

Any other Suggestions?

[florin80]

Yes, make sure it doesn`t open the door for the greeks to become the power house. Afaik the thing is that the region is very lucrative and the faction that wins control of it(mostly macedon in RTRPE) becomes a very powerful faction. So, just limiting macedon might make the greeks go crazy. You`ll have to test it.
Some have suggested reducing the amount of provinces in the area as a way of making it less profitable and moving them to Gaul and Thrace for example.

[Black Francis]

Try putting their unit cost and upkeep up across the board. Watch you don't "unbalance" their armies though (lots of low level inf and no elite).

[Shorebreak]

I noticed that macedon was pretty powerfull in my mod set (Hic Sunt + Candelerus), but once i raised all of the building prices by 2.5 and all of the bulid times by 1.5 across the board, everything became "normal". In fact, Macedon and the Greeks are neck and neck, no one side getting a clear advantage. Try it out.

[KALI]

There are as you've probably noticed, a few ways to sort the problem.
In my game which uses the Macedons Met/Nav mod I've introduced a homelands economy system using hidden resources to identify factional homelands and lands that are more easily assimilated. It limits the farming and trade income when a new province is first conquered. Building the appropriate level of auxilia level reflects your tightening grip on the local economy (and cancels the block on income). This slows down faction development quite a bit.
I've also limited the availability of elite Hellenistic troops to homelands provinces, increased unit upkeep and increased many building prices. Mercs have gone up quite a bit in cost and upkeep, this also limits fast expansion. I've also given some of the Mac's nieghbours a financial boost in there basic homeland provinces. Eg illyrians who had a reputation as bold adventuring pirates get a trade bonus in the illyrian ports.

[marcvs agrippa]

I guess the key to the macedonian supremacy are their Hypaspistai Units. Many of their full-stack armies contain at least of 4 or 5 of these units and the Hypaspistai overcome any Thracian, Illyrian or German unit by far.

I don't think that Hypaspistai should be weakened, but they should be really, (really!) expensive and only recruitable at Pella and Thessalonia.

I haven't tested that yet, but you asked for suggestions

[Turk]

Any other suggestions or should i begin?
What is included can you see in post NO.1

[Mathius]

I'll be extremely interested in how this mod goes, because 4 in 5 campaigns I play it ends up with a slugging match between myself (usually Pontus or Rome) and the Black Death. I look at the problem slightly differently from other posters though - except in agreeing that Greece may well become an issue. IMHO the imbalance is in how lame Illyria and Thrace are under AI. Both nearly always vanish in a few years to Macedonian armies, before Rome establishes itself. This gives a pretty sold platform for whipping Greece, the Seleucia and so on and so on. None of the other power factions (Seleucia, Rome, Carthage) have quite this easy start to the game. Not sure this helps but good luck.

[Darviathar]

I've played RTR using the Extended realism mod. In the last month or so, I've played 3 seperate campaigns as Rome. Two into the 220's, and my current one at about 235. In one of those games, Macedon was indeed a powerhouse, which was welcome. I really had to pump out a constant flow of units to counter them. The Macedonian threat was pushing me so hard in Cisalpine Gaul that I was forced to build provincial barracks earlier than what I considered historically acceptable. I simply had to have more uniform armies, that allowed me to combine battered stacks and keep unit experience high. I eventually defeated them, and pushed to Byzantium to confront Pontus, the eastern superpower.

That said, It has not been my experience that Macedon is overpowered. In my current game, they were *completely* destroyed by Thrace by the 260's. I was very unhappy with this, although the Thracian armies are proving to be as difficult to defeat as Macedon usually is. In my third game, the Greek States seemed to get the best of the fight, and while I did fight Macedon some, the battles were not epic in scope.

In other words, Macedon has been a superpower in only one of my games. I'd prefer that some factions ALWAYS be strong in this game: Carthage, Macedon, the Seleucids, the Ptolemic Empire, and last but not least, Parthia (who never is). I've been reading about the "Black Death" on these boards for quite some time now, but never really seen it. Is this perhaps because I'm only playing Rome?

[Turk]

Ok i begin today or next day this mod is released...

EDIT:SRY maybe this little mod has one or 2 days to wait because i am working on some other mods

[Tiberius Nero]

Removing multiple hitpoints from hypaspists and elite hoplites is the very first thing you want to do in order to bring some balance to the Greek mainland.

[Quinn Inuit]

Agreed. My MightyMiniMod for the ExRM does just that, and after some research I saw (see the ExRM main thread), I'm going to remove them from the main build of that mod in the next patch.

[Wien1938]

I've actually removed multi hps from all units, increasing defence skills by 50% as QI and MC have suggested, although I've also increased those unit strengths - foot by 100%, horse by 50%. It plays better that way, also means no more invincible generals!
Richard.

[Darviathar]

I've seen 2 hp units removed from some factions, but not all; Bactria fielded some 2 hp units against my Parthians yesterday. I am wondering if they somehow "slipped between the cracks"? This could perhaps help explain how Bactria always crushes the Seleucid Empire in my games; they have 2 hp units, while the Seleucids do not.

[Quinn Inuit]

I've seen 2 hp units removed from some factions, but not all; Bactria fielded some 2 hp units against my Parthians yesterday. I am wondering if they somehow "slipped between the cracks"? This could perhaps help explain how Bactria always crushes the Seleucid Empire in my games; they have 2 hp units, while the Seleucids do not.

With which mods are you playing? I just double-checked the MightyMiniMod and the Bactrians have no 2hp units besides their generals. The basic ExRM doesn't have any of the 2hp units removed, though.

[Darviathar]

With which mods are you playing? I just double-checked the MightyMiniMod and the Bactrians have no 2hp units besides their generals. The basic ExRM doesn't have any of the 2hp units removed, though.

Maybe I've just not taken a close look at the units of the other factions. Didn't Triari used to have 2 hp, or am I mistaken?

I'm playing the ExRM mod with no mini mod's added in.

[Marcus Camillus]

Removing multiple hitpoints from hypaspists and elite hoplites is the very first thing you want to do in order to bring some balance to the Greek mainland.

Agreed. My MightyMiniMod for the ExRM does just that, and after some research I saw (see the ExRM main thread), I'm going to remove them from the main build of that mod in the next patch.

You will be interested to know that in the RTR Platinum v1.9 Release, 2HP units have been largely eliminated. I did quite a bit of experimentation and decided after several decussions with others to go ahead and reduce them to 1HP. Here is the info concerning this from the v1.9 Change Log file...

- Changed EDU to reduce most of the 2 HP's units to 1 HP. Reduced the "egyptian hypaspist", "seleucid hypaspist", "greek hypaspist", "greek hoplite elite", "illyrian hoplite heavy", "carthaginian sacred band infantry", "bactrian swords", "seleucid swords", "macedonian swords", "greek bastarnae", and "merc bastarnae" units from 2 HP's to just 1 HP, and then added 50% to their defense skill. Reduced the "greek hoplite spartan" unit, or Spartans, from 3 HP's down to 2 HP's and added 50% to their defense skill. Increased the "rtr german eliteswords", the only RTRPE unit with the berserker attribute, from 1 HP to 2 HP's, leaving their defense skill as per the EDU of the RTRPE v1.8 release. The only units remaining in the EDU with multiple HP's still are the general's bodyguard units and the various chariot units. The reason for this change is to correct for the overly weighted effect that multiple HP units have with auto-calced battles, which all AI vs. AI battles are calualtaed as.
[File changed = export_descr_unit.txt]

[Quinn Inuit]

I don't think the triarii used to have 2hp, but I could be wrong. I've actually never played vanilla. *ducks*

And Marcus, that's very cool. Two questions for you on implementation:
1) What did you think of my idea about increasing the armor a little, as well, so the formerly 2hp units don't become relatively more vulnerable to ranged units?
2) What about reducing general unit hp to 1? Morte did some interesting testing (see this thread), and it reduces generals' suicidal tendencies. If we did that, we might want to follow the EB route and give generals a default extra hp to keep them from dying all the time.

[Tiberius Nero]

Nah, EB generals are just ridiculous, you need a tac-nuke to stand a chance to kill these guys off. Alternatively, surround them after their bodyguard is gone, with a horde of heavy spearmen and hit them for 5 minutes real time and be prepared to lose a few spearmen as well.

[Quinn Inuit]

Really? They sound like MTW generals.

Ok, maybe we shouldn't go that far, but it might still be a good idea to give them a single extra hp.