Mental Attribute and longer battles

[John Woods]

Would raising the mental attributes of all units by a percentage increase the battle time? I've modded the game to my liking except for a realistic way to increase the battle time a bit. Not looking for 30 minute battles just somewhat longer.. I would prefer to not raise the armor ratings as this most likely would make the smith/foundry buildings useless.. Any suggestions?

Thanks

JWoods

[Simetrical]

It should help if most battles end in mass routs. If battles tend to end in slaughters, it's not going to do that much.

-Simetrical

[ellinelle]

The best way to make battles last is to modify the the stat_pri and stat_sec values. The last two values are the time between attacks and what I call lethality (I've haven't seen any other description of it yet). These are mostly set to 25, 1 although some units have 0.73 and 0.87 for lethality. I find that setting the time between attacks to 250 for all melee stats makes battles last for more realistic periods although it does look slow when you zoom in. You can also reduce lethality by a significant percentage ( e.g. multiply by 0.1 )although the factors don't quite work in an obvious fashion. The second method has a problem in that it seem to negate the charge factor.

I certainly agree that melees should last much longer. Moving from extreme missile range (say 300m and that's pretty extreme) to actual contact at a walk would take about 3 minutes or about 1 minute at a charge. While the charge itself could break a unit, if this did not happen almost instantly, melees could easily last for over an hour. This means that actual kill rates were normally quite low.

BTW, the above changes do not noticeably prevent cavalry from mopping up routers. Also do not change the factors for missile weapons, only melee. Having said that I slowed down slings and javelins as I'm fairly sure they do not reload as fast as bows.

[John Woods]

ellinelle thanks for the ideas

I have tried your method(after trying 3 other ideas..) and I decided your's works best.. I can live with the slow zoomed in look since 75% of battle time is general's view anyway.. I did change it to 75 instead of 250 though! Added +2 morale to all. Now Carthage infantry lasts 4 secs instead of 1 against early Roman legions..

One mod vastly increases armor - works but smith/foundry useless
One mod double HP/Double morale - does not work very well. Too much imbalance as Cretan Archers attacking with KNIVES amongst other issues
One mod upped armor a bit(factor of one) and added +4 mental. This one not too bad.

Did you do anything for archers?

John

What did you do with

[Bob the Insane]

One mod double HP/Double morale - does not work very well. Too much imbalance as Cretan Archers attacking with KNIVES amongst other issues


Would this remain as so much of an issue now the missile units no longer make melee attacks with the missile attack values?

I am considering a slight morale boost for all units (1 or 2 points), has any tested the effectiveness of this?

Also had anyone considered the rebalancing of attack verses defensive skills say give all units a bonus to defensive skill to see if that lengthens things out a bit??

[John Woods]

Bob,

The Cretans issue was after the patch.. Maybe it was an isolated incident...

I see a small increase in battle time after raising 2 morale points to all units.

Def/Att would probably work but I think would need rebalancing.

Maybe the mod I tried that doubled HP/Morale problem was with the morale.. Logic says doubling HP should just make the unit last 2x as long..

[John Woods]

Bob,

The Cretans issue was after the patch.. Maybe it was an isolated incident...

I see a small increase in battle time after raising 2 morale points to all units.

Def/Att would probably work but I think would need rebalancing.

Maybe the mod I tried that doubled HP/Morale problem was with the morale.. Logic says doubling HP should just make the unit last 2x as long..