Slowing down combat...

I just wanted to share a little mod I have placed into my game and am finding very satisfying. It is a fairly simple one I have just increased all unit's Defensive skill stat by 4 and all units morale by 2...

I am a fencer my and practice as hard on defending myself as attacking. yet when you look at the stats in the game, for the majority the defensive skill greatly lags behind the attacking skill...

This makes each inidividual in a unit harder to kill, but maintains the deadliness of missile weapons (because the defsive stat is not applied)...

My tests so far have shown no weirdness coming out of this. The phalanx still being as effective against cavalry as before, if not more so because the individuals are harder to kill and the morale change means infantry stick around longer. But elephants seem to work fine but take more casualties than before... Infantry vs Infantry takes longer, Phalanx vs Phalanx take longer, cavalry vs cavalry takes longer... Note that the charge bonus of cavalry is more telling now as it it is needed to overcome the defensive stat of the target... Note also that classic pinning and flanking tactics still work fine and units are not not totally immune to routing...

I still have to test other difficulty levels then medium but it looks fun so far,,,

Interesting... I have considered doing something like that sine I began to mod my game. But I keep forgetting to do it when I plow through the file. THere is always something I like to mod in, out or tweak.
I like the morale as it is, units run when they should relative to their losses, so I guess I don't like the morale issues (also some units can rout in face of a nice pila shower, don't want to lose that).

Yes, I've been meaning to do this as well. I agree with Kraxis about morale. But better defense for most units would definitely slow the offensive punch.

I have an issue with archer accuracy as well because single volley kill rates of base level green recruit archers vs. unarmoured at range are far higher than good rifled muskets ever caused...but rather than give armour to everyone, I'm leaning towards the idea of lowering archer power somewhat for most units, and particularly elite, but giving the elite archers AP, so that they still inflict *some* casualties to the most highly armoured men (particularly the cav that has high armour but are sitting on an unarmoured horse...) This should help the barbarians.

I wonder if this might have an effect:
In the export_descr_unit.txt file, there is a stat at the end of the primary attack line (as well as any secondary attack line). It is described in the readme as the min delay between attacks (in 1/10th of a second). I wonder if perhaps this was increased to a reasonable level that kill rate may be reduced by a considerable margin, and therefore lead to longer battles.

Just a thought. I would like if an expert modder would respond to this, if it has any relevence, and possibly even test it in-game (which I may do myself).

Kraxis - I have to admit I am considering changing the morale back again, having peasant units not break and run until they have had over 50% casualties seems a bit much, and the simple fact that the casualty rate has dropped means morale takes longer to come into play... But then again it does force to you consider morale as it make it very difficult to break enemy units by a simple frontal attack giving infantry a better chance against cavalry and it also means that routed units are more likely to turn around and rejoin the fight. You are forced to be more creative (and pile on the morale penalties) so I have not decided yet...

Slider6977 - I have heard funny things can haapen to the animation spped on the screen if you do that and it why I was looking for a different method... I have no problem with men fighting quickly, it was just that they where dying too quickly, I have been considering bumping the defence stat up by another 2 points and returning morale to the default values...

Red Harvest - That would be some else, is there no way of effecting the accuarcy of a missile unit? I mean when you see the animation you see arrows landing all over the place so they must be able to miss... You should start a thread on this if there is not one already..

Red, I have already done most of that with the archers... But no AP (that is reserved for the merc slingers).

Right now the Cretans are the best archers (12) while the Pharaohs are next (11) best, and a lot of arcehrs stuffed in at 10. The Cretans are now extended to both Sicily and Africa but the chance of them popping up has been reduced significantly along with the two slingers. But more infantry has been made available, especially my stronger Cilicians (3 pilas and square formation). They come more frequently in Cilicia but can also be found in the Aegean (seems fitting to me). Wanted to stuff them into Syria, but with the million of other mercs it was not that great.

But I agree a way to lower accuracy would be great (but that would up FF again).