Gameplay Balance

[Arkanin]

Hi everybody,

This is my first post on these boards... I want to start by saying that Europa Barbarorum is an incredible mod! I've happily dropped MTW2 for a genuinely challenging campaign and have absolutely no regrets about doing so. The mod is just amazingly good fun.

I do have one and only one issue with the mod, however, and that is unit balance. There are a couple of balance related problems I see, nothing that can't be fixed. First, it appears that the designers relied on the Charge Bonus rather than relying on cavalry mass settings, which causes the cavalry I have seen to do negligible damage in charges. Between their extremely high cost and lack of charge damage, I have seen no reason to use most of the cavalry cavalry (except for one very cheap, very light unit to chase down stragglers).

Also, it seems like all unit's defense settings are a little too high. This can lead to archers never killing a single unit of mediocre infantry, and is also what I consider responsible for the undesirable gameplay side-effect where two exhausted melee units fight very, very slowly. The next issue I have seen is that there are various mistakes in unit balance, units are simply costed wrong or do not receive unit balance, and so on. Some examples of the balance flukes I have seen include Roman Rorarii -- which get 120 soldiers as skirmishers at near-skirmisher cost, but behave like low-quality legionaries, and should probably have only 80 soldiers, and Iberian Medium Spearmen, with almost twice the upkeep cost per man compared to Light Spearmen and a smaller unit, but only 2 more attack and good -> excellent morale.

So I wonder if the designers of this mod -- again an excellent, absolutely fantastic mod -- are officially done balancing units. If so, I will get to work on a mod for the export_descr_units.txt, or maybe I will do so anyway. ;) As it stands, my proposed balance changes would be:
-Improve cavalry charges by restoring cavalry mass to as in RTW vanilla.
-Reduce defense on most units (slightly improves missiles and prevents ultra-slow battles from occurring)
-Normalize infantry costs in general; slightly raise the price and upkeep of skirmishers, while slightly reducing the cost of elite units (this improves incentives to use superior units and compensates for the above defense reduction)
-Slightly reduce cavalry costs in general

I am wondering what you guys think about campaign balance in general, and if you have any other ideas. Overall I do think it's pretty healthy, but it could simply be improved. Please discuss :)

[Ibrahim]

you've missed a point of this mod: realism in combat, as well as looks.

actually, the charge is effective (at least with me); do they sound the horns/trumpets as they close? if they don't, you're waiting too long to close in a gallop. also the lethality(not mass) was lowered to prevent people from using all cataphract armies or whatever, and to reflect the fact that infantry was king in the EB timeframe.

the defensive ability has little to do (relatively speaking) with arrow damage. it's where you shoot the at and the lethality of the arrows (shooing at the rear is way more damaging than the front)
the slowness of battles is again lethality, not attack/defence related. in RTW the lethality of all (or almost all) weapons was 1; now a celtic longsword has say .225 lethality, and a dagger or arrow is less lethal. the slowing down is thus deliberate, for realism, not balance. lastly the rorarii have the stats they have again for realism's sake, and the prices are to add challenge to gameplay.
if you play long enough, the enemies will churn out elites, as more money is available.
I hope this was all helpful stuff.

[mcantu]

the mass stat has no effect on the damage done by a cav unit. it determines how the cav will push into another unit but doesnt add to the attack stat...

also, the defense skill stat is not applied to missile attacks

[Arkanin]

You are right that the mass does not explicitly increase some hard-coded value for deadliness, but its practical result is that the charge is more deadly. When the cavalry knock men over and press deeper into the unit, more enemies simply die. So far I have not seen my Roman Generals able to do much damage to even cheap infantry with a rear charge, but your mileage may vary of course. :)

I understand that facing affects archery damage. As I understood it, armor (from any direction) and shields (from the front) do affect missile defense. So unit defense does affect archery damage, correct?

I do believe some changes can be made that improve the quality of the game balance without compromising realism. If realism somehow significantly reduces the quality of the gameplay (at this point I do not see any reason it does, although I find the way the battles drag out to compromise the tactical richness of the game) I would definitely change it though. If I do make a modlet, a positive aspect of that is that players who will enjoy it may download it and those who will not enjoy it will not have to download it.

Anyway, I wonder: if deadliness is a hidden value, and there are many other significant hidden values, have the designers left us with a way to get an idea of what it has been set to for each unit, aside from editing the files (E.g. a deadliness value corresponds to an attack value)? I hope we can all agree that when you look at unit cards, there definitely do appear to be noteworthy imbalances in terms of overall unit power divided by some function of upkeep and recruitment cost. I do not think such imbalances make the game more challenging, rather, they reward players for building lots of one unit type, and that is probably not ideal.

[mcantu]

You are right that the mass does not explicitly increase some hard-coded value for deadliness, but its practical result is that the charge is more deadly. When the cavalry knock men over and press deeper into the unit, more enemies simply die. So far I have not seen my Roman Generals able to do much damage to cheap infantry with a charge, but your mileage may vary of course :)

I understand that facing affects archery damage. As I understood it, armor (from any direction) and shields (from the front) do affect missile defense. So unit defense does affect archery damage, correct?

well the overall defense # is made up of armor, defense skill and shield. the armor stat applies to attacks from any direction; the defense skill stat is a parrying bonus that applies to non-missile attacks from the front and front/right; shield applies to attacks from the front and front/left.

Save you cav charges for attacks from the rear into demoralized units...

[Watchman]

Especially with less than stellar horse, such as most the Romans wield is. That said, IIRC the mount mass values were under reconsideration for 1.1...?

[Arkanin]

well the overall defense # is made up of armor, defense skill and shield. the armor stat applies to attacks from any direction; the defense skill stat is a parrying bonus that applies to non-missile attacks from the front and front/right; shield applies to attacks from the front and front/left.

Save you cav charges for attacks from the rear into demoralized units...

That is a good suggestion. But as I have observed, the cavalry are currently sufficiently underpowered (when you examine 1.) their cost and 2.) their efficiency in combat) that they do not seem to regularly achieve cost efficiency even when hitting most infantry units in the rear. This is especially true when combat is slower and most infantry units can simply turn around and fight the cavalry, who did not get much of a charge to begin with. Hitting almost anything in the front seems to be a disaster, even skirmishers, as cavalry cost up to 1000 Denarii in upkeep and will trade one for one with units that cost as little as 200 Denarii in upkeep.

[mcantu]

from what i gather, you're basing this on Roman cavalry which is weak to begin with. there is much better cav throughout EB...

[ombudsman]

That is a good suggestion. But as I have observed, the cavalry are currently sufficiently underpowered (when you examine 1.) their cost and 2.) their efficiency in combat) that they do not seem to regularly achieve cost efficiency even when hitting most infantry units in the rear. This is especially true when combat is slower and most infantry units can simply turn around and fight the cavalry, who did not get much of a charge to begin with. Hitting almost anything in the front seems to be a disaster, even skirmishers, as cavalry cost up to 1000 Denarii in upkeep and will trade one for one with units that cost as little as 200 Denarii in upkeep.

I would suggest playing around a bit with cavalry to get the right feel for it, it is quite hard in the beginning to know how to use cavalry properly. As you yourself said, hitting infantry from the front is a disaster, which i believe is as it should be. When you do get the hang on using cavalry carefully and right, they really are a battle winning force. prices for cavalry are high because horses are expensive to maintain IIRC. Anyway, not trying to put you off making a mini mod, i´m just suggesting you try fiddling around with the different units and see if you can use them in maybe a different way then you are to get the most out of them, I find the balance really very good, and I really enjoy the way it´s different from other mods and vanilla rtw, it just takes some time to get to know how to use them properly. Just my 2cents.

[Arkanin]

I will definitely make sure to experiment with other cavalry :)

I also don't think frontal charges should be rewarded, though the cavalry I've played with (Iberian and Roman Cavalry) is not effective even when charging flanks. As for microing the cavalry properly, though... it's been get behind a unit that's engaged with another, then charge, the meek charge kills about 3 enemies, and fairly quickly more cavalry are dying than infantry, so I repeat.. is there something else I should do? (I play vanilla RTW competitively so I definitely know how to micro there!)

Also wondering, where do I find this deadliness stat? export_descr_units.txt? I'm not seeing it. Thanks!

[JeffBag]

stat_pri 6, 34, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, piercing, spear, 200 ,0.4
stat_sec 13, 18, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 ,0.15

The rightmost figure in each line is the lethality stat, and yes it is in the EDU file.

By the way, do you let your cavalry stop, reform up in a appropriate direction, before charging? They have to sound the horn and lower the lances before you get any charge bonus. Anyway, Roman cavalry are still pretty useless in a charge; you need those two handed lancers for that. They are however, pretty useful for preventing those two handed lancers from charging in, as their mobility allows them to escape a direct charge and to harass them while they are forming up for the charge, thereby preventing one.

[Arkanin]

Thanks for the information Jeff. Yes, I watch their formation and get a trumpet sound. Interesting thought about fending off better cavalry but I'm not sure I understand your idea, I would imagine better cavalry would cream mine so I'm not sure how you mean when you say I should fend off lancers with weaker cavalry.

[Kromulan]

Arkanin,
The reason elites are so expensive, relative to their incremental increase in combat ability, is to prevent you (actually, me) from building unrealistic armies consisting of nothing but elite units.

As to the cavalry issue, I was stunned the first time I used cav in EB. . . I was so used to cavalry destroying everything in its path in vanilla, I just stared at the screen for a few seconds wondering what happened to my cav. Then I grinned like an idiot and though "OK, so maybe there IS some realism in here"
Careful use of even light cavalry (I use horse archers in melee all the time) can turn a battle still. It's just not auto-win like in vanilla. I just caused a chain rout of 3 ~80% strength triarii with a rear charge on the middle unit from my single Illyrian light cavalry. Not a particularly impressive unit, but all I had at the time. . . I've also seen heavier cav do the bug on a windscreen impression trying the same thing . . . It's kinda fun not knowing if your foolproof battle-winning tactic will work or not.

[JeffBag]

Proper quality (i.e. non-Roman) shielded medium cavalry can beat similar quality lancers in direct melee due to the extra defense from the shield. They can dodge the initial charge from the lancers by running perpendicular to the direction of the charge, which somewhat cancels or at least screw the charge up bad. Against heavier cavalry, the faster medium cav can charge in to the heavy cavalry side while the heavy cavalry are forming up to charge into your infantry, then backing off and causing the heavy cavalry to chase a little, which results in them to have to form up again.

By the way, equites romani is definitely cost ineffective, so I wouldn't use them for general price comparison of cavalry. I never used them during my Romani campaigns, prefering Ligurian cavalry and Greek Hippies, which are cheaper and actually better, if not the same.

[Bonny]

The balance of EB is not perfect but imho well done in most parts ( I'm one of the few members who spend a little bit more time playing EB than aktual modding )

Also, it seems like all unit's defense settings are a little too high. This can lead to archers never killing a single unit of mediocre infantry

Archers are devastating to ligtly armored units but have almost no effekt on heavily armored units.
So you have to think what units you taregt with your missile units , If you target Phlangites or Hoplites the effects will be rather limited, if you target only th support units, ( Hoplite Haploi, skirmishers and all kind of celtic, iberian and germanic lower class infantry ) you will notice that those units will suffer heavy casualties. The direction of the unit is also something that influences the casualtie rate rather much. If you shoot in the rear or in the unshilded side missile units will cause greater damge to the armored units. For example Akontistai do little damge to Pantodapoi Phalangites, if they shoot at them from the front, if they shoot at them in the back two units of akontistai is enough to rout the Phalanx unit.

Some balancing examples : Drapnai are a Killer Unit in hand to hand combat, they manage to fight their way through most of EB's heavy units ( Triarii, Phalangites, Hoplites, Hypaspistai ) but they get eaten alive by missiles ( arrows and javelins ).

[Arkanin]

Arkanin,
The reason elites are so expensive, relative to their incremental increase in combat ability, is to prevent you (actually, me) from building unrealistic armies consisting of nothing but elite units.

As to the cavalry issue, I was stunned the first time I used cav in EB. . . I was so used to cavalry destroying everything in its path in vanilla, I just stared at the screen for a few seconds wondering what happened to my cav. Then I grinned like an idiot and though "OK, so maybe there IS some realism in here"
Careful use of even light cavalry (I use horse archers in melee all the time) can turn a battle still. It's just not auto-win like in vanilla. I just caused a chain rout of 3 ~80% strength triarii with a rear charge on the middle unit from my single Illyrian light cavalry. Not a particularly impressive unit, but all I had at the time. . . I've also seen heavier cav do the bug on a windscreen impression trying the same thing . . . It's kinda fun not knowing if your foolproof battle-winning tactic will work or not.

I'm curious, does this mean the elites are intentionally overcosted (IE made cost-inefficient) to prevent the spamming of them?

Some cavalry units in RTW were slightly overpowered, but at a high level of play cavalry attacks were not game breaking. They seem unusually powerful against the AI and in campaigns because the AI's grasp of combat tactics is extremely poor. I would probably not try to use EB cavalry against a human, but I guess that doesn't matter, if it's at least effective against the AI that works.

Do you guys have any suggestions for a faction with cavalry that is cost-effective?

[beatoangelico]

-Improve cavalry charges by restoring cavalry mass to as in RTW vanilla.
-Reduce defense on most units (slightly improves missiles and prevents ultra-slow battles from occurring)
-Normalize infantry costs in general; slightly raise the price and upkeep of skirmishers, while slightly reducing the cost of elite units (this improves incentives to use superior units and compensates for the above defense reduction)
-Slightly reduce cavalry costs in general

1 increase mass a bit, maybe, restoring to vanilla values, madness. With vanilla mass values and EB charge values cav could destroy anything with frontal charges.
2 as said it's not defence the "problem" but low lethality values. I'm pretty sure that the team won't change how lethality works for EB 1.1, so if you want you have to modify the files yourself (for example double lethality values and increase by 1 missile attack)
3 no way, one of the best thing EB accomplishes is that AI armies are not full of elites like the ones in vanilla and other mods, but more realistically made up of several good quality units with some levies and some elites. I wouldn't touch anything but some errors and inconsistencies.
4 cavalry is mostly fine. You have to use it very carefully, but is still a battle winner.

[pezhetairoi]

@Arkanin

Possibly the horsearcher factions, logically...

[Arkanin]

Hey, would anyone mind sharing with me the formulas used by attack and defense? I imagine that chance to hit on attack is adjusted by the attack value and the defense of the unit (which is adjusted by enemy unit facing)?

By the way, viewing export_descr_units.txt stat_pri field, melee attacks generally have a deadliness of 1. Isn't 1 the default, should be fine?

[Disciple of Tacitus]

Do you guys have any suggestions for a faction with cavalry that is cost-effective?

Head East, young man. You will find fanatic adherents to just about all the factions here - so send that general question out knowing that. Start a new thread with a "best cavalry faction" and find yourself in the middle of a fine mess. There may be some insightful threads already out there - so do take a moment and check out some of the older pages.
I've played mostly Western Factions, so I am of little help. I do know that the Gallic Briethen (sp) cav is the best in the west. As for out East - ask away - just remember ..."I warned you!!"

[beatoangelico]

Hey, would anyone mind sharing with me the formulas used by attack and defense? I imagine that chance to hit on attack is adjusted by the attack value and the defense of the unit (which is adjusted by enemy unit facing)?

By the way, viewing export_descr_units.txt stat_pri field, melee attacks generally have a deadliness of 1. Isn't 1 the default, should be fine?

take a look at this excellent guide https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88859

[mcantu]

arkanin,

you're looking at missile weapons. using 1 for melee weapons will make battle way too fast as every hit will be a kill...

[Arkanin]

Head East, young man. You will find fanatic adherents to just about all the factions here - so send that general question out knowing that. Start a new thread with a "best cavalry faction" and find yourself in the middle of a fine mess. There may be some insightful threads already out there - so do take a moment and check out some of the older pages.
I've played mostly Western Factions, so I am of little help. I do know that the Gallic Briethen (sp) cav is the best in the west. As for out East - ask away - just remember ..."I warned you!!"

Good idea, thanks

arkanin,

you're looking at missile weapons. using 1 for melee weapons will make battle way too fast as every hit will be a kill...

I see, thanks. So stat_sec in those cases must be the melee attack?

[Watchman]

Normally that would be the case. A surefire indicator is the third, fourth and fifth segments - they're always "no, 0, 0," with melee attacks, whereas with ranged attacks you have "[missile type], [range], [ammunition per man],".

[Arkanin]

Right now I've been playing with Iberian and Carthaginian cavalry, which at this point I find to be very underpowered. It takes 2 stacks of medium greek cavalry to win when frontally charging a single unit of skirmishers. I am not honestly confident I have so far seen a cavalry unit that is cost-effective when charging straight into undefended archers. :(

At which point I have noticed and I must ask -- why are the attack values on cavalry so low? Is that what is wrong with them, what causes them to fare so poorly in combat? It seems that 4-6 attack is the norm for cavalry aside from their charge bonus. For comparison, slingers have 8 melee attack. This really doesn't seem appropriate... from a realism, or gameplay perspective.

[JeffBag]

That is the attack rating of their lance, which has high charge value but low melee stat. You have to alt-attack for them to bring out their swords, which are far better in melee. Also slingers have daggers with a lethality of 0.04, though their attack may seem high.

Once again on this point of lethality I must stress that overarm spear cavalry like Hippies are rather crap for charging since they only have a 0.15 lethality and no ap stat for their lance, as compared to lancers which generally have lethality of 0.4 and the ap stat which are fundamental.

Personally though I still believe that the -2 penalty to skirmishers and the like should be -4 instead, and certain skirmishers like Roman leves and Iberian velites come with good attack and high lethality spears with the light_spear attribute which is pretty capable of slaughtering even medium cavalry.

[Korlon]

Most likely due to the absence of stir-ups. They don't have the balance for that kind of melee. Some cavalry have large lethality though. I think the Greek General's lance has .4 lethality, which is fairly huge even though their attack is only 4.

[LorDBulA]

Skirmishers are tricky. They run away from charge and this screws up charge pretty bad. Loose formation doesnt help either.
This is a big flaw in RTW mechanics.

[mcantu]

Right now I've been playing with Iberian and Carthaginian cavalry, which at this point I find to be very underpowered. It takes 2 stacks of medium greek cavalry to win when frontally charging a single unit of skirmishers. I am not honestly confident I have so far seen a cavalry unit that is cost-effective when charging straight into undefended archers. :(

At which point I have noticed and I must ask -- why are the attack values on cavalry so low? Is that what is wrong with them, what causes them to fare so poorly in combat? It seems that 4-6 attack is the norm for cavalry aside from their charge bonus. For comparison, slingers have 8 melee attack. This really doesn't seem appropriate... from a realism, or gameplay perspective.

It really sounds like you still need to get used to a different style of cav use than what youre used to in RTW. Skirmishers will not rout as soon as contact is made with cav in EB. No cav should be left in melee too long after the charge is complete, esp if they have no shield. When charging, use alt-right click so the cav switches to their swords after they charge; then if you see that they start taking casualties, pull them out...

[antisocialmunky]

The only exception are the heavy cataphracts and some of the Eastern FMs that are exceedingly hard to kill. But even then they tend to do better if you charge in when units start wavering, use mercenary light cavalry to kill skirmishers instead.