Europa Barbarorum 2.08e is released!

[QuintusSertorius]

Changed the title to 2.03, where's my beer?!

I was expecting stealth-Ludens to have done it.

I owe you at least three, now.

[QuintusSertorius]

Update to diplomacy coming shortly, everyone.

[QuintusSertorius]

Indeed. Now updated to 2.03a - thank you for the quick feedback everyone, and thanks to z3n for the rapid turnaround.

If you were finding the pace of change too fast before, I'd recommend going back to Medium campaign difficulty, I suspect there's some hardcoded general aggressiveness at work there.

[QuintusSertorius]

I'd like people's observations on morale and it's impact on battles. I've seen a number of reports of mass routs, and I've seen some myself as well.

In 2.01, morale was too high. By the time routs occurred, very late in the battles, units were so depleted that they'd flee without rallying. I believe the number remaining has an impact on their likelihood to rally - ie return to the battle after breaking.

In 2.03, morale is generally half what it was in 2.01. Units rout earlier, but because they retain more men (if you don't immediately jump on them, hard to do in bigger battles if other parts are still fighting), they rally and return to the fight. I think this is particularly significant in the case of line infantry, cavalry feel fine for the most part.

I don't want a return to 2.01 where morale was basically irrelevant until it was a foregone conclusion. But I do think they're routing a little too early in 2.03. What I'm thinking of is a formula for consistent application of morale across all units (or at least for line infantry) where it would be a point or two higher than it is at present, but nowhere near as high as it was in 2.01.


I also want views on unit cohesion. It might just be me, but it seems to have changed recently. Does anyone with experience of 2.02 and my testing EDUs see anything different?

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

I started an Epirote campaign with 2.03,nly siege battles so far so not sure if morale works differently on walls than in open battle. Both sides' morale only collapsed to routing after they were massively depleted (so for my - attacking - units there was no rallying).

What I did notice was that my units would run the siege engines or ladders up to the walls and then.....stand back, disengage from the siege engine and admire it, so that I had to re-order those units to make an attck on the units on the wall. Don't know if anybody else has had that problem.

[QuintusSertorius]

I started an Epirote campaign with 2.03,nly siege battles so far so not sure if morale works differently on walls than in open battle. Both sides' morale only collapsed to routing after they were massively depleted (so for my - attacking - units there was no rallying).

What I did notice was that my units would run the siege engines or ladders up to the walls and then.....stand back, disengage from the siege engine and admire it, so that I had to re-order those units to make an attck on the units on the wall. Don't know if anybody else has had that problem.

Sieges make morale irrelevant for the defender if they're in the "town square", which causes an auto-rally as soon as they reach it. So it's field battles we need feedback from, as far as morale goes.

Siege pathfinding is problematic at the best of times, as long as you can get them to actually execute an order, even if it takes multiple attempts, that's a result. If they abjectly refuse to do something, then we may have a bug.

[Ozonius Tomicus]

I played Bosporans for the first time with 2.02c so opted to try them again with 2.03a. As of turn 10 there have been two battles thus far -- both attacks by Rebel governors when I began siege on their towns. I only had about half the size army as the garrison in each case -- but decent hoplite infantry, a unit or two of skirmishers and my general's cavalry.

Rebel aggression with the immediate sally seemed appropriate given the numbers. Both garrisons had hoplite-class infantry, missile cavalry, and bow and javelin skirmishers. I pulled my troops back into a defensive line with cavalry screening the redeployment and chasing off the lighter cavalry harassers.

With the greater distance to attack my position the various foot troops definitely get spread out, so only attacked my defensive line with 1-3 units at a time. This gave me opportunities for local superiority with 2-3 of my units counter-charging each enemy in turn. The resulting melees did not seem any shorter than in the previous version of the mod, but units were definitely recovering and coming back for more punishment more quickly than before.

Most of the units available to the faction at start remain the same, though some names have changed. The starting forces did include a sphendonetai slinger unit and those had not been available to the Bosporans when I played them before.

No new family members yet though there should be one in a couple more years. Both games as the Bosporans I have started with a 65-year-old heir, so expect him to keel over any day now. Hopefully new FMs will not go starving the turn after they appear as they all did in my 2.02c game. Also no sign of bad traits yet -- in the previous game the great majority of FMs accumulated 4-6 traits apiece from bumpkin, self centered, rumormonger, toady, repulsive, and shameless -- even with schools in all towns.