Europa Barbarorum 2.08e is released!

[Michael King]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for replying. My apologies for not replying sooner but I forgot my password and strangely The Org was not emailing the reset... it works now.

I meant the SEGA folder C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods where all the campaigns are, which is the folder the 2.01 suggested I install it in. That is precisely the folder you say not to install 2.05 into hence I am asking about reinstalling it... But now you are saying it has to be in the mods with the rest of the campaigns, which is also the one you say not to install in, so I am confused. Do I have to completely reinstall all my M2TW mods in a shorter folder name? Say it ain't so!

All the best,

Daniel

Well, the folder you describe is the correct mods folder, where EB II should be installed.

Sadly, EB II (and many other mods) can have issues when M2TW is installed in Program Files, so if you're having trouble with it, maybe reinstalling the game in a shorter path can help. For example, my game is installed in G:\Games\Medieval II Total War\ (G:\Games\Medieval II Total War\mods\EBII).

It sucks, but maybe reinstalling might be the best option.

[V.T. Marvin]

Another, less painful option is to simply copy your "C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\Medieval II Total War" folder and paste it as, for example "C:\Games\M2TW". If space is an issue you can then delete all other mods in this new "C:\Games\M2TW\mods" folder and then install EBII there. :cents:

It will save your original game and other mods you might already have, while still giving you well functioning EBII.

[Artemisia]

Hi there. I loved EBI but took a while to try EBII due to remembered M2TW as an unplayable trainwreck, so I'm still a little wary about the engine

So far, I've played 50-60 turns with both Saba and Pontos.

Campaign AI behaviour - does the AI combine armies properly and attack with large stacks; move with purpose; respond appropriately either to attack or defend; conduct diplomacy consistent with it's military activities; use balanced armies; use it's navies appropriately; does each faction feel like it is acting according to it's own agenda, not all following the same script?

It looks like mostly the AI does these things, a big improvement over both EBI and vanilla Kingdoms. However, it's not very good at them; the AI still makes some boneheaded decisions like starting wars on multiple fronts when it can't really afford to do so, but at least it's not some crazy berserker that always attacks its neighbours, and I've had the AI offer ceasefires when it starts losing and actually honour treaties (however, it still has trouble making concessions during negotiations, this is Total War after all).

On thing I've noticed with the AI merging stacks is that, while it tries to avoid attacking piece meal with small stacks, it tries to merge them too close to its target, so if the player is proactive they can attack the small stacks before they merge together. If possible, the AI should be programmed to first merge its forces, and only then move towards its target.

Campaign AI economics - harder to discern, but does the AI seem to have unlimited money, throwing stack after stack at you, or it is more constrained than it was; is the replenishment rate change noticeable?

I don't know if it's the replenishment rate holding it up, but the AI seems to spam stacks less than what I'm used to. Although I have noticed it emptying a merc pool in one turn.

Early campaign difficulty - are the Rebel garrisons in particular appropriately daunting, or are they too big? How quickly to AI factions expand?

Rebel garrisons looked really scary at first glance—but the autocalc allows the winner to take relatively little attrition past a certain point in the balance of forces (3:2 to 2:1). If you can achieve that it's possible to take rebel settlement after rebel settlement, especially if your faction doesn't have cultural issues (so you don't need to drop large garrisons to hold your conquests). Some AI factions expanded very fast in my two saves (Hayasdan and Bosporos grew surprisingly fast for instance) while others remained stuck in their starting position for 50+ turns.

One thing I noticed is that the rebels cause a huge ammount of lost income through devastation in the early game. It makes them feel like much more of a threat and forces you to deal with them, but the ammount of lost income is rather brutal for smaller factions—and essentially forces them to blitz or die, which I don't think is intentional.

Battle AI behaviour - does the AI hold a line, execute a plan of it's own rather than trying to "match" your movement, try to turn your flanks with cavalry and light infantry?

The AI seems to stick to its plan, to a fault even. It has definitely stopped shuffling its units around and responding constantly to small movements. On the downside, it appears very reluctant to change its plans, leading to things like heavy infantry chasing cavalry all over the map, and AI units spending too long finishing off a surrounded unit and not moving to help elsewhere on the battlefield.

The AI seems to make clumsy flanking attempts at times. But not really with cavalry—it uses its shock cavalry in the centre, which IIRC is a vanilla behaviour.

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised with the AI behaviour.

Unit performance - does cavalry move at a realistic speed and have the right impact when charging; does infantry move at a realistic speed and keep their formations when moving and fighting; do skirmishers use their missiles properly and seem effective against unarmoured targets and from the rear; are elephants effective and realistic-seeming; do units generally have a feeling of weight and solidity to them, not like two blobs brushing against each other? When feeding back here, be specific about which units you observed.

This is where it shows that the M2TW engine is still a trainwreck

Charging impact for both cavalry and infantry is often negated by pathing and formation issues. An extreme example was a unit of AI Hoplitai who became stuck in place with "Charging" as their status. They didn't move at all for several minutes, except for two soldiers (out of 150).

Units have trouble keeping formation when marching. Some examples fresh in my memory include the Cappadocian axemen/skirmisher soldiers randomly switching from line to column formation while marching and Pantodapoi Phalangitai moving to a narrower, deeper box from their assigned line formation.

Missile troops in general feel terribly ineffective. However considering how slowly melee troops kill it may not be unbalanced, although the very slow pace of battles makes for insipid gameplay, honestly. I would like lethality to go up across the board.

Skirmishers have issues because of their limited range, which generally forces compact formations—the loose formations that feel more logical are inefficient, because you end up with part of the unit out of range of the target. When put on skirmish mode, skirmishers get caught less often than in EBI, but they also tend to spend all their time running away and not use their javelins much or at all. In any case, I often disable skirmish mode because the units tend to be really dumb about which direction to run in.

Units in melee inevitably lose formation sooner or later and become blobs pouring into each other. Even phalangites with guard mode enabled fighting hoplitai get mixed up in the enemy formation.

I did not play with or against elephants.



Some more general observations:

• Units have a lot of trouble killing each other. My first battle was quite a shock when I (as Saba) tried to storm a rebel settlement and the battle ended in a draw because defenders weren't dying fast enough, and this is with lightly armoured Arabian units. In several battles I've see a general surrounded lose all his bodyguards and proceed to fight alone against hundreds of men for minutes, being knocked down dozens of times in the process. It just looks silly. I realise that historically armies didn't slaughter each other in ten minutes, but it's just pointlessly time-consuming and, honestly, a bit boring for battles to drag on like this. Please make casualties happen faster.
• levied Toxotai, Persian archers and Cretans all have the same missile attack value. I realise there are limits to how granular you can make it, but generic Greek archers being as accurate and deadly as the most famous mercenary archers and the bowmen of a renowned archery nation feels wrong. It also means there's little point in hiring the more expensive Cretans.
• Western Tribal culture fades noticeably in Galatia. It looks possible that Celtic units will become unavailable there by around 220BCE. Maybe the unique building in Ankyra (the Galatian meeting forest) could have some cultural conversion to Western Tribal?
• This was already the case in EBI, but Kappadokia Pontika can't produce warships—despite including Herakleia Pontika which produced some very big warships historically.
• Misthophoroi Hoplitai are the unarmoured Hoplitai Haploi kind, even though their unit card shows body armour shouldn't professional mercenary hoplites be the better equipped flavour of hoplite anyway?
• Using the minor settlements and no-upkeep slots to garrison units for free and then gathering them up for campaigns feels a lot more immersive

[V.T. Marvin]

Thank you for your excellent and detailed feed-back.:

I can't comment on much, however this...

[*]This was already the case in EBI, but Kappadokia Pontika can't produce warships—despite including Herakleia Pontika which produced some very big warships historically.

...was just an omission that is now fixed in the dev build and will be fixed in the next public release as well. Thank you!

[QuintusSertorius]

Firstly, thank you for the detailed feedback. It's always good to have, especially from people new to EBII.

Some more general observations:
Units have a lot of trouble killing each other. My first battle was quite a shock when I (as Saba) tried to storm a rebel settlement and the battle ended in a draw because defenders weren't dying fast enough, and this is with lightly armoured Arabian units. In several battles I've see a general surrounded lose all his bodyguards and proceed to fight alone against hundreds of men for minutes, being knocked down dozens of times in the process. It just looks silly. I realise that historically armies didn't slaughter each other in ten minutes, but it's just pointlessly time-consuming and, honestly, a bit boring for battles to drag on like this. Please make casualties happen faster.

Something you have to understand regarding kill rates is the huge amount of compromise involved from a number of different angles. In the RTW engine, every unit has it's own lethality setting allowing a lot of granularity. In their infinite wisdom, in M2TW, CA chose to abstract this down to a single number. For every kind of unit. There is just one number for melee kill rates, push it too high and cavalry charges become ridiculously overpowered. Too low and not only does melee take a long time, but cohesion suffers (because of course it's logical to tie cohesion to kill rates...). We've gone for a balance of cohesion, stable battle pace and not too overpowered cavalry charges.

You don't win battles in EBII by killing the other guys quickly. That's by design. As far as we know most kills in ancient battles tended to happen during a rout, not in the contested part. You win by breaking their morale. It means rather than insta-routs ending battles lasting a few minutes where most of the facets about a unit don't actually matter, instead stamina and morale come into play. Units with low stamina get tired - which impacts their morale. Units with low morale break earlier. You generally win by flanking and cavalry charges to the rear are especially effective - even with lighter units. It means you can actually change tactics, respond to crises, and have to deal with issues like shoring up wavering units, or having your general have to go off and rally those who have broken. Because they do often return to the fight if the battle isn't lost. With faster kills, that wouldn't happen either.

Sieges have completely borked pathfinding, they're not representative of proper field battles. That will improve in the autumn release, because settlements have been completely redone. Including removing the impassable (but empty) spaces that are "reserved" for future construction. That should assist in being able to flank during sieges.

Otherwise if it's too slow - turn the speed up.

levied Toxotai, Persian archers and Cretans all have the same missile attack value. I realise there are limits to how granular you can make it, but generic Greek archers being as accurate and deadly as the most famous mercenary archers and the bowmen of a renowned archery nation feels wrong. It also means there's little point in hiring the more expensive Cretans.

They might have the same attack value, but they use a different projectile with different ranges (and different amounts of ammo). Kretans and Persians can stand outside Toxotai's range and decimate them, especially because the latter are unarmoured. Kretans have armour which means any return fire from the Toxotai is much less effective, and they can actually fight in melee. What you pay for with Kretans is not only a Greek archer with an eastern archer's range, but a unit who turn into medium infantry when they've expended their ammunition. When you're only using one archer unit in your army, they're a much more efficient choice than Toxotai.

Toxotai are not as accurate or as deadly; and indeed a coming change will make levy archers unable to fire synchronised volleys, which will make the distinction even clearer.

Western Tribal culture fades noticeably in Galatia. It looks possible that Celtic units will become unavailable there by around 220BCE. Maybe the unique building in Ankyra (the Galatian meeting forest) could have some cultural conversion to Western Tribal?

Conversion mechanics are mostly working as intended now; the biggest impacts are the governor you choose and any conversion-impacting buildings. As Pontos if you install any of their more sophisticated governments, you will get conversion to Eastern Imperial. If you have an influential governor and build Native Colonies, that will happen even faster. However, aside from Allied Governments, the level of Western Tribal shouldn't make any difference to the units available there.

Misthophoroi Hoplitai are the unarmoured Hoplitai Haploi kind, even though their unit card shows body armour shouldn't professional mercenary hoplites be the better equipped flavour of hoplite anyway?

We've changed the concept of the unit, but we don't have a new card (or indeed a new model) for them yet. They're professionals in the ekdromoi (light hoplite) mould which is more flexible and better-suited to mercenary work (most of which was patrolling and raiding) than the much more heavily-armoured regular Hoplitai.

[z3n]

The AI seems to stick to its plan, to a fault even. It has definitely stopped shuffling its units around and responding constantly to small movements. On the downside, it appears very reluctant to change its plans, leading to things like heavy infantry chasing cavalry all over the map, and AI units spending too long finishing off a surrounded unit and not moving to help elsewhere on the battlefield.

The AI seems to make clumsy flanking attempts at times. But not really with cavalry—it uses its shock cavalry in the centre, which IIRC is a vanilla behaviour.

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised with the AI behaviour.

Glad to hear that.
Getting shock cavalry to perform better has been a long standing battle of mine. Currently I'm having to redesign the premise behind how the AI behaves and how it utilizes the XML file. Instead of relying on what I presume to be internal algorithms I've tried to write elements in such a way that encourage the AI to use its troops in a more efficient and sensible manner.

As you've observed, it's not always gone too well. Hopefully in future battles the cavalry disengage and reevaluate their target/priorities like they're supposed to. They should eventually end up either hitting your flank or trying to go for a double envelopment.

In 2.06a and onwards I hope to improve upon the rest of what you mentioned. Thanks again for the feedback, we really appreciate such through reports.

It looks like mostly the AI does these things, a big improvement over both EBI and vanilla Kingdoms. However, it's not very good at them; the AI still makes some boneheaded decisions like starting wars on multiple fronts when it can't really afford to do so, but at least it's not some crazy berserker that always attacks its neighbours, and I've had the AI offer ceasefires when it starts losing and actually honour treaties (however, it still has trouble making concessions during negotiations, this is Total War after all).

On thing I've noticed with the AI merging stacks is that, while it tries to avoid attacking piece meal with small stacks, it tries to merge them too close to its target, so if the player is proactive they can attack the small stacks before they merge together. If possible, the AI should be programmed to first merge its forces, and only then move towards its target.

Unfortunately this is due to being able to change everything (what,when,where,why) except how in regards to CAI decision making. Anotherwords it's a combination of my being unable to do anything about how the CAI pathfinder and how the LTGD (long term goal director) works. I do have access to a couple of LTGD related algorithms, other than that however I don't have access to the underlying architecture within the engine.

So for the moment things will probably remain the same as the current state of things is a choice between getting the CAI to move into high gear immediately when acting on defensive decisions, or allowing it to sit indefinitely until it finally plans a relief force. In essence, invasion decisions have a fundemental role when working with the defensive ones, so I have to find the right balance. Originally CA planned to implement a 'defensive priority' which would really open things up with allocation of units/armies in a more efficient and effective way, (especially siege relief forces) but they never did and I couldn't make it work because the parser info/architecture simply wasn't in place for that.

[Artemisia]

As you've observed, it's not always gone too well. Hopefully in future battles the cavalry disengage and reevaluate their target/priorities like they're supposed to. They should eventually end up either hitting your flank or trying to go for a double envelopment.

Just to clarify, I do see the AI retreating its cavalry and charging again. They're not necessarily very judicious in deciding when to retreat and most of the time charge the same unit again (not always a bad thing, of course), but they do try to break away and charge again after a while in melee. Of course, some of the time the unit gets stuck due to one guy not making it out of melee, or breaks formation trying to charge, although those aren't problems specific to the AI.

And while they're usually charging in the centre, at least they're supported in EBII. I remember in vanilla M2TW (and mods like Broken Crescent or King or Country) the AI would litterally suicide its heavy cavalry FM into my centre. It was like the AI was trying to lose so you've taken it a long way from that :)

Conversion mechanics are mostly working as intended now; the biggest impacts are the governor you choose and any conversion-impacting buildings. As Pontos if you install any of their more sophisticated governments, you will get conversion to Eastern Imperial. If you have an influential governor and build Native Colonies, that will happen even faster. However, aside from Allied Governments, the level of Western Tribal shouldn't make any difference to the units available there.

I'm sorry but you misunderstand: it's not that they're easy to deliberately assimilate, but that their culture is at risk of vanishing on its own. It's not too bad while they remain rebels (it declines, but slowly in my game as Saba) but as Pontos with an allied government and client ruler their culture is collapsing fast, 2% a year or more it seems. As I understand it, being bordered by a lot of Eastern Tribal and Hellenistic provinces has an influence on culture as well, though from what you say perhaps not using the client ruler would slow their cultural loss?

As an aside, it's a nice touch that EBII assigns the correct ethnicity to client rulers. Although it's sad the ethnicity trait doesn't seem to affect cultural conversion (hardcoded limitation maybe?).

Something you have to understand regarding kill rates is the huge amount of compromise involved from a number of different angles. In the RTW engine, every unit has it's own lethality setting allowing a lot of granularity. In their infinite wisdom, in M2TW, CA chose to abstract this down to a single number. For every kind of unit. There is just one number for melee kill rates, push it too high and cavalry charges become ridiculously overpowered. Too low and not only does melee take a long time, but cohesion suffers (because of course it's logical to tie cohesion to kill rates...). We've gone for a balance of cohesion, stable battle pace and not too overpowered cavalry charges.

You don't win battles in EBII by killing the other guys quickly. That's by design. As far as we know most kills in ancient battles tended to happen during a rout, not in the contested part. You win by breaking their morale. It means rather than insta-routs ending battles lasting a few minutes where most of the facets about a unit don't actually matter, instead stamina and morale come into play. Units with low stamina get tired - which impacts their morale. Units with low morale break earlier. You generally win by flanking and cavalry charges to the rear are especially effective - even with lighter units. It means you can actually change tactics, respond to crises, and have to deal with issues like shoring up wavering units, or having your general have to go off and rally those who have broken. Because they do often return to the fight if the battle isn't lost. With faster kills, that wouldn't happen either.

It's not a historical issue, though. Historically troops didn't die fighting very much, they were run down during routs, disappeared after a defeat (or just a long campaign), or died of disease much more often. Of these only the pursuit is shown is shown at all, and not very completely, in the game, so abstractions have to be made anyway. I also think you're way overestimating how overpowered cavalry charges would become; this is the M2TW engine still, with charges not always working in the first place I appreciate it's hard to work within the limitations, but I still think the lethality (or attack values maybe) should be turned up at least slightly.

They might have the same attack value, but they use a different projectile with different ranges (and different amounts of ammo). Kretans and Persians can stand outside Toxotai's range and decimate them, especially because the latter are unarmoured. Kretans have armour which means any return fire from the Toxotai is much less effective, and they can actually fight in melee. What you pay for with Kretans is not only a Greek archer with an eastern archer's range, but a unit who turn into medium infantry when they've expended their ammunition. When you're only using one archer unit in your army, they're a much more efficient choice than Toxotai.

Toxotai are not as accurate or as deadly; and indeed a coming change will make levy archers unable to fire synchronised volleys, which will make the distinction even clearer.

Unless I'm misinterpreting descr_projectiles it seems Toxotai are slightly more accurate than Cretans and just as deadly. The Cretans have 3 more arrows, which is not that much of an advantage, and they are less terrible in melee but uh, I'm not buying archers to serve as assault infantry. Certainly this is born up by my ingame experience: Cretans archery isn't better. They have longer range, but that doesn't stop the Toxotai from emptying their quivers.

Archery duels are only really relevant against horse archers and such. Even then, I don't see the point in Cretans when Eastern archers have the same range, and some have shields too. You need screening infantry for them anyway. Cretans will certainly do better on their own, but even the AI now avoids throwing unsupported archers around

Finally, I don't see a synchronised volley special ability in the game if it's a passive thing, I'm not noticing much synchronisation from my archers and even less from the AI's.

So, I still don't find the Cretans (or even the Persians) living up to their reputations in-game. Certainly, historically, archery depended a lot on how many arrows you could put in the air, but quality of the archers seems to me to have been more important than I find it to be for most of the in-game archers (if only because of something hard to model in TW, but better trained archers could shoot faster and be less tired by it).

Also, I've noticed missile attacks don't scale with experience like they did in Rome. So you could possibly up them a bit without risking gold-chevroned archers getting silly strong, as was the case with EBI.

We've changed the concept of the unit, but we don't have a new card (or indeed a new model) for them yet. They're professionals in the ekdromoi (light hoplite) mould which is more flexible and better-suited to mercenary work (most of which was patrolling and raiding) than the much more heavily-armoured regular Hoplitai.

Oh okay, that makes sense, and is even hinted at in the description (although it could be made clearer)

Since it seems there are plans for non-merc Ekdromoi, are there plans to reintroduce heavier merc hoplites? It would seem to me that in both cases, it was largely the same men who would lighten their gear for mobile actions and then wear the heavier armour if they expected a pitched battle, so it would make sense for the player to have the choice of which style to recruit. Besides, mercenary hoplites have always been useful in the game for factions with a hard time getting heavier line troops

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm sorry but you misunderstand: it's not that they're easy to deliberately assimilate, but that their culture is at risk of vanishing on its own. It's not too bad while they remain rebels (it declines, but slowly in my game as Saba) but as Pontos with an allied government and client ruler their culture is collapsing fast, 2% a year or more it seems. As I understand it, being bordered by a lot of Eastern Tribal and Hellenistic provinces has an influence on culture as well, though from what you say perhaps not using the client ruler would slow their cultural loss?

As an aside, it's a nice touch that EBII assigns the correct ethnicity to client rulers. Although it's sad the ethnicity trait doesn't seem to affect cultural conversion (hardcoded limitation maybe?).

As you've correctly identified, Galatia specifically is suffering from the effect of being surrounded by places with a different culture. I could possibly tone down the "nearby province" conversion effect some.

It's not a historical issue, though. Historically troops didn't die fighting very much, they were run down during routs, disappeared after a defeat (or just a long campaign), or died of disease much more often. Of these only the pursuit is shown is shown at all, and not very completely, in the game, so abstractions have to be made anyway. I also think you're way overestimating how overpowered cavalry charges would become; this is the M2TW engine still, with charges not always working in the first place I appreciate it's hard to work within the limitations, but I still think the lethality (or attack values maybe) should be turned up at least slightly.

Cavalry charges in M2TW take a lot of practise to pull off correctly - certainly harder than it was in EB1. Often what's needed is more distance. With practise, I find virtually any cavalry with a spear can perform pretty devastating charges to the rear - especially when repeated. Any higher than 0.35 and sword-armed cavalry will be able to do the same and any distinction would be lost. Plus as I said, it tips the balance away from stamina and morale having a meaningful impact.

Unless I'm misinterpreting descr_projectiles it seems Toxotai are slightly more accurate than Cretans and just as deadly. The Cretans have 3 more arrows, which is not that much of an advantage, and they are less terrible in melee but uh, I'm not buying archers to serve as assault infantry. Certainly this is born up by my ingame experience: Cretans archery isn't better. They have longer range, but that doesn't stop the Toxotai from emptying their quivers.

Archery duels are only really relevant against horse archers and such. Even then, I don't see the point in Cretans when Eastern archers have the same range, and some have shields too. You need screening infantry for them anyway. Cretans will certainly do better on their own, but even the AI now avoids throwing unsupported archers around

Finally, I don't see a synchronised volley special ability in the game if it's a passive thing, I'm not noticing much synchronisation from my archers and even less from the AI's.

So, I still don't find the Cretans (or even the Persians) living up to their reputations in-game. Certainly, historically, archery depended a lot on how many arrows you could put in the air, but quality of the archers seems to me to have been more important than I find it to be for most of the in-game archers (if only because of something hard to model in TW, but better trained archers could shoot faster and be less tired by it).

I'll get someone to have a look at the respective properties of the light_arrow and medium_arrow projectiles - that may be an error.

I also wonder if levies using self bows (Toxotai, Celtic Archers, etc) should have their attack lowered - again I'll raise it for discussion.

Also, I've noticed missile attacks don't scale with experience like they did in Rome. So you could possibly up them a bit without risking gold-chevroned archers getting silly strong, as was the case with EBI.

Experience doesn't work the same in M2TW; only the 1st, 4th and 7th chevrons actually do anything, as I understand it. Hardcoded in any case.

Oh okay, that makes sense, and is even hinted at in the description (although it could be made clearer)

Since it seems there are plans for non-merc Ekdromoi, are there plans to reintroduce heavier merc hoplites? It would seem to me that in both cases, it was largely the same men who would lighten their gear for mobile actions and then wear the heavier armour if they expected a pitched battle, so it would make sense for the player to have the choice of which style to recruit. Besides, mercenary hoplites have always been useful in the game for factions with a hard time getting heavier line troops

No non-merc Ekdromoi - the historians are pretty clear that they only make sense for mercs. For the rest of the world, things have moved on - there's the Hemithorakitai Peltophoroi (coming in the autumn release) who are eventually replaced by the Thureophoroi as "lighter than Hoplite" units.

Regular ones won't get heavier - the heavy hoplites are elites (Hypaspistai, Epilektoi Hoplitai, Carthaginian Sacred Band). No plans for heavier mercenaries either.