What Mods Are Needed - Lets Have It.

[danimal]

So RTW is generally great. Good news.
SP is very good especially on the campaign map.
MP has some issues especially for the ultra hardcore.

BUT

We all know there are some issues that need adressing.

Speed of infantry.
Cavalry strength on a charge.
Manouvering of spearmen.
Kill speed.
Undo that bloody annoying dumbing down of terrain effect.

Please add more.

Sooooooooooooo.

Lets all get this agreed so the mods can be made that we all agree on and get on with the game cos its not that far off what we want.

Speed of infantry.
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Walking speed - adjust by how much? Does this need changing?
Running speed - adjust by how much as we know this is silly, especially when routing.
Charging speed - Lets get rid of those Carl Lewis with a ton of armour. But how much by.

Cavalry Strength
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Now the charges ARE BETTER, no doubt but far to devastating. Look at kill rates and penetration through 1/ spears 2/ swhordmen/ 3/archers. This should be 1/ almost none 2/substantial 3/complete. Set up custom battles and just push cavalvry through the appropriate units. Post your results.

Manouvering of spearmen
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Problem. This manouvre is possible but shouldn't be
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| | - spearmen ( arrow shows facing direction )

xx - cavalry

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This situation equals very dead infantry, especially with current cavalry strenth. But this never used to happen with MTW. The reason is beacuase turning units was bloody easy in MTW but as I understand it there is no replacement for the ALT - RT CLK that use to easily swivel units.
This is obviously not realistic as all you would need to do is point your spears in another direction making cavalry look bloody stupid.
NOW I could be wrong about this point as I am just going by information on the posts and my experiences on the demo so please correct me if you feel you need to.

Kill speed
----------------------------------------------------
Are men dropping off too quickly? I don't even care if they are peasants.
Now 1 man could potentially deliver a lethal blow in about 2 seconds. To then turn and parry and deliver another lethal blow about 3 seconds. This would be your optimal rate for the best man in your unit if not faced by multiple opponents. I know this as I have experimented in my kicthen by slicing vegetables in a tactically thought out manner.
It would perhaps be fair to say then that your more average dual would take about 8 seconds man vs man for a result to occur. What is the actual kill rates. How long does it take for two units to completely batter each other? How many casualties. What difference does 1 valor point make.? If you do conduct your own experiments with veg or with RTW please post your results.

Undo that bloody annoying dumbing down of terrain effect
-------------------------------------------------------------

I have seen mention in the other forums of the fact that the effect of terrain has been reduced to make "RTW more accessible"
Now this is obviously *$&&$ "&&^")) "£(*("*£ (insert own expletives)
Biut what actually is the effect on terrain. What should it be. This is not to say that MTW got it right cos I don't think it did fully.


The purpose of this post is replace all the
THE DON'T/DO NOT/TOO
threads and get everyone's thoughts down so we can mod it out and all agree that the game is finally great.
If response is decent could the mods post this in the coll forum and anywhere else to elevate response further.

Any other thoughts on sieges, terrain effects, night mode, weather.

Please post but make it useful and not
" I think your wrong"
If I am wrong, why, how, and blah blah blah.

GO

[Tomcat]

See this thread for modifying Movement Rates which has already been addressed by Apollonius:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=36729

Tomcat

[danimal]

excellent. that could very well be the speed addressed. Has anyone tested this mod. Does it do what is says in the tin.
Could do with some figures of new speeds vs original speeds. Just trying to build a picture of what would be realistic as surrently it is just not.

[danimal]

Another thought.
Effectiveness of arrows, pilums and other projectiles.

If a group of 40 archers fire unarmed men, how many should go down.
Same for javelins and pilums.
If the front ranks launch say 30 how much is the takedow and how much should it be???

[Ulstan]

I'm still playing the prologue campaign - but one thing I noticed was that in my first battle, I thought people died way too quick - but that was because I had very very high valor troops against 0 valor troops.

In later battles with all 0 valor troops the kill rate for infanty vs infantry head on seems about right.

I think the pilum throws seem to do about the right amount of damage - but it takes so long to throw them - if barbarians are charging your lines, your men can't physically throw the pilum before the barbarians pile into them - i think this should be changed since Romans did in fact use this as a tactic :)

Walking speed for infantry is about right - charging and routing is too fast, as is running. Cavalry charges by even the light militia cavalary and the inept roman cavalry seem far too devastating. Even too poor spearmen O.o

Archers do better than in MTW it seems to me, but I think it's about right,

[desdichado]

excellent. that could very well be the speed addressed. Has anyone tested this mod. Does it do what is says in the tin.
Could do with some figures of new speeds vs original speeds. Just trying to build a picture of what would be realistic as surrently it is just not.

speeds are decreased to about 66% (on the 2nd mod, 1st was about 50%). Makes for a more enjoyable battle. Its a simple mod - just alter the values in a txt. file for move modifiers.

cav op on the charge I agree with but if you can catch them still they die.

men dying too quick I'm less sure - once units get some exp they seem to battle for longer but obviously need more testing.

What i want is faster reload for javelins/pila - how hard can it be to pick one up and throw - legionaries can never get off two against charging enemy. It should be possible - they had 1st light for longer range and 2nd heavy for shorter but they were able to throw both against charging enemies if I recall properly

[TomPaine]

One other modification that I'd suggest: squalor. Everyone's complaining about squalor, and my solution is to just add a few more "-1 to squalor" effects to various Vices/Virtues and Ancillary characters, wherever they make sense. There are already some (with the Understanding of Natural Philosophy trait, or with the Architect follower), but I'd just add them where they make sense -- say, in "Skilled Administrator," or with the "Doctor" follower, or some of the priests. I think that that might cancel out the squalor business.

Now, as to my problems -- I tried to do that, but both the "Export_desc_ancillaries" and the "Export_desc_character_traits" begin with the comment "This file is generated from the Spreadsheet VnV,txt
;Please modify the spreadsheet and re-xport the data, rather than editing this file directly," and like it says, editing those files doesn't change anything. At the same time, alas, I can't find whatever "Spreadsheet Vnv,txt" it is that they're talking about, so I'm helpless. Anybody who can help? I think that this is a pretty quick fix, and not a bad one, for squalor, but I just can't implement it; tho' if someone points me to the file, it'll take all of 10 minutes do the fix.

[Murmandamus]

The reason is beacuase turning units was bloody easy in MTW but as I understand it there is no replacement for the ALT - RT CLK that use to easily swivel units.

You can right click + drag to reposition the unit and you can also use < and > keys to easily rotate a unit on the spot. I find it easier than the old way.

I disliked the interface for the first hour or to but now that I have learnt it, I prefer it (except for the hot corners rotating the view).

I don't feel this game needs any mods yet. It's too early. People are just freaking out that things are different to MTW rather than giving it a chance first. I'd suggest playing it for at least a week before you even start thinking about mods. Otherwise, your changes will be based more on a knee-jerk reaction to change than a well thought out improvement.

[Morindin]

Changing face isnt a problem if you right click and drag.

Also, kill rates between light infantry (Histari vs Warband) is 1 every 6-12 seconds, which doesnt seem that bad to me.

Heavy infantry such as Sacred band vs Urban Cohorts is one man dead every 20 seconds + usually the Cohort. :)

Now MTW was 30 seconds + for 50 swordsmen to kill one knight. Do we want to go back? No. Somewhere in the middle? Perhaps, but RTW is growing on me.

[Arakasi]

I've read/heard that the wardogs are a bit too powerful. Mostly dealing with that you target the handlers and not the dogs. Makes you wonder though that if you kill the handlers, what happens to the dogs then? Hmm possible strategy there. But anyways that wasn't what I was trying to say. Perhaps just tone down the power of dogs. I think the mod for killing speeds has made the battles much longer lasting, which is great. Thanks to the people at TWC for that.

[danimal]

Changing face isnt a problem if you right click and drag.

Also, kill rates between light infantry (Histari vs Warband) is 1 every 6-12 seconds, which doesnt seem that bad to me.

Heavy infantry such as Sacred band vs Urban Cohorts is one man dead every 20 seconds + usually the Cohort. :)

Now MTW was 30 seconds + for 50 swordsmen to kill one knight. Do we want to go back? No. Somewhere in the middle? Perhaps, but RTW is growing on me.

Good stats, more, please. This is really useful information that long term proper mods should be built on if needed.

Problem with right clicking and dragging though is that it can take valuable seconds. What if you botch it cos of the camera. You units will end off strolling right into trouble. What would be handy is what we used to have. The alt -RtClk method.

[camulos]

This situation equals very dead infantry, especially with current cavalry strenth. But this never used to happen with MTW. The reason is beacuase turning units was bloody easy in MTW but as I understand it there is no replacement for the ALT - RT CLK that use to easily swivel units.
This is obviously not realistic as all you would need to do is point your spears in another direction making cavalry look bloody stupid.
NOW I could be wrong about this point as I am just going by information on the posts and my experiences on the demo so please correct me if you feel you need to.

For me its a question of when changing their facing should be allowed. If the spearmen are marching forward with nothing in front of them they should obviously be allowed to turn around and face a unit to their rear. However, if they're engaged in their front they shouldn't be able to turn. This would be the ideal situation for my liking because it would require you to use better tactics and timing to flank the enemy rather than just running your cav around them.

Kill speed
----------------------------------------------------
Are men dropping off too quickly? I don't even care if they are peasants.
Now 1 man could potentially deliver a lethal blow in about 2 seconds. To then turn and parry and deliver another lethal blow about 3 seconds. This would be your optimal rate for the best man in your unit if not faced by multiple opponents. I know this as I have experimented in my kicthen by slicing vegetables in a tactically thought out manner.
It would perhaps be fair to say then that your more average dual would take about 8 seconds man vs man for a result to occur. What is the actual kill rates. How long does it take for two units to completely batter each other? How many casualties. What difference does 1 valor point make.? If you do conduct your own experiments with veg or with RTW please post your results.

Remember the weapons these men are fighting with. Most won't deliver a fatal blow in 1 shot. You need a few more seconds to stab the enemy a few times after he's down.

[Spuddicus]

The reason is becuase turning units was bloody easy in MTW but as I understand it there is no replacement for the ALT - RT CLK that use to easily swivel units.

As I sit here at work, far far away from Rome I seem to remember seeing a shortcut to change facing.
I think it was "" with maybe a ctrl or alt combo.

[Spuddicus]

odd ... i used the ISO8859 character standard to show the less than and greater than signs, and they did show on the preview, but I see now they're gone with just an empty "".

[camulos]

The less than and greater than buttons do turn the unit. However, this is very time consuming because the whole unit turns around. I think what people are looking for is an "about face" type command.

[Kommodus]

From what I've heard, I think a lot of people will want Carthage to be more powerful, both to increase the challenge of playing as the Romans (Scipii in particular) and to increase the fun of playing as the Carthaginians.

It seems to me that at very least, Carthage should be very rich and should benefit from a steady stream of available mercenaries. (For all I know, this may already be the case, since I don't have the game.) That way, even if Carthage's own units are not improved, it will at least be able to depend on mercenary armies to help when necessary. The weakness, of course, would be that Carthage would be in big trouble if it suffered some major defeats that led to the loss of revenue. It would not be able to afford having trade routes cut, ports blockaded, or wealthy territories lost.

[camulos]

From what I've heard, I think a lot of people will want Carthage to be more powerful, both to increase the challenge of playing as the Romans (Scipii in particular) and to increase the fun of playing as the Carthaginians.

It seems to me that at very least, Carthage should be very rich and should benefit from a steady stream of available mercenaries. (For all I know, this may already be the case, since I don't have the game.) That way, even if Carthage's own units are not improved, it will at least be able to depend on mercenary armies to help when necessary. The weakness, of course, would be that Carthage would be in big trouble if it suffered some major defeats that led to the loss of revenue. It would not be able to afford having trade routes cut, ports blockaded, or wealthy territories lost.

Playing as the Scipii I was extremely surprised and somewhat disappointed how easy it was to destroy the Carthaginians. The only thing that gave me trouble was their navy and that all but disappeared after the city of Carthage was taken.

[Mazzeroth]

(I don't have the game yet!)

Many people have complained that AI reinforcements are "suicidal." So maybe a mod which "teaches" them to use better tactics, and to be a little less reckless in the face of the enemy, would be appreciated.

And I agree with the suggestions to subtly decrease killing & charging speeds, though modders should be careful not to swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. And keep in mind that the battle time limit should be increased proportionately.

[[We could try to deduce the appropriate change in battle time:

1 % (K * C) = (constant)*(Battle time limit) ;

K = (killing speed, in kills per second; you will have to pick a "base" killing speed which is then subjected to increases/decreases depending on the type of unit, valor, terrain, fatigue, etc...) ;
C = (charging speed, in the game's unit of distance per second; again since different units have different charging speeds I assume you will have to pick one, and then use proportions to see how changing that particular speed should affect other units' speeds) ;
(constant) = (you have to calculate this)
(battle time limit) = (in seconds; if there are different time limits for summer and winter you should pick one & then use proportions)

OK, so I don't know anything about coding or how MTW works, but this is just math... hopefully I'm not saying something completely wrong or totally confusing!]]

I would really like CA to make an official patch which fixes those few problems whicih hurt the game. Somehow, an official fix would make me happier, because it would seem as if the game were truly perfect, as opposed to having to be "customized" to become what it might have been when we bought it. Hopefully this will happen. If not, custom mods are great, too.