Game ruiner

[hung41584]

uhh, i really like rome total war but recently it has become a little bit tiresome. I started a campaign on very hard/ very hard with the gauls and i managed to survive past my first 10 turns. After repeated heroic victories, i realized how bad the game mechanics are with CALVALRY. All i did throughout the campaign was use armies composed almost entirely of normal calvalry or noble calvary. All you have to do is attack one or two enemy units using your whole army. Once that unit begins to route because of your charges, then just click on an adjacent enemy unit. Keep doing that until they all route. It is quite sad to say, but it ALWAYS WORKS. I use large unit sizes and destroy like 2000 enemy units in one battle with an army of 1000 calvalry.

Is this some sort of bug? cause its almost like a cheat. I know for sure battle difficulty was on very hard because i repeatedly restarted my campaign and i always won my battles heroic style. Its just I kept getting flanked by the julii , spaniards, and britons, and germans at the beggining. I fixed that by expanding into spain (using calvalry) and only having wars on one or two fronts.

And to also add, the basic calvalry is better than the noble ones when playing gaul because they charge better even though they cost so much more less than the noble ones. At the end of my game, i had quite a few 3 gold chevron units and a lot of silver ones.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I don't do this just so I can make the game more realistic and a bit harder, it is up to the individual.....

I don't think it is a bug but one of the main reasons that cav would not have worked like that is you have to feed twice as many mammals, cav are bad in sieges and it usually takes more training to be in the cavalry than infantry.

[screwtype]

Excuse me for being a pedant, but the word is CAVALRY, not "calvalry". No "L" before the "V", okay?

If you have trouble remembering, just recall that the abbreviation for cavalry is CAV.

[Duke John]

To me it sounds like exploiting weaknesses in the game. Most strategic games have them and once you find them it is up to the player to either use them or avoid them.

Using these weaknesses makes the game easier as the AI and you are not fighting on equal terms and if you do that for a long time then it will indeed ruin the game for you. IMO it has little do with CA but with the player itself.

[Senta]

well, i can invite you and your all cavalry army to meet my hoplites any day :)
we would see some routing then, and it wouldn't be greeks that run away i can assure you ;)

[caesar44]

but the first thing that the develops of the game had to do is to prevent a super unit
it is not up to the player to avoid such situations

[The Stranger]

i also modded the game and made most cavalry twice as expensive as infantry.
also the huns were mostly only horse armies, cause in real life in sieges they dismounted. and what somebody said you have to feed twice as much, isn't exactly true. they just grazed along the way and drunk water from rivers.

[Cassius]

That certainly wasn't the case with later armies - one of the biggest problems of an army on the march was providing fodder for its cavalry. I don't see why ancient armies would have been able to get away with it.

[Merlin271]

come play some multiplayer you'll find enough of a challenge there

[hoom]

I'm sure the question of feeding horses is largely dependant on terrain, length of stay in any particular place & how many horsies you have to feed.
Lots of horses in a long drawn out siege in rocky, barren territory = lots of hungry horses.
Relatively few horses just passing through on the steppe are going to have little problem.

Personally I've never been a big fan of cav heavy armies & I rarely have more than 4 cav units.
Much more often only 2.
OK, so the exception is Naginata Cav... mmmm Naginata Cav, though even then I mostly only had 6 units in a frontline army

[Maelstrom]

... and what somebody said you have to feed twice as much, isn't exactly true. they just grazed along the way and drunk water from rivers.

I am no expert on horses, and I am sure there are plenty of people out there who are (please correct me if this is off target - as if you needed an invitation!), but I understood that natural grazing was pretty low on energy, and if you want a horse to be doing anything other than eating all day you need to give it higher energy density fodder (oats etc)?

[The Stranger]

maybe but someone also said horse armies are bad in siege, wich in real life isn't the case. cause they just simply dismounted. and the huns and mongols conquered big parts of the world and i didn't think they were that rich.

[Old Celt]

The "overpowered cavalry" syndrome is one that has been discussed here in detail before. It boils down to this simple principle: cavalry gets bonuses on hard and very hard settings which may create unbalancing and inappropriate battle results. The game was designed for best balanced play on medium battle difficulty, and those aforementioned bonuses do not apply then. So it isn't a bug, it's a feature, and if you want more balance and realism, then don't create all cav armies to beat up on the AI with.

I once faced 2 full stacks of Macedonians with a Pre Marius Scipii force which had only 2 equites and 1 cavalry aux plus a general for horses. The Macs had 7 light lancers and 3 greek cavalry in just 1 of their stacks. Playing on VH, the light lancers easily charged through and routed my Triarii, from the FRONT, and of course, that would be impossible in real life. I just accepted it as part of the game design, returned with much more cavalry of my own and dealt with it.

[The Stranger]

wich bonusses they get?

[The Stranger]

i just fought a battle on very hard and the macedonian companians couldn't even beat my Legionary cohorts.

[Bob the Insane]

The "overpowered cavalry" syndrome is one that has been discussed here in detail before.

Not meaning to argue or anything but the focus of the issue here was how overpower cav is when the player is in control...

I have to say that this is true as the game is now... My personal opinion is that this is a fallout from how much money is available to the player. The cavalry units are in general superior to infantry units, though there are always exceptions. Cavalry are faster and harder hitting then infantry, so equal or near equal numbers of cavalry to enemy infantry mean that the cavalry should win unless stupidly lead as the cav can either overpower units vunrable to cav attack or out manouver units that can defend themselves from cavalry...

So the fact that a huge cavalry army can be just as easily put together as a huge infantry one, and that the huge cavalry army does not threaten to bankrupt the player is at the heart of the problem for me.

Personally I am considering modding cavalry units to be more expensive both to train and especially in unkeep... I am also considering a general morale increase across the board to keep units in the fight longer which is always bad for cavalry once they get bogged down...

[Red Harvest]

The "overpowered cavalry" syndrome is one that has been discussed here in detail before. It boils down to this simple principle: cavalry gets bonuses on hard and very hard settings which may create unbalancing and inappropriate battle results. The game was designed for best balanced play on medium battle difficulty, and those aforementioned bonuses do not apply then. So it isn't a bug, it's a feature, and if you want more balance and realism, then don't create all cav armies to beat up on the AI with.

I have never heard of this. Do you have a link? As far as I know only the AI gets bonuses on H and VH, not the human. And now with 1.2 it apparently no longer gets the attack bonuses. Instead morale has been adjusted in some fashion.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

The "overpowered cavalry" syndrome is one that has been discussed here in detail before. It boils down to this simple principle: cavalry gets bonuses on hard and very hard settings which may create unbalancing and inappropriate battle results. The game was designed for best balanced play on medium battle difficulty, and those aforementioned bonuses do not apply then. So it isn't a bug, it's a feature, and if you want more balance and realism, then don't create all cav armies to beat up on the AI with.

I have never heard of that. Difficulty setting changes AI bonus, but it's very unlikely it changes specifically cavalry.

Any units with a +7 attack can walk throught any other unit. A cavalry charge with such a huge bonus is very dangerous. But, as far as I know, that bonus is for ALL AI troops, and not cavalry specific.

However, I think cavalry is overpowered, even at medium level, and that's mainly a cost/ upkeep problem.
I like the cavalry behaviour, but it's far too easy to have many cavalry for a very low cost.

Louis,

[Quillan]

That certainly wasn't the case with later armies - one of the biggest problems of an army on the march was providing fodder for its cavalry. I don't see why ancient armies would have been able to get away with it.

It primarily has to do with the horses. In the ancient period, horses were much smaller, and generally only fed on grass, so grazing was sufficient food for them. In the later medieval period, most horses were grain fed, and much larger. Grass isn't enough to keep them going, they need grain, and you have to supply that for them.

And as to the horse nomads, mostly they didn't siege in the traditional sense. A cavalry nomad army could just burn everything around the city and ride off, the city will starve. The Mongols learned siege warfare when they invaded China, but they took over chunks of with without that knowledge.

[Old Celt]

Sorry I don't have a link to the discussion. It was a statement from a CA staff member and it was in response I think to a question about why cavalry units could charge phalanx units frontally and crash through even deep ranks of those formations. My understanding was that such bonuses for charge do get applied to both the player and AI cavalry.

[Red Harvest]

Sorry I don't have a link to the discussion. It was a statement from a CA staff member and it was in response I think to a question about why cavalry units could charge phalanx units frontally and crash through even deep ranks of those formations. My understanding was that such bonuses for charge do get applied to both the player and AI cavalry.

If you remember where you saw it, please post it because it could be useful. Prior to 1.2 the AI received a +4 attack on H (all units) and +7 attack on VH (all units). This came from Jerome's response in a Q/A in the modding section here. The AI was also the recipient of some undefined morale bonuses, but no defense adjustments IIRC. After 1.2 the attack bonuses appear to be absent, but the morale bonuses appear to have been amplified or altered in some fashion. This has led to some rather strange effects, such as human triarii beating up AI triarii 1v1 on VH...

[hung41584]

spearmen seem to be good at destroying infantry, but do horribly against missile units. Its like the swords cant seem to go past all those long spears.

Also, In 1.2 I seemed to notice that the human foot soldiers route or lose battles easier even though the odds are even. They seem to require a CAVALRY charge to boost up their fighting spirits. Albeit from a general (which isn't a good idea cause he will die easily) or normal horse units. This led me in the first place to start putting more cavalry in my army until i found out that it would be even better to just use an army full of cavalry.

I think the game developers were trying to make the battles hard by first getting a real fight going and then having the human player try to win the battle by having auxilary units like archers charging in at the last moment to save the battle. Thats probably where the effectiveness of the charging bonus comes into play.

[The Stranger]

come play some multiplayer you'll find enough of a challenge there

well i'll challenge you, and everybody else. go look at Campus_Martius/Challenge thread for the rules and details.

[The Stranger]

Not meaning to argue or anything but the focus of the issue here was how overpower cav is when the player is in control...

I have to say that this is true as the game is now... My personal opinion is that this is a fallout from how much money is available to the player. The cavalry units are in general superior to infantry units, though there are always exceptions. Cavalry are faster and harder hitting then infantry, so equal or near equal numbers of cavalry to enemy infantry mean that the cavalry should win unless stupidly lead as the cav can either overpower units vunrable to cav attack or out manouver units that can defend themselves from cavalry...

So the fact that a huge cavalry army can be just as easily put together as a huge infantry one, and that the huge cavalry army does not threaten to bankrupt the player is at the heart of the problem for me.

Personally I am considering modding cavalry units to be more expensive both to train and especially in unkeep... I am also considering a general morale increase across the board to keep units in the fight longer which is always bad for cavalry once they get bogged down...

allready did it

here's the layout i used.

training cost
+100 for light cav
+150 for medium cavalry
+200 for heavy cavalry

Upkeep
+100 for light armoured cav
+150 for medium armoured cavalry
+200 for heavy armoured cavalry

Training time
all cavalry + 1

[Bob the Insane]

allready did it

here's the layout i used.

training cost
+100 for light cav
+150 for medium cavalry
+200 for heavy cavalry

Upkeep
+100 for light armoured cav
+150 for medium armoured cavalry
+200 for heavy armoured cavalry

Training time
all cavalry + 1

Nice, I will try it and see what effect it has...

Does it have a detrimental effect on the Parthians and other eastern horse cultures?

[The Stranger]

yes it does for the armenians but not that much for Parthia

[Puzz3D]

If you remember where you saw it, please post it because it could be useful. Prior to 1.2 the AI received a +4 attack on H (all units) and +7 attack on VH (all units). This came from Jerome's response in a Q/A in the modding section here. The AI was also the recipient of some undefined morale bonuses, but no defense adjustments IIRC. After 1.2 the attack bonuses appear to be absent, but the morale bonuses appear to have been amplified or altered in some fashion. This has led to some rather strange effects, such as human triarii beating up AI triarii 1v1 on VH...

I've seen test results made by players at .com which shows the combat resolves much faster at VH setting without any advantage to either side. Those results show that not only is the +7 attack bonus still present, but that both the AI and the human player get the bonus. The accelerated casualty rate drives the morale down lower, and units rout faster as a result.

[The Stranger]

men that stinks, so a unit that has a attack of 10 is actually 17. well why did i never noticed it then Pre and Post patch. and this stinks, just cut the money or something like that not increase attack.

[Red Harvest]

I've seen test results made by players at .com which shows the combat resolves much faster at VH setting without any advantage to either side. Those results show that not only is the +7 attack bonus still present, but that both the AI and the human player get the bonus. The accelerated casualty rate drives the morale down lower, and units rout faster as a result.

I've seen the same speed effect with level, but I had not seen anything stated by developers about giving the bonus to both sides. (I had assumed it was all morale related.) Why on earth would they do something so foolish??? Most folks were already complaining about the high kill rate so they made it worse??? Surely this can't be right.

[Puzz3D]

I've seen the same speed effect with level, but I had not seen anything stated by developers about giving the bonus to both sides. (I had assumed it was all morale related.) Why on earth would they do something so foolish??? Most folks were already complaining about the high kill rate so they made it worse??? Surely this can't be right.

I think it was accidental. I'd put this in with the Parthian shot problem and the non-scrolling building browser.

Also, I quesion the wisdom of giving the bonus entirely on the attack value. That accelerates the combat resolution more than a bonus that is split between attack and defend values. And, although combat points in RTW give about half the improvement they did in MTW, the increase on VH is much greater than it was in MTW at the hardest setting. In MTW, the hardest setting gave the AI a 30% melee combat advantage. In RTW, the hardest setting is giving the AI about 200% advantage. It just goes to show how much inferior the AI in RTW is compared to MTW.