the elephants issue

[Pycckuu]

i dont know if many of you guys find this a major issue, but most of the time the games for factions who have access to elephants are only a challange untill you can get your hands on one. after that, the game only consists of you routing elite enemy armies with your full stack of war/armored elephants and reciveving 0 casualties, which certainly gets old after about 5 provinces you capture this way.
i was wondering if EB was planning on introducing some sort of a system in order to prevent the appearance of such elephant armies.

[Sarcasm]

Why don´t you restrain yourself? In my campaigns as Carthage, Seleucids and Parthia I only had one elephant unit at a time. Also, I never allow myself to have more than 2 elite units per army (like spartans, bull warriors, etc...).

[Pycckuu]

well, thats one way of doing it...

[Urnamma]

We've changed their behavior and made javelineers and archers deadly to them. Siege engines (which the AI now builds) are also exceedingly deadly.

[Pycckuu]

sounds good, thanks Urnamma

[[cF]HanBaal]

We've changed their behavior and made javelineers and archers deadly to them. Siege engines (which the AI now builds) are also exceedingly deadly.

Well I dunno if I agree much with this. Since patch 1.1 (at least) archers and especially siege engines are already a REAL menace to elephants. I mean, do you guys play online MP? The poor elies aren't guilty that the AI sucks. In MP, it's enough to hold them with some cheap javelineer unit (who have +8 combat bonus againt elies already), keep an archer unit or 2 firing at them (fire arows are especially VERY effective) and there you go, you got yourself an UBBER expensive enemy unit routing in no time. OR simply target a siege engine at them (since siege machine's aim rises A LOT when aiming at elephants, even fire balls!) and there you go again... an ubber expensive unit cut in half and routing with a single onager shot.

Again, imo, we're not guilty the AI suks and so are not the poor elephants, so let's not exagerate on downgrading them.

[jerby]

ok, playing RTR 5,2 now. and boy does it suck from time to time. it takes two velites in two salvos to rout armoured elies. 3 died in second salvo. other two died in rout.
pleae keep it balanced, and make balllista's and scorpions ( or whatever your version will be) kill them at ones.
make archers and peltast deadly, but not that much, keep it balanced, but i'm am VERY confident EB will manage to deliver.
also, elies were primarily a scare-unit, or a counter-cav unit. so if you weaken them vs soldiers, try to up thsoe other two.

[Red Harvest]

Well I dunno if I agree much with this. Since patch 1.1 (at least) archers and especially siege engines are already a REAL menace to elephants. I mean, do you guys play online MP? The poor elies aren't guilty that the AI sucks. In MP, it's enough to hold them with some cheap javelineer unit (who have +8 combat bonus againt elies already), keep an archer unit or 2 firing at them (fire arows are especially VERY effective) and there you go, you got yourself an UBBER expensive enemy unit routing in no time. OR simply target a siege engine at them (since siege machine's aim rises A LOT when aiming at elephants, even fire balls!) and there you go again... an ubber expensive unit cut in half and routing with a single onager shot.

Again, imo, we're not guilty the AI suks and so are not the poor elephants, so let's not exagerate on downgrading them.

+6, not +8. The problem was that elephants in 1.1 were invincible to infantry missiles: slingers/javs/archer--except for some siege weapons, and flaming arrows. So in 1.2 there is now a greater tendency to run amok. Unfortunately, it amplifies the stupid flaming arrows. In 1.1 I ran tests with 10 archer auxilia vs. a single elephant unit and the elephant always reached the archers without casualties as long as regular arrows were used. The only chance the archers had was in melee. Usually their numbers were enough to rout the elephants. Flaming arrows were another matter.

And in vanilla, the first time I faced onagers they killed two of my elephants with one shot. I have "issues" with onagers as well. They are implemented fantasy style.

[Steppe Merc]

I don't know much about what you're saying, as I never use seige engines, and only rarley encouter elephants. Their usually killed easily enough with horse archers peppering them until they go nuts...
Though our main focus is really historicalness, and then comes gameplay. We won't sacrifice history for gameplay.

Red Harvest, what you say about flaming arrows has a point... I think I'm going to bring it up, and try and get them elimatated if they haven't already...

[jerby]

flaming arrows should drive em nuts, but do almost NO damage due to their thick hide.
javs can penatrate elie hide ( skin).
so the amok-bonus on flame-arrows should be upped, but damage done downed.
jav bonus rtr is bullshit, to heavy.
agree on onagers, they didn't exist back then.

[Red Harvest]

I don't know much about what you're saying, as I never use seige engines, and only rarley encouter elephants. Their usually killed easily enough with horse archers peppering them until they go nuts...
Though our main focus is really historicalness, and then comes gameplay. We won't sacrifice history for gameplay.

Red Harvest, what you say about flaming arrows has a point... I think I'm going to bring it up, and try and get them elimatated if they haven't already...

Steppe Merc--

You might want to adjust flaming arrow velocity down so as to reduce their range without eliminating them. (This needs some experimentation with flaming ammo.) The velocity appears to be independently set for them. If you try to set long ranges for javelins like 200 meters, the low velocity (30 m/sec) still limits them to about 90 meters (on level terrain.) If you set them to 25 m/sec their range should fall to about 65 meters. Haven't tested this with the flaming arrows. 48 m/sec is used for all arrows, giving them a theoretical range of about 235 meters. This also means that a vanilla archer's trajectory is the same at 100 meters as an elite archer's trajectory at 100 meters.

The range in the units file is more an "effective targeting range" than an upper limit on the projectile from what I can tell. The units could shoot further, if they were not capped to prevent longer range targeting.

Also, if you remove/modify flaming arrow ability from any units, it is most easily done by creating a new projectile type and assigning that new weapon to the unit. That way any towers or such that also use the flaming arrow will not have their capability disrupted by editing the base projectile stats. I use three different arrows with different velocities: arrowshort, arrowha, arrowlong. (Vanilla archers, horse archers with composite bows, and elite archers, respectively.)

[Steppe Merc]

Note on onagers: While their far from my speciality, I'm almost certaint they are not in the game... rather, there are different seige equipment. However, my factions hardly, if ever used seige weapons, so I may well be incorrect.

[Red Harvest]

I just completed a test of reducing the velocity of fire arrows. It does reduce range as I had suspected. So if one wants more realistic, shorter range fire arrows, all that is needed is to adjust velocity until the range suits your taste.

There are two small visual issues: since the "nominal range" set by the unit stats is higher, when in fire arrow mode the unit will emulate the firing sequence and sound without firing, beginning at the nominal range, and ending when the new range fire arrow range is reached. Also, the targeting arrow will show green well before the unit can be targeted with fire arrows.

No doubt it will lead to bug reports from those who don't read the read me if this is implemented. However, this might be a reasonable way to tune the fire arrows.

[jerby]

is scare-factor moddable? because while i'm playing I see my seleucid armoured-elies trample and kill a lot of elite swordsmen.
elies shoudl scare the piss out of everything, light cav routing. peaseants routing when seeing(!) the elies charge them.
but then again arrows should scare the elies even more! also, i've seen a scorpion/ballista arrows fully hit an elie, and the sucker lived! this can't be. Scorpion velocity is huge!
not mentioning onagers here, since they didn't excist and are far to accurate against elies. Scorpions are very much underused!

[Red Harvest]

Scorpions get a "2" for damage to troops in projectile stats. This means that they need to hit the same elephant many times to kill it (all those hit points.) Ballista score a 5. Boulders are 8's. Some other poster noticed this in another thread.

[Sarcasm]

@ Steepe Merc

LOL.......you and your horse archers...I get pretty bored micro-managing HAs...don´t you play any other factions?

It just ocurred to me if elephants went amok, how could you get them back? Catching an elephant is not exactly an easy thing.....it´s funny to imagine 100 elephants thrashing the Italian countryside.....

Maybe it´s possible to adjust the number of elephants you get back after they amok out of the battle, when you win.....

Small note. Onagers weren´t around till 25 A.D, so they´re out of the time period.

[lomeinchef]

Hey this is my first post on this board, so just saying hi. But I wanted to suggest something that many people seem to overlook when talking about elephants and cavalry. They don't need to have their stats turned down (maybe a little on the elephants) as much as they need to have their upkeep costs driven through the roof. The cavalry (including elephants, well, most of the time) in Rome Total War is quite accurate I think in terms of its vast superiority over infantry in most cases (huge charge bonus etc.) If you just make maintaing more than one unit of elephants far too expensive to be worth it you would solve your problem. One unit of elephants is not difficult to defeat at all, and the resulting chaos is an advantage to you.

[Sarcasm]

I´m pretty sure they´re working on reducing the number of horses, and adjusting the upkeep/recruitment cost per unit.

Vanilla RTW was far too ahistorical when it came to cavalry....when you start reading on the forums how Roman players are squshing everything with cavalry, you know something is terribly wrong with the current system.

[Red Harvest]

There are some oddities about how powerful cav are on the field, vs. the raw stats (which will skew autocalc against them, when in fact they rule in RTW.) Coupled with cost and how AI does recruitment, this can pose real problems to realistic costing/upkeep as well.

[lomeinchef]

Yeah the whole thing where romans have elite heavy cavalry was a bit of a mystery to me. But that's simply a poor decision on the part of EA. I don't think cavalry (and elephants) are overpowered, they are just too cheap, which turns their role from a supporting one into a primary one. But I don't think "nerfing" elephants until they are walking targets of little use to the player is the correct way to go about solving this issue, because elephants were a huge terrifying force on the battlefield that often scattered (generally undiciplined) armies or terrified cavalry. The reason they are overpowered is because they are too easily attainable so that the player can make stacks of them. But one unit of elephants as part of a balanced, realistic army is not too much trouble to deal with in vanilla RTW if you play right (think phalanxes and flame), and conversly adding a unit of elephants can help you out a lot. I am just afraid that instead of making elephants hugely expensive extras for your army that can spread terror in an undiciplined army like they should be, they will end up as weak, useless cannon fodder that is not worth building.

On the note of elephants however I would like to suggets to the EB team, if possible (I don't know much about the modding process but this doesnt seem too farfetched) that maybe elephants could have different morale lowering effects on different units. So a german swordsman (since they have never seen elephants) would be more effected than a bactrian warrior. Just a thought. Keep up the good work, this mod looks even better by the day.

Oh and by the way, there are tons of things that autocalc doesnt compensate for (and who plays a beautiful game like this on autocalc anyway? no offense if you do, I've just never heard of someone doing that) so I wouldn't be particularly worried about autocalc problems, but I'm not the mod developer and probably for good reason.

[Red Harvest]

You don't understand. All the factions except the player's are fighting nearly every battle in autocalc. So yes, it matters, ALOT! There is a lot to keep in mind when you do balancing.

This autocalc issue is one of the reasons Egypt is such a powerhouse. It has two oversized units. If you match up two 20 unit armies, and half of one army is filled with cheap 50% oversized units, how do you think that AI faction is going to fare vs. other AI factions? It's going to kick the snot out of 'em. That was a very strong reason for modding Egyptian Bowmen and Desert Cav to correct sizes. (I did adjust cost as appropriate comparing to similar units.)

I don't disagree about upkeep and I have adjusted it in my game. But you need to think about it carefully, especially when considering horse archer factions.

The real problem with TW series is that the population growth tech tree doesn't work all that well anymore. We really want representative armies, rather than "all elite" armies when we hit certain population levels. The rule set doesn't handle this at all.

[Drag0nUL]

The real problem with TW series is that the population growth tech tree doesn't work all that well anymore. We really want representative armies, rather than "all elite" armies when we hit certain population levels. The rule set doesn't handle this at all.

About encouraging people to have balanced armies how about radically increasing the number of turns required to recruit an elite unit? If a unit of let's say Thorakitai or Sacred band takes about 8-10 turns to train I doubt people would find practical to field more than a few of them in a campaign.Or you could also drastically increase their recruitment cost.

[Sarcasm]

10 turns seem way too much for me......

[Drag0nUL]

10 turns seem way too much for me......

It was just an orientative figure. However, it should take quite a long time to turn ordinary men into elite troops.

[jerby]

I couldn't possibly wait 10 turnsa for one elite unit. it would take about 50 turns to get one full army ( not even all elite) and it only takes one turn to mess it all up.
what kind of man will be on top of teh elies? still archers? or give war-elies javs. and armoured archers? would give more difference between them.

[BDC]

10 turns seem way too much for me......

Yes, I think doing that would make it so no one ever uses them, or the AI clogs up all its big cities only building one or two units.

[Hakonarson]

The main problem with expensive and rare units like elphants, Cataphracs, Elite infantry, etc., is that there are insufficient restrictions on purchasing them.

The economic model doesn't work if it's relatively easy to buy a whole army of elephants - perhaps it would work if Elephants weer 10 x their current cost?

I don't know that the RTW system can be fudged to fix this.

In RTW you can get elephants in Syria - but historically elephants were NOT available in Syria - they were imported by the Seleucids from India.

When the Ptolemaics couldn't get elephants from India they reverted to African Elephants, and there was quite a thriving trade of elephants into the Red Sea from the coast of Africa.

EB will extend the map eastwards to Bactria, which was a major user of elephants too - which is obviously closer to India, but on the whole I would suggest that Indian Elephants in the Mid-East should be limited to mercenary units.

Ideally a game such as this would keep track of poplations in a more realistic manner - heck that's why we have computers - to do lots of number crunching!!

Eg 1 model I quite like is that a % of your population dies each turn, a % become "of age" adn able to serve, and a % is born.

In the army a % of "regulars" become veterans, and a % of veterans retire - and of course you only raise elite troops from among veterans thus providing a natural cap on numbers.

the Seleucids seem to have imported elephants in large numbers on a few occasions, so the game could keep track of individual alephants and track their ages - when the numbers got low a player could chose to buy replacements/reinforcements at some suitably exorbadent cost.

While Ptolemaics might receive a smallish number of new elephants every year from a steady trade, etc.

But I don't think RTW can be modded like that!

[lomeinchef]

About the autocalc thing I didn't even think about the AI and i realize that it is important that it is not too different from a custom battle, but don't bend over backwards and make units unrealistic because it will be skewed a little bit in AI vs. AI custome battles. Unless it really throws the whole thing off a ton, I would MUCH rather have fun and more realistic custom battles with accurate units and have the AI's battles go a little bit wonky than have less enjoyment in my own battles so that the AI battles would go smoother.

And about restrictions on purchasing units, I know EB is making it so most region specific units (spartans, lybians, etc.) can only be recruited in an area where they would realistically be (you can only train spartans in sparta, etc.) So Elephants could be only available to recruit from provinces in the Indus Valley, far southern nile region and atlas mountains. And Harkonarson, your idea about mercenery indian elephant units in the middle east is excellent idea! It seems a perfect way to symbolize nations importing elephants for their armies using the engine. I hope EB uses that one! Sorry to all if I seem a little over-zealous, I'm just really excited about this mod and want to help all I can!

[Furious Mental]

"the Seleucids seem to have imported elephants in large numbers on a few occasions, so the game could keep track of individual alephants and track their ages - when the numbers got low a player could chose to buy replacements/reinforcements at some suitably exorbadent cost."

Dude what do you think the maintenance costs of the unit represent?

[Hakonarson]

Dude what do you think the maintenance costs of the unit represent?

Fodder, wages, barracks/stables, tack, weapons, and virtually everything that gets used up except for replacement elephants.

What do you think it represents?