Archers like Dogs

[Fast Death]

So, why are my archers NOT hitting any ememy wardogs?

[drone]

The dogs themselves don't "register" with units, only the handlers. If you tell a unit to charge a wardog unit, they go after the handlers, and if you tell a unit to fire on a wardog unit, they target the handlers.

[Ulfang]

Which makes a lot of sense doesn't it. OMG There's a rabid dog on the way to rip my throat out ... I must find the handler and kill him else i'm in big trouble! lol

Course one way around this is to use the Realism Mod and then you won't have any dogs as it removes the "Fantasy Units".

[Fast Death]

I am in the process of removing ALL fantasy units right now.

Roman first:

Wardogs
Gladiators
Pigs
Peasents
Arcani

Did I miss any???

[drone]

Seems to me that someone at CA (or Activision ) saw the opening scene for "Gladiator" and said, "gotta get me a unit of those for the game!".

If you like the idea of the general having a couple of pet/protection dogs, there might be a better way to emulate this. Remove the wardog units (make them non-buildable in export_descr_buildings.txt). Add them (in export_descr_unit.txt) to the soldier line to the general's unit and put in the animal line. Something like:

soldier          roman_praetorian_cavalry, 12, 2, 1
animal           wardogs

Haven't tried it, no guarantees on what would happen, but it seems plausible. There might be problems with the unit speed vs. doggie speed, and not sure what the size changes for general units would do to the number of dogs (faction leader/heir units vs. normal generals). The auto-regen effect might work or not, and the unit formation might get messed up. You are on you own if you want to add "Sit", "Stay", "Heel", and "Good Boy" sounds to the unit response wav files

[drone]

I am in the process of removing ALL fantasy units right now.

Roman first:

Wardogs
Gladiators
Pigs
Peasents
Arcani

Did I miss any???

Just curious, why peasants? Not really fantasy, or are you doing it to increase the AI army difficulty?

[The Stranger]

yeah why peasants, maybe he just hate them or are you a farmer yourself

[Fast Death]

Peasants were never used as "police". They were a supplement to the main army. Anyway, does it make sense ( in the Roman Era ) to place people who you have just conquered, “in charge”. To me, it’s a fantasy unit.

[drone]

True. The only thing I use peasants for is resettlement. If they get in combat, it's an accident. I use town watch for public order/garrison duties.

I take it you removed them from the building lists. What happens when a town revolts? Without peasants, it's possible to have a town that cannot recruit any units. What does rebel stack look like?

[Fast Death]

I haven't "spun-up" a game yet.... CD at home and I'm at work. I'll check tonight.

[drone]

Ah, a work poster, like myself...

[Someone Stupid]

I personally cannot stand wardogs. They are just too unbalanced in so many different ways. Can't attack them directly, regenerate, tear though practically everything long as it is busy with something else or trying to route. They are just ridiculous. I've just raised the cost to 3 turns and 2 grand. I've maybe seen them twice since i've done that. Both times they were arguably worth what the AI paid for them in cash, not turns. They still did a decent amount of disruption and probably did cost me a couple grand in replacing units since they'd get tied down and I'd have to deal with the enemy minus a critical piece at times costing me more units than I'd like. One time I had something like 8 wardogs and 12 other units attacking a city. It was a slaughter. The wardogs just cleaned up as my units would get preoccupied with actual enemy they could target. After that I went to the txt and raised the cost - not sure about how to delete units. It looks easy enough, but I didn't feel like having another CTD that night as I was playing with other stuff as well.

I use Gladiators only when dealing with Egypt and in limited number. They counter chariots nicely if another unit can stop them. Otherwise I never touch them. Though in my last run against the egyptians I used regular auxilla and they did an admirable job and are easier to get ahold of. So I may soon be ignoring gladiators all together. Pigs don't really bother me. I don't use them, but since they are one shot weapons and rarely have disrupted more than a couple units when used I can deal with them. Often my cohorts have no problems ignoring them. High morale makes them rather ineffective in my experience. Still I'd imagine they'd be horrific against other nations without the reforms which will still have a good deal of low morale units or easily panickable ones like elephants. Never bothered to use them so I wouldn't really know.

Never really bothered with Arcani, the small unit size makes them unattractive to me and I'd prefer to flank with light cav instead of HOPING the enemy doesn't stumble on the Arcani and slaughter them before the army can blindly walk past them and get attacked from behind.

As for peasants, they've been used in battle commonly. Although I do see your point for removing them if it's to help the AI.

[Someone Stupid]

No edit? The above should read the AI attacked me with the 8 wardogs (surprised me that is for sure). If one reads the rest it can be made out - or it could just be plain confusing - so I thought I'd clear up that point.

[Watchman]

AFAIK the flaming pigs are perfectly historically accurate. It's not like they have much use besides scaring elephants, anyway.

The Arcanii are a bit tricky issue. Especially in the last centuries of the Empire the Romans had a sort of elite special-forces doctrine in use, where small bands of mobile, highly trained troopers shadowed invasion forces and caused distruption; they undoubtly also did a lot of scouting, cross-border raiding and whatever. Dunno what they were called, though, or if there even was any specific term for such troops.

I always thought the RTW Arcanii had some connection with that. Or maybe someone in the design team figured that since the previuos games had Battlefield Ninjas (whom I personally never bothered using) and Hashishin (ditto), it'd be keeping in character to give RTW too an unit of elite stealth light infantry.

I once saw an unit of Arcanii demolish an entire Early Legionary Cohort. Dunno if it was due to them fighting in woods, the Arcanii attacking downhill, all those upgrades I'd given them (second-level equipement and the full valor bonus from the Mars temple line) or what, but in any case they mauled the whole bunch and lost about three men.

[The Storyteller]

There WAS an organisation called the Arcani in the Roman Empire. As far as I know, they were a secret police unit rather than a battlefield unit.

I don't think peasants are ahistorical at all. In fact, we use them in a VERY historical way - to garrison cities.

Whenever someone attacked a city, of course sometimes the town militia would try to engage the enemy away from the city. However, if it came down to a siege, with soldiers going over the top, or a last ditch sally, there would absolutely, definitely, beyond a shadow of doubt, have been peasants around. All the old men and boys would be given whatever vaguely resembled a weapon. After all, if they fought, they might win. If they didn't, and the enemy won, they wouldn't live either.

Maybe they weren't peasants in the sense that they weren't farmers. But they were certainly ordinary guys with either no training or some physical disability or old age upon them.

[Fast Death]

I know of the Roman "secret police" and yes, they were NOT battelfield units. So maybe they could enter an emeny town and assist the assassin(s)? I haven't deleted the fantasy units, but I did up the cost and training time 10000d and 10 turns

We'll see what the "AI" fields on the next battle.

[Old Celt]

Which file exactly, do you edit to change turns and cost to build?

[Kaldhore]

I think peasants should be removed from the game entirely. Its a medieval word, and has no place in RTW. Town levies would be more appropriate - but with town watch - why would you?

[drone]

Which file exactly, do you edit to change turns and cost to build?

export_descr_unit.txt - it's part of the stat_cost line for the unit.

[Old Celt]

export_descr_unit.txt - it's part of the stat_cost line for the unit.

Thanks, Drone. I think I'll mod them into super costly status.

[Red Harvest]

About the pigs. I edited them out not because I think they are non-historical, but because they might get "abused" by the AI's build routine, like wardogs, screeching women and the like.

With dogs I was ok with a unit of dogs every once in awhile in 1.1, but they got old really fast in 1.2 where they were 10 to 25% of quite a few armies I faced.

[General Carnage]

I am in the process of removing ALL fantasy units right now.

Roman first:

Wardogs
Gladiators
Pigs
Peasents
Arcani

Did I miss any???

None of these are 'fantasy', all were used by the romans, even the pigs. Gladiators were certainly used quite extensively.

Wardogs and Pigs were, admittedly, very rarely used, but that still doesn't make them 'fantasy'

[General Carnage]

I personally cannot stand wardogs. They are just too unbalanced in so many different ways. Can't attack them directly, regenerate, tear though practically everything long as it is busy with something else or trying to route. They are just ridiculous. I've just raised the cost to 3 turns and 2 grand. I've maybe seen them twice since i've done that. Both times they were arguably worth what the AI paid for them in cash, not turns. They still did a decent amount of disruption and probably did cost me a couple grand in replacing units since they'd get tied down and I'd have to deal with the enemy minus a critical piece at times costing me more units than I'd like. One time I had something like 8 wardogs and 12 other units attacking a city. It was a slaughter. The wardogs just cleaned up as my units would get preoccupied with actual enemy they could target. After that I went to the txt and raised the cost - not sure about how to delete units. It looks easy enough, but I didn't feel like having another CTD that night as I was playing with other stuff as well.

I use Gladiators only when dealing with Egypt and in limited number. They counter chariots nicely if another unit can stop them. Otherwise I never touch them. Though in my last run against the egyptians I used regular auxilla and they did an admirable job and are easier to get ahold of. So I may soon be ignoring gladiators all together. Pigs don't really bother me. I don't use them, but since they are one shot weapons and rarely have disrupted more than a couple units when used I can deal with them. Often my cohorts have no problems ignoring them. High morale makes them rather ineffective in my experience. Still I'd imagine they'd be horrific against other nations without the reforms which will still have a good deal of low morale units or easily panickable ones like elephants. Never bothered to use them so I wouldn't really know.

Never really bothered with Arcani, the small unit size makes them unattractive to me and I'd prefer to flank with light cav instead of HOPING the enemy doesn't stumble on the Arcani and slaughter them before the army can blindly walk past them and get attacked from behind.

As for peasants, they've been used in battle commonly. Although I do see your point for removing them if it's to help the AI.

Pigs are designed exclusively for use against elephants, and I have found them to be ridiculously effective in that

[Somebody Else]

How about a counter-unit to wardogs? Battle-cats! When deployed, they un up the nearest tree, causing all wardogs to give chase, run aimlessly around said tree, and demoralise opposition, who have to end turn to buld siege towers to remove cats before the dogs can be regained.

[Someone Stupid]

I know they were used against elephants - it even says that in their discription. But how often have you seen AI factions with no elephant factions around have them in their armies? I've seen it enough times to finally make them so stupidly high in cost the AI ignores building them. I've also seen them target my elephants when I've played a faction that has them maybe twice. One of those times they tried to charge them through a line of Poeni - that did them no good. Then the elephants just went and stomped on everything. The other time they actually made it to my elephants and they routed - but not before doing the only thing I needed them to do, knock through a wall (hence why they got routed, the pigs were on the other side ready to burn). I'm not saying they aren't realistic or don't have their uses - just the AI has problems with some units moreso than others. This is one of them in my opinion. It waste the AI's unit slot in that army at the least, it also waste a cities production time, the factions treasury when they are produced and every turn until they are killed due to upkeep. The AI is better served with a base melee unit as it just can't grasp how to use incendiary pigs. If it could, that would be great.

Sending them against cohorts or peoni though isn't very effective.

[Kraxis]

None of these are 'fantasy', all were used by the romans, even the pigs. Gladiators were certainly used quite extensively.

Oh yes, they are mentioned a good number of times really. So yes gladiators are perfectly historical.
But they were always (with the famous exception of Spartacus) armed like legionaries. So in reality they should be of normal size and look like normal legionaries. That was for obvious reasons abandoned (do we need another three units of legionaries? or even just one?).

So personally I think the gladiators are good enough. A fairly good compromize between playability and historical accuracy.
I would though have liked a unit called Gladitorial Legionaries, who were strong attackers but basically only had the scutum to protect themselves, just like the real life gladiators. Damn even make them small in size (but in an ordered formation) and give them 2 HP if you want. But don't make them look like the gladiators right now.

[Phase]

Didn't I read somewhere on this website, that autocalc is based a lot on unit cost? So just upping the price could have some unintended consequences there I'd think.

[Fast Death]

Oh yes, they are mentioned a good number of times really. So yes gladiators are perfectly historical.
But they were always (with the famous exception of Spartacus) armed like legionaries. So in reality they should be of normal size and look like normal legionaries. That was for obvious reasons abandoned (do we need another three units of legionaries? or even just one?).

So personally I think the gladiators are good enough. A fairly good compromize between playability and historical accuracy.
I would though have liked a unit called Gladitorial Legionaries, who were strong attackers but basically only had the scutum to protect themselves, just like the real life gladiators. Damn even make them small in size (but in an ordered formation) and give them 2 HP if you want. But don't make them look like the gladiators right now.

After the reforms, gladiators (when asked to be free or join the military) were "folded" into existing Legions. They didn’t form there "own" military distinct unit = RTW Gladiators are fantasy units.

AND

If my archers can't attack the dogs individually, they become fantasy units.

[NicSO]

Which makes a lot of sense doesn't it. OMG There's a rabid dog on the way to rip my throat out ... I must find the handler and kill him else i'm in big trouble! lol

Course one way around this is to use the Realism Mod and then you won't have any dogs as it removes the "Fantasy Units".

And the dog will stop:-)

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

With my R: TW, when I target the handlers my men go after the dogs too, so I see no probablem there.