Spqr

[The Hun]

In my mind, only way to play RTW online or otherwise...SPQR Mod. No more scurrying ants, now movement and kill is correct speed, time to manage units, armies more realistic. Some very nice change and credit to creator for giving us the best way so far to play RTW

[Puzz3D]

SPQR is the only way I'll play RTW online, but 99% of the players seem to prefer the gameplay of RTW v1.2.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I had a look at that mod, played it a bit in SP custom battles, and had a look at the unit stats.

I don't find the killing and moving speed to be all that different. Regular RTW battles can be long too...
Graphics look better, but seem to be more cumbersome for large battle (more lag than in regular RTW with an awful lot of men; still playable at 6000 men though).

A positive: some problems units have been nerfed or gone (bye bye praetorian and other hollywood units..)

My main problem is the pinball like stats. It has some positive (it's so high that upgrades are irrelevant....), but for morale it created a lot of rally and regroup. With morale in 10+ for the worse and in the 20s or 30s, few units break, and when they do, they rally all the times...
Chasing the routers was awfully long.
I have not played enough to find imbalances, but given the range of stats used, it's likely there are some...

Overall, for MP balance, most of what the mod achieved can be done without the pinball "add 20 to all stats" affect. More specifically, morale is very very high. Probably a good thing in SP when facing a computer to help the AI stand and fight a bit, but not that good for MP (favours strenght over position, too much rallying).

Louis,

[Puzz3D]

Units fight much longer in SPQR mod than in regular RTW v1.2. I set up a test with principes using large size units.

In RTW v1.2 the principes are 80 men. The pila volley killed an average of 11 men in each unit. The units fought for 2 minutes with one having 65 kills and the other 50 kills at the rout point.

In SPQR mod the principes are 60 men. The pila volley killed and average of 3 men in each unit. The units fought for 6 minutes with one getting 62 kills and the other 34.

The fighting time is 3 times longer in SPQR, and the unit size is actually smaller so you get better frame rate. SPQR large unit size provides a setting inbetween RTW v1.2's normal and large unit sizes. I've played quite a few SPQR battles online, and a broken army never came back to win.

Other important points are that unlike RTW v1.2, in SPQR spears will beat cav and shields work against arrows. Yes other mods could fix these problems, but there are no other mods right now which do so.

[Tomisama]

Would someone please put up a link to the download to save time.

Thanks

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I have not found that SPQR and vanilla battles feel that different regarding duration; the chance that a melee would last 6 full minutes without an ennemy units coming to make a difference are small. One on one tests are not showing that tactics may make a difference much before the one on one is over.

I have played a few test games in 1.2, running heavy cavalry into phalanx with phalanx on and guard off: phalanx came on top. I mean long pike phalanx (the regular kind) against praetorian cavalry and the like... Silver shield phalanx against praetorian would take like 15% casualties and rout the cavalry killing 80% of them.

Whether I put cavalry on wedge, or tried to get some wrapping effect changed the outcome little. In RTW 1.2, spears will beat cavalry; the main issue is to get the cavalry to run into the phalanx, or to get the phalanx to catch the cavalry... Usual issue. SPQR has not fixed that...

A broken army never come back to win, but it rallies again and again. Thanks to sky high morale.

Aren't shield protecting from arrows in 1.2 too?

Louis,

[Puzz3D]

I have not found that SPQR and vanilla battles feel that different regarding duration; the chance that a melee would last 6 full minutes without an ennemy units coming to make a difference are small. One on one tests are not showing that tactics may make a difference much before the one on one is over.

Sure if you flank or get flanked the battle will be over quickly. Play someone who doesn't allow you to flank them, and the battle will last longer. I just proved that the units fight much longer in SPQR mod. That fact provides more time for maneuvering at the height of the fighting. If you loose the first unit in SPQR, you are in serious trouble as that extra enemy unit can come and flank one of your other units and then you'll be down two units, and it only gets worse from there. The men in SPQR die very quickly when hit from behind usually on the first strike which is due to a game mechanic built into the battle engine. If there would be any criticism of the dynamics in SPQR, I would expect it to be that units fight too long thereby allowing other units to come from too far away. However, flanking was decisive in many ancient historical battles. SPQR mod is the first mod I've seen that actually allows a battle like Marathon or Cannae to be fought with success the way the historical battle was actually fought.

I'm not answering the rest of this post. If you don't see the dramatic difference in the shields, then forget it. I know you don't advocate mods for online play even when the gameplay is clearly better: i.e. Samurai Wars for MTW/VI or any of the fine mods that CBR made for MTW. SPQR unit balance isn't perfect, but the gameplay in RTW v1.2 is the worst of the entire Total War series. Surely, you're not trying to tell me that RTW v1.2 MP gameplay is good are you? Although many players say they want more balanced gameplay online, very few will actually leave the "offical" gameplay in which CA refuses to fix even blatant balance issues.

[[seminoles]shadow]

i found that the spqr mod doesn't feel that different than v1.2 it can also get a bit laggy sometimes

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Sure if you flank or get flanked the battle will be over quickly. Play someone who doesn't allow you to flank them, and the battle will last longer. I just proved that the units fight much longer in SPQR mod.

Sure, one on one fight last longer, but in the larger context of a full battles, with flanking taking place, and many, many other things happening, chances are indeed small that the battle will last when the melee started. In MTW, the battle would be over before the one on one are over; there is always a flanking move, this is not a game of attrition, a battle is not a sum of 1v1 fights.

We can have 1v1 unit fight for 30 min with some stat tweaking, and still get some fast battles.

That fact provides more time for maneuvering at the height of the fighting. If you loose the first unit in SPQR, you are in serious trouble as that extra enemy unit can come and flank one of your other units and then you'll be down two units, and it only gets worse from there. The men in SPQR die very quickly when hit from behind usually on the first strike which is due to a game mechanic built into the battle engine. If there would be any criticism of the dynamics in SPQR, I would expect it to be that units fight too long thereby allowing other units to come from too far away. However, flanking was decisive in many ancient historical battles. SPQR mod is the first mod I've seen that actually allows a battle like Marathon or Cannae to be fought with success the way the historical battle was actually fought.

I got a few other issues with SPQR mod in MP; cavalry fails to clear skirmisher or light infantry the way it does it in vanilla; that somehow reminds me of pavese in VI on hold/ hold and cavalry getting stuck in them. Very high morale creates router chasing problems; for me battle last long because the ennemy keeps rallying and coming back...

I'm not answering the rest of this post. If you don't see the dramatic difference in the shields, then forget it.

Difference in shield is just the same as everything else in the mod; a multiplication of factors. The effect was already there in 1.2, it's amplified here, and it has some odd consequences; flank shoot look almost magical. Does it really matters? IIRC missile attack has been increased too, so now we're looking at very large discripancies in archery effect depending on that multiplied shield factor. I don't like it. It was already working in vanilla; it's a case of fixing one aspect that was not broken that leads to odd phenomenon.

A shield value of 5 already have a very noticable impact on archery in vanilla, why was it needed to increase to such value?

I guess because the defense value got so high that keeping a "reasonnable" shield value in regard of archery was no longer possible without making shield irrellevant in melee fight?
A shield of 5 might be good for archery, but useless for melee if all units got defense of 40...
And for me, all the mod is like that.

I know you don't advocate mods for online play even when the gameplay is clearly better: i.e. Samurai Wars for MTW/VI or any of the fine mods that CBR made for MTW. SPQR unit balance isn't perfect, but the gameplay in RTW v1.2 is the worst of the entire Total War series. Surely, you're not trying to tell me that RTW v1.2 MP gameplay is good are you? Although many players say they want more balanced gameplay online, very few will actually leave the "offical" gameplay in which CA refuses to fix even blatant balance issues.

Although I am sceptical of modding success, I have played a few mods, including Reconquista, MP Wars, STW (before it was rebalanced, barroca version)... I am playtesting 4 mods in RTW. If I don't play Samurai Wars, it's mainly because I don't play VI period.

I'd like to point that topic:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=43786

I am not a happy camper, and I have no issue with modding. SPQR may have felt good for some people for some good reasons, it does not cut it for me. Yuuki, I think that you could do a better job for balancing MP than SPQR modders did and with probably less issues. It's fairly obvious they have SP in mind; nothing wrong with that, and I hope they'll be very succesfull with this mod in SP and I got no doubt many players will like it.

Given that SPQR is filled with inflated values, I don't think it's a good base for additional MP balancing. In my opinion, tweaking vanilla 1.2 will be better than tweaking SPQR.

Louis,

[Puzz3D]

Louis,

Ok. I got a response from LT1956, and it is as you say. SPQR was made for SP. He can't play multiplayer, and it will never be balanced for MP. The problem with the shield is that SPQR was made for v1.1, and LT1956 says it's the RTW v1.2 patch that messed up the way shields work in SPQR. It's too bad because the graphics are nice and the unit selection seems better to me, i. e no dogs and pigs. So, the best thing is probably to make a new stat for RTW v1.2. The problem is getting players to agree on one stat.

[Orda Khan]

Sometimes I can't believe what I read

........Orda

[Puzz3D]

Work on SPQR continues at .net with LT1956 making adjustments based on feedback on an alpha test stat. I guess there are four main testers.

[LuminousSun]

I think this mod is the best mod so far.
The gameplay is great.
once you get used to the new order of things it becomes much more tw like.
They have also added realistic banners and music fit for rome.
give it a try.

[Spartan117300]

if anyone can give me a link showing EXACTLY what this mod does besides just saying it is better.... i might consider it, everyone who has had it seems to love it but what does it do!?, also are there any screenshots of the modded units? if so id love aq link of that too