How tough are the battles?

[olly]

Hello,

Long time RTR fan who won't be able to try this mod til the weekend (real life does get in the way) and didn't try the earlier builds for long (combo of CTD's and 1.2).

Anyway excited by it all and just wanted to know what the battles were like? Are many people getting heroic victories? What kind ratio of kills are you getting against the AI? That sort of stuff.

Anyway, very jelous of people playing it now and would like to know more .

Also does EB use land Bridges?

[LorDBulA]

Also does EB use land Bridges?

No. But we have crossable straits.

[Dram]

theres no difference in AI between rtr and eb. unless youre playing a mod that forces you to play a particular faction, which is purposely made underpowered compared to the other factions (such as the old Roma mod for RTR), the battles will always be very similar and the limitation is the AI of the game which is hardcoded.

if you dont like the formations the AI uses in eb then you can try out the darthmod formation pack but thats about it as far as AI improvements go.

[olly]

That is cool. Just asking as you have made so many changes who knows what you could of done . Will thourghly enjoy giving it a go this weekend.

Do like the Imperator II mod for RTR though (which is the updated Roma for RTR Platinum) Dram but I'm looking forward to going back to my favourite Carthage and seeing what all this EB fuss is about!

[fatsweets]

I've played a couple hours so far as Koinon hellenon and in a siege of Korinthios it seemed that the towers were shooting very rapidly at my army and killing a lot more than usual. Has there been changes in the fire rates?
I fought the siege with equal numbers of troops and lost pretty handily, it just seemed a lot harder than usual and I play difficulty level hard for battles. I usually win those type of battles.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Well, EB is harder, specially in the strat map. But it's harder overall.

[Samurai Waki]

Saba, Saba, Saba! Yay! Hard Battles, but very rich land. I Looove It.

[Dooz]

You know, the only downside to this mod is that it's on RTW and not M2. For whatever reason, I guess actually improved AI, kill ratios are vastly improved in the updated engine. Going back to RTW after a good while of M2, it was very noticeable. However, EB being EB more than makes up for that with every other aspect of the mod. And if you play on Hard battle setting, ratios end up a bit better even though it doesn't feel right because of unit unbalance.

[Meothar]

The battles are much easier than the fight versus Mongol Horde in MTW2. Especially with Phalanx units...well, if you are a good RTW player you will win the battles even if the odds are against you.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Then try the sweboz or lusotannan or someone like that or take your phalangites into the steppe. I rarely play barb factions but have been having a blast with those wacky germans lately.I'm about to run into romans, and am pretty sure I'll lose that fight.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Well I am losing about 40% of my troops per battle ,the AI uses advanced manouvres and the campaign is much more complex than RTW.
Mind you i am playing MTW 2 and not EB so maybe that's the reason...

[Spidey]

Hello,

Long time RTR fan who won't be able to try this mod til the weekend (real life does get in the way) and didn't try the earlier builds for long (combo of CTD's and 1.2).

Anyway excited by it all and just wanted to know what the battles were like? Are many people getting heroic victories? What kind ratio of kills are you getting against the AI? That sort of stuff.

Olly:

I've played RTR Platinum and love it. When I started playing RTR, the first thing I noticed was the battles are quite a bit longer and a lot harder. I stuck with it and was soon winning most of my battles (playing initially on medium/medium and then moving to hard/hard).

Last night I played my first five or six battles with EB (playing Macedonia). My first two, I was crucified. Clear losses both times on medium/medium. Then I read Teleklos' guide and started a new game.

This time I won two and lost one. All were against Greeks. I won the two against Sparta (yeah, really). The first one had a 1:1 ratio and I was hanging on by my teeth, attacking the flank of the Greeks with anything, including skirmishers to win. I chewed up a Macedonian cavalry unit by doing charge after charge into the Greek rear. When I was done, the cavalry unit was down to 30 (from 48). The second battle was my siege against Sparta and I actually got a clear victory (course, I threw everything into that one). Kill ration was something like 430 to 180 in favor of Sparta.

I had a brief encounter with the last of the Spartan army, a cavalry skirmish, and when I was done all that was left was a general and three bodyguards. These retreated to Athens.

Then I attacked Athens with around a 2:1 ratio, thinking I'd push through easily. Nothing doing. It was ugly and the Greeks phalanxes took out unit after unit of my levy pikemen (or whatever they're called, I'll learn names soon enough). Eventually everyone routed. I think I killed around 200 Greeks. They killed about 900 Macedonians.

I quit after that. But it was a blast.

It'll also be interesting to see how that final (non-beta) Macedonian map falls into place. Right now the game is hard because, like RTR, it requires more management skills and more thought, and it introduces an entirely new (to those not used to EB) way of playing.

If you like RTR, you'll probably like this too.

Spidey

[pezhetairoi]

I like the sound of that. Makedonia steamrollered KH in 0.7.4, and I like a good challenge when I finally play as the Maks.

[Cheexsta]

Playing M/M as Romani, haven't had any real "hard" battles just yet. One battle against Carthage was a bit tough (outnumbered by a thousand men on Huge scale), but they were mostly Poeni Citizen Militia so the enemy army crumbled pretty quickly. Ended up losing about 25% of my army before healing was factored in (which brought back about 25% of my losses, too). I was very happy that the AI kept its phalanx units in a reasonably straight line, and actually managed to punch through my lines with its cavalry at one stage. If they had better units I would certainly have been in more trouble...

But then the Romani campaign is fairly easy - one of the only factions to have a positive income at the start Might try a different faction, see what else has changed...

[Trithemius]

Mind you i am playing MTW 2 and not EB so maybe that's the reason...

...

What?

[Pintaphilly]

Ive been playing Medium/Medium with Romani, and the battles take longer than b4, like this one time when the enemy general didnt want to die !! it was sorrounded by my spearman, and it took like 200 hits b4 he finally died. And also i noticed the units take more hits b4 they die.

P.S. Why when my cavalry charge the enemy they dont send some of there units flying? they just stop in front of them and start to attack.

[Foot]

P.S. Why when my cavalry charge the enemy they dont send some of there units flying? they just stop in front of them and start to attack.

You must send your cavalry far enough away, or they won't be able to get enough speed to reach a full charge. If they have lances check to see if they are down, if they are not then you have a failed charge. Best way to do it is to send them far enough away and click once on the enemy, if the cavalry don't instantly charge then the charge will be good.

Foot

[olly]

Spidey. thats the answer I was looking for

Will look forward to giving it a go.

[Tiberius Nero]

For better battle AI I recommend playing with the BI .exe. There is a guide by Cheexta one how to get it running: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74213

[Spidey]

Ive been playing Medium/Medium with Romani, and the battles take longer than b4, like this one time when the enemy general didnt want to die!!

I had that situation last night, too. A Spartan general ran way after killing ten or fifteen Macedonian cavalry. He had just one or two bodyguards left. They retreated to Athens where he emerged to try to lead the Greeks to victory.

I love this game.

[Tiberius Nero]

Generals are indeed very hard to kill. Also, do the spears work correctly? I have had my pontic general unit 60 or so strong crash head-on into a full pantodapoi spearmen (not phalangites) unit and after fighting it out for 3 minutes on the spot, I routed them without really losing more than 15 horsemen. I mean, the stats of the pontic general aren't really impressive either and with the reduction in HP I would have expected my unit to disolve in seconds (it was more of a diversion charge and I intended to pull back immediately, but found out there was no reason to!) at least from my experience of RTRPE so far...

[Watchman]

Pantodapoi are about as crap as spearmen come in EB, and most of the time (barring fairly extreme circumstances and/or high battle difficulty settings) most GenBGs ought to be able to rout them without excessive difficulties. Might take a while though.

Remember that most weapons in EB have quite low "kill rates" - 0.125 seems to be the norm for infantry spears for example , meaning if I've understood correctly that only around one in eight blows that gets through the defense stats actually wounds...

[blank]

Playing as the Lusotannan (they rule), i came across this: i was fighting a siege battle against the Iberian rebels. I used skirmishers to ram the gate (so that they could throw their javelins after they're done). But after the gate was down and the skirmishers re-arranged them, the enemy's cavalry charged out of the gate and annihilated the skirmishers before my spearmen got there

I have never seen the AI do that in RTW or any other mod, so i wonder if it's an EB feature? If it is, then great work!