Game balance, EDU stats, and etc...

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

I have been chaging the RS EDU file a bit, mainly because I have some issues with RS:

1. Lethality is too high. Battles are very frenetical, like in vanilla, and not as long as many would like them so fast; the best solution would be either to increase HP or decrease lethality. Instead of 1 lethality for most soldiers, 0.23 or 0.13 will be enough depending on what kind of weapon the unit is using. So a gladius would have lower lethality than a Gallic longsword, and a shortsword or dagger less lethality than a Gladius, and etc... Missiles would still have a somewhat high lethality.

2. I've decreased the unit stats and the differences between many units in attack and defence. Some heavy units were killing too quickly, traditionally with legionaries killing a lot of hoplites too fast. Apart from lethality control, I've set some more modest values to unit and underpowered the Romans a bit, they were too strong. Especially the late Post-Marian and Imperial Legions.

This basically consists of having determined values for armour depending on the armour used, a fixed value for shields depending on size and type, and fixed skills for legionaries. There's no more total reliance on defence skill like before, and Imperial legions only have an armor bonus depending on the armor they use.

So, if the unit is depicted as wearing Chain, Bronze Helmet and Scutum:

5 for Chain + 4 for the bronze helmet + 5 for the Scutum

Total: 14 + Skill (I've set it to eleven and ten values), so the defence rating of the unit is 24. This would be a typical consular legion.

This might sound like low values, but with the decreased lethality battles are actually longer.

I've also tweaked missiles down a bit, they were very strong. With the above stats, I've set them more or less to vanilla values; now all pila have either 12 or 13 attack (plus ap feature). In my tests with the original stats legionaries were killing a lot with pila, about half of the enemy units. Pila were powerful, but not so decisive unless used in a concentrated manner.

Javelins, arrows, etc... all went down. Lethality for them is about 4 to 7, but their stats don't go above 14. Arrows have around 6 to 9 attacks, with the best archers getting 11. This way, I feel missiles are a bit more accurately represented, especially with heavily armoured units, and will also put some challenges to the player using archers. People will try more to avoid the Shields and shoot them from their backs, so they get only their armor to protect them.

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As for attack, we would have some references according to the type of weapon used. Shortswords would have about 8 or 9 attack, with the more skilled and best shortswordsmen (like Legions) getting about 10 as max attack. Skilled longswordsmen would have more attack and lethality due to the weapons they use, but they would be more expensive.

This brings the issue of prices, and IMHO, they're fine. I'm mainly focused on modding unit stats, so their prices still are not an issue.

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I'm currently play-testing this solution, and I can say it adds a lot of challenge to gameplay. Units won't die and rout so fast, missiles need more skill to be used, and I have underpowered cavalry a bit to reflect their secondary status and prevent them from steamrolling spearmen & other infantry too easily, in an unrealistic manner. I've also set the standard number of cavalry per unit to 100 for elites, and 120 for "normal" cavalry, to make up for their stat losses.

I would like to know what the RS team has to say about this. Longer battles, and more balanced Romans, are definetely a way to go.


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Finally, I would like to point some historical innacuracies in legions: Consular legions should get round Scuta, Centurions should use Lorica Hamata or Squamata, and use a legionary combat animation instead of their current one. Principes' shields shoud also be a bit larger.

BTW, I'm still playing with RS 1.10b. If there are any updates on these issues in recent patches, then tell me.

[Squid]

I have been chaging the RS EDU file a bit, mainly because I have some issues with RS:

1. Lethality is too high. Battles are very frenetical, like in vanilla, and not as long as many would like them so fast; the best solution would be either to increase HP or decrease lethality. Instead of 1 lethality for most soldiers, 0.23 or 0.13 will be enough depending on what kind of weapon the unit is using. So a gladius would have lower lethality than a Gallic longsword, and a shortsword or dagger less lethality than a Gladius, and etc... Missiles would still have a somewhat high lethality.

This disagrees with what the vast majority of both the team and players have commented, which is that most battles take ~30-60 minutes, once you have larger armies moving around, and no one seems to be complaining about battles being too short. And just as a person who is very into correctly phrased arguments, don't present your own opionions as "many would like them" without and proof to back up the claim.

Any weapon with a sharp edge is just as lethal as any other weapon with a sharp edge. It's not the weapon that determines the lethality but the user of said weapon. One gladius in roman times certainly killed more Gauls on average than any Gallic longsword ever killed romans, so your assumption on lethality is faulty.

2. I've decreased the unit stats and the differences between many units in attack and defence. Some heavy units were killing too quickly, traditionally with legionaries killing a lot of hoplites too fast. Apart from lethality control, I've set some more modest values to unit and underpowered the Romans a bit, they were too strong. Especially the late Post-Marian and Imperial Legions.

This basically consists of having determined values for armour depending on the armour used, a fixed value for shields depending on size and type, and fixed skills for legionaries. There's no more total reliance on defence skill like before, and Imperial legions only have an armor bonus depending on the armor they use.

So, if the unit is depicted as using Chain, Bronze Helmet and Scutum:

5 for Chain + 4 for the bronze helmet + 5 for the Scutum

Total: 14 + Skill (I've set it to eleven and ten values), so the defence rating of the unit is 24. This would be a typical consular legion.

This might sound like low values, but with the decreased lethality battles are actually longer.

I've also tweaked missiles down a bit, they were very strong. With the above stats, I've set them more or less to vanilla values; now all pila have either 12 or 13 attack (plus ap feature). In my tests with the original stats legionaries were killing a lot with pila, about half of the enemy units. Pila were powerful, but not so decisive unless used in a concentrated manner.

Javelins, arrows, etc... all went down. Lethality for them is about 4 to 7, but their stats don't go above 14. Arrows have around 6 to 9 attacks, with the best archers getting 11. This way, I feel missiles are a bit more accurately represented, especially with heavily armoured units, and will also put some challenges to the player using archers. People will try more to avoid the Shields and shoot them from their backs, so they get only their armor to protect them.

---------

As for attack, we would have some references according to the type of weapon used. Shortswords would have about 8 or 9 attack, with the more skilled and best shortswordsmen (like Legions) getting about 10 as max attack. Skilled longswordsmen would have more attack and lethality due to the weapons they use, but they would be more expensive.

This brings the issue of prices, and IMHO, they're fine. I'm mainly focused on modding unit stats, so their prices still are not an issue.

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I'm currently play-testing this solution, and I can say it adds a lot of challenge to gameplay. Units won't die and rout so fast, missiles need more skill to be used, and I have underpowered cavalry a bit to reflect their secondary status and prevent them from steamrolling spearmen & other infantry too easily, in an unrealistic manner. I've also set the standard number of cavalry per unit to 100 for elites, and 120 for "normal" cavalry, to make up for their stat losses.

I would like to know what the RS team has to say about this. Longer battles, and more balanced Romans, are definetely a way to go.

Again I will point out, that very few people consider the Romans overpowered. In fact dvk recently made a post pointing out that in not one AI campaign has Rome actually won. Meaning it gets defeated (or at least marginalized) every campaign.

One of the reasons value are set as high as they are is to reduce the impact of armour/weapon/exp bonuses as with higher values of offensive/defence these bonuses are a smaller percentage increase, making them less imprtant.

Just reading over your changes it doesn't look like you've actually changed a whole lot aside from lethality rate, since reducing everything by the same percentage keeps everything the same. More improtantly your cavalry changes make no difference, and in fact make cavalry more powerful. Reducing their power by half but doubling their size makes them just as powerful as before, but now each loss decreases their effectiveness significantly, 50%, less, meaning they are a stronger unit in a battle far longer then they should be.

The Roman Imperial Legions should be strong, they were by a large margin, the best fighting force of the time, their defensive skills weren't based on the armour, though it was certainly a factor, but on the skill and tactics used by the legions.

I'd also question what difficulty level you were playing on.
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Finally, I would like to point some historical innacuracies in legions: Consular legions should get round Scuta, Centurions should use Lorica Hamata or Squamata, and use a legionary combat animation instead of their current one. Principes' shields shoud also be a bit larger.

BTW, I'm still playing with RS 1.10b. If there are any updates on these issues in recent patches, then tell me.

There are updates most patches as we are always tweaking stats and fixing things as we find them. So you are not playing on the most current release which would be 1.10c.

I've tried to answer your post as best I can, but it comes down to the following: You are welcome to change the mod for your own use as you see fit, but none of your changes are likely to be implemented now or in the future.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

This disagrees with what the vast majority of both the team and players have commented, which is that most battles take ~30-60 minutes, once you have larger armies moving around, and no one seems to be complaining about battles being too short. And just as a person who is very into correctly phrased arguments, don't present your own opionions as "many would like them" without and proof to back up the claim.

Strategical thinking and gaming means longer battles. What, you'll try to pin down the enemy and encircle them, but what if they kill you too quickly. SPQR has a very nice 2HP system that made battles very long, long enough for your decent units to hold the enemy while the rest maneuvers and encircles them. While in my test, Imperial legionaries just massacred Byzantine hoplites in an unrealistic fashion; I mean, they were trained and all, but doesn't it take long for you to kill somebody with a large shield and a bronze cuirass, plus greaves and helmet? Somehow, compared to other mods, not only are Imperial legions killing too quickly because they're strong, but many units are dying quickly due to lethality.

Any weapon with a sharp edge is just as lethal as any other weapon with a sharp edge. It's not the weapon that determines the lethality but the user of said weapon. One gladius in roman times certainly killed more Gauls on average than any Gallic longsword ever killed romans, so your assumption on lethality is faulty.

I beg to differ. Some weapons are very similar, BUT, a skilled guy with a longsword gets a lot more advantages that a skilled guy with a dagger. The factor that made the gladius a good weapon was the large Scutum protecting the wearer from blows, better than many shields of the time, and the tightly grouped Roman formations that left no room for maneuvering Gallic longswords. But let's make circumstances a bit different: give a guy a Gladius and a round shield, and another one a longsword and a round shield. Much easier to whirl the longsword around and hit the guy from a bigger distance than he can get because of his small gladius. In individual combat, longswords actually had an advantage, and that's why the Celts used them: they didn't have all the discipline to put their men into tightly grouped formations for very long. Neither did they have Scuta.

One of the reasons value are set as high as they are is to reduce the impact of armour/weapon/exp bonuses as with higher values of offensive/defence these bonuses are a smaller percentage increase, making them less imprtant.

So, the well-experienced and tough unit of hastati doesn't deserve to get the same stats as fresh Principes? Or a fresh unit of hoplites? Differences, even with small stat disparities, can be big enough to allow units to remain distinct in strenght, although I can't see the point for cancelling exp./armor/weapon bonuses from the list.

Just reading over your changes it doesn't look like you've actually changed a whole lot aside from lethality rate, since reducing everything by the same percentage keeps everything the same. More improtantly your cavalry changes make no difference, and in fact make cavalry more powerful. Reducing their power by half but doubling their size makes them just as powerful as before, but now each loss decreases their effectiveness significantly, 50%, less, meaning they are a stronger unit in a battle far longer then they should be.

No, no. Remember the big warbands from vanilla? Well, they actually sucked for pretty much any kind of combat except against light infantry. Quality is the issue that's going down here; mods such as RTR put a lot of emphasis on the Charge value of cavalry while tweaking down their defence and attack stats. Why? Because it's pretty easy to hit such a big target near you, man and horse, even with a knife or a dagger. Only cataphracts and heavy cavalry, with armored horses, can decrease this problem in close combat to a manageable point, but most cavalry at that time wasn't like the Parthian cataphracts. They were not suited for any degree of combat in close quarters, but rather for hit-and-run tactics.

The same cannot be said of RS, where even Equites can be armoured vehicles if used properly. Elite Greek Cavalry is even more powerful, and 80 of them managed to defeat 171 hastati in close combat. Happened in one of my battles.

Again I will point out, that very few people consider the Romans overpowered. In fact dvk recently made a post pointing out that in not one AI campaign has Rome actually won. Meaning it gets defeated (or at least marginalized) every campaign.

Have you ever expected to see the AI win anything? Roman legions are quite overpowerd especially in missile attack, but their strenght should never be overestimated. They were not gods, just trained men. I play on VH\Medium, yet it was too easy to win with Rome. Consider also what human players have to say.

For gameplay reasons, I think Roman infantry stats should be tweaked down a bit. They just kill pretty much anything, cavalry, infantry, and even pikemen, to a rate that is simply not in touch with realistical stats. Don't forget they were infantrymen first, and their training wasn't enough to make them gods or strong enough to kill half of the enemy unit with their pila.

And yes, their strenght was also based on their armor. Armor is an important factor in close combat; consider how many blows you can deflect with nothing, and with a suit of chain mail. Skill plays a lot, but let's not forget the legions had that big shield and good quality armor to protect them.

I'd also question what difficulty level you were playing on.

I always test my battles on Medium.

[Squid]

Strategical thinking and gaming means longer battles. What, you'll try to pin down the enemy and encircle them, but what if they kill you too quickly. SPQR has a very nice 2HP system that made battles very long, long enough for your decent units to hold the enemy while the rest maneuvers and encircles them. While in my test, Imperial legionaries just massacred Byzantine hoplites in an unrealistic fashion; I mean, they were trained and all, but doesn't it take long for you to kill somebody with a large shield and a bronze cuirass, plus greaves and helmet? Somehow, compared to other mods, not only are Imperial legions killing too quickly because they're strong, but many units are dying quickly due to lethality.

See my comment below on difficulty level. Also as I said before, the entire team and the (vast) majority of comments we see tell us that no one wants battles as long as SPQRs battles are. Basically, it was decided it isn't fun to play one battle for 3 hours.

I would also expect an Imperial Legion to massacre any hoplite unit it came in contact with.

I beg to differ. Some weapons are very similar, BUT, a skilled guy with a longsword gets a lot more advantages that a skilled guy with a dagger. The factor that made the gladius a good weapon was the large Scutum protecting the wearer from blows, better than many shields of the time, and the tightly grouped Roman formations that left no room for maneuvering Gallic longswords. But let's make circumstances a bit different: give a guy a Gladius and a round shield, and another one a longsword and a round shield. Much easier to whirl the longsword around and hit the guy from a bigger distance than he can get because of his small gladius. In individual combat, longswords actually had an advantage, and that's why the Celts used them: they didn't have all the discipline to put their men into tightly grouped formations for very long. Neither did they have Scuta.

Unfortunately, real combat for the most part was not one on one, so looking at and comparing weapons in a vacuum doesn't help. The stats are based on an entire unit not any individual person in said unit. So a roman unit using Hastati will have better stats, because as a unit they were far more deadly. This increase in stats is countered by the fact that all roman units are smaller then their counterparts in other factions. If we made longsword have a higher attack value then a gladius, then every unit that used a longsword would beat every unit that used a gladius. RTW does not support one on one combat.

Also any person with a short sword wouldn't be stupid enough to let the person with longer sword "whirl it around", they'd step inside their attack arc, and then the longsword is entirely useless because it's too big to bring to bear. Don't look only at the side of the argument you want to see.

So, the well-experienced and tough unit of hastati doesn't deserve to get the same stats as fresh Principes? Or a fresh unit of hoplites? Differences, even with small stat disparities, can be big enough to allow units to remain distinct in strenght, although I can't see the point for cancelling exp./armor/weapon bonuses from the list.

It isn't that we've cancelled the bonuses (we could not just allow them in the buildings if we wanted to do that), it's we're minimizing the effect. For arguments sake, say each level of weapons bonus is the equivalent of 5 points to their primary weapon. If you have a gold weapon unit that's 15 point weapon increase. If the unit starts with a weapon of at most 15 points (according to your changes) this means that their weapon alone would double their effectiveness, which is entirely unrealistic. If the same unit starts with a 60 point weapon then they are getting at most a 25% increase in effectiveness, which while unrealistic still is more accurate, if they start with 75 points it's 20% increase for a gold weapon unit, similar argument applies for defence and experience. Basically an upgraded unit should be better yes, but not a god comapred to its unupgraded counterpart.

No, no. Remember the big warbands from vanilla? Well, they actually sucked for pretty much any kind of combat except against light infantry. Quality is the issue that's going down here; mods such as RTR put a lot of emphasis on the Charge value of cavalry while tweaking down their defence and attack stats. Why? Because it's pretty easy to hit such a big target near you, man and horse, even with a knife or a dagger. Only cataphracts and heavy cavalry, with armored horses, can decrease this problem in close combat to a manageable point, but most cavalry at that time wasn't like the Parthian cataphracts. They were not suited for any degree of combat in close quarters, but rather for hit-and-run tactics.

The same cannot be said of RS, where even Equites can be armoured vehicles if used properly. Elite Greek Cavalry is even more powerful, and 80 of them managed to defeat 171 hastati in close combat. Happened in one of my battles.

Fine, warbands were horrible in vanilla, but the romans were tremendously powerful in vanilla and if you ran an AI campaign would win some inordinate percentage of the time.

I'd expect a unit of elite greek cavalry to destroy a hastati unit one on one. Elite Greek Cavalry we're IIRC based on Alexander's compagnion cavalry. The Roman's were routinely beaten or at least barely managed to win against any foe that had superior cavalry to them.

As I've already said, the stats are constantly being tweaked and fixed to address issues.

Have you ever expected to see the AI win anything? Roman legions are quite overpowerd especially in missile attack, but their strenght should never be overestimated. They were not gods, just trained men. I play on VH\Medium, yet it was too easy to win with Rome. Consider also what human players have to say.

The tests were an all AI campaign, and in such a test yes I would expect the romans to win every time if they were as overpowered as you claim. They weren't overpowered and they didn't win. To clarify, there was no human interaction in these test campaigns, they are run entirely using the game's AI for all factions.

As for human opinions, you are one person with one opinion, whos opinion isn't better or worse than anybody elses. I said previously that based on the collective opinion of the team and the probably hundreds of others who've made their opinion known, yours is definitely in the minority.

I always test my battles on Medium.

This is the problem, the battle AI is designed around hard battles not medium. In medium battles you will always mow through your enemy, it doesn't matter what the stats are, unless you give the AI a ridiculous disparity. You could just be a very good general. As I said in my last post you can change the stats however you want to suit your desires.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

I would also expect an Imperial Legion to massacre any hoplite unit it came in contact with.

I would expect it to defeat the hoplites, never to "massacre" them. And what about Spartans and the rest? Aren't they elite?

It depends on the type of hoplite or unit in question.

As for shortswords vs. longswords, there is a lot of debate on this. But just to remember, longswords are better in skirmishes or in loose combat. Shortswords won't even have the range to reach the enemy in the situation I described above, as blocking a lognsword is not as easy as it sounds. To complete this, the Romans switched to a longer sword when battles ceased to be massive pitched conflicts and turned more like small border skirmishes, where massed formations of legionaries with big shields and short swords weren't really as effective as lightly armoured longswordsmen fighting in loose order.

I'd expect a unit of elite greek cavalry to destroy a hastati unit one on one. Elite Greek Cavalry we're IIRC based on Alexander's compagnion cavalry. The Roman's were routinely beaten or at least barely managed to win against any foe that had superior cavalry to them.

Yes, they were beaten. Mainly because of momentum during a cavalry charge that was devastating, a rear charge, or else. Only the heaviest cavalry can be realistically succesful in a pitched battle, even against medium infantry such as hastati. Point is, big horse, big guy mounted on it, difficult to strike from horseback = small defence + small attack. Charge is the issue here, even with Elite Greek Cavalry. Alexander didn't waste them in pitched battles, rather he used them to constantly charge the rear of the enemy to rout it.

The tests were an all AI campaign, and in such a test yes I would expect the romans to win every time if they were as overpowered as you claim. They weren't overpowered and they didn't win

Sorry, I wasn't very clear, but on the battlefield, Post-Marian Romans, especially Imperial legions, seem a little too powerful.

As for human opinions, you are one person with one opinion, whos opinion isn't better or worse than anybody elses. I said previously that based on the collective opinion of the team and the probably hundreds of others who've made their opinion known, yours is definitely in the minority.

Fine, I'm just saying whatever I think on the issue. RS is great and I think a messageboard is here so we can hear opinions. Even different ones; nobody minds if someone disagress with someone.

This is the problem, the battle AI is designed around hard battles not medium. In medium battles you will always mow through your enemy, it doesn't matter what the stats are, unless you give the AI a ridiculous disparity. You could just be a very good general. As I said in my last post you can change the stats however you want to suit your desires.

If you play with Roman legions on Hard, game gets challenging. But against Roman legions on Hard, game is quite impossible. As I said, the only extra feature I think Imperial Legions should have is the extra armor rating, nothing more. Consular legions already get formidable stats for heavy infantry.

[Squid]

As for shortswords vs. longswords, there is a lot of debate on this. But just to remember, longswords are better in skirmishes or in loose combat. Shortswords won't even have the range to reach the enemy in the situation I described above, as blocking a lognsword is not as easy as it sounds. To complete this, the Romans switched to a longer sword when battles ceased to be massive pitched conflicts and turned more like small border skirmishes, where massed formations of legionaries with big shields and short swords weren't really as effective as lightly armoured longswordsmen fighting in loose order.

The earliest a longer sword (spathae) then the gladius (in its various incarnations) was used by any branch of the roman military aside from auxilia and cavalry is 2nd Century AD, which is after the time frame of our mod.

Fine, I'm just saying whatever I think on the issue. RS is great and I think a messageboard is here so we can hear opinions. Even different ones; nobody minds if someone disagress with someone.

Haven't I said you're entitled to your opinion and to make whatever changes you see fit in order to make the game more to your own liking? I agree this board is here so we the team can hear opinions; however, you seem to be confusing our hearing your opinion with our having to follow it, and the latter does not follow from the former. I have heard your opinion and have answered it as best as possible, and I'm sure others on the team could probably explain better, and for that I apologize.

I have also said that we are basing the changes that are made based on the trends across all opinions, not just yours. On another board we had someone swearing up and down that the Roman legions were so weak they needed higher stats to be able to win any battle, so if we follow that opinion yours is ignored, and if we follow yours then the other opinion is ignored.

Rome should be able to win most battles, but Rome should also take a chunk of casualties in the process, less casualties of course once Rome has Imperial Legions. There's no point in making Rome no better then anybody else, because historically they were the best, and it wasn't even close. As I already said the superior stats of the Roman army is offset by the fact that each unit has fewer number of men in it.

If you play with Roman legions on Hard, game gets challenging. But against Roman legions on Hard, game is quite impossible. As I said, the only extra feature I think Imperial Legions should have is the extra armor rating, nothing more. Consular legions already get formidable stats for heavy infantry.

The improvement in stats represents an improvement is the tactics that the roman legions used post reforms (the multitude of them that happened not just the one we can depict in game). The difference between pre any reform and imperial legions was a lot more then segmentata armour, which is what you're implying is the only difference. And as I've said their better than average stats are offset by their worse then average numbers.