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.