EB II Mechanic and M2TW AI (and other stuff)

[LusitanianWolf]

Yes, that is a problem. Phalanxes will be even less useful in flanking maneuvers and in towns. But in a way it's good, getting away from town battles is good.

A wall of pikes with flanks protected by walls? Thats how I defended towns from entire stacks with just 3 units of hoplites in vanilla. Less usefull where? =P
Maybe less versatile but thats ok at least for me :P Anything is best than having them kinda like the Iphikratous Hoplitai in EB 1.2, phalanx only the name and when standing still in guard mode.

[Ichon]

Yeah the main problem with removing secondary weapon is the siege battles. Phalanx vulnerable only on rear or somewhat on flanks means defending in walls becomes so easy. Just hold the position and the towers kill the enemy. However there doesn't seem a good way to deal with this. Good shield value, medium armor, very low attack, high cohesion and the phalanx formation can still make fighting in frontally incredibly brutal.

It might not be so bad if sieges didn't last so long. In most MTW2 mods sieges of decent walled cities can last 8-12 turns before forcing a sally. I think at least half that would be more appropriate especially if there is a way to make the attacking force in a siege also lose some casualties while engaged in the siege.

I think it would be wonderful to lay siege to a city that will surrender or sally in 6 turns and have the AI attack with a relief force in 4 turns and even without fighting a battle my army has lost 20% of its strength in laying siege. (5% per turn). Winning the battle but not capturing all the enemies so the survivors retreat into town and finding now have 50% of the original army alive. 2 more turns of siege equals 40% of the original army remaining and even if gaining the city it requires reinforcements to hold or move on in the campaign.

% might be difficult to script but it might work as well to make it so a certain level of walls causes a certain # of casualties for besieger per turn based on unit size. Lower size walls might cost only 50 men on normal size where a full stack is usually just over 1,000 so slightly less than 5% but large stone walls might cost 100 men per turn. Dividing the 100 by number of units and each units size seems a bit much scripting even if possible. I'd prefer just making the number come for 3-4 random units each turn as some elite units might make a foolish attack and suffer and next turn a low tier unit eats bad food and gets sick and many die.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Perhaps a CA insider can help out of the phalanx dilemma? As I understood it, the same happened with the battle map settlements, so why not with the phalanx issue? Surely it's not a big deal, just toggling some value here or there ... (I understand that the M2TW engine is based on the RTW one?)

[fomalhaut]

I believe in the team to come to a satisfactory conclusion to this unfortunate issue!

[a completely inoffensive name]

Threads like this always made me very peeved at how M2TW was structured by CA. You would think the same engine that handled these kinds of units would be able to still handle them after its upgrade. Not really an upgrade if you muck around with it so much, backwards compatibility becomes an uphill battle.

[Tuuvi]

Threads like this always made me very peeved at how M2TW was structured by CA. You would think the same engine that handled these kinds of units would be able to still handle them after its upgrade. Not really an upgrade if you muck around with it so much, backwards compatibility becomes an uphill battle.

I think it might be even worse than that; I didn't play M2TW a whole lot but IIRC there are units that use a medieval pike formation in the game. If people can't get the Macedonian phalanx to work than I'm assuming the vanilla pike units didn't work correctly either.

[bobbin]

Perhaps a CA insider can help out of the phalanx dilemma? As I understood it, the same happened with the battle map settlements, so why not with the phalanx issue? Surely it's not a big deal, just toggling some value here or there ... (I understand that the M2TW engine is based on the RTW one?)

Do you think we would have had this problem for all these years if it were that simple? The phalanx as it was in RTW does not exist, its code in the exe has been rewritten to make the M2TW pike wall and in the process CA have broken the formation.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Do you think we would have had this problem for all these years if it were that simple? The phalanx as it was in RTW does not exist, its code in the exe has been rewritten to make the M2TW pike wall and in the process CA have broken the formation.

IIRC you had the settlement problem quite a long time until someone came around with CA insider knowledge. Often, when a new version of an engine is developped, things get occultus, if you get me, and sometimes it just takes toggling the switch again. No offense intended.

[Foot]

IIRC you had the settlement problem quite a long time until someone came around with CA insider knowledge. Often, when a new version of an engine is developped, things get occultus, if you get me, and sometimes it just takes toggling the switch again. No offense intended.

The circumstances are quite different. The settlements was that we didn't understand how the files worked, and CA were able to point those modders in the right direction. The phalanx in M2 was a design decision. Its not that we don't understand how it works, its that how it works just doesn't.

Foot

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Ah yes I see. And you cannot alter existing formations to make them look like a phalanx, right? Shieldwall, for example?

[Gustave]

We use M2tW's pikewall formation. It's the most appropriate.

[Cybvep]

Problems like that have me worried about the final quality of the game. I have no doubt that the team will do all that is in their power to deliver a great mod, but it's a different game than RTW, a game which wasn't even set in the antiquity to begin with. One can almost be sure that there will be problems...

[Olaf The Great]

Don't worry about that too much. Even the vanilla Pike wall is decent so I'm sure the EB team will come up with something even better

IMO the RTW exe had more issues. Though I may be biased as I typically use thorakitai based armies when playing as Greek factions so this doesn't affect me too much.

[Ichon]

Don't be biased beforehand. RTW phalanx formation had issues as well. Overall I think I will prefer MTW2 formation of pike wall for the most part. The trickiest part of MTW2 will be getting skirmishers done better. I didn't really like it in RTW but some of the skirmishers had such long range they could be quite deadly. MTW2 the range is much shorter and the throwing animation is a bit long.

[Olaf The Great]

The range of missiles is defined in the edu so you will likely see range like in EB.

[antisocialmunky]

Is there a way to make it so charges don't carry past the initial 1st ranks of the pikes like monkeying with mass or monkeying with unit cohesion?