umm...

[Vuk]

I heard so many raves about EB, so I decided to download it and try it myself. I gotta say, truely a fantastic job of overhauling the game system, representing provnices, units, characters, etc. It really is quite a breathtaking achievement. There is one part of it where I really felt it fell flat though. I know there are lots of fans of this mod, and I am not trying to be a jerk here, but the way battles play out is really quite unrealistic. Archers are undervalued, cavalry is almost completely useless, damage is quite off, and the AI does some random and pretty ridiculous things. Now before you rip me apart for stating my opinion, let me clarify something. I am not an ignorant noob who wants ridiculous tank cavalry that can roll everything like in RTW, and I am not clueless as to weaponry of the time. In fact, quite the opposite. Apart from having read a vast variety of sources on the subject, I have created and used my own archaic weaponry and armour. While not an expert, and not everything I have made has turned out, I none-the-less have a working knowledge of ancient equipment.
For example, let's take slingers. A good slinger could outrange the average bowman at this time, and be quite a bit more accurate. There are lots of good sources that cite the accuracy and range of slingers, but the best IMO is the Bible (I leave it up to you whether to accept this as a creditable source or not). I forget in which book of the Bible it says that the slingers of Benjiman could hit a bird in flight from some (I forget exactly) very long range. I made and have used a sling (three in fact) myself, and while I remain very unskilled with it, I have gotten a taste for its power. My biggest objection with the slingers lies in the description. The description says that they fling rocks at the enemy. Most Hellenic slingers at least at this time used lead bullets, not stones. They flew faster, with more accuracy, and could cause devestating damage - easily being able to kill an armoured man without even necassarily damaging his armour. While many peasants used smaller slings and stones to herd sheep, and often only brought that into battle, more professional slingers had more professional equipment, with hemp slings and lead bullets. I decided to have a unit of Rhodian slingers pour into a units of unshielded infantry and LO AND BEHOLD! About FIVE darned men dropped dead! WTH! They would have destroyed the entire first row and reaked havoc on the rest. Slingers were limited because of the nature of their weapon, but when used correctly they were extremely devestating, their long range could keep archers and horse archers away, and they slaughtered armoured soldiers. They are just one example of how horribly wrong battles play in EB.

*rant over*
Sorry if I ranted too much, but trust me, the reason for my abject disappointment with this aspect of the game is my love of other aspects of it.
I will still play the mod, but just auto resolve battles. Overall I think the mod is excellent, and I assure you that I will be doing my best to rebalance the battles myself.
Good luck on part 2, I will play it.
Vuk

[SwissBarbar]

The AI stupidity cannot be modded and is the same as in RTW.

And the slingers... they are good enough if used correctly

[Tollheit]

I'd even say they are still easily the most efficient ranged foot soldiers in EB, especially so against armoured opponents.
On the use and usefulness of cavalry:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=103172

[Vuk]

The AI stupidity cannot be modded and is the same as in RTW.

And the slingers... they are good enough if used correctly

So what if they can be used effectively under the correct circumstances? The point of this mod to represent things realisticly, and that could have been easily achieved by simply setting a few values to something different. The problem is that the modders (despite how excellently they did with other aspects of the game) are not well enough informed about the warfare of the time. The way battles in RTW were worked too, but they were also wrong. EB's battles hardly play any more realistically than vanilla's.

I'd even say they are still easily the most efficient ranged foot soldiers in EB, especially so against armoured opponents.
On the use and usefulness of cavalry:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=103172

Come on, if you have three units of some of the best cavalry in the game you can take down ONE unit of infantry after charging multiple times. lol, why not just have three units of infantry? That is my whole poine, cavalry is useless. And regardless of how useful it is, the big point here is that it is unrealistic.

Anyway, I may release my rebalance when I am done, then people can have realistic battles as well as campaign.

[Phalanx300]

EB battles are realistic, and not well informed? Are you joking???

[SwissBarbar]

So what if they can be used effectively under the correct circumstances? The point of this mod to represent things realisticly, and that could have been easily achieved by simply setting a few values to something different. The problem is that the modders (despite how excellently they did with other aspects of the game) are not well enough informed about the warfare of the time. The way battles in RTW were worked too, but they were also wrong. EB's battles hardly play any more realistically than vanilla's.

That's what I say. The EB team is bound to the limits of hardcoded RTW-aspects.

Come on, if you have three units of some of the best cavalry in the game you can take down ONE unit of infantry after charging multiple times. lol, why not just have three units of infantry? That is my whole poine, cavalry is useless. And regardless of how useful it is, the big point here is that it is unrealistic.

Anyway, I may release my rebalance when I am done, then people can have realistic battles as well as campaign.

In reality, if you have nothing but "3 units" of cavalry against nothing but "1 unit" of heavily armoured Hoplitai with long spears, they also would be repulsed. The thing is to use cavalry properly in battle, in cooperation with the rest of your army. If you use cavalry how it should be used, you can roll up a line and make a whole army of 3000 men rout with your 3 units of heavy cavalry.

[Mediolanicus]

So what if they can be used effectively under the correct circumstances? The point of this mod to represent things realisticly, and that could have been easily achieved by simply setting a few values to something different. The problem is that the modders (despite how excellently they did with other aspects of the game) are not well enough informed about the warfare of the time. The way battles in RTW were worked too, but they were also wrong. EB's battles hardly play any more realistically than vanilla's.



Come on, if you have three units of some of the best cavalry in the game you can take down ONE unit of infantry after charging multiple times. lol, why not just have three units of infantry? That is my whole poine, cavalry is useless. And regardless of how useful it is, the big point here is that it is unrealistic.

Anyway, I may release my rebalance when I am done, then people can have realistic battles as well as campaign.

Of course the battles play the same as in Vanilla. Battle AI is hard coded. Nothing the modders can legaly do something about.

Cavalry is pretty effective when I use them. They can kill everything as long as you don't leave lance-armed horses in melee. And use them in a supportive role most of the time. As Swiss Barbar said 3, and even 2 (I use an FM and a unit of equites extraordinarii in my campaign) can mob up a whole army 3000 men strong while taking about 10-20 casualties in total.

If you can't get used to fight with them then change their stats, but plaese don't come saying the EB team did a bad job and made battles unrealistical and should change everything because you say so.

[anubis88]

yeah... The cavalry is very strong in EB if you use it as it was supposed to be used, there is no non spear armed unit that could defeat a good charge by heavy armoured cavalry.

If the slings would be so effective as you suggest, then instead of a roman empire we would have a rhodian empire... If slings would be so effective, ie completly destroy a formation why weren't they used more? In fact, why were the slingers most of the time from the lowest level's of society?

If the sling was so effective, it would be use more often

[Mediolanicus]

Slings are very effective but require years of training before they can be so effective.

That's why only the lowest classes used them. They learned slinging by playing as a kid and hunting afterwards.
For a professional army it would take to long to learn. Archers are almost as deadly, can be used from behind your own lines and are much more easier to learn to use effectively.

In EB: western archers < slingers < eastern archers (with a few exceptions of course).

[Tollheit]

I can rout one unit of Hoplitai with one unit of cavalry by frontal charges, and that is not how cavalry should be used.

[Lovejoy]

Cavalry bad? You must be joking. Look in the MP-thread, even against humans opponents cavalry is game winners. Hetairoi is almost over powered in multiplayer - as romans you cant stop them.

Are you sure you know how to use cav correctly? They need a long chage space etc.


And the thing is, you cant make everything realistic. You must balance things. If they made slingers even more powerful, you would only need 5 slingers to beat ANY Gaul army. Is that realistic?

The battlefields in Rome Total War are like football fields: flat and you have a good view of everything. Slingers can target WHATEVER unit he wishes on the ENTIRE battlefield. If we went by your suggestion, you could simply take 5 slingers and kill the general in EVERY fight before the battle have even started. Is that realistic?

You see, you cant simply take one unit and say, "look this is wrong!". You need to look at it from a bigger picture.

[Vuk]

The Roman Empire (and Republic) DID use slingers. The reason that they did not dominate the battle are threefold.
1. They could not be concentrated easily like archers, because they needed a lot of room to shoot (I have done it myself, so I know :P)
2. If the enemy hard large shields they could get up to enemy slingers taking very few losses.
3. To be a good slinger took a lifetime of experience (which is why I am such a lousy one :P).

As to the cavalry comments, I am not saying they should be able to roll pikemen (like the guy who did the tutorial tried), but they should be a lot more mortal (ei, take a heck of a lot more damage), and do a LOT more charge damage. (and no, I am not saying that they should launch enemies like Vanilla had) And to avoid confusion, I am talking about heavy charging cavalry, not horse archers or something. Every unit should be more mortal, ranged units overall need to do more damage, infantry has to be a little slower, shields have to count for a bit more, and shock troops need more charge damage. That is my (un)proffesional opinion.

[Vuk]

Cavalry bad? You must be joking. Look in the MP-thread, even against humans opponents cavalry is game winners. Hetairoi is almost over powered in multiplayer - as romans you cant stop them.

Are you sure you know how to use cav correctly? They need a long chage space etc.


And the thing is, you cant make everything realistic. You must balance things. If they made slingers even more powerful, you would only need 5 slingers to beat ANY Gaul army. Is that realistic?

The battlefields in Rome Total War are like football fields: flat and you have a good view of everything. Slingers can target WHATEVER unit he wishes on the ENTIRE battlefield. If we went by your suggestion, you could simply take 5 slingers and kill the general in EVERY fight before the battle have even started. Is that realistic?

You see, you cant simply take one unit and say, "look this is wrong!". You need to look at it from a bigger picture.

lol, the answer is to give it all an overhaul. Make formations count for more, make shields count for more, give slingers a very loose formation and have them do lower damage than archers, but do AP damage. Up the charge damage of shock units, lower the speed of infantry, make new maps, etc. All these things would go a long way toward making the big picture more realistic.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and distinguise between peasant slinger levys and professional slingers with cost, training time, etc. The training time for good slingers should be very high. In MP that could be balanced by adding to the cost.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I heard so many raves about EB, so I decided to download it and try it myself. I gotta say, truely a fantastic job of overhauling the game system, representing provnices, units, characters, etc. It really is quite a breathtaking achievement. There is one part of it where I really felt it fell flat though.

I know there are lots of fans of this mod, and I am not trying to be a jerk here, but the way battles play out is really quite unrealistic. Archers are undervalued, cavalry is almost completely useless, damage is quite off, and the AI does some random and pretty ridiculous things.

Archers are undervalued? How so? I get the impression you have limited yourself to the very western most half (possibly the Italian Peninsula even) of the campaign map? Because, and I'm saying this as an EB player here, the archers from the Eastern regions will -when deployed properly- simply trash most armies. If two people where to do battle in multiplayer and one of them would use an army with those Eastern archer types the other one would have no choice but to invest considerably in his cavalry: indeed, when you get to the East the archers are quite capable of roundly defeating most western cavalry squadrons.

Now before you rip me apart for stating my opinion, let me clarify something. I am not an ignorant noob who wants ridiculous tank cavalry that can roll everything like in RTW, and I am not clueless as to weaponry of the time. In fact, quite the opposite. Apart from having read a vast variety of sources on the subject, I have created and used my own archaic weaponry and armour. While not an expert, and not everything I have made has turned out, I none-the-less have a working knowledge of ancient equipment.

For example, let's take slingers. A good slinger could outrange the average bowman at this time, and be quite a bit more accurate.

This is what makes me think you have really limited yourself to the western bit. Oh and for the record: slingers in the west could & do outrange (as is the case in EB) most archers. But if you go to the east you'll find the nomadic composite bows are... quite potent. So potent in fact that composite bows remained the best ranged weapons: fast, accurate, and effective from horseback too. (While probably not entirely without exaggeration the Mongols did pride themselves on extraordinary range for a reason.)

There are lots of good sources that cite the accuracy and range of slingers, but the best IMO is the Bible (I leave it up to you whether to accept this as a creditable source or not). I forget in which book of the Bible it says that the slingers of Benjiman could hit a bird in flight from some (I forget exactly) very long range. I made and have used a sling (three in fact) myself, and while I remain very unskilled with it, I have gotten a taste for its power. My biggest objection with the slingers lies in the description.

Okay... However I personally do doubt that you would, as they do in movies, have sufficient time to aim very accurately under the stress of battle (you should look up the astonishing low percentage of soldiers in for instance WW2 that actually shot to kill, nevermind now the very low number which actually shot at all) much less when they are ordered to fire. It's not like "Fire! - But sir, I haven't marked my target yet!" more like "Fire! Ok, here we go - let's give it a shot..."

As for the reliability of the Bible... Well, put it this way: Biblical is a distinct term for refering to certain expressions or events. So is Homeric. See what I mean?

The description says that they fling rocks at the enemy. Most Hellenic slingers at least at this time used lead bullets, not stones. They flew faster, with more accuracy, and could cause devestating damage - easily being able to kill an armoured man without even necassarily damaging his armour.

The discription does? Yes, you are quite right that the Hellenic slingers do fling lead bullets. (I thought that it was mentioned the lead bullets are one of those military innovations which occured around the time of the famous Philip, king of Makedonia, or am I utterly confused here?) Heck, they are _statted_ as such (compare to the clay bullets of their Thracian counterparts). However...

While many peasants used smaller slings and stones to herd sheep, and often only brought that into battle, more professional slingers had more professional equipment, with hemp slings and lead bullets. I decided to have a unit of Rhodian slingers pour into a units of unshielded infantry and LO AND BEHOLD! About FIVE darned men dropped dead! WTH! They would have destroyed the entire first row and reaked havoc on the rest.

5 Men on a unit of how much? Even at 240 men it's still 1 in 48 or approximately 2% of the entire unit. Now consider that a slingers unit is what, 120 men? At any rate 1 vs 1 tests do not really work out in EB. They don't do so in RTW either. You will find, for instance, that the _scenario_ of the battle is quite influential: in EB units are more prone to the effects of circumstances (as they probably were in real life, for all we know) than they were in RTW because of the combination of stats, cost and AOR. You will find that slingers and archers are among the most effective and arguably the most cost-effective troops to campaign with. You will find that height advantages and disadvantages have markedly more effect on the performance of various missile troops compared to RTW: a few archers positioned advantageously are capable of inflicting massive losses among lightly armed enemy (infantry). Really, do play a couple of camaigns as a settled faction that has to face the nomads early on in large numbers (AS, Baktria) and you will -if anything- probably curse them archers for making your life so much harder and depleting your forces (not to mention coffers) so quickly. See how you can annihilate armies with a good mix of archers and slingers backed up by some solid heavy infantry, some tough light infantry and powerful cavalry. See how going cheap & easy on recruitment policy can backfire when faced with unexpectedly tough opponents, resulting in massive losses and/or routs.

The rather different ways in how battles play out in EB are a known first-timer nasty-surprise. However, once you get used to it apparently it isn't inherently worse than RTW: at least people who play EB a lot complain a lot less about these issues than do people who are new to it (and don't see their expectations fulfilled).

[SwissBarbar]

Since you're a slinger yourself, it's clear that you're not impartial If I was a naked swordfighter, I'm sure I would like to see them in the game being more powerful too

[Vuk]

Since you're a slinger yourself, it's clear that you're not impartial If I was a naked swordfighter, I'm sure I would like to see them in the game being more powerful too

I use the Atl Atl also, that does not mean that I am partial torward it. It just means that I understand it better. I also use bows and arrows, so why am I not prejiduced toward them? Heck, I can throw knives, hachets, do various styles of sword and knife fighting, and have experimented with making spears before. I must be prejiduced toward it all. :P No, it is just that ancient and medieval warfare interests me (esp primitive warfare). When I see things like 240 javelin being lobbed into a group of 240 infantry without shields and 10 or so falling dead I die inside. Do you know how deep you can bury those things into a tree? Do you know how little protection mail offered against them? That is what I mean about units being more mortal. Their biggest defense was their shield, and should be in the game.

EDIT: Just thought of some something, I am learning the Yang style Taijichuan fan form next semester, you will not see me opting for including fan warriors. :P

[anubis88]

I use the Atl Atl also, that does not mean that I am partial torward it. It just means that I understand it better. I also use bows and arrows, so why am I not prejiduced toward them? Heck, I can throw knives, hachets, do various styles of sword and knife fighting, and have experimented with making spears before. I must be prejiduced toward it all. :P No, it is just that ancient and medieval warfare interests me (esp primitive warfare). When I see things like 240 javelin being lobbed into a group of 240 infantry without shields and 10 or so falling dead I die inside. Do you know how deep you can bury those things into a tree? Do you know how little protection mail offered against them? That is what I mean about units being more mortal. Their biggest defense was their shield, and should be in the game.

EDIT: Just thought of some something, I am learning the Yang style Taijichuan fan form next semester, you will not see me opting for including fan warriors. :P

Dude.... sarcasm...

[antisocialmunky]

...Cavalry is ridiculous. As the Rome vs Greece tournement has shown. The infantry can all but win the fight until the cavalry comes back and messes up their day.

[Tellos Athenaios]

...Cavalry is ridiculous. As the Rome vs Greece tournement has shown. The infantry can all but win the fight until the cavalry comes back and messes up their day.

Cannae... ?

[cmacq]

I heard so many raves about EB, so I decided to download it and try it myself. I gotta say, truely a fantastic job of overhauling the game system, representing provnices, units, characters, etc. It really is quite a breathtaking achievement. There is one part of it where I really felt it fell flat though. I know there are lots of fans of this mod, and I am not trying to be a jerk here, but the way battles play out is really quite unrealistic. Archers are undervalued, cavalry is almost completely useless, damage is quite off, and the AI does some random and pretty ridiculous things. Now before you rip me apart for stating my opinion, let me clarify something. I am not an ignorant noob who wants ridiculous tank cavalry that can roll everything like in RTW, and I am not clueless as to weaponry of the time. In fact, quite the opposite. Apart from having read a vast variety of sources on the subject, I have created and used my own archaic weaponry and armour. While not an expert, and not everything I have made has turned out, I none-the-less have a working knowledge of ancient equipment.
For example, let's take slingers. A good slinger could outrange the average bowman at this time, and be quite a bit more accurate. There are lots of good sources that cite the accuracy and range of slingers, but the best IMO is the Bible (I leave it up to you whether to accept this as a creditable source or not). I forget in which book of the Bible it says that the slingers of Benjiman could hit a bird in flight from some (I forget exactly) very long range. I made and have used a sling (three in fact) myself, and while I remain very unskilled with it, I have gotten a taste for its power. My biggest objection with the slingers lies in the description. The description says that they fling rocks at the enemy. Most Hellenic slingers at least at this time used lead bullets, not stones. They flew faster, with more accuracy, and could cause devestating damage - easily being able to kill an armoured man without even necassarily damaging his armour. While many peasants used smaller slings and stones to herd sheep, and often only brought that into battle, more professional slingers had more professional equipment, with hemp slings and lead bullets. I decided to have a unit of Rhodian slingers pour into a units of unshielded infantry and LO AND BEHOLD! About FIVE darned men dropped dead! WTH! They would have destroyed the entire first row and reaked havoc on the rest. Slingers were limited because of the nature of their weapon, but when used correctly they were extremely devestating, their long range could keep archers and horse archers away, and they slaughtered armoured soldiers. They are just one example of how horribly wrong battles play in EB.

*rant over*
Sorry if I ranted too much, but trust me, the reason for my abject disappointment with this aspect of the game is my love of other aspects of it.
I will still play the mod, but just auto resolve battles. Overall I think the mod is excellent, and I assure you that I will be doing my best to rebalance the battles myself.
Good luck on part 2, I will play it.
Vuk

A rant about the 'king of battle,' the sling, under-strength, as for the ratio of kills per volley??? Have not seen that one for awhile. Of course, this is why the sling has controlled the outcome of every battle until the coming of the first nuke? Although you protest otherwise, as introspection, do you think the problems you’re finding with EB have something to do with either your perception, level of experience, or intrinsic abilities? I’m Just asking the obvious and what most that read your comments are thinking.

For example try using the slingers against the rear or right flank of an enemy, yet with 6 or 7 kills per volley then you may complain the casualties caused are extreme or excessive?




CmacQ

[Lovejoy]

lol, the answer is to give it all an overhaul. Make formations count for more, make shields count for more, give slingers a very loose formation and have them do lower damage than archers, but do AP damage. Up the charge damage of shock units, lower the speed of infantry, make new maps, etc. All these things would go a long way toward making the big picture more realistic.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and distinguise between peasant slinger levys and professional slingers with cost, training time, etc. The training time for good slingers should be very high. In MP that could be balanced by adding to the cost.

Heh, not everything can be done.

Formation - not much can be done. what do u wanna do?

Shields are very strong is EB. Thats why many units don't take much dmg from skirmishers and slingers.

Slingers do have AP(most of them) and have weaker attacks than archers AFAIK.

Not much can be done about the maps. The AI only know how to use these kind of terrains - besides: most things are hardcoded.

[heldelance]

Cavalry are horrific things. Horrid armored bastards that can ruin your day (actually even light lancers can wreck your day). The only cavalry that sucks in close combat are the ones without lances/spears/whatever. You may think cavalry sucks and they're underpowered but you couldn't be farther from the truth. All cavalry sucks against pikemen, even infantry suck when front attacking pikemen, against hoplite style units however... Get some heavily armored cavalry (25+) and have some good offensive infantry backing them and here's a killer frontal tactic. Charge the cavalry head on and even hoplites break lines and then your infantry can get in and slaughter them with ease.

Other than that, cavalry is supposed to be used as the hammer, infantry pin the enemies and due to their speed, cavalry will get behind the enemy much faster than infantry can.

Slingers need to be used correctly, sure they don't have the range of Cretan archers but good slingers (rhodian slingers for one) will kill cataphracts dead. against armor, slingers are great, they're like the mid point between javelineers and archers, less damage than a javelin but greater range and they have AP (All of them do I think) which makes them indispensable when fighting heavy armor.
Can anyone verify that slingers suck against units with good shields? My slingers seemed to smash units with high armor and low shields but when fighting say hastati, they didn't do as much damage.

[Vuk]

A rant about the 'king of battle,' the sling, under-strength, as for the ratio of kills per volley??? Have not seen that one for awhile. Of course, this is why the sling has controlled the outcome of every battle until the coming of the first nuke? Although you protest otherwise, as introspection, do you think the problems you’re finding with EB have something to do with either your perception, level of experience, or intrinsic abilities? I’m Just asking the obvious and what most that read your comments are thinking.

For example try using the slingers against the rear or right flank of an enemy, yet with 6 or 7 kills per volley then you may complain the casualties caused are extreme or excessive?




CmacQ

Trust me, it is not their overall effectiveness that I find fault with, but their historically inaccurate battlefield role and capabilities. The same can be said for most other things in the battle system.

[Zett]

Trust me, it is not their overall effectiveness that I find fault with, but their historically inaccurate battlefield role and capabilities. The same can be said for most other things in the battle system.

First read this. Approach the discussion openly, sources in hand, but willing to listen.

If you present some sources or evidences about your view, this agumentation wouldn't be only about "I said this, you said that".

Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam

[Vuk]

First read this. Approach the discussion openly, sources in hand, but willing to listen.

If you present some sources or evidences about your view, this agumentation wouldn't be only about "I said this, you said that".

Ceterum censeo Romam esse delendam

2 things, first of all, I am in Hungary now, several thousand miles from any of my sources.
Second of all, a part of my evidence was based on my own experience, and so not testable. I am not a sloppy historian (in fact, will not be a historian at all technically for another year), but right now it is a little hard to get at anything. You can check my thread in the Frontroom if you do not believe me BTW, I am in Hungary studying (just got here two months ago).

[A Very Super Market]

Just a question, you aren't playing on very hard difficulty are you?

[Mediolanicus]

Trust me, it is not their overall effectiveness that I find fault with, but their historically inaccurate battlefield role and capabilities. The same can be said for most other things in the battle system.

Go complain to CA if you don't like the battle system. As said previously, that's hard coded.

Just a question, you aren't playing on very hard difficulty are you?

If this is the case, I'm going to laugh very, very hard...

[cmacq]

Trust me, it is not their overall effectiveness that I find fault with, but their historically inaccurate battlefield role and capabilities. The same can be said for most other things in the battle system.

Your words make trust impossible. Capabilities = Role = Overall effectiveness

...this is madness!


CmacQ

[Vuk]

Your statements make trust impossible. Capabilities = Role = Overall effectiveness

...this is madness!


CmacQ

I said that their roles and capabilities were inaccurate, not uneffective. If no one is even gonna take the time to read what I write, I will not bother arguing on this thread. I will make my own rebalance and let you critique that.

[A Very Super Market]

What difficulty are you on?