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Help yourself: Decisive battles and faster research

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notger.heinz

notger.heinz

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Jan 24, 2007
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Here is what you can do when you are as disappointed as I am about the boring battles and the long research times: Mod them away.

More decisive battles = higher casualties:
Go to the directory Rome/common/units and then change the number values in the .txt files. I suggest multiplying them by 3 -> casualties around three times higher.
Side benefit: With higher casualties, manpower will actually become a problem again.

Faster research:
Go to the directory Rome/common and open static_modifiers.txt . In the second big category, second sub-category, you will find a value that sets the base research per civilization point (I can't remember the variable name, sorry). It is set to 0.01 by default.
Raise it accordingly.
I set it to 0.025, which sped up research by x2.5. Now it seems ok, but I am sure, more tweaking has to be done, here.
 
I tried to raise the research but it will not let me save the changes :confused: I am not very computer savy, what am I doing wrong? I think I am not in the actual directory file as it keeps telling me that the file I am in is "read only"...how do I find the directory?

thnx in advance for the help
 
right click on the file you want to change and select properties. Then deselect read only. you can then save your changes
 
Fixing Ping-Pong should be number 1 priority

I had just been enjoying a game a Macadonia. I had taken all of Greece and most of the black sea in relatively small wars over 150 years.

The Selecuid empire had been in civil war for years. So i took my chnace to declare war with 150k men, reserves of 140k men and 800 gold.

I decimated them but have since spent 15 years trying to chase down single stack armies getting away with 200 losses against 20k man armies. Right now I cannot play the game I am so frustrated. I kill there forces and they recuit a load more single stack mercanries who then retreat behind my lines and besige by cities and my conquests.

Does anyone know anyway to mod the base moral level to make this more playable? If not, can I request this as an urgent fix for the next patch.
 
What some people (me included) are doing is altering a text file entry to increase casualties in battles. It doesn't stop the ping pong completely, but at least means battles are more decisive.

The file is located in the Rome\Common directory, and is called 'defines'

The entry in question is;

# _MDEF_LAND_DAMAGE_MODIFIER_

Which is set to 0.1. I have mine currently at 0.25. So that more than doubles casualties. The effects on manpower are yet to be reported over a long game.
 
Very frustrating experience, I just stoped playing for about the same issue.
 
I have to say that I don't feel the ping-pong is significant. Retreating armies don't gain reinforcements, and this makes them destined to lose rather quickly. It feels like defeating the army, then chasing down to finish it off, rather then the awful ping-pong of the demo.
 
Arentak said:
I have to say that I don't feel the ping-pong is significant. Retreating armies don't gain reinforcements, and this makes them destined to lose rather quickly.
Click to expand...

But that's part of the problem. Setting aside the extreme annoyance factor, the real problem with ping-pong armies is that they cripple the AI opponent. Instead of retreating, regrouping and putting up a sensible fight, they destroy themselves by dispersing all over the map, out of supply and beyond reinforcement.

The root problem is that the AI simply doesn't know how to fight effectively. I'm increasingly convinced that this problem persists from release to release because it reflects a fundamental flaw in how the AI makes combat decisions - a flaw that Paradox doesn't know how to fix.
 
Well the fix that Banquet posted works very well based on the games I have played with it. The decisive battles do however have the drawback of giving generals more popularity. One of my generals gained 86 popularity after wiping out 25,000 barbarians with his six thousand troops and losing less than a thousand (defending a river, three point leader advantage and luck) so I really recommend fixing this yourself instead of waiting for a patch.
 
Banquet said:
What some people (me included) are doing is altering a text file entry to increase casualties in battles. It doesn't stop the ping pong completely, but at least means battles are more decisive.

The file is located in the Rome\Common directory, and is called 'defines'

The entry in question is;

# _MDEF_LAND_DAMAGE_MODIFIER_

Which is set to 0.1. I have mine currently at 0.25. So that more than doubles casualties. The effects on manpower are yet to be reported over a long game.
Click to expand...

I recommend this guys.

It does help. It can, however, be pretty brutal. I set mine to 0.4 to start with and it was carnage. If you engage an army that is to big you get massacred. My 8k strong army engaged a 12k army and was totaly wiped out. Every single man. Ofcourse you wipe out enermy armies too. 0.4 might be little high for some peoples taste but try it out.
 
AtheGreat said:
I recommend this guys.

It does help. It can, however, be pretty brutal. I set mine to 0.4 to start with and it was carnage. If you engage an army that is to big you get massacred. My 8k strong army engaged a 12k army and was totaly wiped out. Every single man. Ofcourse you wipe out enermy armies too. 0.4 might be little high for some peoples taste but try it out.
Click to expand...

I modded mine to 0.25 and I think it plays along greatly... 1-2, maybe 3 battles and the enemy's army is no longer a threat since reinforcing it will take some time.

Biggest problem are the annoying 1k stacks running around trying to get past your lines to besiege stuff. And if you seperate your stacks in smaller sizes so you can chase them off, then suddenly comes a big stack of 40k men of seleucids that will mop your decently sized 8k stacks.

But next invasion I'm going to take 3 big armies and 4 5k armies behind to clean everything.
 
All these ping-pong complaints I read, and yet I never know what you people are talking about. I agree the AI is perhaps a little too eager to split it's forces at times, but I rarely have to chase an army any more than what seems natural.
 
I've bumped my land damage modifier to .17, which is about the casualty sweet spot for my games, but the ping-ponging and retreat logic still...bugs me. I don't want to complain too much, because I really do love this game (you always hurt the ones you love...?), but some kind of logical retreat rules would be really nice. Most paper-based wargames have a standard set of retreat rules to follow (back the way you came, to a friendly controlled area, towards your supply source, etc.) but the EU:Rome system doesn't seem to follow much rhyme or reason, at least not that I can grep.

Why not use some kind of standard retreat logic like paper games?

On a side note, something else I'd love to see is a casualty bonus applied to losing armies if the victorious army has cavalry, like many ancient period wargames have. That was one of the primary uses of cavalry in the pre-stirrup era, since they weren't as effective as shock weapons.
 
MightyM said:
I've bumped my land damage modifier to .17, which is about the casualty sweet spot for my games, but the ping-ponging and retreat logic still...bugs me. I don't want to complain too much, because I really do love this game (you always hurt the ones you love...?), but some kind of logical retreat rules would be really nice. Most paper-based wargames have a standard set of retreat rules to follow (back the way you came, to a friendly controlled area, towards your supply source, etc.) but the EU:Rome system doesn't seem to follow much rhyme or reason, at least not that I can grep.

Why not use some kind of standard retreat logic like paper games?

On a side note, something else I'd love to see is a casualty bonus applied to losing armies if the victorious army has cavalry, like many ancient period wargames have. That was one of the primary uses of cavalry in the pre-stirrup era, since they weren't as effective as shock weapons.
Click to expand...

The retreat direction is very annoying. I also find the fact then an armies in engaged even if they are on their way to another province. They may have been walking for weeks but the arrival of the enemy triggers battle. very unrealistic.

In regards to orwell comment, The annoyance is having masses of low number armies with broken morale that keep engaging vastly larger armies and losing almost no men. Even worse, they retreat behind your lines and start to attack your cities or free their own cities that you have already taken. You spend all of your time trying to mop them up but it is impossible.
 
I took the advice in this thread and upped damage to 0.25. I also upped base morale to 3.0 tho :D

Works pretty well. 28k barbs fought to the last man vs 8k + 6k reinforcements 2/3 into the battle. I would have been totally wiped tho if not for having a 9 martial vs their 3 martial, terrain + river and better dicerolls.

I guess I maybe went a bit overboard with having both 0.25 dam and 3.0 morale, but so far I love the results, very little ping-pong.

I also halved the loyal unit modifier and it feels more reasonable.
 
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