Military Units

I'm going to start doing the military units for the different factions. Out of curiosity how "different" do you want me to make them? Basically here would be the 4 ways I think we could do this.

The Examples I use will only include greeks.

#1 There should be 4-5 different troops for each "age" or every x years. Those would be Pure offensive, mostly offensive, balanced, defensive, pure defensive.
Example:
year 1(in order from offensive to defensive): Toxotes (archers), Peltasts (javelin throwers), Light Hoplite, Medium Hoplite, Heavy Hoplite.
and then say every ~50 years later a new 5 would unlock.

#2 There would be 3 types for each "age" or every x years: Offensive, balanced, and Defensive

Example: Year 1: Light hoplite, Medium Hoplite, Heavy Hoplite again every set amount of years new types unlock

#3 Who cares about how many different types there are and who cares about them being equal just go for historical accuracy.

Example :
Year 1: Light hoplite
Year 5: Medium Hoplite, Peltast
Year 7: Heavy hoplite
Year 10: Toxotes

This would be the new troop types develop as the game progresses more or less how they developed historically. This WILL result in some nations being penalized when "their" preferred unit does not appear until later and then give them advantages when their unit appears and is slightly better than the others.

#4: mixed system. Have 3 historically named "standard" troop types that are equal AND with 1-2 historical bonus units that are slightly better. This would be a kind of moderate "bonus" to whichever faction was indeed more powerful at the time. This would (hopefully) lead to more historical scenario by giving the nation that did in fact conquer everyone in that period a moderate bonus for that time period in that they would have better soldiers for a period of ~20 years.

Example:
Year 1: Peltasts, Light Hoplite, Medium Hoplite
Year 3: Spartan Hoplite (sparta gets the advantage in this scenario)

Year ~50: Toxotes, Reformed Medium Hoplite, Heavy Hoplite
Year 55: Athenian Marines, Spartiates

Can we do a quick vote on which you guys prefer? I personally am leaning towards the 4th one because it will be a way to possibly create more historical scenarios. And we would have to make less decisions to make powerful civilizations unique. Instead we could just give them their own troop types during the eras that they were powerful in.

I'm in favor of #4. Sounds good to me.

#4 sounds fun.

4

Awesome 4 it is then. I've got a rough sketch on what units I want. However I would like to know how many different type of soldiers you guys want. Like how often do you want a "new" type of unit to appear? Every 20 years? 30? To be honest I'm not really sure because I want on one hand to give incentives for players to tech rapidly, but I don't want it to get super cluttered and have new soldiers every few years. Do you guys have an idea of this already?

illapa wrote:Awesome 4 it is then. I've got a rough sketch on what units I want. However I would like to know how many different type of soldiers you guys want. Like how often do you want a "new" type of unit to appear? Every 20 years? 30? To be honest I'm not really sure because I want on one hand to give incentives for players to tech rapidly, but I don't want it to get super cluttered and have new soldiers every few years. Do you guys have an idea of this already?

It doesn't have to be extremely frequent - land tech also affects the shock & fire modifiers so in that way even a land tech without a new unit (or building) is useful.

I'd say every 20-30 years is easily frequent enough. Make it smaller (down to 20) in times that were historically eras of military modernization, and larger (up to 30-ish) for other times.

That's my 2 cents .

very true I'm going to upload a table, or just a really big post with detailed descriptions sometime this week then of the unit names, what year they appear, maybe my reasoning as to why they are there, and their stats then and then feel free to comment on it and stuff and once we agree on their stats, what years they appear in etc. I'll upload the files after I get feedback from that.

Apologies for the double post but I have 2 rather large questions.

1st. Am I also doing the land technology file? or just the units?

2nd. We need to re-work the whole thing where unit fire stats grow faster over time than shock stats do (gunpowder does not exist ). I think we should just nerf the fire stats in the land tech file so that it is = to shock since ranged does NOT become more important than shock in this time period.

illapa wrote:Apologies for the double post but I have 2 rather large questions.

1st. Am I also doing the land technology file? or just the units?

2nd. We need to re-work the whole thing where unit fire stats grow faster over time than shock stats do (gunpowder does not exist ). I think we should just nerf the fire stats in the land tech file so that it is = to shock since ranged does NOT become more important than shock in this time period.

1. It makes sense if you also do the land tech file. So yes .

2. You're right. Fire should correspond to arrow (/balista/catapult) shooting. If anything, its influence should go down slightly vs shock (except for artillery).

Well what I have tried to do so far is just...give offensive fire values of zero for melee infantry and if the main infantry unit is an archer I give it fire values. Defensive Fire was basically how armored the unit was. So I'll upload a chart today/tomorrow of all the Greek units because to be honest I'm not sure how to really balance it. Archer units end up getting bear mauled in shock but since melee infantry doesn't even have fire values the archer units get a free phase where they can shoot and not be shot back at. So I'll upload the chart late tonight (I'm not at my desktop atm) and you guys can proceed to rip it to shreds lol.

I tried to just super limit the amount of units that have higher fire and I tried to balance it by saying for example: at tech 28 I am going to create 4 units using ~28 points and I'm going to allot them to whatever I think is more historically accurate but just because I used the same # of points to make them I have no idea if that really makes them "balanced" or not. Greeks for example RARELY used ranged weapons. So predicting how a fight between Greeks who used like 80% melee weapons vs the Persians who had much closer to 50-50....I have no idea how that is going to go to the point where I am tempted to propose "changing" the units to infantry = melee infantry, cavalry = cavalry, and maybe changing artillery to just...ranged units be it archer or catapult. That would screw up things like upkeep/purchase costs, sliders, and everything basically but it would also make it so in battles there would be lines of infantry and lines of archers behind them so I don't know if it would be worth it.

Well, like you noted before, the names of the units are just the names of the most iconic units. It is assumed that other types are still present in the regiment. E.g. if the Persians have a regiment of "immortals" it can be assumed that these are not 1000 immortal-type sword fighters but actually a mix of different types of infantry + immortals, after whom the regiment is called.

This means that, e.g., a Greek "hoplite" unit probably should have a low fire capability. I'd rather keep artillery some kind of siege equipment as these did play a role during the time period.

edit: as to how well it'll work balance-wise... I guess we have to do a lot of testing!

Sry about the late timing the release of Mass Effect 3 pretty much killed all my free time lol. I'm done with the greek units want me to upload a chart or something so they can just have their stats seen here? or upload a link with all the unit files?

illapa wrote:Sry about the late timing the release of Mass Effect 3 pretty much killed all my free time lol. I'm done with the greek units want me to upload a chart or something so they can just have their stats seen here? or upload a link with all the unit files?

Great! If you have a table lying around it would be useful to see it here. But definitely also upload them, so I can test them in-game.

ok so I tried really hard to make them historically accurate. Greek Units were not really based on an offensive vs defensive type thing like some of the europa civilizations are its more of a phalanx vs non phalanx. I numbered them so that its very easy for you to see what years they are for. Though I have not totally decided yet. I do know that 9 = the very end of the game aka when Rome starts to pwn everything. (we can just make the final roman unit have 11 in all stats to show its superiority). Here is a ROUGH and very flexible time period for the numbers. (each troop has a # in front of its file to make it easier to compare)
1 = ~ 650 or pre 650 BC
2 = 590 BC?
3 = 550 BC?
4 = 500 BC (right before until just after the Persian Wars)
5 = 460 BC ( Athenian/Sparta cold war then Peloponnesian War)
6 = 404 BC (end of Peloponnesian War)
7 = Rise of Macedon 360 BC
8 = post 323 BC (Alexander's Death)
9 = ~280 BC (our game stops at 250... so idk if this is even worth putting?) I propose we code and do stuff up until 250 BC but in the defines file we just allow the game to go on forever (set the year to 9999) so that the player can do w.e he want afterwards.

Can someone give me an email? I'm home for Spring Break but I can't upload the file from home for some Fod forsaken reason(probably a router firewall). I'll email it to you and can you upload it for me? I have the Greek Units made.

*edit*
Also I'd like to defend one of my decisions before people point it out. I did NOT want to make the end units just have all 11 in the stats. Why do you ask? Because I hate it. I hate that all the units would essentially be uniform I tried as hard to not have any unit be too similar to another I wanted them to be unique so that the player has to actually think of the unit when they choose it.

Some have low moral but high shock/fire. These units will be for hit and run. Some have outrageously high shock and low fire because they are phalanxes they are slow but devastating. The reverse is also true. Some have very high fire values but little to no shock because some (few though) cultures put high premiums on archery/slinging.

I have no idea how the really high fire ones will do balance wise but the rest I am pretty confident in. If any of you want a "super" unit that has all 11 in all stats lets just make that the end game Roman Legion unit since lets face it it does conquer the world.

As it stands not too many are at such extremes. If you guys want I'll go back in and make them more similar to each other because this will sadly require more testing to balance them. I like having the option to go hit and run if you are curious as to which units are for hit and run tactics look at the ones with high offensive and low defensive and low moral because they also have 2 movement instead of 1 (not too many like this though).

Also I'll put the cavalry up as soon as I get feedback from this. Greeks notoriously sucked @$$ with cavalry (not counting Thessaly Macedon and Taras) so it should be pretty simple to make them I just need to know if these infantry numbers are good so I can tweak the cavalry to "match" them

Hey Illapa, that sounds really good! I haven't got time (I'm really busy currently) to go into your post in detail right now but so far I agree with your general philosophy. I PM'ed you my email (didn't want to post it here, lest bots start spamming me) - you can send the files there.

I don't see anything in my inbox here and I don't see anything on the eu3 forums. I can just post my spam email here if you want or just re send it to me to my username on this forum.

illapa wrote:I don't see anything in my inbox here and I don't see anything on the eu3 forums. I can just post my spam email here if you want or just re send it to me to my username on this forum.

Strange... Ok now I PM'ed you over at paradoxplaza. If you still can't see it you could indeed put your spam email here .

I got the email and sent you the file let me know if you got it. Since we cant see the units yet. What does everyone think of the years? Is that enough unit "groups" or unit tiers or should I have more types of units? I have like ~4 for each year listed there.

illapa wrote:I got the email and sent you the file let me know if you got it. Since we cant see the units yet. What does everyone think of the years? Is that enough unit "groups" or unit tiers or should I have more types of units? I have like ~4 for each year listed there.

Yup, got the file! I'll look into it asap!

Great just upload it here to this topic whenever you get the chance.

illapa wrote:Great just upload it here to this topic whenever you get the chance.

Oh that's a good point. I just re-uploaded your zip file here.

Again, I'll take a look asap but it seems this week might be a busy one IRL. Sigh.

Want me to just send you the cavalry too then when I can, or just wait until next week and work on something else?

illapa wrote:Want me to just send you the cavalry too then when I can, or just wait until next week and work on something else?

Yeah, send the cavalry too! Inf and cav of course interplay so it's probably best to review them together.

I took a look at the units, and I love them! They're totally awesome! This is great work, illapa! The naming of the units is great too!

I suddenly realized that it's also important to know the modifiers for shock and fire before we can actually test the units in-game. Do you have ideas for those currently?

Alright, after a bunch of flag editing, I want to turn my attention to military units. Illapa's Greek infantry are very good, but many more units are still required.

One problem is that military unit type is inseparably tied to tech group. This means that to get realistic unit types, we need quite a few tech groups. I was thinking along the following (the % are tech rate):

- Chinese 100% 'Settled' Chinese states
- Roman 100% Roman Republic
- Greek 95% Greek city states
- Carthaginian 90% Carthage
- Iranian 90% Iranian states
- Mesopotamian 85% Mesopotamia, Arabia, Lydia, Lycia
- East Asian 80% Japan, Korea, Nomadic Chinese
- Italic 80% Italics, Rome (early), Etruscan
- Indian 75% Vedic states, SE Asia
- Egyptian 75% Egypt, Kush and surroundings
- Steppe Iranian 75% Scythia & central Asia

This of course needs tweaking by testing, but for land units I think this one should be fairly representative. Note that it is also possible to edit in the tech level at which any malus starts kicking in, giving extra editing freedom. Furthermore, the optimal cav-to-inf ratio also depends on tech group. This means it should be possible to make sure that Greeks and Romans, for example, have a high percentage of infantry, whereas Iranians and Steppe Iranians can have high percentage cavalry. Greeks, Romans and Italics should get excellent spearmen; Iranians should get good cavalry, and Mesopotamians good bowmen. Another thing that should be considered is that the difference in fire and shock modifiers for early and late game should not be quite as high as it is in vanilla EU3. Military development went slowly in our time period. More modern unit types in the game are already better than earlier ones, and the extra modifier makes that effect even stronger (that means unit power goes (at least) quadratically in EU3).

Illapa already posted a 'leveling' system by which new units in a tech group simultaneously become available (see this post). In the Greek case, there are 9 levels, each making available 3 or 4 infantry types, for a total of 32 Greek infantry types. My plan is to not have quite as many different types in other tech groups because that would be a lot of work. This can be achieved both by reducing the number of units per level, and by reducing the number of levels (for other tech groups than greek, of course). Here's what a quick 'n dirty brainstorm came up with for now (the number indicates the "level". This corresponds to a certain year, which can be different for each tech group):

Iranian Infantry
1 Early Iranian spearmen
1 Early Iranian bowmen
2 Iranian spearmen
2 Iranian bowmen
3 Immortals
3 Sparabara?
4 Reformed Immortals
4 Reformed Sparabara
5 Armored Immortals (for the hypothetical case where Persia survives longer than historically, they could adapt Greek-style heavy infantry)
5 ...

Mesopotamian Infantry
1 Assyrian bowmen
1 Assyrian spearmen
2 Babylonian bowmen
2 Phrygian peltasts
Lydian something? Lycian something? Arab? Cilician? Judean?

Italic Infantry
1 Early Italic spearmen
1 Early Italic swordsmen
2 Italic spearmen
2 Italic swordsmen
3 Early Italic legionaries
3 Early Italic skirmishers
4 Italic legionaries
4 Italic skirmishers
5 ?
5 Italic velites
6 ...


Any comments?