Tribute to Elephants and Fanatics

[tora_tora_tora]

After several trying, I concluded Elephants and Fanatics are support arms.
Sadly I must admit, they cannnot make their days with few troops(in case of Elephant) and thin armor(in case of Fanatics).
It's fact of life, horse cavalry are indeed, somekind of exception and Elephant is not horse, and there is no chance naked guy endure in melee-battle.

But, as you see why I post in this forum, there are some magic to work.
So, in short, I want to make them main battle arms. I want to see waves and waves of elephants trample heavy infantries.
I guess at least some of you guys want to see that, too.

Thanks to you guys, the magic is in our hands.
The problem is to what extent, Elephants and Fanatics should be powerful.
Just adding more troops in one unit, for exsample, 80 Elephants in one unit?

[tora_tora_tora]

There are many ways to tweak squad files, but the point is I don't want allmighty hero units.

And I'm testing teaked fantics and elephants in roman campaign, right now.

fanatics
change unit type into skirmishers from original heavy infantries.
speed 28 originally 33 (the bigger, the slower they become)
increase trample chance 10 10 10 10 originally 0 0 0 0
increase leader bonus 1
Add leaderRadius 5
agility ability 33
chancetohit ability 20
levelstep 250 (same as velites)
levelstepdelta 20　(change to 120) (same as velites)

the thing I found unhappy with is after they got level 16 or around there. I want fanatics to be one of the choice in civil war campaign,
the final part of roman campaign. So, with good punch and a bit fragile units is what I like.

elephant
men 14
and avilable all the equipments except boots. I imagine a kind of well armored elephants.

[Redpossum]

INTERESTING ideas, Tora!

I'll keep watching this space

[tora_tora_tora]

Thanks Possum, it is really encouraging to have comments, indeed.

So far testing through to Cisalpine Gaul, next is Battle of Heraclea(against Tarentum and sometime in near future against Greeks).
there are few things I noticed.

1 enemy fanatics also turned into skirmishers. Though I cannot see what their precise status is, it's good thing to watch them
also having command radius(red circle around their unit), though whether their skills are suitable for this change is uncertain.

2 enemy elephants are I suppose do not equip with those items. So when it comes to enemy elephants against my elephants,
I suppose mine will always win, due to good add-on armour and helmets.

3 My campaign styles is limiting the number of units to 8. Legate, javelinmen, warrior(gallic light infantry with shields), elephants,
fanatics, veterans, fanatics, and newbie fanatics. So plenty of item purchase and fewer units against numerical superior enemy units.
I really appreciate everyone's opinions.

[tora_tora_tora]

observation
1 enemy elephants troops in a unit do not increase from 8 to 14.
2 killequalizer can be really deadly, so lowering hitchance and increasing killequalizer makes fanatics more powerfull and fragile.
3 elephants in ordered and offensive formation is too tight and not visually good.
4 skirmishers' agility ability is in most case, 30.

[tora_tora_tora]

observation and progress
1
though what killerequalizer precisely do is still unknown, but as praetorian's it is 300, and auxilia is somewhere around 260-280,
I thought the higher, the better for units performance.

2
I want fanatics to get promoted trample, so at certain level their trample percent to rise from 10 to 15, but without success.
Checking through bonusdifinition .txt, and cannot gain clue.

3
start to think I want amazoness. the problem is adding new units, and how much it should cost. Making western archers a bit tough melee-combat type is easy.

[tora_tora_tora]

observations
1
playing at hard level and let units promoted as possible, fanatics are really awesome. and considering
which parameters to decrase. maybe agility is too much. agility 30 is actually　two times as big as original 15.

2
roman campaign with gallic army might be a problem. I want to test higher levels unit' performance so I did in this way,
though, each map is rather suitable for repubilc army.

3
In fact, gallic army with modded fanatics perhaps do not need cavalries. As I'm still around the first part of campaign, and time limit is
not so severe, parhaps in latter maps, things will be different.

[tora_tora_tora]

http://legionarena.web.fc2.com/

I upload saved data, here.

[tora_tora_tora]

progress
1
increasing troops in Legate from 1 to 12, and without changing levelup EXp means lv41 unit at early stage in campaign.
The reason I choose 12 is lictor(bodyguards of consul) are 12. Though, anyway tweaking is relly difficult.

2
turn on ISCAVALRY, and fanatics can get trample skill. So scouts' default trample is 22, and modded fanatics is 10.
I suppose +5 around level 10 is good, though +10 or more is not so realistic, after all, fanatics are nothing more than
human beings with great sword, and scouts are mounted arms.
And I changed Legate's troops in unit from 12 to 1. Bodyguard of Legate's own is good idea, though, I want to find some other way.

[tora_tora_tora]

progress
cavalries got surprised as enemy skirmishers tend to get some toughness against cavalry charge.
So manuvering scouts against enemy skirmishers without support arms is a bit dangerous.
Though, I did not tweak arhcers, so scouts can trample enemy archers as usual.


I got beta test CoM, and as I want to know the original game balance, I changed to the original suad .txt file.