I have explained the two main areas we are looking at. "Command and Control", which is very underdeveloped in FOG2 in our view and "Melee Rebalancing". They are quite distinct from each other and would work OK in separate mods.MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 5:07 am There are also a lot of things I don't agree with about your mod or maybe straight up don't understand the need for. It really does feel like a random smattering of changes that were originally intended as tweaks to Vanilla to address a number of very specific issues that were then dumped into a blender and the served up with "anarchy" changes on its plate.
In your opinion it is fine in vanilla, in our opinion it is not. In virtually every cavalry battle in vanilla you get units pursuing vanquished enemy units out of a larger melee that is still unresolved. On many occasions you even get units from both sides pursuing vanquished enemy units out the larger unresolved melee. And then they have to turn round and charge back towards their baseline to make contact again. I am not saying that this never ever happened but it certainly did not happen regularly. The basic dynamic is that two cavalry forces come together, have a fierce melee, then one side breaks and the other one chases them off. Sometimes the chasing cavalry will pursue indefinitely, sometimes the chase will be curtailed and the cavalry then join an attack on the enemy's centre. That is what we are working towards. At the moment we are testing game mechanics that keep these larger melees together more and we both feel we are on the right track.Like I don't understand what this cavalry combat resolution is supposed to accomplish. It is fine in Vanilla. Why are infantry all of a sudden losing their next turn if they get charged by cav? Why is cav made to chase less when that was like *the defining feature* of their behavior according to what limited information we have throughout this time period? I mean if we know anything at all about combat in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it was that you can always count on the Cav to bugger off and chase like rabid dogs. The no double drop rule is clear in its intention when double drops were rare.
You are grossly overstating your case here. You still get very large POA's when you hit a unit "in the side" and cohesion drops do often occur still so it is still a powerful tactic in the game. So nothing has been "ripped out" as you put it and so your argument falls. Flank attacks without automatic cohesion drops are already in the game. If a unit is hit in the side twice in the same turn in vanilla there is only one automatic cohesion drop. This is where the idea to remove automatic cohesion drops originally came from.The most egregious change to me is the flank angle change. The entire premise of this game is built literally on auto-cohesion loss when charged in the flank while engaged. This entire game revolves around this dance where the expensive but better units try to use their PoAs to break opponents before their opponent manages to maneuver their more numerous army for a series of flank charges. How well can you maneuver your elite troops to do the most damage before the other side can stretch you out? How well can you gauge the timing for inferior troops to hold off elites while you make the flanking move? How good are you at RNG risk mitigation should either your elite troops fail to break their opponents on time, or your inferior troops fail to hold your opponent's elites in check?
This mechanic, along with how good you are at the geometry of physically moving troops around the grid to make the best use of ZoCs, is literally the two foundational blocks on how this game is meant to operate and you have just decided to straight-up tear one of them out. In its place, you have put in the anarchy "no charge" and "random charge" system which is, imo, one of the worst design features to come out any game (sorry for being harsh). The act of layering results after a player action behind multiple levels of RNG is inevitably unsatisfying for someone like me who is looking for skill-based results in a game. We already have two levels of RNG after a player initiates combat. The odds to win, followed by the odds to break morale for the loser if there is one. After this, the action is passed back to the player who then can react to that particular event with whatever resources he left at his disposal (reserves etc). There is a constant feedback between player action and an uncertain result.
However, the way we are calibrating the mod now, where there is greater emphasis on getting 2v1 situations, means that battle lines are more likely to maintain their coherence and players are more likely to deploy in depth rather than sending off units to look for a so-called "flank attack". We feel this is more realistic.
One unintended consequence of this aspect of the mod is that you get a much better game out of the AI. Because the AI is not able to plan 2-3 moves ahead to get flank attacks it is at a severe disadvantage against a human player in the vanilla game. But take the flank attacks out of the equation and give greater importance to 2v1 combats, then AI has a much better chance. I am now getting very good games at Tribune and Legate level even though I have managed to defeat the AI on Deity level a few times.
No, it is not the entire point of the mod. When we have got the balance right, a good player will generally be able to mitigate most aspects of anarchy in their own army and take advantage of its manifestations in their opponent's. We are some way off getting the balance right at the moment but we have only been at it for a week.With anarchy as it is implemented along with coming random charge features, you are loading a ton of RNG behind each player action and indeed potentially gating off entire sequences of play that maybe have been planned out. EX. A player can maneuver a unit into a desirable matchup only to have it not charge. A ZoC that the player had anticipated to be gone is now still intact potentially ruining a litany of subsequent moves. Maybe he was clever enough and the geometry was flexible enough to allow a second unit to come in an try to strip the ZoC but it would be a suboptimal move as that was a flanking unit. What happens if that unit refuses to charge as well? Maybe the entire strategy built up over several turns during movement to contact is now irrevocably shattered and none of these prior moves now make any sense at all given the new circumstances entirely outside his control. A reserve unit that was carefully husbanded meant to plug critical gaps in the line now might now randomly not charge to help a beleaguered friendly unit. A unit on the far end of a refused flank might all of a sudden break ranks to attack and compromise the entire position.
Removing player agency by overloading it with RNG sucks. In every game of every type. It sucked when WHFB decided that units don't just charge a fixed amount anymore but had to roll a die to find out how far it actually could charge AFTER you made the charge declaration. It sucks in Magic the Gathering when they inflated the cost for creature kill spells so high that the creatures could kill you before you had enough mana to actually cast the spell. It sucks in World of Warcraft when my character's haste proc happens when I don't need it but never procs when the boss is doing some insane raid-wide damage mechanic that I am struggling to heal through.
Maybe that is the entire point of your mod? To throw enough RNG at the game to stop it from being the game of footies and ZoCs that it currently is? But then why did you eliminate double drops if you want more RNG? Did introduce the flank angle mod knowing that so many potential random troop movements could leave a lot of units with vulnerable flanks? I just don't know what your mod is trying to achieve and how the changes are supposed to come together make that a reality.
It's a bread and butter of any cavalry-heavy army like Byzantines, Arabs, Sassanids, Andalusia etc. It happened in almost every my EMA game last season, for example.
