Slitherine

Neutrino_123 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 7:25 pm I like the impact advantage of impact foot vs. pikes. This could represent the impact foot taking advantage of minor imperfections in the pike formation or rough patches below the scale of entire tiles.

I'm not sure if bronze shield reservests should have a higher quality rating than average, though. Silver shields should definitely be above average, but "superior" should then be for really dedicated long-term professional units.

I support a reduction in the size of pike units, though. In some battles, the pike army was similar size to the opponents army, but they didn't seem to have an overly high worry of being outflanked (without some unique even occuring), which I believe is strong evidence that the pikes would occasionally fight in less deep formations.

- Except that we don't have any evidence of that happening. The written record at least is pretty clear that pikes are extremely difficult to penetrate from the front. It took some significant rough terrain at Pydna to disrupt the phalanx as it pushed the legion back. Which makes it more like the danger to pikes was extended melee contact with enemy units, rather than the initial rush. This is the opposite of what usually happens in the game currently, where the pikes are - most - vulnerable to impact foot at impact, but then usually cruise to victory in the long run (all things being equal).

- Silver Shields in Seleucid times were definitely long term professional units. The Royal Guard was under arms at all times. The Seleucids and Antigonids in particular used the Royal Guard for regular military missions against small scale foes. They would definitely count as Superior in the game's context. As for the Bronze Shield Reservists, they're Above Average because they would have had a significant mixture of relatively recent Silver Shield graduates. The relatively large Silver Shield corps of the Diadochi kingdoms, a function of their wealth and political system, was unique in the Greek world at that time. A centralized royal guard of such a size, that also regularly cycled through the military settler system, was expensive, but had some solid advantages. Were the Ptolemies on par with the Seleucids and Antigonids as time went on? Probably not, but that can be discussed later.

- Similarly, I'd also argue that Mercenary Hoplites should lose their mobility bonus and instead be upgraded to Above Average since they should have a quality advantage over your normal citizen hoplite.

- Yup, agree with your last point. My own hypothesis is that the 16x16 syntagma advanced to battle with gaps of a several feet between each file of 16 men. These gaps would allow the skirmisher screen to withdraw through prior to melee. Then, when ready to make the final advance, the last 8 men in each file would step to the right (or left) and then march forward. This would immediately decrease the syntagma depth, increase the density, and maintain the frontage. The final advance would be relatively short to maintain cohesion. Keeping the gaps between the files during the initial advance would give it flexibility and the ability to avoid annoying obstacles. We already know that larger gaps could form in the phalanx to absorb things like chariots. So yeah, they marched at 16x16, but fought at 32x8.

Neutrino_123 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 7:25 pm I like the impact advantage of impact foot vs. pikes. This could represent the impact foot taking advantage of minor imperfections in the pike formation or rough patches below the scale of entire tiles.
...
I support a reduction in the size of pike units, though. In some battles, the pike army was similar size to the opponents army, but they didn't seem to have an overly high worry of being outflanked (without some unique even occuring), which I believe is strong evidence that the pikes would occasionally fight in less deep formations.

As far as I know the only impact-foot that really did well against Pikes was the Romans and in most the cases I know they only won because of terrain or some other factor disrupting the pikes. Are there any examples of Romans just frontally charging and breaking pike phalanx in open and level terrain.

Those terrain and disrupting factors are already accounted for in the POA/cohesion mechanics so there's really no reason to add it in open terrain. Leaving the pikes fragile to Impact Foot in ideal pike terrain also erodes their place in the game balance and robs them of their only niche.

...

Regarding the Pike formation thickness. Historically the pike phalanx were a huge demand on manpower. Alexander's army had Greek style spearmen in addition to the actual pikes, some diadochi trained as much infantry into pikes as possible at the expense of lighter infantry. In Alexander's army the weakest flank of pikes was generally covered by the main force of cavalry.

Flanking maneuvers in general are not that easy to pull of by relatively untrained forces. Lot of the Eastern infantry the Macedonians would have faced were missile heavy and fought in relatively deep formations themselves. Compensating for lack of quality by thicker formations is pretty common through the history and matching the frontage of enemy is rarely depicted as major issue.

The thickness of the formations opposing the Phalanx should also not be underestimated: for example warbands fought in loosely organized deep wedges where the worst equipped men would be behind the best equipped men leading the formation. Almost mob-like formations would probably be characteristic of many armies of the time and the neat and linear 8 to 10 man deep formations would probably be almost exclusive to the best drilled fighting forces.

If overlapping the enemy formation was more important than thick formation, there would have been a consistent trend of stretching and thinning the front through history. This is however not the case most of the time and even after firearms became prominent the infantry formations often remained surprisingly deep despite the rear ranks seemingly having no influence on the fighting. To me the depth of formation seems to have been matter of morale more than anything.

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:01 pm - Similarly, I'd also argue that Mercenary Hoplites should lose their mobility bonus and instead be upgraded to Above Average since they should have a quality advantage over your normal citizen hoplite.

I agree with Mercenary hoplites being upgraded to Above Average status, but they were also arguably the most drilled troops of the early antique so removing their drilled status would be hard to justify. The retreat of 10 000 is a good example of Greek mercenaries pulling off a trick that would have ended in disorganized panic and slaughter for pretty much any fighting force in history.

Greek citizen hoplites were generally not that professionally drilled (not counting the Spartans in their heyday) and when Greeks started taking drilling (and leading) their citizen troops more seriously around 4th to 3th century BC it was usually the mercenaries who were hired to train the citizens.

For depicting new and inexperienced mercenaries who might not be that well drilled I think the Citizen Hoplites are rather fitting unit.

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:01 pm - Yup, agree with your last point. My own hypothesis is that the 16x16 syntagma advanced to battle with gaps of a several feet between each file of 16 men. These gaps would allow the skirmisher screen to withdraw through prior to melee. Then, when ready to make the final advance, the last 8 men in each file would step to the right (or left) and then march forward. This would immediately decrease the syntagma depth, increase the density, and maintain the frontage. The final advance would be relatively short to maintain cohesion. Keeping the gaps between the files during the initial advance would give it flexibility and the ability to avoid annoying obstacles. We already know that larger gaps could form in the phalanx to absorb things like chariots. So yeah, they marched at 16x16, but fought at 32x8.

That is indeed the only believable explanation for how pike phalanx would fight in less than 16 deep formation.

However, the theory has some important implications:

It still means that the smallest maneuvering unit of pike phalanx is the 16x16 square AND that the final 32x8 formation would probably be relatively tightly packed compared to their contemporaries (otherwise there would be fairly little point in not just forming the 32x8 formation in the first place).

The theory also pretty much removes the possibility of formation thicknesses other than 16 or 8 as different thicknesses would completely break the Lochoi organization and/or require spreading the entire syntagma over wider area.

In my opinion, that still makes the 960 man formation the best and most accurate way to depict pike units in FoG2.

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 7:02 pm Those stats seem pretty close to right for Bronze Shields aka the Average Pikes for most Hellenistic factions. 480 men. I'd say that impact foot, light spears, and off spears should all be held to 100 POA, which would actually decrease the power of pikes on impact vs. hoplites, and only really change much for impact foot. Against cavalry, you'd want a similar effect to off spears where the impact POA of horse units is decreased.

My initial thought was that pikes would not have much of an advantage in melee, if any. It's hard to model a situation where Romans and Greeks can't really get close to the phalangites because the sarissas are locked against their shields.............while simultaneously, the pikes aren't really killing the Romans and Greeks that much BECAUSE of those large shields. That's my interpretation of how the combat worked, at least. Having roughly even POA values so that it's 70% odds for an indecisive result kind of works I guess.

56 points being in line with normal Hastati/Principes feels right to me. And then 78 points for Veteran pikes with the superior trait. And then maybe a 96 point Elite Silver Shield option (max 2 units) for the 328-321 Macedonian list that represents the best of Alexander's Veterans.

I feel like making pikes much cheaper while simultaneously giving them bonus vs impact foot would really upset balance in Romans vs Pikes match-up (that is pretty good overall right now, imo, historical accuracy of pikes losing to frontal charges aside) as it would make it much harder for Romans to flank the pikes, both due to their increased numbers and no disruptions/pushbacks.

MVP7 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 7:12 pm The values I suggested weren't that exact, rather the basic idea of how pike POA could work. Even lower POA values would be better if the Raw and Average pike veterancy was increased (and they really could use that extra cohesion). I still think the pikes should remain fairly expensive, just not as extremely expensive as they currently are for their veterancy.

- The pike unit size would still be 960 men. I have never seen any historical indications of pikes regularly fighting in thinner formation (and it's unlikely that hoplite combat was simple reverse-tug-of-war so whether or not pikemen could push each other isn't decisive).
- The only POAs that really require new penalties vs pikes would be the Impact Foot Impact and Spearmen melee. Cavalry already loses most of its POA vs spikes. With around 100-150 impact and melee POA plus size modifiers the pikes would do just fine against cavalry without any additional POA penalties.
- Spearmen POA vs pikes should be the same as swordsmen. Cavalry POA doesn't really require further changes as they would not be a significant threat to pikes even with the reduced Pike POA.

Without getting into specific POA values, I think a pike unit should have slight POA advantage in the open against maneuverable Heavy Infantry unit of similar cost (the similarly priced heavy infantry would still have better armor and/or veterancy than the pike but not by as much as it currently would). In rough ground these pikes would be at severe disadvantage against any heavy or medium infantry. The slight advantage should also be lost* with fairly mild casualties to the pikes but I think after that the Pikes should still remain pretty even with their opponents rather than plummet in POA as they currently do.

I think my suggestion wouldn't require any new mechanics or unique rules and they would actually bring the behavior of pikes closer to the other units in the game.

* edit. The non-base POA (the part that would be lost with casualties) could also be lost in non-open terrain.

You can't really make pikes cheaper while keeping them at 960 men and making them stronger against only enemy type they currently struggle with. It's not like pikes are weak or anything, removing their vulnerability to impact foot while making them only slightly weaker (you can't get their melee POA too low, as pikes should still beat hoplites and swordsmen reliably) vs other common enemies is arguably a straight buff.

Nosy_Rat wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:02 pm
I feel like making pikes much cheaper while simultaneously giving them bonus vs impact foot would really upset balance in Romans vs Pikes match-up (that is pretty good overall right now, imo, historical accuracy of pikes losing to frontal charges aside) as it would make it much harder for Romans to flank the pikes, both due to their increased numbers and no disruptions/pushbacks.

Honestly, I think the balance should be inverted a bit. Pikes should be safe to charge into Romans, but be less safe the longer the melee goes on. The fight should be a draw when pre-Marian Romans face pikes of equal quality. For Marian Romans, however, that's where pikes in melee should start to run into trouble.

Definitely sympathetic to the balance between the two armies. One way to balance the new pikes would be through unit caps in the list. Decreasing the cost, but not massively increasing the max number of pikes would still leave them vulnerable to outflanking, while still giving them the points needed to find creative solutions.

@Nosy_Rat

With reduced overall POA values the pikes should perform worse against most unit types rather than overwhelming anything but the best units as they currently do. Especially high quality armored swordsmen should do better in melee against pikes. Having frontal charge by impact foot as the main weakness for pikes is very unhistorical.

Large units size actually isn't much of a benefit in FoG2. Currently the only reason 3rd and 4th ranks really matter for the pikes is their excessive POA value being tied to those ranks unlike any other unit type in the game. The high unit size also means relatively low veterancy and armor for the price which increases the number of casualties the pikes suffer from all sources.

In Wolves at the Gate the Raw Shieldwalls were actually purposely nerfed by increasing their unit size as it reduces cost efficiency and the always important unit count.

The size must be 960 men. Increasing the troop quality and the armour of the unit, increase the resilience and the morale in the battle. Both in impact and melee. The charge of the pikes was tremendous. The resilience is critical when your plan is to outflank the enemy line with cavalry and other type of infantry.

GeneralKostas wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:34 pm The size must be 960 men. Increasing the troop quality and the armour of the unit, increase the resilience and the morale in the battle. Both in impact and melee. The charge of the pikes was tremendous. The resilience is critical when your plan is to outflank the enemy line with cavalry and other type of infantry.

What is the theory of unstoppable Macedonian pike charge based on? If the pikes were so overwhelming on impact then why did the enemy not break? Why would Macedonians rely so heavily on combined arms (especially cavalry) if the pikes supposedly skewered the enemy infantry on contact?

It just doesn't seem to fit the widely accepted anvil like role of pikes in Hellenic armies.

Generally speaking, it seems that pikes should be something like:

able to hold on for a long period of time in sustained melee combat in open terrain, neither taking or inflicting too many casualties against other heavy infantry
very effective against medium foot in the open
somewhat resistant to ranged fire
extremely vulnerable to being flanked
greatly reduced in effectiveness by rough/difficult terrain
slower to maneuver
cheap enough that you can make a large line of them comparable in width to contemporary enemy armies

MVP7 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:18 pm ...
On impact I'd expect them to win most opponents and at least not get disrupted by high quality impact foot. I think the Pikes should win or at least be on equal ground in melee against other infantry types. Bad terrain and flank attacks should be the major weaknesses of pikes.

I think a good way to limit the POA of Pikes without making them too weak against certain units would be reducing the opponent's POA: The Impact POA of Impact Foot could be reduced to 100 against pikes (Macedonian pikes were said to be resilient to missiles), the Melee POA of Spearmen could be reduced to 50 vs Pikes (spear doesn't really offer much benefit in comparison so sword when facing pikes). This would allow the actual POA values of pikes to be relatively low so they wouldn't just blow every non-elite unit out of the water.
...

Yes! I think you nailed it in this post. Especially the idea that rather than having high POAs of their own, instead they negate the POAs of other infantry units, and that bad terrain and flanks should be their main weaknesses

I still think they should be somewhat oversized, but not by as much as they are currently. Perhaps 800 men would be a good balance so that they have some extra staying power vs phalanxes and ranged attacks. Dunno if historical unit count size is imperative to keep.

Get rid of square

Get rid of deep pike POA losses from manpower losses.

In order to have a whole big line of pikes they would need to be priced more like hoplites, but altered in such a way that
they aren't just better outright for the money.

Perhaps we could think of pike stats as starting from offensive spearmen type (similar base +100 POA on melee and impact), and then altered in the following kinds of ways:

~800 man unit size
Loss of most (all?) impact and melee POAs if disordered at all
severely rather than moderately disordered by rough terrain (like cataphracts say)
Loss of some POA from being disrupted, and all of it by being fragmented (unlike offensive spears who don't lose POA until fragmented)
extra +1 to CT in open terrain on top of heavy inf +1
additional -1 to CT if flanked
additional -1 to CT if disordered
ignore -1 CT from lancers and impact foot
unmaneuverable
above average quality to help with staying power in normal fights (and average quality if raw)
maybe make zero chance to be pushed back so that they hold a line better (and because I don't think anyone could push them back?), and maybe zero chance to push opponents back? but retain chance to pursue.

POA other units:
vs impact foot/swordsmen:
negate impact foot impact advantage and have moderate advantage in melee vs swordsmen

vs offensive spearmen:
have moderate advantage on impact and small advantage in melee

vs other pikes:
equal of course

vs cav:
in open negate cav POA

still just 'protected' for armor might be fine? maybe there should be some special ranged fire POA reduction vs pikes?

is there some way to mutually reduce melee effectiveness? Like both sides receive a manpower penalty or some such when one of them is a pike unit? just to drag things out more. Maybe just improve CT for both sides if one is a pike and the other also heavy infantry (including other pikes).

Is there an easy way to mod new units into the game to test this sort of thing? Like in the editor can you make custom units? or in like an ini file or something?

Really the only thing I would change about pikes is I would have them maintain +200 on impact until they reach 25 percent losses, and then start to lose impact points.

Gaznak wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 11:46 pm Really the only thing I would change about pikes is I would have them maintain +200 on impact until they reach 25 percent losses, and then start to lose impact points.

I agree with this.

I second Schweetness's question about how easy it would be to mod this so that some of these changes could be tested out.

There have been various suggestions for the size of the pike units - 960 men (the current size), but also 800 and 720. I think 480 was also suggested, but that would seem far too low. In comparison a Galation warband is 720 strong.
I believe the theoretical strength of each syntagma was 256 men (16x16); I'm not sure what approach the game takes between theoretical and operational units, but something close to a multiple of that would seem appropriate.

If you removed the raw pike category, how would you handle the later Ptolemaic pikemen recruited from locals, and meant to be poorer quality than the remnant Macedonians? One of the Jewish lists also has raw pikes.

Also, all the discussion has been on Hellenistic pikes, but I can imagine a couple of DLC's, that could change that. Earlier than currently covered, would be the Sumerian long spears held in two hands. Later would be the various European armies, like the Scots, Low Countries, and Swiss; as well as their imitators, the Burgundians, Germans, and Italians. Further east you have a various Asian armies using very long spears like some Koreans. I'm not sure they would all count as pikes under the current rules, maybe some would be a variation of spears or Pictish spearmen. You also have things like the Welsh spearmen (that probably would be similar to the Picts). So will pikes be limited to Hellenistic types, or will the others need their own troop type to differentiate them?

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:43 pm

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:32 pm That's why I think the third rank and square ability need to be ditched. Bringing down their cost by 10-20 points would make it much easier to afford non-pike units while still having a viable front line.

Having only two ranks would leave pikes vulnerable to be ground down through attrition by superior hoplites. As well as too vulnerable to cohesion tests from missile fire.

Is there any evidence of ancient pikes using square? If so, is it often or an exceptional occurrence?

I think the pikes should have a modifier to reduce missile damage received. The loading screen tip of FOG:E tells me that they suffered reduced casualties from arrows because of their pikes held at 45 degrees.

I like a lot of the suggestions in this thread. I agree that something needs to be done to make them better value for money. I also think that there should be a cap on the number of pike units, so that the extra spending power should be spent mostly on other units, e.g. skirmishers, cavalry, etc.

There are concerns about the impact of these changes on the scots, swiss, etc. pikes. Do they have to have the same rules, or can there be different rules for ancient pikes and medieval pikes?

Morbio wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 12:02 pm

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:43 pm

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:32 pm That's why I think the third rank and square ability need to be ditched. Bringing down their cost by 10-20 points would make it much easier to afford non-pike units while still having a viable front line.

Having only two ranks would leave pikes vulnerable to be ground down through attrition by superior hoplites. As well as too vulnerable to cohesion tests from missile fire.

Is there any evidence of ancient pikes using square?

Yes, Appian says they did so at Magnesia.

If so, is it often or an exceptional occurrence?

I don't know of any other reported cases, but if they could do it at one battle it seems reasonable that they could do it at others. They only did it because their cavalry wing collapsed. (Mainly due to their own scythed chariots routing through them).

Also worth noting that the Seleucid pikes were 32 ranks deep at Magnesia.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:04 pm Yes, Appian says they did so at Magnesia.

Also worth noting that the Seleucid pikes were 32 ranks deep at Magnesia.

They did, with elephants inside them. So less of a dense square like we see in game, and more of a hollow one like you'd see at Waterloo.

In terms of marching formations, 32 ranks is pretty easy to manage if you take that 16x16 syntagma with gaps that I mentioned earlier and have every other file of 16 stop, wait for the other files to pass by, and then march to the left a few feet to line up behind the front 8 files. Now you have a syntagma of the same width, with gaps for even larger things to pass through, and twice the depth.

That's the thing, the ancient sources rarely feel the need to spell out the intricacies of march and drill order for every military system.

Mairtin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:02 am There have been various suggestions for the size of the pike units - 960 men (the current size), but also 800 and 720. I think 480 was also suggested, but that would seem far too low. In comparison a Galation warband is 720 strong.
I believe the theoretical strength of each syntagma was 256 men (16x16); I'm not sure what approach the game takes between theoretical and operational units, but something close to a multiple of that would seem appropriate.

If you removed the raw pike category, how would you handle the later Ptolemaic pikemen recruited from locals, and meant to be poorer quality than the remnant Macedonians? One of the Jewish lists also has raw pikes.

Also, all the discussion has been on Hellenistic pikes, but I can imagine a couple of DLC's, that could change that. Earlier than currently covered, would be the Sumerian long spears held in two hands. Later would be the various European armies, like the Scots, Low Countries, and Swiss; as well as their imitators, the Burgundians, Germans, and Italians. Further east you have a various Asian armies using very long spears like some Koreans. I'm not sure they would all count as pikes under the current rules, maybe some would be a variation of spears or Pictish spearmen. You also have things like the Welsh spearmen (that probably would be similar to the Picts). So will pikes be limited to Hellenistic types, or will the others need their own troop type to differentiate them?

I'd bet that 480 is the basic unit of measurement for all infantry units in the game because that's the size of the Roman cohort. 480 is close to the size of two syntagma, so it's not far off.

The Machimoi phalanx did really, really well at the battle of Raphia. Hard to tell exactly why, of course. The Ptolemaic phalanx in total was about twice the size of the Seleucid phalanx, so it could be as simple as they flanked their opponents and/or got matched against the lighter-equipped foreign troops. The way the syntagma is set up, the top officers in the unit are concentrated in the first 3 ranks. Sidenote, this is probably why the losses of Pyrrhus were so distressing to him. I need to read up more on the machimoi, but I'd be interested to see who the officers of their phalanx would have been - whether trained Native Egyptians, or experienced Greek mercenaries.

Personally, I feel fairly strongly that Hellenistic pikes should be distinct from Medieval pikes. Two very different cultures and geopolitical systems developed them. A pike army designed to fight with significant cavalry support will work differently than one coming from a culture with much less of an equestrian tradition.

Geffalrus wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:56 am I second Schweetness's question about how easy it would be to mod this so that some of these changes could be tested out.

So from looking at the modding guides so far, here's what I've been able to figure out:

I want to make a singleplayer custom battles mod only at first. So, I made a new folder in:

C:\Users\MyName\Documents\My Games\FieldOfGlory2\CAMPAIGNS

called:

PIKE_MOD

inside PIKE_MOD folder I have a TEXT1.TXT with a single line that says:

IDS_CAMPAIGN_NAME,"Test Pike Mod",

which allows me to 'launch' the mod from the custom battles module window where it shows as having the name Test Pike Mod

also inside of PIKE_MOD folder I have a "Data" folder, and inside of Data I have pasted the

Squads.csv
Squads.xlsx

files and tried editing them. I edited the pike manpower and cost values just to see what would happen, saved, loaded the game, launched the module and started a new custom battle with an army that has pikes but none of the value changes appear to have carried over. Also, a ".~lock.csv#" file has generated inside PIKE_MOD\Data for some reason, dunno if that is preventing Squads.csv from being edited or something.

What other files/folder would I need to add/edit to make changes to just the stats of just one unit? Not adding campaigns or textures or anything like that. Do I need to make separate edits for the UI values as well? or would those update automatically from changes to the Squads.csv file?

In one of the modding guides here:

viewtopic.php?f=492&t=80108

it mentions:

"NOTE: If you want to make a Custom Battles module, just create a "campaign" that isn't a copy of any of the existing "campaigns"."

but I don't really understand what that means. I just make an empty folder in C:\Users\MyName\Documents\My Games\FieldOfGlory2\CAMPAIGNS?

thanks for any help

*note I don't own excel so I am doing the modifications to the csv file in open office calc, dunno if that is causing issues

thanks for any help, and perhaps I should post this to the mods subforum?

Schweetness101 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:57 pm So from looking at the modding guides so far, here's what I've been able to figure out:

I want to make a singleplayer custom battles mod only at first. So, I made a new folder in:

C:\Users\MyName\Documents\My Games\FieldOfGlory2\CAMPAIGNS

called:

PIKE_MOD

inside PIKE_MOD folder I have a TEXT1.TXT with a single line that says:

IDS_CAMPAIGN_NAME,"Test Pike Mod",

which allows me to 'launch' the mod from the custom battles module window where it shows as having the name Test Pike Mod

also inside of PIKE_MOD folder I have a "Data" folder, and inside of Data I have pasted the

Squads.csv
Squads.xlsx

files and tried editing them. I edited the pike manpower and cost values just to see what would happen, saved, loaded the game, launched the module and started a new custom battle with an army that has pikes but none of the value changes appear to have carried over. Also, a ".~lock.csv#" file has generated inside PIKE_MOD\Data for some reason, dunno if that is preventing Squads.csv from being edited or something.

What you have done sounds correct, but did you put #REPLACE in cell A1 of the Squads.csv file? That tells the game to overwrite existing units values with your new values. That may explain why your values did not appear.

If you are changing the number of men in a unit you also need to change the UnitSize (Column AE). Unitsize is what the game uses in it's combat calculations, not the TotalMen value. For infantry UnitSize should be 1.25 times the TotalMen value.

I have no idea what the .lock.csv# file is, I have never seen it before. Maybe it is something created by Open Office Calc, I have never used that so cannot comment.

Schweetness101 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:57 pm What other files/folder would I need to add/edit to make changes to just the stats of just one unit? Not adding campaigns or textures or anything like that. Do I need to make separate edits for the UI values as well? or would those update automatically from changes to the Squads.csv file?

No, you only need to edit the Squads.csv file.

Schweetness101 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:57 pm In one of the modding guides here:

viewtopic.php?f=492&t=80108

it mentions:

"NOTE: If you want to make a Custom Battles module, just create a "campaign" that isn't a copy of any of the existing "campaigns"."

but I don't really understand what that means. I just make an empty folder in C:\Users\MyName\Documents\My Games\FieldOfGlory2\CAMPAIGNS?

Yes, you just make an empty folder, like you have already done, and just add the files to it that you want to edit.

There is no need to post in the Mod Sub Forum, both Richard and myself are looking at this thread.

cheers

Paul