Ears up folks, it's time for another Legacy of Rome and patch 1.07 dev diary! This time, I'll reveal what we've done to rebalance combat. All these things are actually in patch 1.07, so you'll get them whether you buy the DLC or not.

To give you some background, we were never entirely happy with the combat system in the game; the outcome was too dependent on numerical advantage and there was little you could do to affect it beside throwing more troops into the fray. Part of the problem was simply the lack of proper random elements. This was fixed in patch 1.06 with more varied, decisive and longer lasting combat tactics. Another issue was that the composition of the Holding levies was largely beyond your control; all you could do was try to focus on Cavalry buildings in your own Holdings if you wanted to try having more Cavalry on the flanks in battle. We have addressed this in part with more specific unit type buildings and cultural versions of buildings. The major fix though, is the Retinue system in Legacy of Rome. Lastly, we realized that the most important tactical consideration for players, and something they can influence, is the choice of commander and the effect he has on the battle. In patch 1.06, we added a new type of trait called "Leadership Traits", and now we're adding even more of them:

• Flat Terrain Expert
• Rough Terrain Expert
• Mountain Expert
• Desert Expert
• Holy Warrior
• Unyielding

The choice of flank leader for the right role is now an important tactical choice with a real effect on the outcome of the battle.

We've also tweaked the combat tactics and unit types a bit more, and made sure that pure archer flanks are not imbalanced, knights are slightly less overpowered, etc. Oh, and all cultures now have a cultural building, but some cultures have the same as others.

Lastly, though not exactly related, I should probably mention that the military AI has been improved a lot, to focus on what's important and avoid attrition.

Hmm, that was a bit short, but it's all I have for you today. Next time: Orthodoxy.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

Will be nice to get more variability in combat.

Will the succession bugs be fixed in 1.07?

 

[FabiusBile]

Sounds very interesting; the way combat worked always seemed a bit too strict for me i.e. the numerical advantage was nearly always the only factor, especially since you had little to no control over the unit types in your army.

Really looking forward to 1.07/DLC .

 

[DominusNovus]

Hopefully we won't get desert experts in Scandinavia

Well, the Varangians were from pretty far north, and they easily could end up fighting in deserts...

 

[unmerged(547259)]

While you're rebalancing combat PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE cap the numerical advantage factor at something.

What I mean is, if an attacker with 10k troops fights a defender who only has 500 troops, the 500 troops are killed at a rate that assumes all 10k of the enemy are on the same battlefield attacking them.
Now we could assume that 10k troops could surround the 500 but there is still only around 500 men worth of surface volume, and the defenders aren't going to take it lying down.

You'll know what I mean if you get a huge doomstack of 20k troops and roll over a 500 man army and lose some ridiculously low number of men. I'm pretty sure I've fought a battle killing hundreds of men and losing only 5, and that just doesn't happen.

So please reconsider the logic, remember surface volume. If you outnumber your enemy by hundreds of thousands of men and they only have 1000 men defending, you should still expect to lose hundreds of men, but in CK2 you lose like 1 man or none at all.

This is partly why empires are so powerful, they make the biggest doomstacks and your combat system isn't logical.

Doesn't this happen in the archer's phase? Then, it is quite realisticaly acceptable imo, since you have the following: imagine those doomstacks having many many archer companies that would insta-hit all or almost all of the defenders, while themselves would be under the cover of a tortoise type formation made by the rest of thousand of soldiers. The thing is that those 500-1000 don't really get in melee combat, where they would indeed be able to kill opponents at a close to 1:1 ratio.

 

[Zireael]

Will the AI fixes be included in the 1.07 patch or the DLC?

 

[Alerias]

While I like the changes in theory, I have usability and interface concerns.

Its fairly easy to rank leaders by Martial stats and pick decent generals. Much less so to find your highest martial-stat'd Holy Warrior amongst your 225 vassals.

What is planned to allow us to easily tell who's what at a glance?

 

[Negru Voda]

Can culture buildings not dissolve when a ruler of a different culture takes over? [unless rebels or other events take them out]

Or maybe just tie the construction to the province culture?

Everything else looks fine to me.

 

[evilon]

1. Could the enviroment blabla experts be have a bit of weight in the random toss-up related to what court they get their education in?
Obvious examples: Courts in deserts get higher chance for those, while courts in the alps, scotland etc get higher chance for mountain expert?
Also would be cool if possible, that being tutored by a crusader/zealot will increase your chance of getting that holy warrior trait.
Other things like that aswell, so you can somewhat increase the chance of getting the leaders you want...

2. About troop compositions; can you make the top tiers of the various buildings negate each other?
If you want a more "heavy cav/inf" oriented setup, the top barracks give +100 heavy infantry and -100 light cav, and the top stables give -100 heavy inf and +100 light cav?
Ofc. having pike men and heavy cavalry in the same buildings complicate things a bit... But I bet you can figure out somehow to get this right.
Just don't forget to tell the AI, so it doesn't build buildings that's "wasted".
Still shouldn't be able to bulldoze those buildings, means you'll have to choose demesne after the troop types you want, and not go changing them all willy-nilly

This for all troop types and not only castles, will give a lot of unique troop setups, that can add a lot of flavour and some deep tactic choices to make.
And if your castles/cities/bishoprics all have the "wrong" setup for you (as you can't control your vassals)... Well, that sucks mate! Life is like that, or was apparently.
Will also make it easier for you to get a "mostly skirmisher weighted flank", and have some heavy inf + archers in the middle.
Of course where you put your pikemen to deflect the cav-weighted flank of the enemy...?

Might be a lot of work tho, but think of the fun to be had (if balanced right).

 

[Tsar Monarchist]

I don't mean to be negative (only a little bit) but when are we gonna hear about features that a related to Rome?? So far we've almost exclusively heard about 1.07... It's hardly a legacy of Rome dev diary.

I'm really looking forward to 1.07, but I'd love to hear more about features for LoR

You had already DD with retinues, not much is added to the DLC, this and some events IIRC. Rest is basing on free patch features.

 

[DominusNovus]

You had already DD with retinues, not much is added to the DLC, this and some events IIRC. Rest is basing on free patch features.

Well, they did say that a lot of the Byzantine specific stuff would be in the DLC, and that they'll be talking Orthodoxy next week, so there's a chance.

 

[riknap]

While you're rebalancing combat PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE cap the numerical advantage factor at something.

What I mean is, if an attacker with 10k troops fights a defender who only has 500 troops, the 500 troops are killed at a rate that assumes all 10k of the enemy are on the same battlefield attacking them.
Now we could assume that 10k troops could surround the 500 but there is still only around 500 men worth of surface volume, and the defenders aren't going to take it lying down.

You'll know what I mean if you get a huge doomstack of 20k troops and roll over a 500 man army and lose some ridiculously low number of men. I'm pretty sure I've fought a battle killing hundreds of men and losing only 5, and that just doesn't happen.

So please reconsider the logic, remember surface volume. If you outnumber your enemy by hundreds of thousands of men and they only have 1000 men defending, you should still expect to lose hundreds of men, but in CK2 you lose like 1 man or none at all.

This is partly why empires are so powerful, they make the biggest doomstacks and your combat system isn't logical.

tthis is basically the combat width mechanic from the hearts of iron series. The devs probably consciously didn't incorporate it ingame for simplicity's sake

 

[Talq]

Shouldn't a 500 man army facing a 20k army instantly surrender or rout (ie disperse) if its not behind fortifications in this period?

That said, provided the smaller army is decently sized (about 10k), its true there should be a limit on the numerical advantage especially on the defensive, as the larger army would have difficulty deploying its numbers (and if the first part of the fighting went badly, the remainder of the army tended to withdraw/rout).

 

[Hootieleece]

Maybe Characters can learn these leadership traits like in HOI3, while in command of a flank.

Also maybe add a Siege Engineer trait to speed up sieges.


or add another event to Military Research.......learn trait(.25%chance per Martial Skill level/per month)RNG of course.

 

[themunck]

Can culture buildings not dissolve when a ruler of a different culture takes over? [unless rebels or other events take them out]

Or maybe just tie the construction to the province culture?

Everything else looks fine to me.

Ditto.

 

[unmerged(193360)]

With the new "self improvement" ambitions, I hope there will be ambitions to learn specific traits. If you get more options to customize your abilities as commander, there would be a good reason to use your rules to lead armies.

 

[Fawr]

Shouldn't a 500 man army facing a 20k army instantly surrender or rout (ie disperse) if its not behind fortifications in this period?

That said, provided the smaller army is decently sized (about 10k), its true there should be a limit on the numerical advantage especially on the defensive, as the larger army would have difficulty deploying its numbers (and if the first part of the fighting went badly, the remainder of the army tended to withdraw/rout).

Having everyone in the front line is the root cause of the "numbers trumps everything else" issue. If every soldier is on the front line then the power of an army is proportional to the square of its numbers. Adding extra random elements (tactics) and military abilities (traits) does introduce more randomness, but it doesn't really get to the root cause.

 

[kaspar42]

Have you added something like the split-army-in-half function from V2? Given the number of individual levies composing a large army, it can be really time consuming to split up a big stack.

 

[Dakk]

I would like to see a winter expert! And then make that trait common for pagans in northern scandinavia, finland and russia.

Maybe Characters can learn these leadership traits like in HOI3, while in command of a flank.

Also maybe add a Siege Engineer trait to speed up sieges.

Yes please to all of these, especially the winter expert (winter wolf)! If you could make sure that this is a really common trait amongst the pagan around the Baltic Sea it would have the really sweet side-effect that they'd be less of a punching bag ~4 months of every year (i.e. slowing down their conquest).

Other than that my #1 request would be this:
Please give more information on what the effects really do. It's like "Oh, higher morale defence - that's probably good for .. morale .. on.. defence?" or "Haha, I'm fighting a religious enemy so I get +30% better.. uh.. 30% of something".

 

[Sovetskysoyuz]

Having everyone in the front line is the root cause of the "numbers trumps everything else" issue. If every soldier is on the front line then the power of an army is proportional to the square of its numbers. Adding extra random elements (tactics) and military abilities (traits) does introduce more randomness, but it doesn't really get to the root cause.

The Lanchester square law only applies to ranged combat with aimed weapons. Because most of the combat in this game is melee, Paradox might want to consider a system where targets are assigned before hits are calculated.

 

[Fawr]

The Lanchester square law only applies to ranged combat with aimed weapons. Because most of the combat in this game is melee, Paradox might want to consider a system where targets are assigned before hits are calculated.

Exactly! I didn't realise that someone had invented a law for this sort of thing