New Mod - 3 Players Needed

[vicberg]

This will be using and play testing a MOD I've started. The MOD will be called Enhanced Diplomacy (ED and references to Erectile Disfunction are not needed ) There will be multiple versions of this as time goes on.

Version 1 - Model Changes

I've found combat to be too quick and too bloody. I believe the reasons for this are due to the low number of hits for each element vs. the high damage and cohesion caused by each unit. So using NGP as the base I've done the following

Hit Changes

The first thing that jumped out at me from looking at NGP is that the number of hits were WAY higher (up to 40 for some AUS units, 36 for French). Thinking about this, if hits are viewed as the Staying Power of a unit rather than the number of men in a unit, then elite and veteran units will stay in the battle much longer. With only 8 hits in the base game, this isn't reflected. So the following has been adopted:

- INF Units have 8 (Conscript), 16 (Normal), 24 (Veterans) and 32 (Elite) hits
- HORSE Units have 10 - 20 hits based on type and Normal vs. Guard
- ARTY Units have 4 hits (unchanged)
- SHIP Units remain unchanged from base

Gun Damage and Cohesion Loss

The second thing that jumped at me from NGP is that gun damage and cohesion loss from gun damage were GREATLY reduced from base. In base, every unit has a Rate of Fire of 2 and gun damage of 2 with cohesion loss from a hit being anywhere from 20-40 per hit. In NGP, ROF is 3, but gun damage is 1 and cohesion loss from gun damage is 5. In NGP, if a unit hits 3 times, it will cause 3 damage and 15 cohesion loss total. In WON, ROF is 2 and if it hits twice it takes out 1/2 of the target unit (with 8 hits) and causes anywhere from 40-80 cohesion, which is enough to cause a unit to run away. This is why the majority of combats last 1 round. What I've adopted from NGP:

- INF units have an ROF of 3 and do 1 damage and cause 5 cohesion loss
- Ranged HORSE Units have an ROF of 3 and do 1 damage and cause 5 cohesion loss
- ARTY Units have an ROF of 2 and cause 1-3 damage and cause 10-15 cohesion loss based on size of gun

Assaults

With increased hits, reduced gun damage and gun cohesion loss, the major of battles will be determined by assaults which represents the tactics of the period. WON is fairly close to NGP in this aspect with one notable exception, the NGP Assault Cohesion done is less.

- INF Units have their Assault Cohesion Caused reduced.
- HORSE Units have stayed roughly the same
- ARTY have stayed roughly the same and Assault Damage Caused and Cohesion Caused is same or a bit higher representing canister shot
- Some units have a "FirstShockCoeff" which bumps up their first assault attack (via charge or whatever). This has been left the same.

CBT Signature

This value is used by the engine for target selection. I didn't realize until recently how important this value is. Horses have a lower CBT reflecting that they were hanging around ready to charge at routing units or for an assault.

- INF are set to 100%
- HORSES are set to 65-75% based on type
- ARTY are set to 50%

Ships

AGEOD has already incorporated some of my recommended changes, but I'm expanding on what has been done. This needs to be play tested and may get changed a bit.

- Ships have a base 10% chance to hit (offense or defense)
- Range has been increased back to 5 or less to be consistent with land Artillery
- Larger ships have more ROF than smaller (reflecting more guns)
- Each hit does 1 damage and 5 cohesion
- Larger ships do more penetration and have higher protection (reflecting the different sizes involved)
- Larger ships have more ROF reflecting greater guns
- Assaults have been left roughly the same. Larger ships have more men and cause more assault damage/assault cohesion loss when boarding
- Larger ships have lower initiative reflecting that they were more difficult to manage versus smaller more agile ships

Factional Overrides

WON uses common models (CMN) to build the base of all models used in the game. Each faction may have overrides to this. For example, French Elite Infantry have higher than common troop quality and cohesion and cause a 30% bump in first shock when assaulting. English Elite Infantry have even higher troop quality than the French, higher to hit and greater cohesion than French but no assault bonus. These for the most part have been left untouched but may need to be tweaked around a bit.

Version 2 - Diplomacy Additions

I'm awaiting the next patch to see what Pocus does and how I can better integrate this within the next release.

- Ability to demand and cede regions between players (only)
- Ability to create a satellite nation giving control over troops and provide a small economic transfer to the major power based on dice rolls
- Full annexation (non-scripted) of countries

So we need three players to help test this out. Please respond if interested. Consider this beta testing. I don't want to publish this MOD prior to playing out the game a bit. What I've noticed so far is that combats last longer. Armies have a greater chance to retreat. They stay battle worthy for longer.

[lukasberger]

Are you proposing a PBEM or looking for single player testers?

[vicberg]

PBEM....More eyes to review and more input. I can send it to you for single play with installation instructions if you wish.

[JacquesDeLalaing]

Watch out. As far as I know, the number of hits a unit has influences its weight in target selection. So infantry units that contain models with a higher number of hits will be targeted more often unless you adjust their cbt signature. Not sure if its wise to represent staying power via hits. Its also rather un-immersive as elite units will be shown to contain many more men than conscript units and casualty numbers would represent the loss of staying power? Thats what cohesion is for and it works very well.

[vicberg]

Watch out. As far as I know, the number of hits a unit has influences its weight in target selection. So infantry units that contain models with a higher number of hits will be targeted more often unless you adjust their cbt signature. Not sure if its wise to represent staying power via hits. Its also rather un-immersive as elite units will be shown to contain many more men than conscript units and casualty numbers would represent the loss of staying power? Thats what cohesion is for and it works very well.

Agreed. I'm going on Napoleon Campaigns data. I didn't make this up myself and since Napoleon Campaigns and WON are very similar, I've adopted the same approach. Increasing hits is exactly what they did, even higher. Units in NGP have anywhere from 8 to 40 hits.

Cohesion isn't enough, IMO, to reflect staying power. The reason I say this is because leaders rule the roost in this game. So a good leader can make conscripts elite quality. Not entirely true IRL, but a good game mechanism that I like about AGEOD games. Something else needs to differentiate elite vs. conscripts. Hits I believe to be a very good idea, but requires a rethinking of the game data.

In terms of menperhit, it's all adjusted so that there's roughly 800 men per unit (elite, vet, normal, conscript).

[TC271]

Happy to help - my email address is tcollins27@gmail.com

[veji1]

Agreed. I'm going on Napoleon Campaigns data. I didn't make this up myself and since Napoleon Campaigns and WON are very similar, I've adopted the same approach. Increasing hits is exactly what they did, even higher. Units in NGP have anywhere from 8 to 40 hits.

Cohesion isn't enough, IMO, to reflect staying power. The reason I say this is because leaders rule the roost in this game. So a good leader can make conscripts elite quality. Not entirely true IRL, but a good game mechanism that I like about AGEOD games. Something else needs to differentiate elite vs. conscripts. Hits I believe to be a very good idea, but requires a rethinking of the game data.

In terms of menperhit, it's all adjusted so that there's roughly 800 men per unit (elite, vet, normal, conscript).

I suppose it all needs to be tested. Ideally one would want better quality units not necessarily to have more cohesion (it works like this at the moment) but a more resilient cohesion. Say both a guard unit and a conscript Batallon starts with 800 men and 100 cohesion. After the first round of battle, even without having been hit, the conscript unit would be down to 95 just from taking part in a battle, while the guard would stay at 100. Say in the second round the two units are hit twice, with each hit taking 50 men away (so that would mean 16 hits per unit as opposed to 8 presently). the conscript unit would lose additionally 10 cohesion point per hit + 5 cohesion point per round which means that it now stands at 70 cohesion after the second round whereas the guard unit would take say only 3 cohesion hits per hit and now stands at 94. Add another round and another 2 hits and the conscriptu unit is down to 600 men and 45 cohesion while the guard unit is down to 88... Cohesion being below 50 the conscript unit actively tries to retreat out of the front line and has to pass a rout roll.

Ideally it should work like this and then cohesion would play its role fully without having to play around with hits.

[vicberg]

You have to flip the way you are thinking about this.

Hits are not just the health of a unit. They reflect the unit's combat effectiveness and a unit at 50% damage has it's to hit rolls reduced. So if everything has 8 hits and everything causes 2 damage and 20 cohesion per hit with a standard rate of fire of 2 across the board, is elite combat effectiveness adequately reflected?

I could increase the cohesion to 100 and it wouldn't make a difference because everything does 2 damage per hit and Rate of Fire of 2 and 4 hits to destroy a unit so cohesion will not come into play. And that is exactly what I've been seeing in combat logs. Units getting annihilated.

[veji1]

You have to flip the way you are thinking about this.

Hits are not just the health of a unit. They reflect the unit's combat effectiveness and a unit at 50% damage has it's to hit rolls reduced. So if everything has 8 hits and everything causes 2 damage and 20 cohesion per hit with a standard rate of fire of 2 across the board, is elite combat effectiveness adequately reflected?

I could increase the cohesion to 100 and it wouldn't make a difference because everything does 2 damage per hit and Rate of Fire of 2 and 4 hits to destroy a unit so cohesion will not come into play. And that is exactly what I've been seeing in combat logs. Units getting annihilated.

The way it should work is that elite>veteran>normal>conscript in terms of :
- Rate of fire (skill)
- Chances to hit (skill)
- maintaining cohesion, ergo combat readiness (skill, training, drilling)

It shouldn't make a difference in damage done per hit, because a bullet is a bullet anyway.

Basically as the cohesion of unit ebbs away, it should become less efficient : slower rate of fire, less chances to hit, etc... So that would reinforce the advantage of the elite unit. Say the conscript unit had a chance of hitting of 20% against 40% for the elite. And say the cohesion is applied in a proportional way : well after 1 round of battle per my example above, chance to hit for the conscript unit should be 0.2*0.7 wheareas it should be 0.4*0.94 for the elite unit. That is sort of the way I would envision the cohesion to affect battle efficieny, as it should.

[vicberg]

You are forgetting one more thing
- The number of men remaining in the unit. You can still have cohesion but if you have 1/2 your men, that needs to affect as well.

See where I'm going with this? Cohesion isn't enough in this abstracted combat system. The number of hits reflects combat effectiveness just as much as cohesion does. This is why changing the hits per unit quality reflects combat effectiveness.

[vicberg]

Here's another thing to consider.

This combat system supports WW1 combat down to Roman times. So certain abstractions are made to support that.

If normal line infantry were attacking an elite unit, would the normal infantry really kill JUST as many men as the elite if both hit? No, a more detailed combat system reflecting Napoleonic battles, there would be additional dice rolls to see how many bullets actually hit, taking into affect cohesion/quality/Rank and File, etc...

With this combat system, a normal infantry does have a slightly less chance to hit than an elite and lower overall cohesion, but if it hits it kills the EXACT same number of men causes SLIGHTLY lower cohesion with the exact same ROF against an elite unit having the EXACT same number of hits. IRL, the elite units maintained cohesion, hit more with less men, caused more damage and were overall much more effective in combat.

So where do you bite the abstraction bullet?

Can't increase damage/cohesion done by elites high than it is because at 8 hits per unit, units will be evaporating even faster. Look at Vet and Elite common models. Elites have a slightly higher chance to hit, but otherwise have the same cohesion and same damage done and the same number of hits. What do to there? How do you reflect Normal vs. Elites when Normal will be doing less overall damage than elites? You have to use HITS. There's no other choice. Cohesion is totally separate from hits and does NOT reflect the number of men remaining in the unit.

So if you have a normal (16 hits) vs. elite (32 hits) and they attack each other, each hit by a normal will cause less damage than a hit from an elite. An elite versus an elite, the damage will be the same. An elite versus a vet, the damage will favor elites.

I think NGP is spot on.