Military Rework
This mod aims to fix some problems I had with the military systems in the base game. In short, some units were far too powerful, which led to a meta in legion design with few deviations, mostly based on unit availability. This in turn made military traditions feel like an effort to get access to Octeres and Mega-Polyremes while looking for the most bonuses to heavy infantry.
To address this, I’ve redesigned Military Traditions, keeping in mind the idea of having specific primary/secondary/flanking cohorts for cultures that have access to specific trees while also trying to represent historical accuracy and diversity. Overall, Military Traditions are more powerful, but come with some downsides, making implementation of different trees require you to consider more factors when choosing bonuses. For historic reasons, Phalanx cohorts have been added to differentiate from other forms of heavy infantry that arose during this period.
Currently, there are a total of 20 Military Traditions, and I have largely broken up the system of paired traditions. All cultures still start out with two trees, however trees are no longer consistently paired, and adopting other culture’s trees now only unlocks one tree. Each tree is more focused, however keep in mind this mod is still a work in progress and is in need of more balance testing; any constructive feedback is welcome.
Beyond military traditions and land armies, naval warfare was pretty stale. Octeres and Mega-Polyremes were far too good, and naval units lacked variety since heavier ships always had bonuses to lighter ships. In order to correct a lot of these problems, there are now nine ships that can be built, and they are all unlocked to begin with. Combat bonuses have been altered so that no ship has absolute dominance over all the others, giving some more variety. The heaviest ships also require hemp to be constructed.
In addition to an update to the available naval units, the naval tech tree has been reworked both to better fit the needs of the updated navy and because in the base game that tree was just worse than other tech trees. Now, it unlocks some of the useful naval abilities that would’ve been unlocked through gaining access to Mega-Polyremes and Octeres from military traditions. There are also upgrades to trade to better reflect how improved maritime technology improves the ability of your nation to conduct trade operations.
Updates:
11/25/21: Reworked navies with new ships, the right side of the naval tech tree, removed changes to legion distinctions for compatibility purposes.
8/15/21: Fixed a bug where some unit abilities didn’t unlock with the traditions that are supposed to unlock them, Slave Raid is only available to countries with Pirate heritage, Trade Hub in the Celtiberian tree now actually does something, fixed missing and broken text.
8/12/21: Phalanx has been added and some numbers were tweaked for better balance. Heavy infantry have had bonuses against certain cohorts further limited, however they’ve been given a large defensive bonus thus still having a favorable fight against some cohorts that have a damage bonus against them. The AI should also now place the phalanx in the right locations in their armies.
Features Currently in Development:
– An overhaul of experience decay and manpower, making a proportion of soldiers (and sailors) retire every year and take their experience with them
– New formations, particularly for Greeks and Germanic Tribes
When I’m "Done":
– An Invictus Compatible version
Tentative Future Features:
– Investigate the possibility of having some units get bonuses and penalties for different terrains (this is a UX problem since the modifiers are hard to easily communicate to the player)
– Better methods of adopting cross-cultural traditions
– More accurate battle casualties, with most deaths occurring when a side routes
Thanks to the Imperator Mod Co-op for helping me learn how to mod Imperator
Note: I do not own any of the images used in this mod
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
