Cohort – Realistic Unit Size and Battle for DEI
A unit size and battle mod originally made for personal use intended to be a more historical depiction of battles and battle results. Fair warning, the engine is not designed for these unit sizes, and my table edits are not thoroughly tested. Must be loaded after DEI as patch, and requires DEI. All credit to the creators of DEI for doing the hard work.
Unit Size – All unit counts adjusted for a debatably more realistic number of soldiers. 200 –> 480 (historical cohort). 300 –> 500. All other unit counts (except for elephants) are 2x, which is within general ranges for how many soldiers likely were deployed in a unit together. Pyrrhus supposedly had 20 elephants in Italy, so this is the new base for elephant units. This change brings army sizes closer to historical levels, while somewhat coping for engine/performance limitations. Population settings adjusted accordingly. Population growth rate also increased to compensate. Unit counts >350 or so will unavoidably break the game at times, and depending on your setup, framerate.
Ranks – Are modified so that units will almost always have clean, pretty rectangles. Soldier spacing made mostly tighter, using historical values where available. Cav formations are less perfect lines.
Battle – Soldiers have much better survivability and morale is much more important, with chain routs occurring more frequently. Battles are more lop-sided and decisive, but may swing either way more often than vanilla. We know, historically speaking, that the vast majority of casualties were had in the rout and not the confrontation. Pretty much every strategy game chooses the confrontation to have most casualties possibly for cinematics or speed. This mod is an attempt for a more historical simulation experience. Overall, battle speed I think is slower than vanilla, however morale shocks can end battles quite quickly once things turn.
Projectiles – Arrows now travel in low arcs, similar to slingers. There is some historical debate as to whether or not they were ever used in the high-arcing fashion typically seen in-game. From a physics perspective, firing an arrow for plunging fire intent *should* be combat ineffective. Javelins may still use plunging fire, as their power is in weight. All missile accuracy is reduced. From a gameplay perspective, high arc arrows is more balanced for the AI, who may overlap units and position archers in positions where they otherwise may not be able to engage an enemy with low arcs. I am preferring the low arcs for my mod intention.
Campaign – Move distance is 1.5x. IMO, allows for more multi-army engagements, buffs AI coordination, and accelerates progress of campaign.
I personally use 40 unit saves and still recommend, although you have to be okay with low fps at times.
Known Issues – Transport ships come in pairs and both must land for the unit to be functional. This can be done but is buggy AF. Pathfinding and unit formations do not work as cleanly. Campaign starting troops are vanilla counts. Naval battles suck, pretty much as they did before.
Base DEI unit size version – (More compatible with other DEI submods, such as new units, no more buggy than base DEI)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3650178139
