Meaningful Veterans & Battle Tweaks

I’ve made some light adjustments to the game, inspired by Bladeuk’s Valuable Veterans mod. This isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s a ‘hardcore’ adjustment to game rules.

Before you ask, yes, this is compatible with SFO. Any problems though, let me know.

This is the TL;DR of it. If you want the details for how game mechanics work, check beneath this.

ARMOUR

• Armour Minimum Defence Percentage: 60% of armour value. (Vanilla: 50% | SFO: 50%)

MELEE COMBAT

• Base Hit Chance: 30% (Vanilla: 35% | SFO: 20%)
• Minimum Hit Chance: 5% (Vanilla: 8% | SFO: 15%)
• Maximum Hit Chance: 95% (Vanilla: 90% | SFO: 75%)
• Melee Attack Interval: 1 second

CHARGES

• Units no longer grow wings when they’re hit by high-mass units. Now, units are either knocked back or flattened.

VETERANS: EXPERIENCE GAINS

• Experience from killing a faction leader: 3,500
• Experience from killing a general: 2,500
• Addition experience for each general level: 250

VETERANS: RANK THRESHOLDS (How much experience they need to rank up)

• Rank 1: 1000 (Vanilla: 1100)
• Rank 2: 2,500 (Vanilla: 1,700)
• Rank 3: 5,500 (Vanilla: 2,500)
• Rank 4: 8,500 (Vanilla: 3,600)
• Rank 5: 9,500 (Vanilla: 5,000)
• Rank 6: 10,500 (Vanilla: 7,000)
• Rank 7: 12,000 (Vanilla: 10,600)
• Rank 8: 12,500 (Vanilla: 15,500)
• Rank 9: 13,000 (Vanilla: 22,000)

Total Experience Required: 75,000 (Vanilla: 69,000)

Units now take longer to level, but the progression is gradual and similar towards the end. This makes the last few ranks less of a slog but more of the ranks difficult to acquire.

VETERANS: STAT IMPROVEMENTS

• Leadership: +3.3% improvement for each veteran level (30% at Rank 9).
• Melee Attack: +4.4% improvement for each veteran level (40% at Rank 9).
• Melee Defence: +4.4% improvement for each veteran level (40% at Rank 9).
• Missile Accuracy: +3.3% improvement for each veteran level (30% at Rank 9 (I think. Will continue testing.)).
• Reload Skill: +3.3% improvement for each veteran level (total: 30%).

Rank 9 units will perform about ~10% better than regiments of renown, but they lack the special traits of RoRs, and they’ll likely be slightly harder to obtain. Experience bonuses from buildings and characters are now plenty more meaningful.

Below I have written out my understanding of the game mechanics in TW:WHII, what I’ve done, and what effect it has.

MELEE COMBAT
Melee combat equation (excluding charge bonuses):
(Base Hit Chance + Unit Melee Attack) – Enemy Unit Melee Defence = Chance to hit.

• Base Hit Chance: 30% (Vanilla: 35% | SFO: 35%)
  Standard chance to hit a unit, without melee attack or defence modifiers.
• Minimum Hit Chance: 5% (Vanilla: 8% | SFO: 15%)
  A unit will always have a minimum chance of 5% to hit an enemy.
• Maximum Hit Chance: 95% (Vanilla: 90% | SFO: 75%)
  A unit with high enough attack will have a maximum 95% chance to hit.
• Melee Attack Interval: 1 second
  A unit can perform another strike animation after this amount of time.

Example: Goblins vs. Phoenix Guard

Goblin Stats
Melee Attack: 20
Melee Defence: 26
Chance to hit: 30% (Base Chance) + 20% (Melee Attack) – 40% (Phoenix Melee Defence) = 10%

Phoenix Guard Stats
Melee Attack: 38
Melee Defence: 40
Chance to hit: 30% (Base Chance) + 38% (Melee Attack) – 26% (Goblin Melee Defence) = 42%

Pushing the boundaries up and down for these rules allows for the elite to thrive and the bad to crumble. It also means bad units flanking can cause more havoc to elite units.

ARMOUR
Armour’s a bit weird in Total War. The armour number represents the % of base damage the unit can negate when it is hit, however, it’s not as simple as 100 armour negates 100% of base damage. Instead, the armour can negate between 50% and 100% of its value.

Vanilla Example:
Franz has 100 armour. He can negate between 50% to 100% of the base damage taken against him. If he gets hit 3 times, it could come out as: Hit 1: 52%, Hit 2: 78%, Hit 3: 99%.

I’ve changed this so that now the armour roll will be between 60% to 100% of the armour value.

Mod Example:
Markus Wulfhart has 50 armour. He can negate between 30% to 50% of the damage he takes.

Why do this?
I appreciate that armour isn’t always 100% effective, but to be 50% effective was a bit crazy to me. This makes it so armoured units are a little more daunting, encouraging players to invest in AP more than before.