oh, yeah thats valid

@duckelz; By ridiculous I meant the ability to arch slings at a very steep angle against short range targets the way bows do here. https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3184074298

Slings in Pharaoh have the ability to arch shots in the same manner as the bows in that clip. I changed that to a lower arc similar to older titles.

just to comment, arching a sling rock isn't ridiculous. it's not difficult and anybody could do it with a bit of sling practice. slings could be fired at pretty surprising ranges.
https://youtu.be/uwBVH2bS8A8?si=FoHHQV3IlG5VUK3T for proof

@Benjamin Franklin; The projectile ranges have been reduced across the board as the values in vanilla are quite high, mostly due to the need for more shots to kill an entity. If I were to maintain the same range in this mod, they would be far too lethal.

The range does vary between bow classes, albeit to a lesser degree.. The Egyptian lower tier archers have more range than those of Anatolia and Canaanite which may be why it seems their range difference with the nubians is small.

I meant the actual range of bows seems to be all shorter? The longbows don't seem to actually shoot further than regular bowmen now?

@Benjamin Franklin; Are you referring to the missile trajectories? I gave slings a low trajectory which is more realistic. In Vanilla they can arc shots like bows which is ridiculous.

Did you flatten the range of most of the units?

I see. It could be an interesting try, your mod. I spoke about longer battles in TW games in general. But only after trying it out can I judge your mod in particular. In any case, contrarz for trying to make this game better

@Ligon Flarius; I balanced this for multiplayer. The length of battles is highly variable depending on the circumstances. Infantry engagements without flanking or missile fire will be prolonged, but flanking maneuvers/missiles offer the potential to end battles quickly. It really depends on the type of player.

prolonged battles, in any TW game, make it more arcady and forgiving, NOT more strategic. What the author said could be true if he were talking about PVP battles. then I'd agree. But in PVE, SHORTER battles will force the player to make hard decisions. longer battles will only ensure the player wins with absolute certainty.

The reason TROY has at least a bit of fun in the combats is because battles are relatively short and dynamic. Every mod of any TW game that prolongs battles will take away the challenge

Thanks mate this looks great.

@hiddenprior; I sent you a friend request, Id be glad to give more insight via dm's

Also especially curious about your approach to balancing ranged units

Is there somewhere I can find more info on your balance approach? I am especially curious about how you reworked Fatigue and Morale. I am a big fan of Duke's reworks, and hoping this mod can provide some similar roles to shock troops, reserves, etc.

@Ketelyes; fixed!

@Kelly too sweet I always try to make it more difficult so i would be happy if was harder.

@ketelyes; if you neutralize enemy chariots and ranged units, you can more decisively win battles with maneuvering. The only buffs AI gets on harder difficulties are for ranged units. I can change the buffs for harder difficulties if thats what the majority of people want

@Kelly too sweet THX for your answer. Even 1 thing i have noticed. Im playing on veteran difficulty (campaign and battle also) and I fell the game very easy...soo easy... my battles used to end by low casualties for example i have 50 men and enemy has 698 losses that was my last fights result. The enemy has the same army size and strength. This happen during automatic and manual playing also. In the meant of the word it is very difficult for me to loose a battle :DDDDD. Anyone else is experiencing the same?

@Kételyes Erkölcsű Honfitárs; There is no distinction between "normal, good or excellent armour". All unit armor has the same durability (15) whereas vanilla is 13 for normal, 16 for good and 19 for excellent. I don't feel the different armour qualities add any value to battles especially when melee weapon armor degradation values aren't specific to armor type (e.g. cloth, leather, scale etc.) And I think it would over complicate things if it did anyway.

"Armour degradation is uniform and no longer acts as an extra HP pool" what do you mean by armour degradation? I dont get it. Units has no armor value or what? thx for your answer

@Kelly: When it comes to archers shooting targets you should check the damage they do, not the amount of kills. When they shoot at a unit with bigger manpower than all the shots get more spread out, thus they do a lot less kills. Against a unit with less entities the shots are more focused, therefore a soldier could get hit twice and die to this.

@Tater; Fixed the 3rd chariot rider bug - Thanks for letting me know!

@xanth; I just tested 2 renowned kushite archers against 1 Upper Egyptian maceaxe and 1 upper egyptian khopesh infantry. I repeated the test as you described. I ordered 1 archer unit to fire on 1 of the infantry units as they entered range. The archer unit shooting the maceaxes had double the kills of the one shooting the shielded khopesh infantry, by the time they reached the archers.

Ranged units in pharaoh had way too much melee ability and pharaoh over complicated the tier system. I didn’t spend the time to change all the unit tiers to account for the reduction in armor and melee ability

I've also noticed almost all the ranged units at Tiers 4-6 appear as tier 3 in their unit card stats for some reason.
Their unit type symbol remains changed though. (The silver and gold circles, squares and Hexagons.)

I had used the Upper Egyptian Khopesh Infantry and these Upper Egyptian 2H Axemen against Renowned Kushite Archers.
The game also no longer shows the little shield next to armor, so no idea how much these Khopesh guys have as shield value.

@xanth; Do you recall the unit with the shield you tested with? I will see if there's some unintentional bug. Shielded units have anywhere from 20-65% block chance where unshielded have 12% at most so it should make a noticeable difference.

That aside the archers are intended to be much more lethal than vanilla; however, the difference between shielded/not shielded should be noticeable so ill definitely look into it, if you recall the units

I was testing in custom battles and I gave the enemy two units one with sword&shield and one with a 2h axe. Both of these units had 25 armor.
Then I choose two bow units and let them shoot. The moment the enemy reached the archers, both archers done about 4.500 damage to the unit they were attacking. So even though one of the enemy units had shields, they didn't do anything to block the arrows.

Before archers would do considerably less damage against a shielded unit than it is in this mod currently.

@xanth and toucraft: Shield units absolutely make a difference. The difference before had nothing to do with shield it had to do with units being able to "soak" multiple arrows until their HP was drained. The difference is that now even shielded units when focused by missile units still take losses. You can test in custom battles.

Yeah shields doesn't seem to exist right now. Archers kill units with shields as easily as a unit without shields.
Whats also a bit weird is, that the Upper Egyptian T3 units have bigger unit sizes than the Lower Egyptians. I always thought that Lower Egpyt is the conscript army but with more men, while Upper Egypt is more elite but less men.

May I ask what you changed with shielded units? The example is shielded spear can't hold the line like they use to against range. Love the chariots changes though.

@arbiter thiel; the people are physically larger

what do you mean scaled unit models larger? you mean like the unit sizes or the people are physically larger?

For those who feel that the battles are just not quite right— this is an excellent battle overhaul mod. I highly recommend it. The modder is diligent about correcting any unsuspected issues. So, be sure to report any bugs that you may come across. Thanks, Kelly.

I'll check out the mod soon. It is certainly an essential gem for the game.

@Tater; Thank you for the feedback! I will look into the bug you mentioned with the 3rd rider

Great mod! Probably the best combat overhaul mods out there at the moment. The pacing of infantry-on-infantry slows down (realistic), but they become vulnerable to flanking from chariots (which FINALLY feel like they have some weight and power when used right - thank you!) or skirmishers/archers.

There are some graphical bugs that I've found (nothing game-breaking, but certainly immersion-breaking) that you should know about. On the "Maryannu Chartiots" and "Heavy Anatolian Chariots" units, there is a graphical glitch where a 3rd individual (of Egyptian culture...) holding an invisible spear is added to each chariot.

Thank you for the great mod. I'll keep you updated if I find more issues.

can u make a mod that is player only and makes your army OP? :D