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Volcano Battle Mod

For: All campaigns
If you use this, then you don't need to activate my other battle mods as they are included here (Longer Battle Time Mod, Real Skirmisher Ammo, Naval Battle Mod).

Also, if you use this mod then you should disable all my other battle mods below, as you only need this one active.)
Longer battle times, realistic skirmishers, realistic siege artillery, tactical naval combat and realistic elephants.

This mod combines all three of my other battle mods into one:

Longer Battle Time Mod
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198482822

Real Skirmisher Ammo + Siege Artillery Mod
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=197237117

Naval Battle Mod
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=190978721

(See the above links for specific changes made in those mods)

...also, this mod greatly adjusts elephants so that they are more realistic and balanced. In many head to head campaigns, it has become obvious that elephants are completely unrealistic and overpowered. An army of 20 elephant units can wipe out a full legion, to the man mind you, in less than five minutes --even with longer battle time mods activated. This is quite ridiculous, and CA's answer was to limit elephant units in multplayer battles to two units to combat "elephant spam". As great as that sounds, this does not address campaigns however, and elephant armies are the "golden bullet" who's only counter is a full army of peltasts who's only counter in turn is a full army of cavalry. Quite silly, and in my opinion anything that requires a cap in multiplayer battle is a telltale sign that it is broken.

NOTE: It is worth mentioning that in v1.0 of Rome 2, there was justifiable community outcry because elephants were initially useless; you could easily kill them the moment they came into contact with any unit. However, CA went too far in the opposite extreme, essentially making elephant units into death rays.

Therefore, this compilation mod not only compiles all of my other battle mods into one (you can read about those changes on the separate mod pages above), but it also adjusts elephant units in the following manner:

ELEPHANT CHANGES:

-Number of mounts and troops in elephant units (number of elephants, and the number of troops riding the elephants) has been reduced to 66% of the old amount. This intetionally makes elephant units more expensive to purchase and maintain (because you now have half the quantity for the same costs) and it prevents an army of 240 elephants from being fielded. Simply put, 12 elephant units were excessive.

-Reduced melee defense of elephant units by 1/2 to make them more vulnerable to counter attack melee after being bogged in melee.

-Corrected auxilia elephant armor to be type leather, instead of cloth.

-Changed armored Indian elephant armor to be cataphract type, instead of leather.

-Adjusted elephant speed so that the smaller elephants are the fastest (original speed values), the war elephants are about 75% as fast (based on scientific comparison with African elephant vs. horse speed), and the armored Indian elephants are 60% as fast as the fastest and smallest elephants.

-Adjusted walk speed of armored Indian elephant to be slower than non armored types.

-Adjusted the mass of elephant units so that the smallest ones are 2500 (original: 4000), Indian elephants are 4000 (unchanged from the original), armored Indian elephant is 5500 (original: 5000). This mass is scientifically based on the actual metric weight of these animals.

-Adjusted the height of all the elephants to be more realistic, originally they were all the same size.

NOTE: Keep in mind that although African elephants in general are indeed larger than Indian elephants, historically Indian elephants used in battle were larger than the African elephants used in battle, because it was all but impossible to tame the adult massive African savannah elephants, so the much smaller African forest elephants were used in large numbers by the Carthaginians instead.

-Adjusted hit points of elephant units based on mass and the presence of armor.

-Added 100 bonus hit points to all war elephant units (to better differentiate them from non-war elephants).

-Adjusted morale of elephant units so that Indian war elephants are the highest (60), while African war elephants are 75% (because they were more difficult to control and more prone to panic), and African non-war elephants are 66% of the African war elephant morale (or 1/2 the Indian war elephant morale), because these were the most difficult to control and easiest to panic since they were not trained war elephants.

-Increased upkeep cost of all non-war elephant units by 2.66x, and war elephants are 1.5x the upkeep cost of non-war elephants, while Indian armored elephants are 1.5x upkeep cost of Indian war elephants. Originally elephant upkeep cost was woefully inadequate, equal to the cost of some cavalry units; elephants were expensive to capture, train, feed, and maintain and their cheap upkeep ruined balance especially since their numbers are not limited in the campaign (so full elephant armies were not only practical but also a forgone conclusion).

-Increased the recruitment cost of armored Indian elephants to be 2x the cost of non-armored Indian war elephants, because these elephant units are so effective now (better armor, mass, health than the original levels).

-Corrected the weight class of all elephant units (original weight class assignments were inconsistent).

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In a test battle, a 20 regular elephant (non-war elephant) unit army attacked a full Roman 20 unit legion, with a realistic mix of triarii, hastati, principes, velites, and scorpions, and the result was a Roman costly victory, but exactly 1/2 of the army lost (1200 men) and 60 elephants killed. In the standard game, this same result is a Roman crushing defeat with 2400 casualties and only 15 SINGLE elephants lost. Obviously, this result speaks for itself, the former being a more plausible result. The difference - losing a full army of elephants in a campaign would be extremely costly.

ADDITIONAL CHANGES:

-Second Wind ability recharge time has been increased by 2x, because it was too powerful before (it made fatigue management nearly irrelevant).

(and many other minor adjustments)