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Adjustments to Combat Tactics

Makes combat tactics logic more internally consistent, reasonable, and intuitive by restoring symmetry between skirmish tactics groups, improving cooperation between different unit types, and correcting apparent oversights. This mod disables Steam achievements.

Visit the Paradox forum thread for a fuller description, including example flank compositions and their tactics profiles[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Here is a partial list of what this mod does:


War Elephants
changes "base_type" from "heavy_cavalry" to "knights" (to correct what seems to be an error: the combat tactics file refers to "knights" rather than "heavy_cavalry")

Camel Cavalry
attempts to balance camels:
increases maintenance from 3 to 3.25
decreases skirmish attack from 4 to 3
decreases melee attack from 7 to 5
increases pursue attack from 2 to 3


Modified Form of Tactics Triggers

changes all "naked" troop checks (i.e. of the form "light_cavalry = 0.01") to bracketed checks against total troops (i.e. of the form "troops = { who = light_cavalry value = 0.01}") in order to prevent Horse Archers from triggering Light Cavalry tactics and War Elephants from triggering Heavy Cavalry tactics (and for consistency)

Improved cooperation between different unit types

Horse Archers receive better support from Light Cavalry
Archers receive better support from Horse Archers
Light Cavalry receive better support from Archers
Heavy Infantry receive better support from Heavy Cavalry
Pikemen receive better support from Heavy Infantry
Heavy Cavalry receive better support from Pikemen

This is accomplished by:

(1) Setting the weights of all exclusive tactics (i.e. namesakes of tactics groups) to 3 and the weights of all cooperative tactics to 4

(2) Setting the offensive bonus that an exclusive skirmish tactic imparts to its associated unit to +200% (up from +100% for Horse Archers and down from +300% for Light Cavalry)

(3) Decreasing the offensive penalty that an exclusive tactic imparts to a potential supporting unit:

Swarm: decreases penalty to Light Cavalry offense from -150% to -50%
Volley: decreases penalty to Horse Archer offense from -150% to -50%
Harass: decreases penalty to Archer offense from -150% to -50%
Advance: decreases penalty to Heavy Cavalry offense from -150% to -50%
Stand Fast: decreases penalty to Heavy Infantry offense from -150% to -50%
Powerful Charge: decreases penalty to Pikemen offense from -150% to -50%

(4) Restoring the original trigger conditions for Volley and Volley Harass and the original weight-multiplier conditions for Swarm, Harass Swarm, Volley, Harass, and Volley Harass

(5) Emending cooperative tactic weight-multiplier conditions that had required improbably precise light troop or heavy troop fractions that made it practically impossible for flanks to hit them. The adjusted multipliers match the form of the vanilla Schiltron multipliers.

Other changes for consistency and symmetry

Disorganized Swarm
adds a +50% affinity bonus against the Volley Group to match Disorganized Harass, which has an affinity bonus despite being a "bad" tactic; increases the trigger condition when the flank has a good commander from 50% Horse Archers to 65% Horse Archers, thus removing the overlap between Swarm and Disorganized Swarm to match Harass and Disorganized Harass, which have no such overlap

Harass, Disorganized Harass, and Raid
removes prohibition when Horse Archers >= 50% of total troops, which is no longer necessary given that Horse Archers no longer count as Light Cavalry. Combinations of Horse Archers + Light Cavalry now behave like combinations of Archers + Horse Archers and Light Cavalry + Archers.

Disorganized Harass
decreases affinity bonus against the Swarm Group from +100% to +50%

Stand Fast Group
removes the Force Back tactic and splits its effects between Slow Advance and Stand Fast, the latter of which can now fire in any terrain. Heavy Infantry alone can no longer fire a Stand Fast tactic.

localisation
changes the in-game text for [special]_[troop]_offensive and ..._defensive to "[Special Troop] Attack" and "...Defense", respectively, to match the text for regular units

Corrected oversights and quirks

changes instances of "Martial" to "martial"

Charge On Undefended
moves the condition that the enemy flank be composed of at least 60% Archers from a multiplier to the trigger
(In vanilla this tactic has a nonzero chance to fire even if the enemy flank has fewer than 60% Archers, which seems contrary to intention. There's also a hardcoded bug associated with this tactic, which causes a flank to change tactics daily when the enemy flank is >60% archers.)

Clever Ambush
changes trigger condition to fix apparent transposition of "light_infantry" and "light_cavalry" (compare to Desert Ambush)

Embolon Charge
adds a +120% bonus to Horse Archer offense; decreases bonus to Light Cavalry offense from +180% to +60%

Somewhat arbitrary / personal preference

Most tactics now last only 6 days (instead of 12 or 18 days)

Shieldwall
Light Infantry (as >=20% of total troops) can now trigger Shieldwall only if accompanied by either Heavy Infantry or Pikemen (as >=1% of total troops).

Feint
Feint can now trigger with as few as 1% Archers (of total troops) but only if Heavy Infantry, Pikemen, and Heavy Cavalry are each less than 1% of total troops. It will still trigger if Archers and Light Infantry are each 20% of total troops, regardless of the amount of Heavy Infantry, Pikemen, and Heavy Cavalry.

Retreat and Ambush, Barrage, Raid
decreases weight-multipliers from 3 to 2
The first weight-multiplier requires the primary light troop type to be at least 30% of total troops.
The second weight-multiplier requires the secondary light troop type to be at least 30% of light troops.

Second-order adjustments (needed because of the mod's other changes)

Shieldwall
is now less likely to fire when Light Cavalry and/or Horse Archers are greater than 30% of light troops

Feint
is now less likely to fire when Light Cavalry is at least 50% of light troops

Clever Ambush & Desert Ambush
allows Horse Archers to satisfy the trigger and modifier conditions to correct for Horse Archers no longer counting as Light Cavalry