(continued)

Cavalry Wedge Revamp: The cavalry wedge has never been a very good choice of formation in Total War games. One of the reason's it's particularly poor in R2TW, though is the unit in formation takes up to a 20% effective maximum speed hit for using it.

This mod tries to revamp the three types of cavalry wedge (wedge, flying wedge, and diamond) to compensate for that speed hit and to more closely match the bonuses for diamond and wedge in Attila:Total War, on the assumption CA got it right the second time.

All formations get a bonus to speed on the charge, which will increase knockdown effects (Flying wedge: 10%, wedge: 15%, diamond: 35%). Flying wedge (Roman) gets a 10% bonus on their charge attack bonus, and +5 to melee attack. Wedge (barbarian) gets 15% bonus to charge attack and +10 to melee attack. Diamond (Hellenic) gets +15 to shield defence.

In addition to the speed hit all formations have their missile block chance reduced to zero.

The net effect should be that the formations can be an effective choice if they can effect a clean charge, but in addition to the speed hit will wilt under missile fire rapidly due to being bunched up. Result is a formation that, while certainly not always the best option, is no longer completely useless, and could potentially have some value for gap shooting, pull throughs, hitting infantry lines side-on, etc.

Thracian Shield Bonus: Gives a 10 point bonus to Thracian Shields for missile block value, up from 0 to 10.

Precursor Javelin Tweakdown: Precursor (ie, non-missile infantry) javelins are omnipresent, and a little overpowered, some believe. This mod affects only the precursor javelins line in the projectiles table, the weapon used by non-javelin infantry, lowering their AP damage from 12 to 9, accuracy bonus from 30 to 10, and their bonus vs cav and elephants from 10 to 5, to bring them down even on those 3 stats with the light or wooden javelins used by Thureos Spears, etc. and thus marginally inferior to Roman pila. (Thureos still has a slight speed advantage.) Has the effect of making those initial barbarian javelin volleys slightly less effective.

Morale and Fear Tweaks: Does two things, only affecting the relevant 3 lines in the _kv_morale table:

1. Restores 5 points of the fear effect to morale for frightened units from previous Rome patches (from -15 to -20).
2. Restores minor morale penalties from S2TW for recent casualties sustained (-5 for 33%, -15 for 50%).

Effect should make units slightly more brittle and susceptible to fear effects.

Chariot Tweakdown: Does exactly 4 things, with the intent of taking down Scythed chariots marginally, with compensating benefits for other chariot types:

1. Increases Iceni and African chariot javelins to 10, adds +5 to reload stat.
2. Increases Iceni walking speed to 2.2 and charge speed to 11, same as African.
3. Decreases turn speed on all chariots from 80 to 60, down to the same as horses.
4. Increases chariot minimum speed at which they can turn up from 1 to 1.2, up to the same as siege engines.

200 man pikes: increasing the size of all pike units from 160 to 200 men. Changes only those units' lines in the main_units table.

Brings the game closer to the RTW standard, where pikes were 240 men to hoplites' 160. Overall makes pike units more survivable and harder to defeat than in the default game.

Also changes the pike_lower_delay_combat and lowered pike turning values in the kv_rules table, to the Attila Total War values. Has the effect of making pikes a fair bit more sprightly on attack.

The sum total of all these changes should be to make the leading Germanic factions slightly less tough, the Hellenic factions slightly better, and the Romans about the same. All the sub-elements above are also their own independent mods in the same workshop if people want to pick and choose.

The BTR mod is set so it is applied by Mod Manager first, just after the Patch 17 Data Typos mod if installed, and before any other mods that may overwrite it in turn, meaning it should be compatible with any other mod in use out there (with those mods overwriting any changed values with their own should they clash). Feedback welcome.

Ever want TW:R2 to be basically the same game, but just a bit better? A mod that improves balance and game play without making drastic changes to core stats? Here you'll find a small compilation of ideas from various people about how to improve the Rome 2 basic game, without drastic changes or overhauling of stats.

I wanted to fix a few things, that were outside the scope of the Patch 17 Data Typos mod effort that I think make the game feel just a little bit better. What are those things? Here's the list.

Barbarian Spacing Tweakdown: Spacing in R2 for barbarian units is a little more disciplined than it should be. By spreading barbarian spear and sword units out and staggering them a little more, to the same spacing as falx and rhomphaia units have already, you get a moderating impact on their charge effect and resistance to charges, lessening the relative in game power of Celtic and Germanic infantry units, while adding to realism.

The BTR mod increases the standard barbarian sword/spear spacing to the same as falx/rhomphaia. At the same time it excludes Dacian spear units, the only nation without javelins, by changing their spacing type to "spear_inf", same as Carthage, etc., making them still javelin-less, slightly better spears.

Multiplayer Mobs: Cause sometimes you just want to chase a bunch of farmers with elephants...

Adds the following formerly campaign-only units to Multiplayer. Purely for the fun value.

Celtic Tribesmen
Carthage Mob
Eastern Mob
Egypt Mob
Greek Mob
Rom Plebs
Roman Rorarii
British Farmers
Dacian Tribesmen
German Tribesmen
Iberian Tribesmen
Illyrian Tribesmen
Steppe Tribesmen (NOTE: This *does* give an infantry unit, albeit a highly limited one, to the steppe factions in MP).
Thracian Tribal Garrison

Also changes two lines in main_units table to differentiate upkeep cost of Rorarii and Vigiles (otherwise there's no point in spending cash to upgrade them): Rorarii now 66 talents per turn, Vigiles 54. All other stats the same.

Charge-Reflect Discount: As noted by Maximus here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzfc63YLHkg), the cavalry charge-reflect attribute in the game is currently broken, and does nothing at all for the 13 heavy cavalry types that have it.

Pending CA fixing this attribute with a patch, this mod reduces their purchase cost by 50 points in multiplayer and campaign. No other changes. Units affected are:

Galatian Noble_Horse (Aux and Merc)
Iceni Heroic_Riders
Celtic Noble_Horse
Azat_Knights
Germanic Noble_Riders
Iberian Noble_Cav
Thracian Royal_Cav (WoS and standard)
Steppe Saka Cataphracts
Steppe Saka_Noble_Armour_Lancers
Steppe Sarmatian_Royal_Lancers
Steppe Scythian_Royal_Horse

More in part 2...