Total War: WARHAMMER II

Total War: WARHAMMER II

Not enough ratings
Cohesive Armies
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Tags: mod, Battle
File Size
Posted
Updated
1.022 MB
12 Oct, 2023 @ 3:39am
9 Mar @ 3:01pm
6 Change Notes ( view )

Subscribe to download
Cohesive Armies

In 2 collections by mr.napop
Immersion, realism and logic
391 items
Battle Dynamics
13 items
Description
The aim of this mod is to have armies the potential to hold for longer. I made this to accompany my other “deadly” mods with more complex alterations but the changes are many so it can be interesting to vanilla as well.

Essentially, it overhauls the moral dynamic to count more heavily on 3 basic elements of battle, that should make armies withstand based on their cohesiveness and potentially last longer but with more punishing dynamics to balance it:

Friends/enemies – twice the impact

- Being next to friendly units makes you hold for longer as flanks secure bonus is doubled but seeing them route demoralizes harder. Seeing enemies route encourages you more, but enemy numbers have more impact. Thus, units perform more as part of an army rather than on their own.

Damage/Casualties alterations

- Damage is calculated as models killed rather than HP, so a full unit of capable yet injured models will have the same base leadership. This means that single entities will not rout based on damage but rather on seeing others flee or being overwhelmed by numbers, to reduce single entity efficiency check Wounds.

- Damage inflicted also boosts the unit’s moral, so as long as it’s killing the enemy models in the same rate as it is taking casualties, it will negate the penalty. This means matchups are more meaningful.

- Immediate (4 sec) damage penalty is enhanced, while the overall damage penalty is reduced, so if a unit loses many models quickly it will route quicker, but if it is slowly grinded or came back from rout it will have more leadership than before as it is not losing models at that moment.

Inspiration – twice the impact

- Generals and heroes encourage more units and much more but mainly to close units, so units hopefully won’t leave their generals to die when fighting together, so moving them to support wavering units has much more impact.

Tactical withdrawing and re-conceptualized routing

- Removed attacked from rear penalty which allows to safely withdraw engaged units, which otherwise immediately receive this penalty upon turning.

- Reduced breaking time, removed distance and enhanced breaking limit, so routing units will rally sooner without enemy distance constrain and with more breaking sessions before shattering, so routing is shorter and more local than leaving the battlefield altogether only to come back from a mile away. Combine with AI General II: Spectator Mode Advanced for AI assignment for rallying units.

Additional alterations:

- Army destruction (mass rout) is greatly reduced but is potentially activated sooner, as it starts when your army’s strength is down to 75% rather than 22% (with double the enemy’s power required instead of 2.5 vanilla). This means that this threshold is not a whistle style complete defeat, high moral or fully intact units might still hold given not too many friends retreated. So, battles might be longer with more last stands and potential turnovers.

- Flanking penalties are removed as these artificial bonuses are embedded in the damage done since you deal more damage from the sides or rear. Combine with Deadlier Engagement Dynamics for more flanking damage.

- Siege leadership bonus greatly enhanced, so units won’t rout as easily if they will be killed anyway.

- Height bonus is doubled.

- Charging leadership bonus is removed.

- Winning/losing battle is removed as it’s embedded in the damage dealt alterations.

- Removed attacked by ranged since not all range attacks are lethal/accurate enough.

- Fatigue penalties are doubled.

- Terror aura effect is equalized with fear (20m), but with less shock time, so it has bigger but shorter effect.

- If your general died, it would not penalize your troops immediately as it takes time for the word to reach in the middle of combat.

- Removed flanks exposed penalty as it’s not very consistent and coherent, X4 flanks secure bonus to match it (pic 4).

any comment/insight/request/bug is HIGHLY appreciated and welcome since this dynamic is harder to test for in pure “lab conditions”.

Recommended to play with my collection which addresses other battle aspects of the game.
11 Comments
むらさき 11 Dec, 2023 @ 10:48pm 
Ohh I see yeah that makes sense. The skaven routing not just because it's skavenslaves but because it's their entire army routing (which are the skavenslaves) and other stuff. It makes for a funny mass rout all the same.

Damage dealt to unit huh. Hm, as I've said I was fighting rats mostly so they don't really have any rampage causing skills. Maybe the threshold for rampage got weird with all the mods I was running xd

Thanks for the clarification though!
mr.napop  [author] 9 Dec, 2023 @ 11:53am 
Hey man thanks! glad you enjoy it!

Skavenslaves have the "Expendable" trait, meaning their routing only affects other units with the "Expendable" trait like other skavenslaves, while clanrats and others don't have it so don't count in the "friends routing" mechanic for them. This means that the other units routing was probably from the "Stronger enemy units" mechanic or the -30 army loss, given the skavenslaves were the majority of force in the army, and not because the skavenslaves routed.

The rampage mechanic is impacted solely by damage dealt to the unit, not the unit's moral, but sometimes other units can cause it, like witch elves, so be aware who your fighting against.
むらさき 7 Dec, 2023 @ 4:46am 
Heya! It's me again. Just wanted to share a few things I've observed while doing a playthrough of Kroq-Gar

Number one is that: Skaven routs hilariously fast. It's a bit of a concern, but also, mildly entertaining seeing the other units of rats (be they clanrats, gutter runners, even heroes) just flee in a mass rout once like 10-20 units of skavenslaves break lmao. (Context: I got ambushed by three armies, the majority of which are skavenslaves)

Number two is that: It seems like with the leadership changes, the rampage mechanic of the dinos trigger quite fast into the fight (bit unsure whether it's from your mod tbh). They weren't at low health either, which led me to believe the leadership changes made it so.

Just wanted to share those observations as a heads up. Still enjoying this mod a lot
mr.napop  [author] 6 Nov, 2023 @ 3:22am 
I tried duplicating this situation but they mostly try to flank to the rear or retreat backwards if not routed already, on Normal and Very hard difficulty the same. I'm using "Ultra aggressive AI" and "AI army tasks" but I don't think they affect the battle AI.

Anyway as the vanilla penalty is only 5 it's not likely that this mod causes the no routing, and in my game they routed, maybe they were close to a general?

I once though of editing the grouping AI making light troops a flanker role rather than melee, or any other change but since abandoned it as it was a bit too much.
FailSafe 3 Nov, 2023 @ 5:39am 
the flanking I'm referring to is mostly fast cav like goblin wolf archers etc, they pretty much sit static (playing dwarves early game, cant chase them off), and die slowly to crossbow fire without breaking...ever

I get the removed morale debuff wouldnt do much, it was more me commenting on the one thing that felt 'off' still, albeit less 'off' than without the mod where the core battle line would break and reform constantly!

Not the worst thing in the world, just maybe something you might like to be aware of :)
mr.napop  [author] 1 Nov, 2023 @ 9:44am 
Hey man thank you for your sincere comments.

The vanilla penalty for missile fire is only 5, so removing it isn't that impactful and this mod doesn't change this dynamic tremendously. If it's decimated quickly enough then it should proc the "recent" (4 sec) and "extended" (60 sec) casualties penalty combined which is way more severe. if dying slowly then it might stay for longer, given their orders are to stay put.

However the AI does retreat if is suffers heavy casualties (mainly skirmish units), so I don't think your units should break if under missile fire, as you can manually retreat them.

Also the AI tends to face your troops, so I'm not sure I understand the positioning your referring to.
FailSafe 1 Nov, 2023 @ 5:26am 
A little feedback, I mostly love it!

It does feel a little weird however when a unit is decimated by missile fire and goes 'guess I'll die' rather than retreat - even if the unit under fire is isolated and alone. It feels unrealistic rather than an enhancement. It MAYBE could be justified if in a lord's leadership bubble, but flanking units sitting around to be murdered just feels...off.

Other than that, I much prefer the en-masse line holding or breaking, and the ripple effect by one end shattering - that feels so much better than vanilla whack-a-mole retreating.
mr.napop  [author] 22 Oct, 2023 @ 4:49am 
Thanks! Created one named "Deadly Battle Dynamics"
Claude 21 Oct, 2023 @ 2:45am 
any chance you could make a collection of your battle mods? love this one so far!
mr.napop  [author] 17 Oct, 2023 @ 1:00pm 
Hey man thank you for the kind words! I'm very happy you like it.

I didn't think many people still play this game and there are many overhauls and unit mods which are incompatible with most of my mods, so it actually exceeded my expectations, but even one subscriber would have been enough for me. Cheers!