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Kill Animation Battle Overhaul

IMPORTANT NOTE: This mod is currently outdated with the recent patch 18. You can still use this mod if you opt into the patch 17 beta, but I believe it will crash if you don't. I am currently working on fixing this and should hopefully have an update out soon. For those waiting on a patch 18 fix, you can at least get the animation part of this mod, which currently works with patch 18, available here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683895635&searchtext=

NOTE: Video used above is of an old version of the mod.... amount of spacing between units has been decreased since then to look less exaggerated.

OVERVIEW: The goal of this mod is to overhaul battles to create a more visceral, cinematic experience, and make battles look more like a movie and less "gamey," while still attempting to maintain some semblance of "realism" (while the 1v1 duels aren't truly realistic, this mod hopes to reduce the severity of formationless, silly 1v1 dueling moshpits with dueling soldiers surrounded by enemies simply standing still, politely waiting for their turn to die). While there are already several animations enhancing mods out there, I felt that they lacked variation in animation, still had rare animations be too rare, and/or also didn't attempt to correct the imbalances caused by changing animations drastically. So I attempted to create my own. The goal of this mod is to create battles with epic animations that are dynamic and fun to watch, without game breaking imbalances, drastically changing the flow of battles, or silly looking moshpits of countless 1v1 duels of soldiers hoplessly out of formation as mentioned above.

To attempt to achieve this, a few major changes have been made:

MAJOR CHANGES:

***Animations overhauled. Rare and brutal kill animations vastly increased in frequency, while boring and silly "heart attack" deaths (where a soldier goes flying to the ground from a wimpy slap) have been drastically reduced.

***Matched, 1v1 combat has been increased in frequency to make battles look more cinematic, however units may still gang up on a single soldier if they surround him.

***Unit spacing has been increased (to about the extent of Rome 1) so that units blob up less, so you can see the various fights and animations play out instead of one big mess. Also, this allows units to have "breathing room" so that the 1v1 combat look at least a little less staged and stupid as the two dueling soldiers won't be touching 8 other soldiers simultanesouly who could kill either one at any time.

****Formation attack has been given to almost all infantry to further reduce the blobbing and to get units to stay in formation amidst the dueling, to help prevent the silly looking duel moshpit with units completely out of formation.

***Various tweaks to battle pace and unit stats (see full notes below)

You should see soldiers getting impaled in the air, heads and arms getting chopped off, men fighting hand to hand, getting wrestled to the ground, headbutting each other, getting kicked to the ground or kicked to death, etc. etc. and soldiers only very rarely flying to the ground over dainty pokes (though, again, this will still occur, though largely only when soldiers are surrounded by enemies and getting ganged up on).

So, how does this effect the speed, balance, and general flow of combat? Well, not *too* much, but:

***Changes have been made to attempt to keep the speed of battle to be slightly slower then vanilla so you have time to watch the sweet animations, but clashes between units are still fast paced and exciting.

****Balance of units has been altered as an unintended consequence of the animations changes. The disparity between elite and poor quality units has been (I think) increased due to the domination of 1v1 fights in combat now. I've done what I could to minimize this and am going to continue to do so, so it should be small if there at all, but let me know if it's I haven't minimized it enough or I minimized it too much.


FULL LIST OF CHANGES MADE TO GAME:
-1v1 Combat much more frequent
-Rare and cool Kill Animations much more frequent, in addition to kill animations in general
-Heart attack deaths and weapons pokes much less frequent, usually only occuring when a soldier is totally surrounded by enemies all stabbing at him
-Unit stats tweaked (tweaked version of Radious Battle Mod's changes)
-Unit spacing increased
-Formation attack added to almost all infantry
-Combat slightly slower due to unit spacing and more 1v1 combat
-Units fatigue slightly slower to keep in pace with slower combat
-Unit health decreased by about a factor of 2 to keep combat just slightly slower then vanilla, rather then much slower
-Due to more 1v1 combat, disparities in combat effectiveness between elite and poor units may have increased.
-To attempt to counter this, lower quality weapons and armor have been increased in effectiveness to lower disparities between elite and poor quality units.
-Ranged weapon range has been increased by about a factor of 1.5 (to just under the range of Rome 1) to compensate for units having better armor and being more spread out to keep ranged weapons worthwhile
-All Units have been given Loose Formation as an option like in previous Total Wars
-Cavalry has more mass and moves faster on the charge for more visceral looking charges
-Infantry has more entity mass and spears are better against cavalry to help counterbalance changes, and to help give levy spear types more of a purpose.
-Transport ships are slower and weaker, and ramming is slightly more decisive (A slightly tweaked version of Radious' changes to naval combat)
-Unit and Leader Special abilities tweaked (a slightly tweaked version of Radious' changes here as well)

If things aren't working or are inbalanced, and I'll do my best to change them. Feedback is very appreciated, negative or positive.

ALTERNATE VERSION:
For those who want the animation changes but don't like the other tweaks I've made to the battles, you can download this version, which includes only the animation changes: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683895635

Be aware that without some of the tweaks I've made to minimize them, you may see more balance issues arise from the drastic changes to animations, but hopefully you are able to avoid them or, if not, aren't bothered too much by them.

COMPATABILITY:
This mod should be compatible with any mods that don't change battles much, however due to the changes it makes to a wide variety of battle aspects, it likely won't be compatible with too many Battle mods. This mod conflicts with other Battle Overhauls like Radious (however, as I use some aspects of Radious, like very similar stats, this mod could work okay with Radious specificly as long as it is given load priority, but it wouldn't work very well with other Battle Overhauls). In general, anything that modifies battle gameplay mechanics will conflict with this mod, however anything else should probably be fine.

CREDIT to mods which I used components of for this mod:

Petro's More Bloody Animations: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=339901182
Radious Battle Mod: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=186967851
Epic Combat: (*Unfortunately removed from Steam Workshop*)