Total War: WARHAMMER

Total War: WARHAMMER

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The Heart of Battle
   
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Tags: mod, Battle
File Size
Posted
Updated
10.524 KB
25 Feb, 2017 @ 2:00pm
22 Aug, 2017 @ 4:14am
9 Change Notes ( view )

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The Heart of Battle

Description
Author Note: Greetings Lords and Ladies of the old world, I would just like to say this is my first ever mod creation which was inspired both by this fantastic game and the huge collection of impressive modders already out here.

QUICK OVERVIEW: This mod is an attempt to increase battle times to be more in line with my games in Medieval and Medieval II. This is largely due to my desire to be able to maneuver units more effectively and not see my armies still several hundred strong with high tier troops route three minutes into a fight.
For more information see below, or simply subscribe and try for yourself.

The Heart of Battle: Why Make this mod?

I have been playing total war since medieval total war I have been a massive fan of the series, however I took a long time out after ROME II (personal reasons nothing to actually do with the game as I quite enjoyed it despite the issues). When I started playing Warhammer on release realised how much I missed the franchise.
In Jan 2017 I took a few days to revisit Medieval 2 and noticed like many of you how short Warhammer battles are. I thus looked at many mods here that attempts to improve this. I found some good ones but after some testing I decided that more was needed for me, leading me to youtube and learning about DAVE.

What this mod does?

I have edited both the global melee stats and altered the morale system. In short I have made changes which allow units to engage in long melee grinds and armies are far less likely to break until they are totally outmatched. For example evenly matched units such as Empire Swords vs Empire Swords will be locked in combat for as long as 12 minutes without any influence from other units. Likewise Chaos Chosen vs Empire Swords will last as long as 8 minutes.
Morale now works on the basis that as long as a fight remains even your army will stand their ground to the bitter end. In battles with even matched forces and engaged without any (or evenly matched) tactical positioning you can expect to see HUGE loses as units fight to the last man. While battles in which one side takes a significant advantage will result in mass routes as you might expect.
Overall I have found the results to be very satisfying as I now have time to maneuver cavalry, reposition reserves or skirmishers which would have been short lived in the base system.

What I have not done?

I have not altered individual unit stats! This means the mod should remain compatible with unit mods (I don't use them but the theory is sound) and also should function with updates.
I have not changed movement speeds or fatigue values for the simple reason I primarily play campaign in which the AI is not currently smart enough not to just run at you from deployment and thus I feel would lead to the battles becoming easier for myself as a player. If you would like revisions to these systems then I would suggest checking other mods that alter ONLY these systems to use alongside this mod for use in Player vs. Player. There are mods that alter similar systems as mine AND fatigue/movement which you may find more suitable, so please check them out they are very good.
If someone mods or CA updates the AI with better army movement (and deployment formations I would personally like to see) then I may consider delving into movement speeds and fatigue but until then I am not likely to.

Final Message

Thank you for taking the time to read this (if you did haha) and I hope you enjoy the mod. I initially only made it for myself but decided I was happy with the result that I might aswell share with the community who might also appreciate it. If not then thats fine. Good luck, and "I wish you good fortune in the wars to come."

The Silver Lion

My other Mods:

Nations of the Old World
Field Promotions



15 Comments
Chocolate Warfare 13 Jan, 2019 @ 8:50pm 
This mod is quite awesome, thank you! I got a little problem though - often flanked units loose pretty fast morale, draw back - but then they get Morale back extremely quickly, even if they are hunted by a pack of Warhounds for example. Can this be solved somehow?
Knight123 15 Jul, 2018 @ 7:47am 
I subscribed to this mode to install it. But when I subscribe, my mode won't go down, so I can't play the game because it won't be downloaded after several hours. :(
TBR77 24 Aug, 2017 @ 12:32am 
Great - thanks for the info
Arcadius  [author] 22 Aug, 2017 @ 1:34am 
This mod works without an update, no values changed in this mod are changed with the lastest DLC/Patch.
TBR77 22 Aug, 2017 @ 1:32am 
Thanks for this mod - best one I've found to slow the pace down. Does it need an update for the Norsca dlc? Thanks
Boonkie 30 Apr, 2017 @ 7:53am 
Why isnt this up on the news feed? This is everything to make the battles
Makkhariel 10 Apr, 2017 @ 3:51am 
My point being, if you can't tweak that more, I really like the mod already, and the "fighting to death" still fits the Warhammer universe in a lot of cases so it's not a big deal.
Also, it encourages maneuvers, flank tactics and so on if you don't want to have to rebuild your army after each battle so I like it.
Played a bit more, loved the mod more and found more situations where battle fought how they should in my opinion :)
Arcadius  [author] 9 Apr, 2017 @ 11:20pm 
Thanks for the update, I believe the cav charge my have been just unlucky based on the unit mix up. Even in vanilla you would probably find a lot less impact in that scenario. In regards to your comments about morale that is very hard to get right and I have tweaked it several times since I released the mod. I can't say I've seen instances of units holding out too long when there is no chance of victory.
But I don't see unbreakable units that often in my playthroughs so i'll do some testing over the next week or so with custom battles. If i can see where the problem is I'll certainly attempt to improve where I can.
And thanks again for the comments, I can only play the game so much with work and my social life so there will be things I miss. So i rely on comments from you guys to help me improve.
Makkhariel 8 Apr, 2017 @ 11:19am 
Lancers from Cataph's Southern Realm mod (medium cav, 45 charge bonus but they indeed have a really low melee attack of 23, so nothing that surprinsing) on Orc Arrer boys who are more beefy. They managed to kill 2 in the charge, with very few HP damage on others. I have to test with other cavs, but it is doing OK against Ungor raiders for example. Not huge damages but they hold their own and make them run away quite quickly.
I am, for now, finding more more things in favor of the mod as I keep on testing it ^^

My only concern for now is units with OK leadership (75-80) will just fight to death in a lot of situations as long as you have a lord / hero and maybe one or two friendly unit around, which kinda defeats the purpose of unbreakable units. It's the only pattern I saw several times in a row while testing.

But again, pretty good work, and I don't know, maybe you can tweak a few things but overhaul it works really well.
Arcadius  [author] 8 Apr, 2017 @ 7:37am 
@makkhariel hi there and thanks for the comments. I have not actually altered damage or charges so while you may have experienced less impact from the charge this maybe due to the lowered hit chance I introduced? In this case then as you might expect some charges will result in "lower" damage but this is not common. I have not found this myself but its something worth considering, do you remember what cav was charging what archer unit?