@god of being bad at everything
Sorry for the late reply, but what you're asking is outside the scope of this mod. It would have to be done on the level of modifying every single retinue type in the game, giving them massive bonuses. This mod aims to solve the main issue of combat balance with minimal conflicts with other mods.

Dragatus, it has been a year or so since the last comment, but I would like to ask for retinues to indeed be super soldiers of some sort, as they are professional armies after all, I mean just a bit after the end date came Matthias Corvinus for pete's sake

You'll need to delete some files from your HIP installation. Go to mod\Historical_Immersion_Project\common\combat_tactics and delete all the files in that folder. If that's too advanced for you then I'm sorry, but there is no simpler method.

Hi
I'm really interested in playing with your mod, but how do I make it HIP compatible ?
( please no complex code manipulations, I'm a 65-year old computer Neanderthal)

Thanks

No, there is no simple way to port the mod to CK3 because of how much the combat changed. And I haven't played enough CK3 to have very strong opinions about its combat mechanics.

@Dragatus and about CK3, you have something in mind to make the mod to ck3 too?

Ok thanks for the reply! I'll save it for later

If it's your first playthrough you don't really need this mod yet, you have enough other things to worry about and it won't add that much to your game. My mod only really becomes valuable once you start getting more into the details of how combat works.

Why only a skirmish phase? I'm not sure I want to use this mod, it seems like it changes too much. I am still on my first playthrough

I'm glad to hear that.

I have to say, I play all my saves with this mod, especially the old version, I really like the feeling of taking the army into combat and having the uncertainty that I will win or lose, it is always a clock counting towards the end of every battle.

@TheAuditor24, you need to delete two files in mod\Historical_Immersion_Project\common\combat_tactics
named "emf_call_to_glory_combat_tactics_codegen" and "emf_combat_tactics_codegen".

Yes, they do. Commander traits still work normally.

Do commander traits still apply as in vanilla?

It should be compatible with HIP and more or less compatible with Realistic Warfare, although I'm not very familiar with the latter. But if the main thing it does is buff command traits then you can run the two mods alongside each other just fine.

Compatible with HIP and Realistic Warfare?

oh ok

I probably wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean retinues in the mod are weaker than levies. What I meant was that with my mod pure retinue armies are no longer vastly superior to levies.

I've read your mod description but I don't get how this mod makes pure retinue armies weaker.
To better explain or determine if this is true at all consider the following scenario: Two armies of two characters at war fight each other on flat terrain (assume no terrain modifiers or the crossing of a body of water) Both armies have commanders of roughly equal martial skill and have no commander traits, have the same personal combat strength, both armies have the exact same composition of light and heavy infantry, archer, pikemen, light and heavy cavalry, have the exact same tech level in all relevant techs, and have the exact same culture. The ONLY difference between the two armies is that one of them is a levy raised army, and the other is a retinue built army. Who wins more often?

Probably.

does this work with "Realistic Battles" ?

Guys this mod is amazing you should really get this if you don't like the way CK2 combat works. I just beat 3x army with 40 martial dude. %5 morale loss only.

The way I understand the word "luck" it doesn't mean everything has an equal chance. To me the word "luck" means that there is no way to affect the outcome.

@Dragatus You say that version 1.0 is based on luck, but when I start a battle for example, you say that the commander has 5% to choose terrible luck, 5% chance to choose Incredible Luck, 15% chance to choose Bad Luck and Good Luck and 60% to choose Normal Luck, wasn't it all supposed to be the same chance? If not, what do I need to change to be all the same chance?

That should do the trick.

@Dragatus, I deleted the new combat tactics of HIP to run Elegant Warfare properly.

It seems there must be some sort of incompatibility and the HIP tactics file is used over the EW one then. Probably HIP redirects the game to load files from it's own special folder.

I like to edit the days of tactics for 100 days, so battles don't change tactics all the time in big battles, but for some reason, the commanders use some tactics like Devastating Harass, Failed Harass, volley, and flanks wihtout commanders do not use the elegant warfare in the new HIP frosty1 update.

They' re still quite long.

do Battles still take weeks instead of a few days?

OK. Thx Dragatus.

That is true. I haven't used HIP in maybe 2 years now. But this mod is compatible with any mod except the ones that introduce new special unit types or rely on combat tactics for special effects.

If you never heard of Golden3 u probably did not see HIP longer time. Coz like "3"saying, its third part of this HIP version.

It should work with HIP, but I never heard of Golden3 before, so I don't know about that.

Does this work with HIP Golden3?

Yes, it does. There is pretty much no way for a patch to break it, unless PDX implements a brand new unit type.

Does this work with 3.2.1?

Ah, okay. Thanks for the reply.

The mod doesn't have any direct effect on the AI. And the mod doesn't really give units specific tactical roles. In a fight they all just fight and that's it. Different units just differ somewhat in what they're good at after the fight (if you consider the pursuit phase of battles being after the fight). So their differences are more strategic than tactical.

Does this affect the AI and how they manage the size of their armies? i.e; Will they still clump all available units into one large merged unit, instead of following this mod, and splitting units into specific tactical roles?

You can easily edit that yourself. Find your mod folder and go to the Elegant Warfare directory. In the combat tactics file just set days = 100.

Can you make a version that the tactics remains for 100 days insteade change in battle?

The advantage of retinues is that they can cover any shortcoming of your levy. For example your levies might be bad at pursuit so you can hire Light Cavalry retinues to make up for that. Additionally there is the standard benefits of retinues that they don't have to mobilize. You can't have any levies raised when you declare war, but your retinues and mercenaries can be ready and waiting right at the border with your intended target.

what is the advantage of retinues in this mod? Do they reduce the number of levies you get like in the base game? I'm not sure what to invest in: building structures to increase my levies or retinues. Overall I like the idea of this mod, I'm just trying to understand its mechanics better.

Defensive terrain bonuses are not affected by this mod, so yes, terrain still plays a role.

Does terrain still play a role in the outcome of a battle? Or is it just the tactics/martial score?

Ohhh I see.

And tactic pollution is when the addition of a small percentage of an additional troop type makes it possible to trigger tactics that will screw up your flank. For example adding 5% of Heavy Cavalry to an army tat used to be pure Heavy Infantry now introduces a chance that you'll get a +300% bonus for that 5% of new troops while the other 95% of your army will end up doing no damage at all because the tactic gave them -150% attack.

In the unmodded game combat tactics typically give a huge bonus to one or two types of troops and a penalty to other types of troops, which makes it ideal to compose armies made out of 1 or 2 troop types, which is only possible with pure retinues.

For example if a flank contains 1% or more Heavy Cavalry it can trigger the Powerful Charge tactic which provides +300% Heavy Cavalry attack, but has the drawback of -150% Heavy Infantry attack and -150% Pikeman attack.

Similarly having 1% or more Heavy Infantry will allow a flank to trigger Advance which gives +300% attack bonus to Heavy Infantry and -150% attack for Heavy Cavalry and Pikemen.

But if your entire army is composed purely out of Heavy Cavalry or purely out of Heavy Infantry, you just get the bonus without any penalty. That is the big advantage of retinues over levies. The disadvantage of mixing them is that you lose this advantage.

I may be dumb or something, but exactly what disadvantage do you get for mixing retinues with levies normally? Don't they act exactly the same? And what is tactical pollution?