mod Scary war elephants

[maroder]

@alre

9 hours ago, alre said:

I think it's a big overstatement to call this mod realistic

That's why I said this mod just improves the realism (a little bit). I don't claim that this is the historic ground-truth. It is just an interesting mechanic that I thought would be fun to use in this case.

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

9 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

it would be interesting to make it so that advanced, elite soldiers, and champion have resistance to this.

already implemented It only affect basic rank cavalry. The idea is that the horses habituate to the presence of the elephants after some time and are not scared anymore.

[azayrahmad]

Regarding the historical background, I found a relevant article from WorldHistory.com (previously Ancient.eu). Excerpts:

Quote

 

The most important effect of elephants in the field was probably, then, a psychological one. These huge beasts would have terrified men and horses both visually and orally with their trumpeting. Even the smell of elephants could drive unprepared horses into a stampede. Starting the battle in a simple line in front of their own troops they could cause undisciplined and poorly trained cavalry lines to scatter in panic. They were also used to combat any elephants in the opposition's ranks. Tossing, ripping, and crushing the enemy, elephants were used to cause havoc with any defensive fieldworks and fortifications too, where they knocked down walls with their foreheads or pulled them down with their trunks.

Elephant corps did not have everything their own way, of course. Firstly, both soldiers and cavalry horses were trained to get used to the sight, smell, and sounds of elephants. Then they obviously provided large targets for artillery fire. Pits and spikes were prepared to entrap them and, if they could get close enough, men were charged with hamstringing the beasts or hacking at their trunks. This latter eventuality was, in part, avoided by the stationing of a small team of infantry to protect the elephant's legs. If the elephant were wounded then all hell might break lose as, unpredictable at the best of times, wounded elephants could literally go mad and cause tremendous damage to both sides. If this happened the rider used a metal spike and hammer to pierce the elephant's brain and kill it immediately.

 

So I guess this mod is pretty spot-on, at least according to the article.

I think I just got an idea on elephant morale for my mod...

Edited April 15, 2021 by azayrahmad

[alre]

My point is that, in my opinion, with this mod the game will feel even less realistic, not more.

There are two main innovations in your mod, one is about effectiveness of ele against cavalry, and the other one is about rendering panick in horses.

First of all, we shouldn't prevent cav to manouvre near to elephants. From a realistic point of view, that shouldn't be a problem until the elephants don't form a complete barrage - that would really make impossible for cavalry to pass. I'm doing some research on ancient battles where elephants and cavalry interacted, and I think it would be fair to give elephants attack bonus against cavalry, and little more. Since cavalry is faster, this should rarely make the difference, and that is true to the fact that elephants were deployed preferably against infantry, not cavalry. Cavalry was decisive in many battles were elephants were also deployed, like already mentioned Zama.

About horses panicking in general, I like your implementation, but I feel like it's a bit out of place. Not only horses, but also men and elephants can panick, in particular elephants were reportedly easy to stress out and panick, much more than horses, and soldiers themselves were scared by elephants, when used against unexperienced fighters, or people who didn't know them. Again, I think a simple attack bonus fits a lot more into the game. I'm not strictly against introducing panick mechanics, but they shouldn't be that impactful, unless you have a whole morale system to manage, like @azayrahmad's. Otherwise it's disproportionate and excessive, not realistic in my eyes.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think this mod's "scare" effect would be okay if the cavalry could be retasked to attack the elephant after a short time, meaning the scattering effect is only a minor setback for the cavalry that could be overcome with a minor amount of micro. 

[maroder]

@alre you convinced me.

Version 2 is out with the following features:

The fear aura affects all enemy units who are not used to the presence of the elephant. Means it affects all basic rank units (cav & infantry).

When the elephants are too hurt, they can fall into rage and attack your own units.

The aura works not on all individuals, only on a random subset. @Sturm I made it work

The aura no longer changes the stance to passive. It forces the units to flee, but they will come back and try to attack again. @wowgetoffyourcellphone

I updated the video, so you can have a look. Hope it is more realistic now.

Edited April 15, 2021 by maroder
typo

[maroder]

@azayrahmad thanks for the article. That is a more detailed description than on wikipedia  

6 hours ago, azayrahmad said:

I think I just got an idea on elephant morale for my mod...

nice. I'm looking forward to it

[alre]

Guys I'm trying hard to not be too critic, but I just can't keep it together. @maroder I don't think this is an improvement. For what we know about battles, morale and herd behaviour, neither people or animals would act that way at all. Also, I'm afraid randmness makes it harder to understand and gives it a kind of buggy feel.

I'm hopeful that, in the context of a game mod that includes a whole morale system, these panick mechanics have good potential, however, as a simple mod only regarding elephants, I don't think the result is realistic anyhow. For the best of my undertandment, this is what realistically happened in battles:

• scared people and animals alike, would refrain (or at least try to) to engage or get close to what frightens them
• if forced to fight scary foes, people and animals alike would stress out, but they wouldn't flee until they loose hope
• horses would be particularly scared by elephants, although training and war experience has the power to make both horses and men more disciplined
• when someone (animals included) arrives to the point that he just can't take it anymore, he panicks; at that point that animal/man wouldn't attack anyone, at least not intentionally, it would just try to get the hell out of there. A panicked elephant would go wherever there seems to be an easy escape, it would trample someone only if he gets in the way (which seems very likely anyway, in the middle of a battlefield). A panicked horse would throw its rider to the ground, and in fact a horseman would avoid carefully to cause excessive distress to his own horse.
• When some herd animal (humans included) panicks, panick would very easily spread to his fellow fighters, likely starting an unstoppable chain reaction. In either case, lone diserters and routed armies aren't easily convinced to go back to fight. It could take weeks or even months to prepare a routed army for battle again, because combativeness and confidence must take the place of dispair and helplessness.

Sorry for the all-critics-no-help approach. I hope you find my notes interesting.

[maroder]

2 hours ago, alre said:

Sorry for the all-critics-no-help approach. I hope you find my notes interesting.

No problem, as I said I just found the idea of the mechanic interesting and wanted to try out how it would fit in the game. Maybe @azayrahmad will come up with a better use for the mechanic  

Regarding your thoughts on panic in battle:

2 hours ago, alre said:

at that point that animal/man wouldn't attack anyone, at least not intentionally, it would just try to get the hell out of there

I would say this is highly depending on the nature of the animal. Horses would certainly not attack. Elephants on the other hand might want to flee also, but if they see no way out (middle of the battle) the will try and defend themselves. 

2 hours ago, alre said:

lone diserters and routed armies aren't easily convinced to go back to fight.

For humans I would say it is dependent on what is on the line. If you are fighting to defend your city you may consider coming back, even if you were scared the first time. And for the combination of human and horse: the horseman can get the horse back under control relative quickly (if he doesn't fall of). Which may not prevent the horse from getting scared again.

But yes, I will try out the current version of the mod and maybe introduce more of a group behavior for the cavalry.

Edited April 16, 2021 by maroder

[maroder]

Version 3 with tweaked values out.

[Sturm]

Lets try to make things more realistic and more complicated, but much more interesting.  I'm not a programmer and I don't know all the cost of processing this, but, let´s suggest it anyway.

In the game, all human beings could have a "scare marker". Nonhuman animals, in turn, would have a marker of potential "frighten humans marker". To give realism and maintain balance, the interaction between these two markers would work like this: a human could only be scared by an animal only once, once he received a "check mark" that tells that he/she has already been scared by that animal/species, he/she would be immune to encounters with the same animal or animals of the same species. The scare would also have a time limiter, I think something between 10-20 seconds. After that, the "check mark" would be granted and he/she would no longer be afraid of that animal/species. So far, it doesn't seem like a very difficult thing to implement, but ...

Another interesting thing, but certainly more difficult to be implemented, is the percentage of humans affected in an encounter with multiple entities. A wolf, for example, could frighten 5-10% of humans, an elephant 20-30% and a tiger, in turn, 70-80% of human entities. The problem is that "encounters" are somewhat gradual, varying from one second to the next, in the approximation of an animal to a group of humans. How to apply this percentage if the number of humans affected varies from second to second?

Regards, Sturm

PS: The "scare marker" would be also useful for "red dragons" e dinosaurs" 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Sturm

[maroder]

Thanks for the suggestions it should be doable, I will think about it for the next version. At the moment I am torn between the timer solution and the current solution of binding it the the rank of the unit. You idea would definitely required some more work.

[Lion.Kanzen]

a macabre idea is in my mind, that they (Elephants) end up turning into food, in other words: huntable for enemy troops, I mean for the enemy is feasible get food if this units is outside of territory like if was a wild animal and turn it into a source of food.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Lion.Kanzen