The Rights of Man

The Rights of Man (TROM) is a major mod for Empire Total War.

Overview

Above all, the goal of The Rights of Man is to achieve a more challenging game-perhaps slower, but also deeper, and more closely resembling historical accounts. It is not to make a more dramatic or cinematic game. War does not now, and did not then, resemble Braveheart, the Patriot (as enjoyable as those movies are) and other highly dramatized Hollywood movies. These are not a good source for making historical decisions in game balance. The Team studied the history of the region, and at least one of them is a soldier and a veteran, albeit one serving in our own strange modern half-wars. It may not be much, but it is hoped that they can add at least a few thin insights to improve the game.

When possible, core balance around units has been unchanged. While many small adjustments have been made, staying close to original values will make it easier for players to utilize the excellent work provided by other modders. Additionally, adjusting core balance can cause the AI to make poor decisions, both on the battlefield and when recruiting troops.

Likewise, changing core game mechanics has been avoided, such as the number of turns per year. Core changes like these can cause problems; in the case of turns per year, this will make buildings that cause economic growth per turn (since there are more turns) overly strong when compared to buildings that create wealth (i.e. add to GDP). Adjust the growth downwards to account for this can cause problems with the AI's purchase decisions.

The Team

Design

• Sage2
• Johan217

Historical Advisor

• Tomsin

Special Thanks to

• Yarkis
• Serenissima
• Tancredii
• Dogmeat
• JaM
• moopere
• Pdguru
• All the modders who allowed the inclusion of their work in the mod.

Main Features

• No changes without historical rationale, gameplay balance, and consideration for AI decision making.
• Detailed AOR system that allows for multi-facted Imperial armies with representative and unique line troops from many different regions. There are over 30 new units recruitable by many factions! These include the Walloon Guard, Chuguevski Cossacks, Freikorps Cavalry, Georgian Khevsurs, Swiss Infantry, and many more units, each balanced for gameplay. Additionally, many changes have been made to unit statistics and recruitability to improve historical realism and balance.
• Unique unit roster for the French Republic, with appropriate blue uniforms
• More authentic Ottoman unit roster, adding many more units such as Sekban Fusiliers, Cebülü Cavalry, Azab Infantry, and new ship types.
• Changes to battle dynamics: movement speed, projectile ballistics, lethality, fatigue and morale to more closely match historical accounts and doctrine, while maintaining game balance and playability.
• Changes to naval battles: longer, and weapon differeniated, range for cannon, and slower and more deliberate ship handling.
• Changes to campaign dynamics: significantly reworked aspects of the happiness, research, income, building benefits, campaign income, governments and more. Balancing progress, happiness and industrialization will be much more challenging, and the better balanced buildings will help the CAI. You will have to make very hard choices.
• Dozens of new descriptive strings to communicate changes to unit types, remove non-period wording, based on proper descriptions pack originally from l33tl4m3r.
• Adjusted traits and ancillaries for greater player challenges, and more characters with both positive and negative traits.
• Reduced speed of research through adjustment to buildings, characters and government types.
• Dozens of other small improvements to improve gameplay.

New Game Mechanics

Battle Mechanics

Projectile ballistics

When selecting a weapon's range, the following has been considered:

1) What is the maximum range of the weapon -- how far the projectile will carry. 2) What is the maximum effective range of the weapon -- how far the weapon will be lethal, at least 1 in 100 shots, in trained hands. 3) What is the doctrinal range of the weapon -- how soldiers were trained, and where they, in practice, opened a lethal fire.

Battle formations

We have chosen to not to significantly tighten regimental formations (the spacing between men). Those modeled in game show a bit more than an arm's distance apart. This is correct. Anyone who has served as a soldier, and had to practice complex drill and ceremony (a modern take, of course, on 18th century infantry evolutions), will know that you cannot operate with any effectiveness closer than this -- you will be stepping on the heels of the soldier in front of you, and when you change your facing, you run the risk of a rifle barrel to the head, a crushed finger, or a bayonet to the gluteus maximus. The spacings in the game for infantry are, in short, correct.

Additionally, Sinhuet's army formations modification has been included. This changes the way that units are set up on the battlefield. The BAI makes use of these changes to very good effect. It's not the same as being able to modify the battle AI parameters, but it is as close as we can do currently.

Battlefield movement, morale and fatigue

A number of changes have been made to movement, morale and fatigue on the battlefield. The goal of these changes to improve game play, without hampering the AI. For example, since the AI is notorious for running its soldiers ragged on the battlefield, the fatigue penalty for running has not been increased. However, the fatigue penalties for fighting, reloading and firing have all been increased -- thus making fatigue more of an issue, but without penalizing the battle AI's poor decision making. All fatigue thresholds have been somewhat lowered, but this means that recovery time is proportionately faster, as well.

Naval battles

In general, naval combat should now more closely mirror historical accounts, without being too slow, or exposing problems in the naval Battle AI. Historical accounts often have battles last 6 or more hours. While it would be most accurate to cut ship movement speed by about 80%, severely reduce turning speed, and make reload speed about 1 minute 45 seconds to 2 minutes between shots (a well trained crew fired about 3 shots in 5 minutes while fresh), this does not a good game make.

Campaign Mechanics

Government

Difference between governments has been emphasized. In conjunction with rebalancing buildings, this will force a player to think more carefully about strategic trade-offs. Religious buildings, and happiness generating buildings, may now prove critical, especially when conquering new provinces, or when an absolute monarchy attempts to modernize.

Research

The rate of research has generally been adjusted downwards, by reducing the spawn rate of gentlemen, reducing the research points generated by different school building types, and adjusting the government type research bonuses so they are normalized at -10% (i.e. technologies require +10% more research ponts).

Music

Lesser known pieces have been chosen, especially from those composers that people may be less familiar with. Whenever possible, those recordings where period instruments are used have been selected, and the piece is performed similar to how it would have been performed during the period. With the exception of Bach's Der Kunst Der Fugue used for the title screen, the mod has selected lesser known works from composers such as Buxtehude, Telemann, Blow, Corelli, Scheidt, Boccherini, and of course Bach. There is also have one piece of Anon. 18th century Russian church music; you may recognize the theme as being used in a later, 19th century piece (hint: it has orchestrated cannons).

Content from Other Modders

• Blood and Smoke mod by Mech_Donald
• Pip-mod and Marble UI by Waronmars
• Equipment mod by Erasmus777
• Animations modifications by Tiyafeh
• Model fixes by Ahiga and Reiksmarshal
• Musket and cannon sounds by Obushnikov.
• More authentic government office titles by jeweetwel_youknow
• Realistic Flags mod by Spanky
• Period loading screens by Spanky, accompanied by lesser known period music by Corelli, Telemann, Bach and others
• Modified early-game campaign script by TheStinger
• French revolutionary textures by Mr Thib, Gerard Duval and Amiral_Bruix
• Unique models/skins for British, French, Spanish, Russian and American marines and naval officers by Officerpuppy

External Links

• The Rights of Man subforum