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Battle Fatigue Overhaul

CA balanced the vanilla game's Vigour/ Fatigue in battle with an eye towards gameplay, rather than logic and consistency. I am compelled to mod it for 2 reasons:

1. I want things to make sense and maintain internal consistency, so that I can base my tactics on real-world intuition rather than arcade game rules. I do not want to internalize a game where a unit's armour rating changes based on its Vigour.

2. Even if I agree with CA's emphasis on gameplay over consistency, I still disagree with CA's decisions on gameplay! I feel CA has overpowered missile units with its last balance tweaks. Melee units now tire out faster than missile units, as if missile units aren't already powerful enough in the game's meta? Reverting the Vigour of missile units is one avenue for me to address the game's balance my way (while still with an emphasis on maintaining consistency).


This mod changes the following regarding Vigour of units in battle:

1. Vigour recovery when idle is faster (multiplied by 1.67). Vigour recovery when idle in rain/ snow is also faster (multiplied by 1.67).

Continuous melee combat in vanilla would exhaust your front line in 2 minutes 22 seconds. With this mod's buffed idle recovery, your EXHAUSTED men should now recover to FRESH if idle for 1 minute 30 seconds (constant walking would take 4 minutes 30 seconds with this mod). Now it is viable for you to cycle your ranks to pit fresh men against exhausted enemies, and feel like a cool Roman general while doing so.

2. Light cavalry gets a buff; now running horses fatigue at 3 ticks (compared to running humans fatiguing at 4 ticks). Their strong point was always mobility; it's an insult to horses for one carrying a lightly-encumbered man to fatigue faster than a human running while wearing armour.

3. Cavalry (heavy) is unchaged from vanilla. They don't get the mobility buff in this mod. Running fatigues them at 6 ticks (same as chariots and war wagon horses).

4. Shooting fatigue rate is doubled!

If you know about TWWH2 meta, you'd know missile units are overpowering compared to melee infantry. While this may be "historically accurate" for a fantasy Renaissance level of technological warfare, it doesn't make for the best game. Now this mod encourages you to recuperate your archers (at the buffed 63 ticks) when convenient. But I did not change what is debuffed from vanilla. So the only ranged debuff when missile units are fatigued is their reload time - accuracy and killing power per volley remain the same.

5. Walking now actually recovers vigour faster, but still too slow to be your main recovery method.

idle...........................-18 >> -30
idle_in_building............-18 >> -30
idle_rain.......................-10 >> -17
idle_snow.....................-10 >> -17
running_cavalry_light......6 >> 3
shooting.........................18 >> 36
walking...........................-1 >> -10


For the fatigue effects, I based some changes on Pierce's Better Fatigue Rules:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560074931&searchtext=vigour+fatigue

But I wanted to achieve certain things differently. Refer to the table in the Images for the changes vs vanilla.

1. Unit speed and charge bonus decreases more drastically compared to vanilla. This makes fatigued units instantly more visual to you. These are Pierce's mod changes.

2. Melee attack debuffs remain unchanged from vanilla. But the melee defence debuffs have become more substantial. Defence still remains less debuffed than attack throughout the vigour levels, but the gap isn't as drastic as in vanilla. However now armour-piercing melee damage decreases a lot more, but armour doesn't degrade at all.

What this does is make armour matter more, and kung fu skills matter less, as everyone gets tired on the battlefield. An elven swordmaiden's ability to stab a knight through gaps in his armour starts to degrade as she fatigues, for example. I hope this makes armour more important again; too many units in TW WH2 have armour piercing as default.

In the meantime, as everyone tires and att/def stats decrease, the elite troops with high att/def actually lose more value than chaff troops with low att/def. Basically fatigue now equalizes skill gaps. Also remember vigour recovery is 1.67x faster than vanilla; even trash units may now serve a role!