Change XXXIX.

-Improved the battlefield terrain speed penalties to be more meaningful and restrictive, which in turns makes the terrain more tactical. The changes in speed penalties are based on relatively commonly used speed modifiers in many serious tactical wargames. For the most part, all restricted terrain is now slower than it was before, some not much more, but others (like rocks and rough terrain) are much slower now. Sharp stones are also much more effective (slower movement) as well.

Change XXXVII.

Special ability changes (more pet peeve changes!):

-Adjusted the rapid reload ability so that it causes more fatigue and some inaccuracy (75%) while used.

-Adjusted the whip ability (use_the_whip) so that once the ability expires, the unit will have 0 fatigue (rather than 50%). This means that you should avoid using it until a unit is exhausted, and then only use it to get one last gasp of effort from the unit before you withdraw them to rest, or you use it at the right moment to rout the enemy and win the battle. Previously, CA had this ability only drop the fatigue by 50%, which was another thing that made it too powerful, since it only had a moderate fatigue penalty after using it. Of course the rationale behind it using up all fatigue with this change is that the act of getting more effort out of the unit, above and beyond them already reaching the point of exhaustion, means that the unit will be completely spent.

-Changed elephant stamped special ability so that it lasts twice as long and only has one user per battle (rather than the previous 900 second recharge, but unlimited use). The rational being that an elephant would only stampede once in a given time, due to the amount of effort it would take to do so, so the ability should be saved and used at the right moment -- rather than allowing elephants to do this repeatedly. It also (intentionally) restricts those full elephant armies from being as effective.

-Slightly increased ship speed when using the ship_speed_1,2,3 abiliites (row harder for 10,20,30 strokes), this was done to make these abilities noticable, and to help ships escape, evade, or ram more effectively.

Change XXXVI.

-Compatibility update for the Getae and Pydna Update.

-Raised bow/arrow accuracy from 5 to 6.

Change XXXV.

-Adjusted the "use the whip" (whip) special ability. Now a unit can only use the whip ability ONCE during a battle, but its effect time has been doubled from 30 second to 60 seconds. In other words, when the whip ability is used then they will benifit from the ability longer but it can only be used once so you have to decide at what critical moment to use the whip. Use it too soon and your forces will be spent and/or you won't be able to use it at a more critical point later in the battle.

This adjustment was made because the unlimited whip ability essentailly caused longer battles to devolve into a point where you are constantly whipped your units to remove the effects of fatigue. This essentially nullified fatigue, and also ensured that the side that had units with the whip ability were always going to be superior in a prolonged battle. Also, it really didn't make much sense that a commander could continously whip his soldiers throughout the battle, giving it a one time use more plausibly makes it where the commander can only ask the impossible of the unit once.

Premature upload.

Change XXXIV:

-Adjusted ship acceleration speeds in order to further reduce the effect where ships would ram each other, then stop, then continue to ram each other again from a stopped position for massive damage. You can still do this, but damaged is now reduced in this case because the heavier ships will not have enough distance/time to gain full speed in such close proximity. This makes it better to board the enemy, or continue to nudge him repeatedly, or disengage and move for another attack run, building up speed for full ramming power.

For the most part, the approach taken now is ship acceleration is now 1/2 the deceleration speed, because this approach makes more sense rather than some seemingly randomized values that were there originally (the original acceleration/deceleration values from the standard game were mostly identical or had strange comparison relationships).

Change XXXIII.

-Adjustments for Patch 12 compatibility.

Change XXXII.

-Addressed a few more pet peeves: unit special abilities...

*Mass Second Wind: now can only be used once per battle, because this ability is extremely powerful. You should choose the critical moment when to use this ability, rather than being able to use it again and again to remove fatigue from a huge portion of your battle line every few minutes.

*Second Wind: slightly adjusted so that the "cooldown" timer is now at 5 minutes (ie. you have to wait 5 minutes before using it again). This is because this ability is extremely powerful, and the commander should have to pick and choose which units to rest -- creating a dilemma since you cannot simply restore every unit every few minutes.

*Stampede: greatly increased the cooldown timer to 15 minutes and reduced the effect time from 30 seconds to 20 seconds. This was done because the ability is extremely powerful, and the fact that you could use it every couple of minutes was, again, absurdly overpowering. The idea is that an elephant would not be willing to stampede again so soon, as stampeding would be an extremely fatiging activity.

-Also, adjusted some elephant related attributes:

*Melee defense for elephant units has now been reduced to 0, which matches almost every heavy cavalry unit. For some strange reason, heavy cavaly have a melee defense of 0, but elephants had a melee defense of 20-30, so not only were elephants "tanks", able to absord massive damage, but they also had magic force fields that kept them from being damaged. This is independent of/in additon to armor mind you. Now at 0, elephants can still take a lot of damage but at least each melee attack will deal damage as they are hacked away at by infantry that aren't flattened by the stampede/charge.

*Elephant unit morale is now 1/3 the original values provided by CA, which makes them more prone to panic. This is necessary because they must be used carefully, whereas before you really didn't have to worry too much about them panic, especially since they only stay in panic for several seconds. Essentially this change helps make them a little less reliable, as was historically the case. Note that war elephants and armored elephants are still less prone to panic than regular elephant units. One side effect of lower morale that occasionally the stupid AI will decide to kill their elephant unit when they panic near their own force, which is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes it happens in poor judgement of the situation. Not much can be done about that behavior. (NOTE: the previous morale value was 1/2 of CA's).

Change XXXI.

-Improved the ammo counts of all siege weapons:

*There is now a better relationship between ballista and giant ballista, in that the former has 1.5x more ammo than the latter (rather than being identical).

*Scorpion and polybolos bastions now have a little less ammo that before (it was excessive).

*Onagers now have more ammo than ballista units. This was done to create a reason to actually field onagers instead of ballista, the idea being that it is much easier to gather up rocks to use as ammo than it was to construct the ballista ammunition (spheres). This is also the trade-off, since ballistas are more accurate, but onagers have more abundant ammo but are very inaccurate.

Change XXX.

-In the latest "WTF CA!?" moment, it was discovered that if you use first person to crew siege engines, then the reload rate was something like 1/10th what it normally is. For example, ballista could fire in first person every THREE seconds, which is utterly and completely absurd because it allows rapid fire which is especially deadly at close range -- basically a semi-automatic ballista of doom. Now before I get complaints that CA did this because you are firing one gun out of the unit, so firing time should be less because you are alternating guns or some such, this is absolutely false because the other guns in the unit are firing at the same time you are commanding it in first person (and you are only controlling/aiming/firing one of the guns).

With this change, I have changed the first_person_engines_tables so that the reload rate of the first person fired siege weapons now match the reload rate of the weapon itself (as defined in the projectiles_tables).