Rebalance mod, need info and Ideas

[the_mango55]

I'm planning on a semi-major mod for after the unpacker comes out, which will add a new unit for every faction, totally rebalance a few factions, and overhaul the armor system. What I need is suggestions for some factions that I'm not quite sure what the unit should be, and historical info for people who may have Osprey books on other potential units (whether it is historical, what it was called, and a brief description for the unit card.)

This is not going to be a historical accuracy mod though (although it would be nice to include some), so if I give a faction a unit that I feel it may need, even if it's not historical, I will probably keep it. Anyway, on to the changes!

Byzantines
- The Byzantines are one of the factions with the biggest overhauls. Changes are:
- The Dismounted Byzantine Lancers given spears, stats changed to be similar to Siphia Lancers
- A Pike unit added, tentatively called kontarions, the name of a type of Byzantine spear, need info about this.
- A lancer unit with stats similar to crusader knights added, called Pronoiai Allagion, but with higher upkeep than knights (350 perhaps)
- Kataphractoi - increase defense a bit, perhaps lower charge bonus.
- Switch the Kataphractoi and Vardariotai in the tech tree, Kats need to come out earlier and be great and be slowly phased out instead of already being dominated by late knights.
- Give them guns, I see no reason why they shouldn't have handguns and arqebus, just because they never got much chance. Sicily didn't get the chance either, but they get them.

Denmark
- I really have no idea what thier unit should be, but I know that something of theirs needs a nerf. They always dominate the campaign.
- Any suggestions as to a unit that Denmark used that is unrepresented?

England
- I think I'm going to remove one of the billmen paths, and replace them with more standard spear and pike units.
- Add a mounted longbowmen unit.
- Buff the elite bill unit and make it more expensive. There is no reason to have such a low quality unit so high up the tech tree.
- Add the "effective against cavalry" trigger to bills if it isn't added with the patch.

Egypt
- Thinking I will add a light horse (or camel) archer.

France
- Dismounted Gendarmes as an elite infantry milita, not sure what weapon to give them, I'm thinking a halberd.

Holy Roman Empire
- Reskin the armor upgraded Scottish Nobles to HRE colors and name it Swabian Swordsmen. Will use the description from VI.
- Make Dismounted Gothic Knights buildable

Hungary
- They need a decent foot archer unit, so thats probably what I will do, unless someone can give me some good Osprey type info.

Milan
- Increase the upkeep cost of Genoese Crossbow Militia.
- Not sure about the unit, suggestions?

Moors
- Need suggestions, leaning towards mounted urban milita I guess,
- I don't have any experince playing this faction, suggestions for balancing appreciated

Poland
- Get the dismounted polish nobles to throw javelins
- Don't know about the unit, I'm thinking dismounted Hussars, with a very high attack but light armor

Portugal
- Add Mouned handgun units, similar to Reiters but not nearly as well armored, or as good in melee.

Russia
- Novgorod city militia - Danish swordsmen reskinned to russian colors, given stats of the spanish Sword Militia
- Add Pavise Crossbow units perhaps to help deal with Mongols

Scotland
- Replace the Noble Pikemen with another weapon, perhaps 2 handed sword or axe. Nobles would never use a pike.
- Add Border Rievers, mounted crossbowmen that are also good in melee, French Aventeures on horses.
- Add guns, same deal as Byzantines
- Add Highland Musketeers a musket unit that is also good in melee, stats similar to cossacks, but ranged damage same as regular musketeers.

Sicily

- give the chain barding of Imperial and Templar Knights to the Normans, I just think it would look better.
- increase the stats and price of the dismounted Normans a bit, it says they are better knights but they are the same as feudals currently.
- add a mounted Muslim archer

Spain
- give Spanish Musketeers, a musket unit armored with a breastplate
- other suggestions?

Turks
- Make the JHI require the huge city town hall, instead of large city town hall.
- Not sure about the unit, perhaps Dismounted Qukupulu(sp?) with maces or swords?
- other suggestions?

Venice
- Thinking of putting the Venetian Archers on horses, but having a heavily armored horse archer may be overpowered. Any suggestions?

Knightly Orders
Each of the knightly orders will get 3 new units.
- In the first level building you will get the standard knight, and a spearmen unit similar to the crusader spearmen but with the colors of the order
- In the second level building you will get a specialized foot knight unit, and a pavise crossbowman.

The foot knights will be:
- Templar foot knight - Two handed sword
- Hospitallar foot knight - Mace and shield
- Teutonic foot knight - Two handed axe
- Santiago foot knight - Halberd

And the Pavise Crossbowmen will (hopefully if I figure it out) work sort of like the Ottoman infantry. They will have kite shields on their back and use them to deflect arrows when reloading, and when they go into melee they will take the shields off of their back and hold them in their off hands.

As for the armor system, It all depends on whether or not I can change the mechanics of armories. Refer to my post on another thread for changes:

The idea is to make it to where the armor the units are wearing gives somewhat more of an effect. I would accomplish this by making upgrades +2 armor instead of +1, if possible. Also, this would lead to crazy amounts of armor on units with 2-3 upgrades, so I would actually reduce armor on units that are wearing leather or light chain and have a lot of armor.

For example, I present this picture:
https://img83.imageshack.us/img83/172/armorlp6.jpg
On the left is plain Italian spear militia, to the right is fully upgraded pike men.

As you can see, the pike men are wearing partial plate, and the Italian spear militia are wearing simple leather armor. If I were to create this mod, I would reduce the armor of the spear militia to 2 (they are pretty overpowered anyway). Then, with the 3 upgrades to pikes they would have an armor of 6, and a fully upgraded italian spears would also have armor of 6 (which is what their fully upgraded stats are anyway).

I will also give units a bonus to defense if I feel they are too weak with original armor downgrades.

Thoughts?

Any feedback or helpful info would be appreciated!

[Aenlic]

Interesting stuff there. Sounds good.

Some more suggestions for you:

The Russians need a spear militia that actually has anti-cavalry bonuses. They get torn up by the Polish in the vanilla game. They could also use a second starting province to better balance them against the Polish.

You didn't mention the Moors at all. I'd like to see them get a non-spear infantry of some kind.

[Re Berengario I]

Pretty nice ideas around :D

I think I'll get out my Osprey books when the unpacker will be out. Moors for example had slavonic mercenary spears together with other africans units if I recall correctly.

Anyway the main problem with huge stacks wandering around are that in middle-age, being no real state institutions, most of the army were mercenary, also the ones of your vassals are mercenary indeed as your vassals usually supported you if they could conquer some loot and lands (the real reason of the crusades) or have cash and lands from you in exchange for the support.

The only real popular armies were from the city states (not just italians, germany too had a lot of "imperial cities" alas cities which were under self-government, not ruled by a vassal, "protected" by imperial edict).

CA tried to accomplish this different kind of troops giving us the infamous italian spear militia and similar units which, in reality, are pretty unbalancing.

This because it also lacks another view of these fact, being raised amongst population (and usually not the lowest classes) these units were employed just in case of dire need as otherway the city would have gone broke. Artisans, mercants, land owners in the army = no commerce, industry, agriculture.

So while they were damn effective on battlefield (they fought for their rights and their lands) they weren't employed in time of peace were the communal army was just a bunch of mercenaries or troops of communal vassals like everyone else.

So my advice wouldn't be to nerf them but to make them cheap to get but damn expensive to maintain, at least try it out so you'll spare me some experiments :P :D

[redmark]

Did longbowmen ever fight mounted?

England needs an early period non-knight sword unit, IMO, as well as enabling spear-carrying sergeants. William had them at the Battle of Hastings.

If Sherwood archers are kept, they should be slightly weaker with the bow than retinue longbowmen, but with better melee.

[KARTLOS]

I'm planning on a semi-major mod for after the unpacker comes out, which will add a new unit for every faction, totally rebalance a few factions, and overhaul the armor system. What I need is suggestions for some factions that I'm not quite sure what the unit should be, and historical info for people who may have Osprey books on other potential units (whether it is historical, what it was called, and a brief description for the unit card.)

This is not going to be a historical accuracy mod though (although it would be nice to include some), so if I give a faction a unit that I feel it may need, even if it's not historical, I will probably keep it. Anyway, on to the changes!

Byzantines
- The Byzantines are one of the factions with the biggest overhauls. Changes are:
- The Dismounted Byzantine Lancers given spears, stats changed to be similar to Siphia Lancers
- A Pike unit added, tentatively called kontarions, the name of a type of Byzantine spear, need info about this.
- A lancer unit with stats similar to crusader knights added, called Pronoiai Allagion, but with higher upkeep than knights (350 perhaps)
- Kataphractoi - increase defense a bit, perhaps lower charge bonus.
- Switch the Kataphractoi and Vardariotai in the tech tree, Kats need to come out earlier and be great and be slowly phased out instead of already being dominated by late knights.
- Give them guns, I see no reason why they shouldn't have handguns and arqebus, just because they never got much chance. Sicily didn't get the chance either, but they get them.

Denmark
- I really have no idea what thier unit should be, but I know that something of theirs needs a nerf. They always dominate the campaign.
- Any suggestions as to a unit that Denmark used that is unrepresented?

England
- I think I'm going to remove one of the billmen paths, and replace them with more standard spear and pike units.
- Add a mounted longbowmen unit.
- Buff the elite bill unit and make it more expensive. There is no reason to have such a low quality unit so high up the tech tree.
- Add the "effective against cavalry" trigger to bills if it isn't added with the patch.


Poland
- Get the dismounted polish nobles to throw javelins
- Don't know about the unit, I'm thinking dismounted Hussars, with a very high attack but light armor



Sicily

- give the chain barding of Imperial and Templar Knights to the Normans, I just think it would look better.
- increase the stats and price of the dismounted Normans a bit, it says they are better knights but they are the same as feudals currently.
- add a mounted Muslim archer


Turks
- Make the JHI require the huge city town hall, instead of large city town hall.
- Not sure about the unit, perhaps Dismounted Qukupulu(sp?) with maces or swords?
- other suggestions?

[
Any feedback or helpful info would be appreciated!

some good ideas there, i deffinately agree about giving all factions the possibilty of gunpowder units.

going through your list:

Denmark - i dont think their units are overpowered. ive seen them doing well in several of my campaigns, but i think this is due to good location. the HRE are generally a weak faction, and often seem to be in trouble with the pope and financial trouble. as they are the danes main neighbours it means that the danes are effectively often give a free reign.

England - there is a mounted longbowmen unit created but not included in the roster. if you use the console to add "mounted longbowmen" you can check them out. they are ahistorical and I dont think england need them though - they would be overpowered.

Poles- dismounted hussars would be good

Sicily -good ideas, the dismounted normans are a litle bit dissapointing at the mo. (even though they look like physcos)

turks- i really wouldnt upgrade the city requirements for janissaries - i played a campaign as the turks and never fought a battle with ji as it took so long to be able to recruit them that I completed the campaign before i got the chance. I think i had a couple of cities that could produce them at the end, prob constantinople but my armies where fighting miles away far into europe by that stage.

and a suggestion - add some more mercs maybe replicate some of the unique faction troops and make them availabe as mercs. eg some form of jinettes in iberia and north africa, vikings in scandinavia, horse archers in the byzantines european zones etc I think a bit more variety with mercs could really improve the game.

[the_mango55]

OK, so a new plan to make the guns a bit more balanced will be added with this mod, making various changes to them:

1. Reduce their range - Arquebus will have the range similar to normal archers, perhaps a bit shorter, muskets will have a range between normal archers and

2. Reduce the damage a bit - I wish I could reduce accuracy, but I don't believe that this engine has the ability to alter accuracy stats (if anyone knows if you can tell me about it). So

3. Reduce their cost - The main reason that nations switched to guns was because of their lower cost.

4. Increase numbers - The lowered range and damage of guns will be compensated with more guns :) I will change the size from archer unit sizes to spear unit sizes. This will represent the bigger "conscription" aspect that gun units took on in the late middle ages.

5. Change building requirements - With the changes I am making, it would make no sense to have to wait until the highest level army barracks to get a unit that is no longer the best. So I think I'm going to change the "alchemist/university" line of buildings into the gun producers, make the first two available at large city, with the ability to build handgunners and arquebusiers, with the third building Musketeers for the nations that have them, and requiring a huge city.

6. Change formation settings - Guns get advantages that they shouldn't have by switching to loose formation. Historically rank and file handgunners fought shoulder to shoulder, so I will change the loose formation to be much tigher than standard loose formation. Currently standard and loose formation are 1.2 and 2.4, I plan on changing this to 1.2, 1.8.

Also, since right now it seems like catapults are just about the best seige units available, I'm gonna make the following changes to siege and artillery units:

1. Double the cost of non-gunpowder artillery - mainly so that the AI doesn't pack his army with them

2. Reduce the damage vs. buildings of various artillery - It should be virtually impossible to get through the massive walls of Citadels and Huge cities with catapult units, I have seen one catapult unit break through 2 sections of huge walls and take out a tower before running out of ammo.

3. double the number of gunpowder artillery pieces in a unit - I want artillary to be a unit that can actually do some damage in field battles, but be expensive and vulnerable if unprotected. They also will have their attack versus buildings cut in half to not make them OP in sieges.

4. Triple (at least) the cost of the gunpowder artillery - these units should be good to have in battle, but they should be the most expensive units in the game.

5. reduce the attack, armor, and defense of soldiers in artillery units - these units should be completely vulnerable to attacks, currently they can actually hold their own against cavalry sent to counter them, and actually defeat them if they are light cavalry!

[Musashi]

Unfortunately the armor problem may or may not be fixable... The lines in export_descr_unit.txt that would allow armor upgrades to have definable bonuses were apparently never implemented as uncommenting one crashes the game on load...

[the_mango55]

Yes I have seen that.

However, according to some people who have tested it at TWCenter, it already works fine, and it upgrades to the level it's supposed to be at for the armorer level you give it, despite what number it gives it.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but we can hope.