One thing I don't like about this mod.

[InferiorBeing]

Before anyone thinks I'm going to beat on this mod, let me just assure you of one thing: I won't. The mod is so interesting, cool and so creative it still amazes me that someone actually had what it takes to come up with something new. I'm tired of all these historical/realism mods like R:TR, EB, SPQR and C:TW. And best of all: to this day, I had yet to see a fantasy-themed mod/game that doesn't take place in a classic medieval Europe-ish world with all the same run-off-the-mill angry old wizards, gremlins, pixies and glittering knights every other fantasy game has; but places its location in the far east and gives us snake-like Copper Dragons, Fire-Lancers carrying the ancient Asia equivalent of rocket-launchers, towering, masked giants, Samurai, Warrior Monks, Hags, ghostly Geisha -ish ladies and those crazy Basket Ronin.

However, it seems as though this mod suffers from one of the main, most important, overshadowing problems that more than anything made vanilla unspeakably more boring than it had to be: unit morale, or lack thereof.

One thing this mod really does, is (Supposedly.), get the battles much cooler, with bright, colourful, almost cartoony Chinese spearmen, green-skinned, zombiefied Ashigaru and so on. Now, what really breaks the experience more than anything words can describe is watching how thousands of wacky-looking warriors of all kinds charge at each other and... break and run for the hills after the first two seconds of fighting, as soon as some six people had managed to die. In fact, it's so disgusting and fun-breaking that it almost gets me angry at the game. Cool battles aren't all that cool if the sides stop fighting and one of the armies spontaneously goes and recoils an instant after they had collided. All I really want is for the sides to fight longer. More fighting, less... well, let's just say that the way it is now, it actually takes longer marching the sides those few meters at each other than the actual fighting. Boo.

To define this a little deeper, as well as explain stuff and get everything out of the way, I sat up a pitched custom battle between one of the Chinese factions and the demon faction on a flat, featureless map without any hills or forests or any other morale -affecting features just to be sure, and with a fair mix of weak and strong, light and heavy units on both sides. During the course of the "battle", (The term "Battle" used in it's broadest form possible.), I made sure to face my weak units, like the Light Spearmen, off with the enemy weak units like their Zombie Ashigaru, and my heavies with the enemy heavies. On both sides, the fighting it took to rout was minimal. I'd understand that weaker units like Light Spearmen would be more prone to breaking, BUT NOT when fighting someone more or less EQUALLY WEAK! (On an un-related note, I'm surprised to see mindless zombies panicking in the first place, but that's probably related to the game balance.)...

So, well, what can you say about it? Are the units "supposed" to have more upgrades like chevrons and so on before entering battle, (Ala the SPQR -mod.)? Are there any way to manually increase unit morale? I really wish for the actual fighting between the formations to be longer. Firstly, it's cooler and more awe-inspiring, secondly, it gives more time to take screenshots, and lastly, I fail to see how it can be even remotely realistic that two armies of actual warriors would turn tail the moment someone actually got hurt.

Just my two cents. Thanks for hearing me out.

[Death_Sheep]

Well, demons are upposed to be terrifying, no? Fear causing units cause intimidation, and in essence facing charging terrifying enemy is more likely to break at the prenumberal ferocity of such an enemy. In custom battles, thids does seem to be an issue, but I have yet to find this during the SP campaign.

The battles I've fought have seemed well done, with the armies fighting until I've either out flanked them or driven a spearpoint through their enemies head whilst instigating a flanking charge (which is more often than not a way to get most any army to lose heart and flee). Morale in game seems fine to me, perhaps its just a few runs of bad luck with bad generals....?

[InferiorBeing]

You might not have understood from my post that the demons routed and rushed headlong off the field just as fast as everyone else.

[TB666]

Well I kinda agree.
The battles don't last long and is usually over before you know it.
I play on VH/VH.
Of course the game is still a beta so things will probably change.

[InferiorBeing]

Yes, I'm hoping that this is a beta issue and will be given attention.

[big_feef]

Yeah, weak morale seems to be an issue in the custom battles. Campaign battles, on the other hand, tend to be much more difficult. You will still have the advantage, but be prepared to suffer heavy casualties if you're evenly matched.

Example: One of my generals, in my Choson VH/VH campaign, who was out solo setting up towers, got ambused by bandits consisting of 1 unit of eagle archers and 1 unit of boar spearmen. I immediately charged the archers and tried to stay away from the spearmen. The archers didn't break until I'd killed all but 20-some of them; and by that time, the spearmen were up my rear.

I still won the battle, but I took casualties of about a third of my bodyguard. In a custom battle I set up after reading the original post; the archers broke after taking 12 casualties and the spearmen after taking 20. I lost 2 of the 48 bodyguards. This isn't really an accurate representation because the strength of the bodyguard in the campaign was 72; but it still shows a huge difference between the campaign battles and the custom battles.

[InferiorBeing]

Wow! That's freaking weird! o_0

[mike007]

Moral can be altered & i hope hoggy does it in the next version because it makes battle so much better. Nothing worse than sitting down to a good battle when the enemy breaks 1 min into it.

[InferiorBeing]

My thoughts exactly.

[Morray]

Well the game has been play tested and being as though there are 120 new units I belive, I think that the morale balance has already been taken into consideration?!

I play on VH/VH all the time 'everything else is just a toy!'

And I seem to be finding the game not only tricky but even surprising in parts!

I can't remember cavalry units of my opposition picking out my melee units in Vanilla!

SO I think it's a fine balance. You will find that units do breaka gainst deamons quite quickly but thats cause they are reallyhard and really ace! Also that most of them have 2 HPs!

[Ypoknons]

I would agree. I understand that the earlier betas were also low morale types, but I also wish that battles would last longer, even if Demons are scary.

[Zatoichi]

One way to increase morale in your game is to edit the export_descr_model.txt - the stat that controls unit morale is called stat_mental. The higher this value, the longer it takes a unit to break. This has an effect on the length of battles, as units will fight longer before routing. Of course, this means units will suffer more casualties during the actual fighting prior to the massacre which inevitably happens immediately following the rout.

For example, you could add 3 to each unit's stat_mental value across the board to decrease the insta-rout.

Hoggy and the rest of the team are no doubt looking at balancing as part of their patching process - this is just a beta after all. They may well come up with a better way of improving battle speed, I'm just suggesting this as a quick and dirty solution.

Please note, changing this file will make your game incompatible with other players in MP unless you all have identical export_descr_model.txts, and remember to always make a back up before changing anything!

[Duke John]

I agree with the fast routing and top of that I was shocked again with the high movement speed. It has been a very long time since I played vanilla and it was very cold shower to see how quickly the enemy closed the distance. I couldn't see what was going on so after a few pauses to at least redress my battleline a bit I was already routing the enemy. There have been a quite a few critics that the eyecandy of R:TW cannot be noticed because of the fast gameplay and this is even more painfull because of truly beautifull eyecandy.

And it was also a good reminder how bad the battle AI was and I hope that Blue Lotus will get a decent MP community as it certainly deserves it.

But the atmosphere is absolutely fantastic, just let me enjoy it for longer than 5 minutes

On an un-related note, I'm surprised to see mindless zombies panicking in the first place, but that's probably related to the game balance.

Wouldn't it be cool if they were completely unbreakeable but died very fast. Couple it with zero turn recruitment or even scripted free recruitment every turn and you have great cannon fodder that can tie up enemy units but little more

[Ypoknons]

I agree with the fast routing and top of that I was shocked again with the high movement speed. It has been a very long time since I played vanilla and it was very cold shower to see how quickly the enemy closed the distance.

Same here - too much EB. I wonder in such a case how will ranged units be rebalanced.

Wouldn't it be cool if they were completely unbreakeable but died very fast. Couple it with zero turn recruitment or even scripted free recruitment every turn and you have great cannon fodder that can tie up enemy units but little more

I think the Warhammer did something similar with theirs. Except that they didn't die very fast either - elite zombies, I guess.

[Sarmatia1871]

I agree with the fast routing and top of that I was shocked again with the high movement speed. It has been a very long time since I played vanilla and it was very cold shower to see how quickly the enemy closed the distance. I couldn't see what was going on so after a few pauses to at least redress my battleline a bit I was already routing the enemy. There have been a quite a few critics that the eyecandy of R:TW cannot be noticed because of the fast gameplay and this is even more painfull because of truly beautifull eyecandy.

And it was also a good reminder how bad the battle AI was and I hope that Blue Lotus will get a decent MP community as it certainly deserves it.

But the atmosphere is absolutely fantastic, just let me enjoy it for longer than 5 minutes

I must agree - the only thing limiting my enjoyment of this fantastic mod is that the battles don't last long enough, and the units look a bit odd when moving so quickly.

Is there an easy way of modding this?

[maxpriest]

One way to make battles slower is to pump up morale (mental_stat) and defence (stat_pri_armour, second number so arrows aren't affected). Adding 10 to morale seems to make the little cowards a bit more inclined to keep fighting.

Slowing down units I've found to be a bit more tricky, you can edit the values in descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt (make them lower) however you encounter some problems with this since the values apply to all units. Making the cavalry go at a normal pace instead of its regular turbo warpspeed requires the values to be so low it messes up the infantry animations and makes them look like they are running on a treadmill ( the infantry animations are at normal speed, but the actual speed they are moving at is far lower).

Anyone else found a better way to edit this?

[InferiorBeing]

One way to increase morale in your game is to edit the "export_descr_model.txt" - the stat that controls unit morale is called "stat_mental". The higher this value, the longer it takes a unit to break.

*Looks at file* Sweet, holy motherlovin' monkey-christ! That could take a while!

[Zatoichi]

Yeah, I said it was a 'quick and dirty' fix, I guess I should have come clean and said it was 'slow and dirty'!

But the time spent editing is well worth it, honest!

[Zatoichi]

Gah! Double post!

OK, well, rather than waste it, I'll add in my values for the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt which slow the game down a bit:

climate default

grass_short0.75
grass_long 0.75
sand 0.75
rock 0.70
forest_dense 0.65
scrub_dense 0.70
swamp 0.65
mud 0.70
mud_road 0.75
stone_road 0.80
water 0.60
ice 0.65
snow 0.65

[InferiorBeing]

Zatoichi, what do you have your morale-values set on?

[Zatoichi]

I've added 3 to pretty much everyone!

One tip, I'm pretty sure that all the units after merc basket ronin are not used in BL, so it's only the first 3rd of the file you need to edit!

[maxpriest]

I personally added 10 to morale, it doesn't make them unbreakable (you'd think that, but they can still rout pretty fast) but dit does make each unit last considerably longer.

[TB666]

I personally added 10 to morale, it doesn't make them unbreakable (you'd think that, but they can still rout pretty fast) but dit does make each unit last considerably longer.

+10 to all units ??

[maxpriest]

Yeah, all units except archers. I know it sounds pretty drastic but beleive me the change isn't THAT extreme and to me it feels much more realistic ( did i just mention realism in a fantasy game?).

[Woozie]

I agree, routing speeds are pretty fast. Just another bug that needs to be ironed out. I know the Demons are supposed to be terrifying but I charged a group of Heavy Samurai Cavalry at Wang Liangs and as soon as they were beside them they routed, they didn't even get to swing their sword! Heh.

[Lucjan]

OK..

So, after playing a few rounds of the campaign as Choson, and then testing a few custom battles...here's what I think.

Hoggy and his teams did an absolutely amazing job with this mod as to date, but seeing as it's a beta there are still a few bugs, and thank you sir hoggy for letting us help you out with them. :-)

1 - We need to eek out that weird ctd that happens once every 4-5 turns.
2 - Unit movement speed is way, way too fast. It's difficult to enjoy the beautiful models and even maneuver decently well when the enemy closes the distance between both armies within the first 10-15 seconds.
3 - Army morale for EVERY faction needs to be adressed. Taking into consideration, yes, demons are supposed to be scary, it's understandable that minor units like peasant spearman would route in the face of these beasts, but I would presume that professional soldiery, whose purpose in life is to protect their nation from these spawn of evil, wouldn't route so quickly in the face of even pitiful basketheads at times. Sure, keep the demoralization on some of the demon units, but lets make our professional soldiery a bit more renowned for their bravery.

4 - I'd like to see hoggy do some more work in the future with this beautiful, unique mod. Be that a mod of medieval 2 or a tabletop rpg..regardless it's a truly unique world and deserves all the work and attention they've put into thus far.

[Lucjan]

..and, just as an interesting suggestion.
Perhaps the zombie ashigaru and undead samaurai can be made to be unroutable or at the very least exceedingly difficult to route, solely to demonstrate that they are, in fact, mindless meatshields.

[Lucjan]

editting the stat_mentals doesn't take as long as it looks, just go to edit, find, and type stat_mental, then keep advancing to next each time you alter one, no more than about 10-15 minutes to change a couple of numbers around

[Lucjan]

To re-adress what I had said earlier..and because I can't yet edit my own posts.

After filtering through the suggestions here from Zatoichi and others, I've altered the unit and movement files to correct the issue with movement and morale.

For anyone who wants the morale and movement speed problems fixed. Install is incredibly easy.


1 - Download the corrected files.
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rt...rale_modded.7z


2 - Download the 7-zip unzipper...
http://www.7-zip.org/

3 - Uze the 7-zip unzipper to extract the files, then cut/paste them into your Blue Lotus:TW data file. When asked to replace the files say yes to all.

[maxpriest]

How much did you add to morale exactly?