MTW Pocket Mod: Units, Buildings and Unit Stats

[ULC]

Will you also be increasig the stats of the bodygaurd units? As an almost unique unit that can't be replenished or retrianed, they could be more powerful then the knights for the era. Also, an increase in size (which I agree with) would also help to not make them useless after thier first battle.

On the German units, should I make them trainable in the region only but avaible to all factions?

[The Unknown Guy]

I was pondering how viable would it be to make a "Mostly region-dependent" unit rooster, and make the factions stick with only a few standard units. AKA: one or two standard, buildable anywhere, Almohad troop types, one or two standard, buildable anywhere, Byzantine troopers, one or two standard, buildable anywhere British troopers...
The rest would be region dependent. As such, if, say, Russia and the Almohads switched places, Russia would be raising desert archers and saharan cavalry, and the Almohads Steppe cavalry and Rus archers...

[The Unknown Guy]

I´m experiment with a 67 per turn upkeep on men at arms, and a slightly reduced upkeep for spearmen, sergeants, anatolian infantry, and Kontarakoi.
The idea is to make spearmen (who would be from peasant levies to "lowest of the low" gendry -sergeants) more proffittable, and more abundant, than sword-units.

I think this is not enough, as it does not weaken swords in any meaningful way. I´m considering reducing unit size to 30 as well (something I already tried with the Varangian Guard)

[The Unknown Guy]

I did the following:

-Reduced all MAAs and alikes (Skulkatoi, Andalusian Infantry) to 40 unit size. Upkeep/month: 45 (roughly. Chivviess and Andalusians a bit more.)

-Reduced their charge to 1

-Reduced their defense to 2

-Reduced spear upkeep so that vanilla spearmen cost 37/turn (making them a feasible "levee" cheap fodder spear unit) and sergeants and alikes cost 50/turn.

This way, swordmen are still the preferred shocktroops to take porcupine spear enemy positions, as they are able to maul them, albeit suffering losses. They also have a reasonable protection against projectiles, but now cavalry pwns them. An unit of Andalusian Infantry was routed in a single charge by an unit of armenian heavy cavalry.

"Gallowglasses", "Clansmen", and the like I did not touch because they are weak as they are, and I regard them as "local mass gendry", which was in place in some European locations, whereas regular men-at-arms are more of a "proffessional", "old", gendry.

I did not touch polearms either as I don´t know whether there´s an issue with them or not. So far I´ve not noticed it, but I havent tested them too much either.

[ULC]

Although I don't agree with the charge reduction, everything else sounds good. I have been working on some units myself, namely spearmen/sergeants, and have found something that works oddly well.

I increased the defense of all Spear units by 2 and armor by 1.
I increased the Anti-Cavalry power by 1 and reduced the defense bonus by one.
I increased morale on all Spear units by 2.
I took away rank bonuses.

What results are cavalry killers that can also hold their own (with a little support) against almost any other unit. Hold Formation simple increases thier ability to survive situations in which other units falter, making them excellent frontline units now. I did keep Pike rank bonuses, as this is both historically accurate and is the main reason people train them anyway.

On halberdier units, I left alone too. I see nothing wrong with them as of right now, but I'll keep looking.

Cavalry is a different story. I reduced thier defense by 2-3 points, armor by 1-2, and increased charge by 1-2 and attack by 1-2. Cavalry are now excellent as shock troopers, able to charge home and generally wreak havoc, but generally speaking, need to back out of the melee before they get hacked to peices.

[The Unknown Guy]

Interesting idea. I shall try it, restore men at arms a bit, update sergeants, and nerf cav defense (why did they have defense to begin with?). Other stuff Ive done: removed all dependences upon armoury, changed it for dependences in other stuff. Also now all mercs depend on town-watch buildings and have high upkeep. This hit byz hard, as compensation I updated their units slighty. Also, now arquebuses are late only, with null defense but better accuracy

[The Unknown Guy]

I reduced cav defense to 0-2(depending on the unit. In general i shared the points among the other stats, and left one or two points of defense depending on the refinement of the unit-ie:pktoxotai have a measure of 2 points of def, but avar nobles, while strong and armored attaked, have 0 def- so in general they are good chargers, but cant hold positions. Upped spear defense to 2/3/4/5 (vanilla/feudal/chiv/gothic) and increased a bit maa attack so they can tear spear units. Pikes are a bit more defensive and even have a half decent attack, but late only. This is because i want late to be shorter and have some good but balanced frantic struggle units. Anyway, now the rock paper scissors balance works

[ULC]

I was toying around with the building production files last night, and it struck me. The A.I. likes to build TROOP PRODUCING buildings, and thus income buildings take a back seat. What happens is that the A.I.s income is hit hard for several years, making it less competitive. But how does the computer decide what is and what is not a troop producing building? What if we fooled the computer into tthinking the economic buildings were troop producers, say for example by switching labels? Give the farm upgrades and such the TROOP_PRODUCER label, and give the actual troop producing buildings a different one?

[christof139]

I was toying around with the building production files last night, and it struck me. The A.I. likes to build TROOP PRODUCING buildings, and thus income buildings take a back seat. What happens is that the A.I.s income is hit hard for several years, making it less competitive. But how does the computer decide what is and what is not a troop producing building? What if we fooled the computer into tthinking the economic buildings were troop producers, say for example by switching labels? Give the farm upgrades and such the TROOP_PRODUCER label, and give the actual troop producing buildings a different one?

Hi, I tried switching building types in the old METW Mod and I think it made the game crash and/or the buildings malfunction. Can't remember for sure though. It was interesting though.

Chris

[The Unknown Guy]

Ok, I divided cavalry in three groups: Heavy Cav, Light cav, and melee cav (low charge-no spear, thus only "trampling charge"-, more balanced attack/defense stats, althrough it varies, of course. I want it to fulfill a "dragoon" role. Some light cavs are Gothic knights (very good attack(6), fairly good defense (4), slow), Saharan cav (0 attack, 0 defense, but damn fast (10-26-28,the fastest). I´m concerned about jedis, through), and Gendarmes (I gave them pretty good stats, but I´m concerned about their balance. I play muslims and byz more often than catholics). Also, removed Lancers from Castilian-Aragonese roosters, and gave them Gothic Foot knights and a bonus for pikemen instead (this only makes sense in so far that, whereas Spanish light cavalry was fairly decent, it didn´t have any particularily good heavy cavarly, whereas Spanish heavy infantry was excellent. I was thinking on giving Iberian factions tweaked gothic sergeants, and make them a sort of elite, court-line dependent pikemen, and make regular pikemen dependent on the town militia building)
Also, I made town militias a cheap peasantish unit, poor attack and defense but fairly cheap and better morale than regular spearmen (which I interpretate as levied peasants). They need a trading post, through.
I gave all units featured using a compound bow the NINJ compound bow projectile. So basically, those excluded are vanilla archers, boyars (russians do get steppe HA, through), genovese sailors, and turcopoles. Arab and Steppe "Vanilla" horse archers, I made a Bowyer2, horse_breeder unit, somewhat slow (9-20-22, average cav stats), and with 0 attack, 0 defense, 1 armor (BTW: 0 armor=crash, so use 1 instead), -2 morale, and a tad expensive for all those poor stats. So, turks can get Steppe horse archers, but are better off upgrading horse-breeder to 2, and getting Turcoman horse, which are nimbler, and have better morale and armor. In general I made specialist HA better. I´m also tweaking Faris: I made them all-periods, almo-compatible, made them avaiable in Cordoba and Granada, and upped their support, requisites, and speed, working as a sort of combo between horse archers and dragoons (low armor, through). I´m ambivalent about this. I wanted to give the almos a chance to fight back if they lost Spain to Castile or Africa to Egypt, but maybe regular HA will do. I don't quite like the lack of build capabilities for Almo units in southern spain, through)

Thus, the roosters go around these terms:
Western Europe: Heavy cav (even their light cav, sergeants, is fairly heavy), heavy infantry centered system. Gets stronger as the game goes on.
Muslims: compound bows, light cavalry center. They get some of the fastest in the game. The cbow is also a significative advantage, which gets a bit weaker when Europeans get arbalests in high. Lack of heavy cavalry can make it hard to cut through Europe, specially in later periods. On the other hand, they can work perfectly well on the desert, and light cavalry flankings can be deadly.

Byz: I tweaked these up and down. Now they are balanced, I think: they neither collapse, nor spread quickly: basically, I improved some units (namely psiloi, which now are fast as well), tweaked byzantine cavalry to a HA/Dragoon hybrid (4 attack, 4 defense, 3 charge), lowered the overall morale (Byzinf stays at 0, Psiloi 2, Byzcav 4....), increased their support costs, and increased the building reqs, which are usually one castle level higher than Western or muslim equivalents (IE: psiloi are bowyer2, swordsmith, town_watch2). In short, they can field fairly decent armies in high and late, if jack-of-all-tradish, and not quite good as specialist units from the others, but they lack backbone (mercs), and thus a battle going badly can mean the whole army running for it, and they are also expensive in relation to other faction´s things. So far Byzantium expands, but it doesn´t rule the steppes by 1120 as it used to. The hard need for infrastructure hits them hard in speedy expansion.

I´ve tried to increase the survival rate of the turks, with mixed success. IMHO Janissaries are too good, but too late, so I basically increased a bit their reqs, whereas I made life easier for the poor Turcomans from Early and High. I was thinking on making them Early and High only, and balance out Ottoman units to a more average, balanced level.

Oh, and as I said before, I tweaked the defense levels for spear units. Now they are all but impossible to break in a straight charge by cavalry, even by (or specially) by dragoons (althrough I´m concerned, as saharan cavalry units were at ease flanking and routing poor morale vanilla spearmen)

One more thing: I wanted to make the economical improvements of some buildings era dependent, so I made the last two levels of the trading post and farming dependent on the compass and gunpowder, as well as the improvement from citadel to fortress (gunpowder dep.). I wanted to restrict a bit how much can a player improve his infrastructure in Early and High.

[Noir]

Just so i wont forget:

I checked the vanilla unit-prod file and while it does have an index of each parameter that is prescribed for units it is by no means as much comprehensive or complete as the unit_prod.txt of the medmod IV.

Medmod's unit_prod.txt has a fully comprehensive summary of all the parameters i guess by Wes and probably because eatcoldsteel that designed the campaign game was involved in the medmod. I suggest that you give it a look as i realised that the info that it presents might prove a time saver.

Noir

[Noir]

A further comment regarding rosters of factions:

In the medmod, Wes gave a dedicated unit in each role in each faction; this has advantages (namely that you face always decent opponents in every department), however the disadvantage is that the particularity of the Muslims for example felt vaporised.

For the pocket mod i would suggest a middle ground between these too; hybrids can be strengthened in melee and have fewer and more damaging missiles (this means that they will join the melee ranks sooner) that can be fired from larger range (to overcome the skirmish mode the Ai plays with) as well as being given to factions with more consistent building requirements and distributed better over time (not 4 almost identical hybrids plus vanilla archers, desert archers and crossbows for the Turks! Useless!), rather than being taken out.

[Martok]

Calling on all Russian history experts!

We're looking for a name for Russian royal units (other than Boyars). Any ideas?

[Belisario]

I'm not sure but Druzhinniks could be an option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druzhina

[caravel]

I think Belisario is right. The actual unit would be one Boyar, a noble, with a number of his Druzhina, the bodyguards.

In game terms this equates to us calling the Royal units "Boyars" and the non royal ones trained as extras by the player simply "Druzhina" perhaps?

This brings me to Polish units. Polish retainers' info pic = Boyar with lance. The "Druzhina Cavalry" is another unknown to one to me. Is this one a more accurate representation of a Druzhinnik than the other Druzhina/Boyars info pics?

The "Polish Retainers" I would like to do away with and instead use that info pic to create two types of Druzhina/Boyars, HA types and non HA types.

The "Druzhina Cavalry" I don't want to leave as is either. If possible I'd like to create a specific bodyguard unit for the Poles instead of just the usual Royal Knights.

All of this depends on how accurate and how suitable the info pics are.

[Belisario]

My point of view about these units:

1. "Druzhina Cavalry" infopic seems an early (11th century) druzhinnik wielding an axe. I read that axes were a common weapon in medieval Rus lands, even highly decorated ones. But I also think Druzhinas made use of shock cavalry tactics where the lance or spear is a fundamental weapon.

2. "Boyars" are depicted like the cavalry of 15th century Muscovite armies with a strong influence from the Golden Horde and its successor khanates.

More information about druzhinas:
http://books.google.es/books?id=GQcv...l=es#PPP246,M1
http://minaev.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

[caravel]

I have been working on the unit training requirements somewhat and have changed a lot of that which was in v1.7. I have reverted the requirements back to near vanilla but with quite a few changes and a few additional requirements for some units. The tech tree I have left as is, with the fort as the low level structure that is in every province at the start of the campaign and the Keep upwards being the prerequisites for all of the smith buildings etc. Despite this the AI is still very slow developing. I have been playing as the Aragonese and though the world is quite stable with much more ships and all factions except the Danes making a half decent income, none have teched up to any serious unit training capabilities. I suppose I will have to look at the build requirements again.

[naut]

Hmmm, often the higher level buildings seem to be just there for the player really. Good move putting a fort in every province. Multiple building prerequisites can cripple unit production, don't want the AI to build a lot of something, make it require two or more buildings to produce. All in all very hard to tweak to perfection.

[caravel]

So in reality units depending on only one building, RTW style, might be a better system for the AI to deal with..? I'm trying to make it easier for the AI and harder for the player, it seems that I've achieved the opposite...

The RTW approach opens up some possibilities, but also renders a lot of the smith buildings useless, unless upgrades are reintroduced - which I'd rather not.

[Martok]

So in reality units depending on only one building, RTW style, might be a better system for the AI to deal with..? I'm trying to make it easier for the AI and harder for the player, it seems that I've achieved the opposite...

That's....unfortunate. I'd not even considered the possibility that creating multiple dependencies for units might introduce complications the AI cannot handle very well. I mean, yeah you don't want Swordsmen to require 10 different buildings just to train, but still.

The RTW approach opens up some possibilities, but also renders a lot of the smith buildings useless, unless upgrades are reintroduced - which I'd rather not.

No, I really don't want upgrades brought back in, either. As we've discussed in the past, that would be just as much of a burden on the AI as anything else.

I hate to leave structures unused, but we might not have a choice, at least where unit dependencies are concerned. Perhaps smith buildings could contribute more to income? I'm not sure. Will have to take another look at them, I guess.

I really dislike oversimplifying training requirements so that [1 building = 1 unit]; merely contemplating the very idea makes me feel dumber. However, I suppose it might be worth trying if it'll help out the AI.

[ULC]

Mind if I jump in?

I did something that's seemed to help the AI significantly with building production, and that was to tie in the castles into the two events within system - the Compass, at 1150, and Gunpowder, at 1260. Nothing over castle level was buildable until after 1150, and nothing over Citadel could be built until after 1260. I understand this wold only really help with an Early Era game, but the AI showed remarkable improvement when I took away it's option of over-teching on the castle development.

Another thing I did was generally tie in units with one other building, something that usually brought in money. This made the AI, in it's military focus, inadvertently create structures that increased it's economy, without making it completely lost when building units. I made professionals require the "Blacksmiths", the Militia ones the "Merchants". I also used Merchants to recruit regionals.

The last thing I did was limit the sea zones to six theaters. The AI was able to handle this quite well, and it was soon making a good sum of money from trade. Also, sea invasions become more common.

My

[naut]

Good idea's YLC.

And, having numerous building prerequisites is fine. But, don't over do it. Core units, like spears, archers and basic cavalry would be best only relying on one building.

[caravel]

Well I'm thinking of more of a barracks/stables/archery range structure at the moment. It seems to me that unless the AI has a one building/one units recruitment system, that it recruits crap, i.e. peasants etc.I'm thinking that common units that I want the AI to build lots of, i.e. Men at Arms, Knights, Archers, Sergeants = one building only. Whereas "exotic" units such as Nizari Fedayeen should be rare and require a few buildings to train.

I present you with a few scenarios:

1) Every unit depends on either a stables (horse breeder), butts (from VI), muster field (from VI), Royal Court or Barracks (town watch) etc in combination with one of the smith buildings.

2) Every unit depends on either a stables (horse breeder), butts (from VI), muster field (from VI), Royal Court or Barracks (town watch) etc and the smith buildings are removed altogether.

3) Every unit depends on either a stables (horse breeder), butts (from VI), muster field (from VI), Royal Court or Barracks (town watch) etc and the smith buildings are used purely as income producing buildings.

4) Every unit depends on either a stables (horse breeder), butts (from VI), muster field (from VI), Royal Court or Barracks (town watch) etc and the smith buildings are used as income producing buildings which are tied to dependent resources (as in "Gold", "Iron", "Wood" etc) such as "exceptional swords", "high quality armour", "legendary bows", "famous blacksmith", "pikes/spears".

Number 1 is going back to something like Vanilla in my opinion. I don't think it will make a big impact as it's still two dependencies per unit and you are bound to see the AI not building enough.

Now number 2 is probably what I'm leaning towards at the moment. I have never understood how MTW's tech tree is worked out. Upgrades are nonsense in all TW games but in MTW they do sway a battle significantly. The dependencies are also all wrong from a historical viewpoint. Yes those facilities were available but a man would buy, steal or salvage his own gear in those times and a better class of soldier did not necessarily have a better class of kit. If they did it was because they had looted it or inherited it. A man did not simply make his way down the high street dropping in at the Master Armourer and Spearmakers' Guild on the way to see if there were any "buy one spear and get the armour free" deals going. Shogun had a better representation of this where the facilities were not smiths but Dojos which makes a lot more sense.

Number 3 I like the idea of, but it will seem strange to have those buildings there to produce an income and nothing more. Also due to the restriction on the numbers of income producing buildings this could cause instability. Currently it's not as I have all of these buildings producing very small incomes per level - cumulatively they make a difference, alone they'll pull in only a handful of florins.

4 is a bit more ambitious and this is my personal favourite the one I would go for if it wasn't for the fact that it would make weapon resources in a province seem relevant to units (i.e. one would assume that your sword units would get upgrades from having this resource and building the swordsmith) and lead to confusion in that respect. I still think in the back of my mind though that this would be the best option and would prevent these buildings appearing all over the map.

[Martok]

The concept I'm currently envisioning actually combines elements of options 1, 2, & 3:


I would propose that basic units (MAA, Archers, Sergeants, & light cavalry) depend on just a single building (stables, butts, muster field, or barracks), with no smith buildings necessary. Knights would have a slightly higher requirement, however: Royal Court combined with a smith building. I agree that the more elite/exotic units should require at least a couple buildings, again including smith buildings. Which leads me to the next part of my idea....

I'm wondering whether smiths should produce a more significant income than they do currently, especially if we were to tie in smiths as an actual dependency for elite/exotic units. By forcing the AI to build smiths in order to gain access to higher-level units, it would also assure that they could afford them.


I also like the #4 option, although you're probably right in that it would cause confusion for players. Unless we renamed the smiths to something else entirely?

[ULC]

Caravel can I ask, from a Historical context of course, was it likely that advanced troops were levied or trained from all provinces? Since trade was not heavy during these times, in the idea if that a province did not have something it usually had to work around that, would it not be reasonable to have each province hold certain resources for unit development?

[caravel]

The concept I'm currently envisioning actually combines elements of options 1, 2, & 3:


I would propose that basic units (MAA, Archers, Sergeants, & light cavalry) depend on just a single building (stables, butts, muster field, or barracks), with no smith buildings necessary. Knights would have a slightly higher requirement, however: Royal Court combined with a smith building. I agree that the more elite/exotic units should require at least a couple buildings, again including smith buildings. Which leads me to the next part of my idea....

The problem with this is that the AI will struggle to tech up to the decent units. As I said exotic units could require a smith building, but mainstream elite units such as e.g. High era Knights probably should not as this would hamper the AI from teching up to them as quickly as the player would.

I'm wondering whether smiths should produce a more significant income than they do currently, especially if we were to tie in smiths as an actual dependency for elite/exotic units. By forcing the AI to build smiths in order to gain access to higher-level units, it would also assure that they could afford them.

Again the problem with having larger incomes on the smiths buildings means that the player can exploit this easily. I prefer the idea of a gradual smaller income build up. For example there are 8 lines of "smith" building:

Spearmaker
Bowyer
Swordsmith
Armourer
Blacksmith
Horse Farmer
Siege Engineer
Gunsmith

If each building was bringing in roughly 100 florins at the base level, that's quite a sum. I have structured it as very low, a couple of florins each at the base levels. Though this could be altered so that as ugprades are applied income increases to reflect volume and better quality of goods produced. I also have cheaper upgrades to the smith buildings only costing 100 each and taking 2 years. So this should balance out when tweaked.

I also like the #4 option, although you're probably right in that it would cause confusion for players. Unless we renamed the smiths to something else entirely?

Renaming is an idea, perhaps something in the name or description that indicates that these are solely income generating buildings? If I were to do this though, I would need to work on some replacement training facilities. Butts are fine for archers but there would need to be upgrades to butts (not the bowyer line). Also I'm thinking that the muster field should be separate from the barracks line. This would be the generic structure for cultural, levied or similar low level units "native" to a province. In view of this the muster field might also need an upgrade or two... Perhaps the Inn could be utilised for this? As technically if a King "trains" a unit of Highland Clansmen, he has not really trained them, but "hired" them, either with promise of a florin or two for their purse, lands, titles or position.

The Horse Farmer line would have to be renamed and used as stables. I don't think leaving these as a smith building producing an income would be wise.

Certain units such as Handguns would probably need to rely on their smith building being in the province as well as the barracks as would siege units depending on the siege engineer. Again these would be training facilities and not really income producing.

So to finish with we would end up with something like this:

Income (perhaps tied to resources in particular provinces to avoid spamming, this way income could be increased per structure):
Spearmaker (Pole Turner?)
Bowyer
Swordsmith
Armourer
Blacksmith

Training:
Horse Farmer (Stables, Stables ???, Stables ???, Stables ???)
Siege Engineer
Gunsmith
Muster field, Inn
Town Watch (Militia Barracks, Barracks, Barracks ???, Barracks ???)
Royal Court
Butts, ???, ???, ???
Military Academy (Possibly depending on the fourth barracks level? Seljuks/Ottomans only?)

Caravel can I ask, from a Historical context of course, was it likely that advanced troops were levied or trained from all provinces? Since trade was not heavy during these times, in the idea if that a province did not have something it usually had to work around that, would it not be reasonable to have each province hold certain resources for unit development?

Yes I'd say that advanced troops would be limited geographically, though we have homelands to deal with that. It may be an idea to use special resources to restrict some buildings to specific provinces and thus restrict training of certain units, but I'm not 100% sure of this yet. It may complicate matters and imbalance the game even more than it is. Inevitably this approach would great very strong areas and very weak ones. Also it's debatable if the AI would build the needed building in that particular province and meet the rest of the requirements in order to train the unit. It also means that if certain factions don't hold certain provinces then some units will be unobtainable altogether. Homelands do this to a certain extent already.

[Martok]

The problem with this is that the AI will struggle to tech up to the decent units. As I said exotic units could require a smith building, but mainstream elite units such as e.g. High era Knights probably should not as this would hamper the AI from teching up to them as quickly as the player would.

Fair enough. My main thought/hope was that adding a smith as a dependency for Knights might help the AI financially without seriously impeding its ability to tech up to them. Ah well.

Again the problem with having larger incomes on the smiths buildings means that the player can exploit this easily. I prefer the idea of a gradual smaller income build up. For example there are 8 lines of "smith" building:

Spearmaker
Bowyer
Swordsmith
Armourer
Blacksmith
Horse Farmer
Siege Engineer
Gunsmith

If each building was bringing in roughly 100 florins at the base level, that's quite a sum. I have structured it as very low, a couple of florins each at the base levels. Though this could be altered so that as ugprades are applied income increases to reflect volume and better quality of goods produced. I also have cheaper upgrades to the smith buildings only costing 100 each and taking 2 years. So this should balance out when tweaked.

Gah! Well I wasn't thinking *that* much (100 florins) -- rather something more like 25-30 florins for the base level smiths, and then working up from there.

I digress, however. If you've made the smith upgrades that cheap, then it hopefully shouldn't matter, especially if you tweak them so they bestow a (somewhat) larger income at higher levels.

Renaming is an idea, perhaps something in the name or description that indicates that these are solely income generating buildings?

We'd definitely want to edit the descriptions, yes. As for renaming, perhaps something as simple as adding "Shoppe" (Armourer's Shoppe, Bowyer's Shoppe, etc.)?

If I were to do this though, I would need to work on some replacement training facilities. Butts are fine for archers but there would need to be upgrades to butts (not the bowyer line).

Hmm. I confess I'm currently stuck as to what else would be proper names for subsequent structures. Presumably upgraded butts (whatever they'd be called) would be primarily devoted to recruiting crossbowmen and arbalesters?

Also I'm thinking that the muster field should be separate from the barracks line. This would be the generic structure for cultural, levied or similar low level units "native" to a province. In view of this the muster field might also need an upgrade or two... Perhaps the Inn could be utilised for this? As technically if a King "trains" a unit of Highland Clansmen, he has not really trained them, but "hired" them, either with promise of a florin or two for their purse, lands, titles or position.

That could work. Otherwise, perhaps upgrades could go: Muster Field --> Levy Field --> Shire Grounds?

The Horse Farmer line would have to be renamed and used as stables. I don't think leaving these as a smith building producing an income would be wise.

Certain units such as Handguns would probably need to rely on their smith building being in the province as well as the barracks as would siege units depending on the siege engineer. Again these would be training facilities and not really income producing.

Agreed.

So to finish with we would end up with something like this:

Income (perhaps tied to resources in particular provinces to avoid spamming, this way income could be increased per structure):
Spearmaker (Pole Turner?)
Bowyer
Swordsmith
Armourer
Blacksmith

Looks good to me, although again we should probably rename them to avoid confusing players.

Training:
Horse Farmer (Stables, Stables ???, Stables ???, Stables ???)
Siege Engineer
Gunsmith
Muster field, Inn
Town Watch (Militia Barracks, Barracks, Barracks ???, Barracks ???)
Royal Court
Butts, ???, ???, ???
Military Academy (Possibly depending on the fourth barracks level? Seljuks/Ottomans only?)

Yeah, I like that. Here's my crack at the building names:

Stables, Knight's Stables, Ducal Stables, Royal Stables
Militia Barracks, Infantry Barracks, Guard Barracks, Palace Barracks
Butts, Yeomenry Range, Guard Range, Master Range

(Sorry, I know that last series isn't very original. )

Yes I'd say that advanced troops would be limited geographically, though we have homelands to deal with that. It may be an idea to use special resources to restrict some buildings to specific provinces and thus restrict training of certain units, but I'm not 100% sure of this yet. It may complicate matters and imbalance the game even more than it is. Inevitably this approach would great very strong areas and very weak ones. Also it's debatable if the AI would build the needed building in that particular province and meet the rest of the requirements in order to train the unit. It also means that if certain factions don't hold certain provinces then some units will be unobtainable altogether. Homelands do this to a certain extent already.

It's the sentence I highlighted in bold that concerns me most. I could all too easily see the AI being critically -- if not fatally -- hampered with the system proposed. So long as elite/royal units can be restricted to homelands, I'd just as soon not mess with the setup (at least for now). We can always tinker and tweak later if it seems desirable and/or necessary.

[ULC]

No, no, I understand we don;t want to limit units to much, I was just trying to find a way of compromising some of Caravels ideas.

Wouldn't it be possible to err, borrow elements of M2TW's building tree at all? (please don't hurt me ><)

I found that it was semi logical at least, and the way they had divided was interesting. Most building served training grounds, IIRC most were referred to as ranges, barracks as housing and training, and the stables the same, etc.

My line of thought is, that we tie things in with a simple system - have the manufacturing building become a requirement of the other buildings, or have more civic minded buildings (such as farms, courts or merchants, to show an increase in population, management, and funds) be those requisites. The AI and the player would both have to work through these, boost the economy regardless, before allowing access to any new troops. In this way, those building essentially are required for said unit, but we don't end up in the mess of actually requiring two buildings for a unit. We could even tack on "troop_producer" to these prerequisite buildings since the AI fancies it so much.

That's if the AI can handle it, and if I'm not doing something you've already done

[caravel]

My main thought/hope was that adding a smith as a dependency for Knights might help the AI financially without seriously impeding its ability to tech up to them. Ah well.

Indeed that was my original idea and is how V1.7 is structured. There are more dependency buildings and the buildings produce an income. Sadly it's too complex for the AI to use.

Gah! Well I wasn't thinking *that* much (100 florins) -- rather something more like 25-30 florins for the base level smiths, and then working up from there.

Added together though for all buildings at the base level, the player could have all 8 smith buildings constructed and be raking in a large sum per province.

I digress, however. If you've made the smith upgrades that cheap, then it hopefully shouldn't matter, especially if you tweak them so they bestow a (somewhat) larger income at higher levels.

Indeed, though if I am to go with having the smith buildings as not being required to train units then I will probably re-think the costs and incomes of the upgrades anyway. Especially if they are to depend on resources in the province.

We'd definitely want to edit the descriptions, yes. As for renaming, perhaps something as simple as adding "Shoppe" (Armourer's Shoppe, Bowyer's Shoppe, etc.)?

Well "Shoppe" is equated to old english (e.g. "ye olde shoppe") but is in fact a fanciful term and not really old or middle english. The other factor is that we're not only dealing with the english but many european catholic kingdoms, eastern kingdom's and muslim sultanates. I'm thinking that for, now leave the names as they are and edit the descriptions. Anyone who is wondering why these buildings don't train any units can check these. Plus them not being available in every province - with none at all available in some provinces, this should clarify that they're not a necessity.

To expand on this, I already have another building of this type in existence, namely the forester. I have looked through the available review panel icons and have found many move unused buildings of the "Workshop, Guild, Master" types including:

Glassmaker
Leatherworker
Mason
Potter
Salter
Vintner
Weaver

I may include some of these also (dependent on resources).

Hmm. I confess I'm currently stuck as to what else would be proper names for subsequent structures. Presumably upgraded butts (whatever they'd be called) would be primarily devoted to recruiting crossbowmen and arbalesters?

...perhaps upgrades could go: Muster Field --> Levy Field --> Shire Grounds?

I'm thinking that the Muster field line should be short, only two buildings. It is only for low level levies and some special province specific units anyway.

...we should probably rename them to avoid confusing players.

Here's my crack at the building names:

Stables, Knight's Stables, Ducal Stables, Royal Stables
Militia Barracks, Infantry Barracks, Guard Barracks, Palace Barracks
Butts, Yeomenry Range, Guard Range, Master Range

I could go with all of those except the stables line. You see I'm thinking that the stables will not be required for Knights, but Knights will depend on the Royal Court line of buildings and not the Horse Farmer line. Perhaps something less related to nobility?

It's the sentence I highlighted in bold that concerns me most. I could all too easily see the AI being critically -- if not fatally -- hampered with the system proposed. So long as elite/royal units can be restricted to homelands, I'd just as soon not mess with the setup (at least for now). We can always tinker and tweak later if it seems desirable and/or necessary.

Perhaps then units should not depend on the smith buildings, this would remove the problem.

[caravel]

My line of thought is, that we tie things in with a simple system - have the manufacturing building become a requirement of the other buildings, or have more civic minded buildings

This is actually a good idea, though I would be worried about the era of nothingness while waiting for the AI to build the right smiths in order to build a barracks to train a unit. This is how it should work, a particular level of barracks depending on the construction of the required smith buildings before it can be built. The smith buildings would then in turn be tied to the castle level. It's logical and makes sense but I'm thinking that the AI will not take to it.

Random examples:

Barracks <- Armourer, Swordsmith, Spearmaker
Royal Court <- Horse Breeder, Spearmakers' Workshop, Armourers' Workshop
Butts <- Bowyer