The Complete EDU Guide - Discussion

[Aradan]

A new guide analysing the EDU has just been posted at:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88859

This thread has been created to discuss this Guide. If you have anything to add, correct, suggest etc. then please do so. Please help make this the best, most complete and most comprehensive source of "everything EDU" so that all information regarding this is gaterred at a single place, easily accessible and found by all.

The Guide does not seek to define ways in which the information can be used, only to provide that information. So, although we might use certain aspects of it to create a counter-elephant specialisist unit (for example) or a unit of demi-gods, those applications are beyond the scope of this Guide. This file provides only the raw data (and some very quick and simple advice).

Your input is much appreciated and anticipated.

[Makanyane]

That's a great document, thank you.

DLF is the difficulty lever factor. It's 0.7 for Easy, 1 for Medium, 1.5 for Hard and 2 for Very Hard. This factor is what produces the AI combat bonuses for Hard/Very Hard and the AI combat penalty for Easy.

That's an interesting find, I knew there was a difference but never realised it was that large.

Would it be at all possible to do an even more idiot proof explanation of the two useful formula at the end? This particular idiot isn't sure how the two constant values fit in.

And thank you, thank you, thank you, for coming up with that before I have to try and balance units for EoDII

[Aradan]

You're very welcome Mak!

Well the melee formula gives a number, which in turn is presumably compared to random generated number that's up to 100, to see if the hit is going to kill. Without the constant, the max number one can get is 2*1.1^63, assuming Very Hard difficulty, which roughly equals 810. So you need to multiply that with a constant to make it smaller than 100, but still close to it, to make sure that the chances of spilling blood remain big. A number that could well do that is 0.095 (=0.19/2), which gives max chance to kill 77%. On the other hand, there might be no constant and the number generated is directly compared to number up to 1000, which would give a max chance to kill of 81%. Not much difference and common sense says that the second way is better, but we're talking about CA coding here and they have used the constant before in the formula for MTW.
A similar thing applies for the missile formula, but since the two are different, it's only reasonable to assume that another constant is used there, hence const2.

EDIT: Since const1, const2 are fixed, direct multiplieres and unmoddable, it really doesn't matter what their value is, they are just there to make the formula accurate.

[Dol Guldur]

Can you see why I left it to Aradan and Xerex now, Mak? :)

But, seriously, I hope this does help out EOD II and many other mods too.


Aradan, not the most important info in the world, but we should note that the category and class entries also affect the order in which the unit appears in the custom-battle unit-selection screen. Generally it is infantry followed by cavalry category, then declining as light-spearmen-heavy-missile class, then edu order in the case of same category/class units. This is probably not only not important but pretty useless - but it is the *complete* guide ;)

[Arakorn-eir]

Yes, it's the completely WIP guide! :P

As I said in the dev forums...

OK; enough kidding, great work Aradan and Xerex! (I'm used to say Xerex & Aradan, most times it's just something that you get used to, the order you say the names in for example. Who ever says dad & mom, it's always mom & dad!)

[xerex]

So I am mom....great...:)

[Aradan]

Thx, Pal I will update.

[Myrddraal]

Great guide. Have you added it to the tutorials database?

[Aradan]

Thx. No I haven't done so yet, as I'm unsure of how... Any pointers would be greatly appreciated! :)

[Makanyane]

this link should take you to the add link area:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local...dlink&catid=71
parent categories should be under
-Rome Total War
--Modification guides and tutorials
--- --All tutorials--
and
---Units
I think, and any others that seem appropriate, if it doesn't work I'm sure Myrddraal knows how to fix (hopefully).

I could try it for you but that is meant to be something modders add their own tutorials etc to so would like to encourage you to try it out.

[Aradan]

Done, and thank you very much!

[tk-421]

Hi! I am one of EB's stat guys and I'd just like to say that you've done an excellent job so far. I've been experimenting with the stat_ground values and have recently been speculating that the scrub bonus could be seriously messed up - possibly giving a bonus in more terrain types (or possibly all terrain types) than it really should. I haven't done as many tests on this as I like and, as it says in the guide, it can be difficult to tell when exactly you are fighting on scrub, so it's entirely possible that I'm imagining things. Does anyone have any good data on this? I'd be very happy to know what others think about this.

[Kuni]

You forgot screeching_women in the list of attributes.

I learned a lot of new stuff from the guide. thanks and great job!

[Aradan]

Thanks tk-421 and Kuni. Well, you see 99% of the testing was on BI 1.6 and FATW, so no screeching_women there... I will test it on 1.5 too and add info about it once I have solid facts/numbers. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Makanyane]

[weapon_tech] : Unit weapon's tech type. Can be: simple, other, blade, archery or siege (note that 'other' is not upgradeable).

Other actually is upgradeable it just doesn't show up in building browser. The note that you see that it is not upgradeable is from text entry in strat.txt

{SMT_HEAVY} Heavy
{SMT_NO_UPGRADE} Cannot be upgraded

The 'other' units do actually upgrade, eg if you use:

weapon_other 1

in building you get option to retrain them and their weapon changes to bronze as usual, you just don't get a "Upgrades xxx weapons" on the building description screen saying it's going to do that, which seems to be due to that part being missing from strat.txt as well.

Trying to add {SMT_CAPABILITY_WEAPON_OTHER} etc. to that file seems to have no effect - I assume the lookup for that file is hardcoded.. ?

anyway you can mod EDB so they are upgradeable.

[Dol Guldur]

Thx Mak, that must have been my incorrect assumption based on the lack of text.

[Aradan]

Thank you too. Update.

[xerex]

Hi! I am one of EB's stat guys and I'd just like to say that you've done an excellent job so far. I've been experimenting with the stat_ground values and have recently been speculating that the scrub bonus could be seriously messed up - possibly giving a bonus in more terrain types (or possibly all terrain types) than it really should. I haven't done as many tests on this as I like and, as it says in the guide, it can be difficult to tell when exactly you are fighting on scrub, so it's entirely possible that I'm imagining things. Does anyone have any good data on this? I'd be very happy to know what others think about this.

I was the one that did the terrain testing mostly and yes, scrub is a pain in the butt. All the other terrains work perfectly and you can clearly tell when you are in them. Scrub, however, is very sketchy. A map can be almost entirely plains with a little patch of scrub and if your unit is fighting on that piece of scrub, it will own. Moving 20 meters to the right makes your unit fight much worse. Scrub can be generally described as "rough" terrain, but pinning down exactly which terrain types are considered scrub requires that I first learn more about how the battle maps are set up which will take some time because I am quite dumb and overloaded at work.

You may also be experiencing stacking of terrain bonuses. I dont remember if terrain bonuses stacked. I think I remember testing it, but it wasn't in the guide. Let me look into it and see if terrain bonuses stack.

[mcantu]

Didnt CA say previously that the spear attribute gave +4 attack vs cavalry? The guide says +8

[Aradan]

Well, CA has occassionally said things that weren't 100% accurate. The spear bonus vs cavalry is 8. Perhaps Jerome said that the general bonus was +4 (+8 vs cav and -4 vs inf = 4) ?


@ tk-421 : Tested a bit more and I still get what I got in the complementary tests I did after Xerex made the 'base' ones: scrub-modifier only gives its bonus on scrub, not on any other ground-types. We're lucky to have an entirely scrub-covered map in FATW and we can know for sure what ground we fight on. As Xerex said, it's a low-grass, arid climate that is between rocky, desert and plains. Not very illuminating, but I hope it helps a bit. I'd imagine your Baktrian provinces would have it, but again I'm not a mapper.


A slight update in the guide, added "skirmish" as an option for class. It's not used at all in vanilla, but it could be useful, especially for formation guys that don't want to go the long way round (if there is anyone else except for me that's actually bothering with battlefield AI, that is).

[Lysander13]

A slight update in the guide, added "skirmish" as an option for class. It's not used at all in vanilla, but it could be useful, especially for formation guys that don't want to go the long way round (if there is anyone else except for me that's actually bothering with battlefield AI, that is).

Firstly, let me say this is a great guide.
So skirmish is a valid option class, is that in both 1.5 and 1.6? When you say it could be useful for formation guys that don't want to go the long way around, what do you mean exactly? I'm curious as to how do you use the tag as it's relative to the priority awarded within the formation? For example let's say if missile gets .8 or .7 do you go higher or lower? or do you even play with the priority at all if your using a battle AI mod like Darth or Sinuhet; rather your just changing the unit class in the edu?

[Aradan]

Thx.

Well the long way round is to have a block containing "missile infantry" with low priority and another one containing only "ranged_missile_infantry" with higher one, so that skirmishers will end up in the first block. It's not a perfect way, but it's acceptable. While now you can use "skirmish infantry" and it will work perfectly. I know vanilla, Sin and Darth already use it, but they always use it along with "missile infantry" for their interception-line-block and they use "ranged_missile_infantry" alone for the archer-block, so that skirmishers always end up in the first-line. I made a custom formation not a week ago and I had assigned only "skirmish infantry" in the first block with a minimum of two such units. I gave the formation a high priority (it was a defensive one, so it would be selected for deployment) and made sure all the other requirements were met, but guess what: the formation was never chosen. When I changed a unit's class from missile to skirmish, the formation was selected.

Note that perhaps the class isn't fully supported (I can't understand why it wasn't included in vanilla otherwise) and it needs further testing.

[Lysander13]

Thanks for the "long way round" explanation. That was actually a pretty dumb question on my part. For some reason i was reading something else into what you posted. I should have known immediately what you meant by it.

In your custom formation; when you say you changed a unit's class from missile to skirmish and the formation was selected (defend); do you literally mean you changed 1 unit's class and the formation was selected, even though you had assigned that first block a minimum of two such units?

[Aradan]

It wasn't dumb.

I changed a unit's (unit = EDU entry) class from 'missile infantry' to 'skirmish infantry', and then I used two 'instances' of that unit in my army. How else would the formation be selected?!

[Lysander13]

Right....of course.
Pardon, apparantly my reading and comprehension has been a bit off in this thread.

[mcantu]

The problem with using skirmish instead of missile is that the AI will recruit them as infantry and result in the AI spamming javelin units...

[Aradan]

Thx for the feedback, mcantu. That's useful for campaign AI balancing.

[Squid]

One thing that I think should be included. For the mercenary_unit attribute it prevents a unit replenishing losses. I also believe that it forces the units with the attribute to use the 'merc' texture and sprite lines in DMB for all faction owners of the unit even if they have their own texture line in DMB.

[Aradan]

Thx, Squid, added. Are you sure about the texture and sprite thingy?

[Squid]

Pretty sure, I was testing how to get two differently textured units for one faction from one DMB entry, so I had two EDU entries pointing to one DMB. One of the EDU entiries had the mercenary_unit attribute the other didn't. The one with the mercenary_unit attribute displayed the merc texture, the other the specific texture for the faction I was testing with.