MonkeyMan
11-07-2002, 18:06
Everything you ever wanted to know about Foot Knights by A.MonkeyMan(but were afraid to ask, or maybe not I don’t know J)
Foot knights are not available to build in MTW. Foot knights currently only exist in the following circumstances-
1. A Rebel army, particularly faction re-emergences and sometimes catholic rebellions.
2. Gothic, Chivalric, Crusading and non early royal knights can dismount all the time, by right clicking on them in the phase before the battle when you are asked to choose a formation for your army.
3. Other mounted units including early royal knights, feudal knights and in fact any other mounted unit without exception; can dismount as the attacker or defender in a siege situation. Feudal knights and early royals give feudal foot knights, ghulams give Saracen inf., gendarmes give chivalric maa etc. (try a few yourself most give archers, spears or peasants).
Entries do exist on the map to +1 valour foot knight building areas, this is relevant to entries in crusaders_unit_prod11.txt in the MTW directory in program files and possibly links back to a development indecision on the building of foot knights themselves.
Regarding foot knights in history – foot knights although for the most part less used than as mounted versions are a quite valid unit to exist in medieval warfare. Particularly with the advent of gunpowder and weapons like the billhook, halberd, poleaxe and pike that evened up the contest between heavy cavalry and foot troops foot knights became particularly heavily used and started to outnumber their mounted friends. Examples like the wars of the roses including the battle of Bosworth (1485 where Richard III died) knights were almost exclusively on foot with poleaxes, with a few exceptions. Also the 100 years war saw the English knights on foot by preference. Also to take into consideration is the impracticality of transporting horses over bodies of water (play the Hastings historic battle, most knights are foot mounted despite the Normans bringing as many horses as they no doubt could.
So given this you say – I want to choose my own rules as to the build ability and use of foot knights. Well here for you is what I know about the modding of such units. Before you start, got to your MTW directory and copy the file crusaders_unit_prod11.txt to a nice safe place. Also do the same for crusader_build_prod13.txt.
1. I want to make feudal knights (or any other unit) dismountable all the time:
Go into crudaders_unit_prod11.txt open it in WordPad (or download a excel version of the files and use as they state in their read me, you can probably get one from www.totalwar.org (http://www.totalwar.org) but be aware that this may fail to work with a patched version of the game)
Search down the entries for the entry for the entry for feudal knights, each entry will probably take two lines and make sure you ignore the entry for feudal foot knights for the time being.
Once you have found it go right to the end (probably on the second line) and you will find the following –
"BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors" FeudalFootKnights SWORD
add in the word YES before sword so you get
"BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors" FeudalFootKnightsn YES SWORD
note that this should be separated from the words around it by a TAB.
Now save this and start a game of MTW to test if it works. Note that if you get an error message this normally relates to the correctness of what you entered so either restore your backup version (you remembered to do that right) or go into the file again and amend the spacing between each item you edited, most items should have one tab between them, of the nature that each is an entry in a dataset, and two tabs are required if there is no entry for a particular value so pay careful attention to whats thes before you start.
2. I Want to be able to build Foot Knights as a separate unit because I think I should have the option and it will make the game more fun.
In crusader_unit_prod11.txt find the entry for the relevant foot unit you want to build for example purposes I will edit Chivalric Foot Knights.
Find the entry for ChivalricFootKnights and find the part that looks like-
CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5)" "DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG" "HIGH, LATE" YES "HEIGHT( 85 ),
Between “Close to support” and “defender spear”, two tabs after (108.5) (there are three) place the line
"{ ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 }"
you can do this by typing it as it is here or copying the relevant entry from the mounted knights and removing the need for a horse breeder.
You should have something like this –
CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5)" "{ ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 }" "DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG" "HIGH, LATE" YES "HEIGHT( 85 ),
Save the file and test in MTW. Other thing of note that you might want to change are the line
ORTH_ZEALOTS(5)" FRENCH ILE_DE_FRANCE "POVERTY_STRICKEN(17.5),
Relates to the faction that gets a valour bonus for this unit and the region that gets one. This can be changed but note that each province has only one speciality allowed, if two are given the first occurrence in the unit prod file takes precedence.
Also of note is the following at the start of the entry
ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 625 8 1 0 80 40 1 PREFERRED
The first number is the cost of a standard unit so 625 (different in patched version I think). The entry 40 is the standard unit size (ignore the 80 it’s nothing to do with it) this number is multiplied by the unit size in your game so huge 40 * 2 = 80 and the cost is hence multiplied by it too. So for example if you wanted units of 60 knights in standerd costing 1000
ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 1000 8 1 0 80 60 1 PREFERRED
These would be units of 120 costing 200 in Huge unit sizes.
3. I want to be able to build Gothic knights and foot knights even though I’m the English because we lack a cool high-tech unit.
Ok fine, go into crudader_build_prod13.txt. Find the entry for ROYAL_COURT and go to the part (open it with wordpad and it should be only 1 line long):
ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE}"
Note that this is the end of the factions that can build each level of the royal_court, with each level having different availabilities, ending in level 4 with only german/hre and Italians. Either copy one of the entries for the lower levels and paste it over the final entry or add in ,ENGLISH. Such that you have:
ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE, ENGLISH}"
Save this file and close.
Now go into crusader_unit_prod11.txt and find the entries for gothic knights and gothic foot knights (make these work as noted in no.2 first remembering they require level 4 buildings) and find the line(s)
"FULLPLAR, YES, YES" "GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN" "Missile, Shocktroop, Spear, Cavalry"
and either replace with ALL_FACTIONS (without "s) or add in as before ,ENGLISH.
Save this file and test.
Please not that the simple modding of this game is really quite easy with some patience. Merely of - decide what you want to do, find something that exhibits this behaviour and make an educated guess as to what in the relevant files causes it to do this where the thing you want to change does not.
Well that’s that for now, please tell me if there’s anything wrong with what I have written or if I have forgotten something.
Foot knights are not available to build in MTW. Foot knights currently only exist in the following circumstances-
1. A Rebel army, particularly faction re-emergences and sometimes catholic rebellions.
2. Gothic, Chivalric, Crusading and non early royal knights can dismount all the time, by right clicking on them in the phase before the battle when you are asked to choose a formation for your army.
3. Other mounted units including early royal knights, feudal knights and in fact any other mounted unit without exception; can dismount as the attacker or defender in a siege situation. Feudal knights and early royals give feudal foot knights, ghulams give Saracen inf., gendarmes give chivalric maa etc. (try a few yourself most give archers, spears or peasants).
Entries do exist on the map to +1 valour foot knight building areas, this is relevant to entries in crusaders_unit_prod11.txt in the MTW directory in program files and possibly links back to a development indecision on the building of foot knights themselves.
Regarding foot knights in history – foot knights although for the most part less used than as mounted versions are a quite valid unit to exist in medieval warfare. Particularly with the advent of gunpowder and weapons like the billhook, halberd, poleaxe and pike that evened up the contest between heavy cavalry and foot troops foot knights became particularly heavily used and started to outnumber their mounted friends. Examples like the wars of the roses including the battle of Bosworth (1485 where Richard III died) knights were almost exclusively on foot with poleaxes, with a few exceptions. Also the 100 years war saw the English knights on foot by preference. Also to take into consideration is the impracticality of transporting horses over bodies of water (play the Hastings historic battle, most knights are foot mounted despite the Normans bringing as many horses as they no doubt could.
So given this you say – I want to choose my own rules as to the build ability and use of foot knights. Well here for you is what I know about the modding of such units. Before you start, got to your MTW directory and copy the file crusaders_unit_prod11.txt to a nice safe place. Also do the same for crusader_build_prod13.txt.
1. I want to make feudal knights (or any other unit) dismountable all the time:
Go into crudaders_unit_prod11.txt open it in WordPad (or download a excel version of the files and use as they state in their read me, you can probably get one from www.totalwar.org (http://www.totalwar.org) but be aware that this may fail to work with a patched version of the game)
Search down the entries for the entry for the entry for feudal knights, each entry will probably take two lines and make sure you ignore the entry for feudal foot knights for the time being.
Once you have found it go right to the end (probably on the second line) and you will find the following –
"BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors" FeudalFootKnights SWORD
add in the word YES before sword so you get
"BerberCamel, bedouincamelwarriors" FeudalFootKnightsn YES SWORD
note that this should be separated from the words around it by a TAB.
Now save this and start a game of MTW to test if it works. Note that if you get an error message this normally relates to the correctness of what you entered so either restore your backup version (you remembered to do that right) or go into the file again and amend the spacing between each item you edited, most items should have one tab between them, of the nature that each is an entry in a dataset, and two tabs are required if there is no entry for a particular value so pay careful attention to whats thes before you start.
2. I Want to be able to build Foot Knights as a separate unit because I think I should have the option and it will make the game more fun.
In crusader_unit_prod11.txt find the entry for the relevant foot unit you want to build for example purposes I will edit Chivalric Foot Knights.
Find the entry for ChivalricFootKnights and find the part that looks like-
CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5)" "DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG" "HIGH, LATE" YES "HEIGHT( 85 ),
Between “Close to support” and “defender spear”, two tabs after (108.5) (there are three) place the line
"{ ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 }"
you can do this by typing it as it is here or copying the relevant entry from the mounted knights and removing the need for a horse breeder.
You should have something like this –
CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT(108.5)" "{ ROYAL_COURT3, ARMOURER3 }" "DEFENDER, SPEAR, STRONG" "HIGH, LATE" YES "HEIGHT( 85 ),
Save the file and test in MTW. Other thing of note that you might want to change are the line
ORTH_ZEALOTS(5)" FRENCH ILE_DE_FRANCE "POVERTY_STRICKEN(17.5),
Relates to the faction that gets a valour bonus for this unit and the region that gets one. This can be changed but note that each province has only one speciality allowed, if two are given the first occurrence in the unit prod file takes precedence.
Also of note is the following at the start of the entry
ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 625 8 1 0 80 40 1 PREFERRED
The first number is the cost of a standard unit so 625 (different in patched version I think). The entry 40 is the standard unit size (ignore the 80 it’s nothing to do with it) this number is multiplied by the unit size in your game so huge 40 * 2 = 80 and the cost is hence multiplied by it too. So for example if you wanted units of 60 knights in standerd costing 1000
ChivalricFootKnights INFANTRY 1000 8 1 0 80 60 1 PREFERRED
These would be units of 120 costing 200 in Huge unit sizes.
3. I want to be able to build Gothic knights and foot knights even though I’m the English because we lack a cool high-tech unit.
Ok fine, go into crudader_build_prod13.txt. Find the entry for ROYAL_COURT and go to the part (open it with wordpad and it should be only 1 line long):
ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE}"
Note that this is the end of the factions that can build each level of the royal_court, with each level having different availabilities, ending in level 4 with only german/hre and Italians. Either copy one of the entries for the lower levels and paste it over the final entry or add in ,ENGLISH. Such that you have:
ARAGONESE, BURGUNDIAN, DANISH, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN, PAPIST, SICILIAN, SPANISH, SWISS},{ITALIAN, GERMAN_HRE, ENGLISH}"
Save this file and close.
Now go into crusader_unit_prod11.txt and find the entries for gothic knights and gothic foot knights (make these work as noted in no.2 first remembering they require level 4 buildings) and find the line(s)
"FULLPLAR, YES, YES" "GERMAN_HRE, ITALIAN" "Missile, Shocktroop, Spear, Cavalry"
and either replace with ALL_FACTIONS (without "s) or add in as before ,ENGLISH.
Save this file and test.
Please not that the simple modding of this game is really quite easy with some patience. Merely of - decide what you want to do, find something that exhibits this behaviour and make an educated guess as to what in the relevant files causes it to do this where the thing you want to change does not.
Well that’s that for now, please tell me if there’s anything wrong with what I have written or if I have forgotten something.