WesW
01-01-2003, 11:56
The Medieval Mod IV for Total War
v 1.3: For God and Country
is now available here (http://wes.apolyton.net/Medmod_IV_1.3.zip) . The readme is also available here (http://wes.apolyton.net/Readme.doc) .
I have made quite a number of changes since the 1.2 beta release.
1)Eliminated the req. of a Port for the Brothel. This leaves only the Tavern as a requirement.
2)Reduced the happiness from Watch Towers and Border Forts by 10 points, to 10 and 20, respectively.
3)Added additional req.s for Merchant-class buildings, so that the AI would not build the more advanced structures in provinces where it is not equitable.
4)Increased the priority of buildings for many of the AI types, in order to try and get them to develop their provinces better.
5)Increased the priority of ships in an effort to get the AIs to develop more trade routes.
6)Reduced the probability of mercenaries appearing, and also the number of units that could become mercenaries.
7)Fixed all the cavalry graphics so that units with both a weapon and a shield appear to hold them in opposite hands.
7b)Added the Crossbow to the Mounted Crossbowman while he is standing, walking and running.
8)Eliminated the possibility of Catholic units appearing in Orthodox and Muslim rebellions, at least for those units I caught.
9)Added Religious Fanatics and Foot Knights to the list of units that can appear in Crusades.
10)Adjusted the stats for the Feudal and Chivalric Sergeants so that the Chivalric unit is clearly better.
11)Mounted Crossbowmen cannot appear until the high era, when infantry crossbows appear.
12)Elite units, generally those requiring a Citadel or Fortress to build, now take two turns to build. This is both to lessen the impact of one highly developed province and to make these units easier to finance, since their cost is now spread out over two turns.
13)The spreadsheet's unit list has been re-arranged some, and separate linked pages have been added for each major faction.
Below is a paste of the Readme.doc.
When a few days have passed to catch any remaining bugs, or to make any needed adjustments, I will send the file in for posting here at the org, so I need a few people to try this mod out and let me know what you think. Enjoy.
Main Readme for the Medieval Mod IV for Total War
V 1.3: For God and Country
By Wes Whitaker (email address, webpage)
My aim with this mod, as it has been with my other Medieval mods for Call-to-Power I and II and Civilization III (which I never released), is to correct any errors which may have slipped by the designers, even out those settings and stats which seem unbalanced, and to add the things which I believe will increase players’ enjoyment of the game.
These modifications are the results of playing the game, listening to player posts in the mod threads, and scanning the .com, .org and assembly forums to see what people were saying about the game, both good and bad. It is not hard to figure out why the criticisms should be noted, but I also note when people repeatedly rave about one particular feature of a unit, since this is often an indication of something that the designers missed when they were balancing the game before shipping. Thus you may find out that your favorite unit is not so powerful anymore.
First of all, thanks to Lord Crazy, Barocca and the other guys who offered help on the .org forums. Even though I wasn’t registered at the time, you helped me understand how the text and graphics files were set up and why I kept getting those strange error messages. The text files aren’t so bad once you get used to them, but I had never seen ones built upon tab spaces before.
The units’ spreadsheet is a heavily modified version of Yas’ file available from the .org site. I have color-coded it for easier viewing, and marked in yellow background where I have made changes to unit abilities from the 1.1 patch. I originally had my changes to unit costs and upkeep, and faction and region bonuses marked as well, but eventually I had made so many changes that I decided to clear those out and simply notify you here to refer to the spreadsheet as needed for the changes. I would recommend that you do as I have done and print out the first two pages of the sheet, as shown in the Excel Print Preview option.
Note: You will really want to take time to read the red-tabbed comments in the spreadsheet, especially the one near the top of the first column which explains the faction color scheme. They often go into detail explaining individual changes that I made. You can ignore any green tabs you may see, depending upon your Excel settings. PLEASE make use of this chart, or you will probably not understand some of the changes that have been made.
The building spreadsheet is by AFlorin, which I also obtained from the .org site, and is modified in a similar manner to the unit sheet.
Notes to mod-makers:
Unit text explanations: I managed to clean up the notes at the top of the units’ text, and then I made a new Word file with this info. As a mod-maker, this alone would make the mod worth downloading even if you don’t intend to play with it. You can paste the cleaned-up units’ text notes over the ones in your file without causing any problems, or you can use the Word file.
File errors noted: Cordoba is misspelled Cordova in the unit file, Friesland is misspelled Freisland, Northumbria as North_umbria. Also, the game will not recognize more than one region per unit for a valor bonus, just as it will not recognize more than one faction for a unit discount, or more than one unit per region. Thus, for example, the second region listed for the Camel Archers will be ignored, as will the second unit tied to Syria. In addition, the Varangian Guard and Longboat are not available in the late age, and several of the more advanced Catholic units may appear in Orthodox revolts.
Now, on to the good stuff…
Installation:
Simply unzip the mod into the “Medieval- Total War” folder, and click “yes to all” regarding the overwriting of files. This readme and the spreadsheet will be placed in that folder, as will an Originals.zip file, which you can unzip into the Medieval- Total War folder just like you did for the mod in order to “uninstall” the mod.
Note: You must have the “Keep file pathways” option checked in order for the mod to install properly.
Color Scheme:
General changes, file references and acknowledgements, factions, buildings, ships, spearmen, infantry, cavalry, missiles, agents.
Building and General changes:
I have increased the priority of buildings for many of the faction types. This was done because the AIs rarely seemed to improve their provinces, and were solely dedicated to ransacking their neighbors’ land. I have also increased the priority of ships, in order to get the AI to trade more.
Watch Towers and Border Forts now increase happiness by 10 and 20 percent, respectively, down from 20 and 30 percent. I felt that the old settings were too high, especially for the cost.
Merchants now require a Port, Merchant Guilds now require a Shipwright, and Master Merchants require a Dockyard. This was done to keep the AIs from building higher-level merchants in provinces where they were probably not equitable.
Brothel: I removed the Castle as the second requirement to build a Brothel. As far as gameplay, you need a lot of Spies for defense and loyalty, and it killed me to have to devote one of my always few Castles to making something like Spies.
I removed the requirement of a Cannon Foundry for building a Shipbuilders Guild. I don’t know who stuck that in there at the last moment, but it sure caused plenty of confusion. Anyway, its deletion squares it with the building chart and gets rid of the War Galley incompatibility.
Palaces: The Marshals Palace now requires a Fortress to build. I think the current setting is another error (Castle12 instead of Castle13). Also, since palaces more advanced than a Royal Palace are now unique, I have substituted the Royal Palace in place of the more advanced palaces in the requirements’ list. This way, you may have more than one city eligible to build these improvements.
The Military Academy now has different requirements, since the Turks would seem to need more than one of them, and the previous requirements were unique. Therefore, I have changed them to a Royal Palace and Citadel for the Christians, and a Royal Palace, Castle and Ribat for the Muslims.
Town and County Militia: I essentially moved these structures up one level in the building chart, with requiring a Castle and Citadel now required for the Town Militia and County Militia, respectively. This will result in Halberdiers and Pikemen being available earlier.
Time and cost reductions: The time to build the troop producers, from Forts to Fortresses, has been reduced by 25%. The cost of the Citadel and Fortress, the time to produce the Tavern and Brothel, and the cost and/or time of some of the other high-level structures has been reduced as well.
Finally, I reduced the cost of improving Farmland by 80% to 2,000. I use a 20 yr ROI (return on investment) as a guide, and it seems that the designers did too from the mine costs, and there is no province that meets this criterion for the 80% improvement under normal circumstances.
As noted earlier, I have made dozens of changes to the settings for faction and region bonuses, in an effort to improve gameplay, boost weak factions and to give most units a special region. I have also deleted region bonuses from units which could only be built in one region (Swiss Armoured Pikemen, Highland Clansmen and Gallowglasses).
The chances of mercenaries appearing has been greatly reduced, along with the number of units available as mercenaries, eliminating most all of the units more powerful than Feudal Men-at-Arms and Mamluk Horse Archers, except for Pikemen, and eliminating most of the one-faction units like Longbowmen and Italian Infantry (please see the spreadsheet for details). I did this because it was simply too easy to hire an overwhelming force early in the game by going on a merc “shopping spree”.
I also found that many Catholic units were subject to appear in Orthodox rebellions, and eliminated this possibility.
Starting positions: These have been adjusted to account for the changes to unit availability and size, and to reduce the double-strength Muslim units to standard size. I have also added a Goldmine to the Sinai province (based upon a post I read and to make this poor province more valuable), corrected some errors in the building lists and added a building or two to some provinces in the Late era. The only province I made major changes to was Sweden, and that was just to make this valuable province barely decent (it only had an Inn). I also adjusted the gathering point for agents in Palestine so that they are not obscured by the castle.
The Hungarians have been substituted for the Danes as a major faction in the High and Late periods. With the emergence of the Russians and Golden Horde, the avenues for Danish expansion are greatly reduced, and I thought it would be interesting to have a chance to play as what was a major eastern European power at this time, especially with the opportunities to expand into what were once Byzantine provinces to the south and east. Note: If you want to reverse this change, it is very quick and easy to do so. Simply go into the campmap/startpos folder, and find the “Active Factions” section (circa line 1290) in the High and Late files, and change the setting FT_MINOR back to FT_MAJOR for the Danes, and vice versa for the Hungarians below.
I decided that the best way to present the unit changes made would be to group them by category rather than by type of change, since I think this is how I would remember them if I were reading this for the first time. So, here goes…
Strategic Agents:
I only corrected a few errors with faction bonuses in this section, other than the change to the Spy’s building requirements which was explained in the Building’s section. The Poles were given a bonus for producing Orthodox Priests and Bishops; I felt that the Russians could make better use of it. I also switched the bonus for Inquisitors and Grand Inquisitors from the Aragonese to the Spanish. I am not sure if this was a bug, but it seemed to fit better.
Spearmen and Infantry:
Almughavars are now available at Inns all around the Mediterranean.
Kerns now fit their description as Irish peasantry, with 100 men per unit, but lower offensive stats.
Peasants and Urban Militia are now much cheaper to build and support, which puts them in line statistically with other infantry units.
I adjusted the stats for Feudal and Chivalric Sergeants to make the Chivalric unit clearly superior to the Feudal.
Swiss Pikemen, Armoured Pikemen and Halberdiers are now only available to those factions who can build regular Pikemen and Halberdiers.
Chivalric and Gothic Foot Knights: These units are now available as standard infantry units, with a Swordsmith replacing the HorseBreeder in the requirements’ list. This is based upon a post by Long John Jr., I believe, in which he described how knights fought more and more on foot after the development of weapons like the crossbow, halberd and pike. This adds some late-era infantry to the game where there was none before. I also added a feature so that these two units, along with Hospitaller and Feudal Foot Knights, may be created when a Crusade is launched. The Feudal Foot are available in the Early era, the Chivalric in the High and Late eras, and the Gothic and Hospitaller in the Late era.
Gothic Sergeants: I made a lot of changes to these guys, most notably the increase from 60 to 100 men per unit, with an accompanying increase in cost, and the requirements of a Baronial Court and a Master Spearmaker to produce. I also made them disciplined and with decent honor, which fits in with their description. Also, they can now be built by the Danes, Poles and Hungarians. These factions need help in the late game. From what I can tell, the Poles and Huns were the 12th and 13th factions, and certainly the Poles had the least amount of effort among the player-available factions put into their unit tree. Maybe this will help some.
Byzantine units: Pikemen are now available to the Byzantines. Since they are not now available until the late era, I believe it is ok for the Byzantines to have access to them, and with their knowledge of Greek history and the Phalanx they would certainly have been able to develop this unit had they wanted to do so. The Byzantines were already able to build all of the Town Watch improvements, even though none gave them any units past Urban Militia, so I believe this was another one of those last-minute changes, perhaps due to the “era segregation” bug in the original release.
I have generally reduced the cost and especially the upkeep of the Byzantine units. An exception is the Byzantine Infantry, whom I have reduced from 100 men to 60 per unit while keeping the costs about the same. I also increased the melee from 2 to 3, and gave this disciplined unit decent honor. These changes were made partially based upon the posts of players on the Assembly site, my own experiences, and the unit settings. I believe that this unit was raised from 60 to 100 men at the last moment, based upon the other unit settings which were apparently not adjusted to reflect the manpower change. I assume this was done to compensate for the fact that the Byzantines didn’t have a spear unit more powerful than common Spearmen. However, I always seem to get incredible generals when playing the Byzantines, which makes the spearmen competitive until the late game when Pikemen now become available.
Muslim units: I have adjusted many of the Muslim units, both infantry and cavalry, since I found that the units’ descriptions consistently did not match their stats and abilities.
Muwahid Foot: I increased the men in this unit from 60 to 100, which is what I believe it was always meant to be based upon the other unit costs and stats.
Almohad Urban Militia now require more buildings.
Nizari are now the equivalent of Chivalric Men-at-Arms, in order to give the Egyptians a heavy infantry unit equal to the Almohad Urban Militia and Chivalric Men-at-Arms, but they lose their bows.
Futuwwa are now available to the Almohads and Egyptians, not the Turks, and are a more balanced unit offensively and defensively in order to make it comparable with Ottoman Infantry.
The Janissary units have been completely overhauled. The Heavy Infantry keeps its role as assault troops, but its stats have been increased to match those of Foot Knights. The Bowmen have been changed to assume the role the Infantry had earlier- that of bow-wielding infantry, but now equal to Chivalric Men-at-Arms, while the Infantry are now heavy Spearmen equal to Gothic Sergeants. Before, I could not see why one would choose to build the Bowmen over Turcomen Foot; this new arrangement gives them each a distinct role.
Finally, most elite units, both infantry and cavalry, take two turns to build now. This will keep someone from being able to flood the game with elite units from a single province, and will also make the construction of these units easier to finance, since their cost will be spread over two turns. Please see the spreadsheet for details.
Cavalry:
Polish Retainers can now be produced in all Polish provinces.
Teutonic Sergeants are now available as a standard light cavalry unit in addition to a Crusader unit, and Gothic Knights and Teutonic Sergeants are now also available to the Danes, Poles and Hungarians.
Horse Archers can now reload on the move.
Lithuanian Cavalry: I don’t know why the building requirements for a light cavalry unit which has lower stats than a Polish Retainer included a level 4 HorseBreeder and a level 3 Armourer and Swordsmith. Anyway, I have increased the melee to 3, and reduced the building requirements to a level 2 HorseBreeder, Armourer and Swordsmith, and raised the price to bring it in line with comparable units. The developers may have tried to compensate for the building requirements by making the unit cheap, but what use is that if the unit is hopelessly outclassed by the time it is available, if it ever is in those three provinces.
Sipahi of the Porte: I increased the number of men in this unit from 20 to 40, which put it in line with its production and support costs, and matched the men in the Kataphraktoi and Boyar units.
Armenian Heavy Cavalry have lost the Heavy in their name, and are now a light cavalry unit available to the Byzantines and Egyptians as well as the Turks, where it helps fill out their unit trees, and can be found all over Asia Minor.
Kataphraktoi and Ottoman Sipahi now wield armour-piercing axes and shields as well as lances, and sport a new look.
Ghulam Cavalry are now equivalent to Feudal Knights.
Khwarazmian Cavalry are now only available to the Almohads and Egyptians, and have had their attack raised and a shield added in order to make them a viable heavy unit for the late game.
Missile units:
Artillery can no longer be mercenary units. I just can’t see groups of guys hauling Catapults around from province to province, and you can usually hire enough merc arty so that you don’t need to build your own, which I am sure is not how the game was designed to be played.
Mounted Crossbowmen are no longer available until the High era, when infantry Crossbowmen become available.
I reduced the building requirements of the Bulgarian Brigands some, and raised it some for the Trebizond Archers.
I have reduced the reload time of the Crossbow, Handgun and Arquebus by 33%. I don’t think that the current settings take into account the time it takes to aim your shot, but only look at the difference in time to work the mechanics of the bow and crossbow. I know that some players swear by the Crossbow, but in my experience the slow reload time renders them almost useless. To offset this some, I have reduced the range of the Crossbow and Arbalest by about 20%. The crossbow bolt was powerful, but it did not have the range of the short bow and longbow, respectively.
Graphics changes:
I have changed the look of some of the units to reflect the changes made to their stats and abilities. The Nizari now look armoured, and have lost their bows. The Janissary Bowmen look like the Infantry, and the Infantry look like Gothic Sergeants. The Lancers and Gothic Knights have gained shields, the High Royal Knights, Knights Santiago and Knights Hospitaller have gained melee weapons, the Khwarazmian Cavalry have gained both a shield and a melee weapon while the Ottoman Sipahi and Kataphraktoi have had their looks completely overhauled. The crossbow can now be seen on Mounted Crossbowmen when they are standing, walking and running, while their sword is now visible when charging and dying, and the weapon and shield now appear in opposite hands of the all cavalry units which have shields.
A huge thank-you goes out to Lord Crazy and Barocca, whose mods and threads allowed me to figure out how the graphics system works. I probably spent 24 hrs on these graphics changes, so if you think it’s an improvement when a knight exchanges his lance for a sword to melee with, please take a moment to say so in the mod thread.
Well, that’s it for now and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments.
Wes
v 1.3: For God and Country
is now available here (http://wes.apolyton.net/Medmod_IV_1.3.zip) . The readme is also available here (http://wes.apolyton.net/Readme.doc) .
I have made quite a number of changes since the 1.2 beta release.
1)Eliminated the req. of a Port for the Brothel. This leaves only the Tavern as a requirement.
2)Reduced the happiness from Watch Towers and Border Forts by 10 points, to 10 and 20, respectively.
3)Added additional req.s for Merchant-class buildings, so that the AI would not build the more advanced structures in provinces where it is not equitable.
4)Increased the priority of buildings for many of the AI types, in order to try and get them to develop their provinces better.
5)Increased the priority of ships in an effort to get the AIs to develop more trade routes.
6)Reduced the probability of mercenaries appearing, and also the number of units that could become mercenaries.
7)Fixed all the cavalry graphics so that units with both a weapon and a shield appear to hold them in opposite hands.
7b)Added the Crossbow to the Mounted Crossbowman while he is standing, walking and running.
8)Eliminated the possibility of Catholic units appearing in Orthodox and Muslim rebellions, at least for those units I caught.
9)Added Religious Fanatics and Foot Knights to the list of units that can appear in Crusades.
10)Adjusted the stats for the Feudal and Chivalric Sergeants so that the Chivalric unit is clearly better.
11)Mounted Crossbowmen cannot appear until the high era, when infantry crossbows appear.
12)Elite units, generally those requiring a Citadel or Fortress to build, now take two turns to build. This is both to lessen the impact of one highly developed province and to make these units easier to finance, since their cost is now spread out over two turns.
13)The spreadsheet's unit list has been re-arranged some, and separate linked pages have been added for each major faction.
Below is a paste of the Readme.doc.
When a few days have passed to catch any remaining bugs, or to make any needed adjustments, I will send the file in for posting here at the org, so I need a few people to try this mod out and let me know what you think. Enjoy.
Main Readme for the Medieval Mod IV for Total War
V 1.3: For God and Country
By Wes Whitaker (email address, webpage)
My aim with this mod, as it has been with my other Medieval mods for Call-to-Power I and II and Civilization III (which I never released), is to correct any errors which may have slipped by the designers, even out those settings and stats which seem unbalanced, and to add the things which I believe will increase players’ enjoyment of the game.
These modifications are the results of playing the game, listening to player posts in the mod threads, and scanning the .com, .org and assembly forums to see what people were saying about the game, both good and bad. It is not hard to figure out why the criticisms should be noted, but I also note when people repeatedly rave about one particular feature of a unit, since this is often an indication of something that the designers missed when they were balancing the game before shipping. Thus you may find out that your favorite unit is not so powerful anymore.
First of all, thanks to Lord Crazy, Barocca and the other guys who offered help on the .org forums. Even though I wasn’t registered at the time, you helped me understand how the text and graphics files were set up and why I kept getting those strange error messages. The text files aren’t so bad once you get used to them, but I had never seen ones built upon tab spaces before.
The units’ spreadsheet is a heavily modified version of Yas’ file available from the .org site. I have color-coded it for easier viewing, and marked in yellow background where I have made changes to unit abilities from the 1.1 patch. I originally had my changes to unit costs and upkeep, and faction and region bonuses marked as well, but eventually I had made so many changes that I decided to clear those out and simply notify you here to refer to the spreadsheet as needed for the changes. I would recommend that you do as I have done and print out the first two pages of the sheet, as shown in the Excel Print Preview option.
Note: You will really want to take time to read the red-tabbed comments in the spreadsheet, especially the one near the top of the first column which explains the faction color scheme. They often go into detail explaining individual changes that I made. You can ignore any green tabs you may see, depending upon your Excel settings. PLEASE make use of this chart, or you will probably not understand some of the changes that have been made.
The building spreadsheet is by AFlorin, which I also obtained from the .org site, and is modified in a similar manner to the unit sheet.
Notes to mod-makers:
Unit text explanations: I managed to clean up the notes at the top of the units’ text, and then I made a new Word file with this info. As a mod-maker, this alone would make the mod worth downloading even if you don’t intend to play with it. You can paste the cleaned-up units’ text notes over the ones in your file without causing any problems, or you can use the Word file.
File errors noted: Cordoba is misspelled Cordova in the unit file, Friesland is misspelled Freisland, Northumbria as North_umbria. Also, the game will not recognize more than one region per unit for a valor bonus, just as it will not recognize more than one faction for a unit discount, or more than one unit per region. Thus, for example, the second region listed for the Camel Archers will be ignored, as will the second unit tied to Syria. In addition, the Varangian Guard and Longboat are not available in the late age, and several of the more advanced Catholic units may appear in Orthodox revolts.
Now, on to the good stuff…
Installation:
Simply unzip the mod into the “Medieval- Total War” folder, and click “yes to all” regarding the overwriting of files. This readme and the spreadsheet will be placed in that folder, as will an Originals.zip file, which you can unzip into the Medieval- Total War folder just like you did for the mod in order to “uninstall” the mod.
Note: You must have the “Keep file pathways” option checked in order for the mod to install properly.
Color Scheme:
General changes, file references and acknowledgements, factions, buildings, ships, spearmen, infantry, cavalry, missiles, agents.
Building and General changes:
I have increased the priority of buildings for many of the faction types. This was done because the AIs rarely seemed to improve their provinces, and were solely dedicated to ransacking their neighbors’ land. I have also increased the priority of ships, in order to get the AI to trade more.
Watch Towers and Border Forts now increase happiness by 10 and 20 percent, respectively, down from 20 and 30 percent. I felt that the old settings were too high, especially for the cost.
Merchants now require a Port, Merchant Guilds now require a Shipwright, and Master Merchants require a Dockyard. This was done to keep the AIs from building higher-level merchants in provinces where they were probably not equitable.
Brothel: I removed the Castle as the second requirement to build a Brothel. As far as gameplay, you need a lot of Spies for defense and loyalty, and it killed me to have to devote one of my always few Castles to making something like Spies.
I removed the requirement of a Cannon Foundry for building a Shipbuilders Guild. I don’t know who stuck that in there at the last moment, but it sure caused plenty of confusion. Anyway, its deletion squares it with the building chart and gets rid of the War Galley incompatibility.
Palaces: The Marshals Palace now requires a Fortress to build. I think the current setting is another error (Castle12 instead of Castle13). Also, since palaces more advanced than a Royal Palace are now unique, I have substituted the Royal Palace in place of the more advanced palaces in the requirements’ list. This way, you may have more than one city eligible to build these improvements.
The Military Academy now has different requirements, since the Turks would seem to need more than one of them, and the previous requirements were unique. Therefore, I have changed them to a Royal Palace and Citadel for the Christians, and a Royal Palace, Castle and Ribat for the Muslims.
Town and County Militia: I essentially moved these structures up one level in the building chart, with requiring a Castle and Citadel now required for the Town Militia and County Militia, respectively. This will result in Halberdiers and Pikemen being available earlier.
Time and cost reductions: The time to build the troop producers, from Forts to Fortresses, has been reduced by 25%. The cost of the Citadel and Fortress, the time to produce the Tavern and Brothel, and the cost and/or time of some of the other high-level structures has been reduced as well.
Finally, I reduced the cost of improving Farmland by 80% to 2,000. I use a 20 yr ROI (return on investment) as a guide, and it seems that the designers did too from the mine costs, and there is no province that meets this criterion for the 80% improvement under normal circumstances.
As noted earlier, I have made dozens of changes to the settings for faction and region bonuses, in an effort to improve gameplay, boost weak factions and to give most units a special region. I have also deleted region bonuses from units which could only be built in one region (Swiss Armoured Pikemen, Highland Clansmen and Gallowglasses).
The chances of mercenaries appearing has been greatly reduced, along with the number of units available as mercenaries, eliminating most all of the units more powerful than Feudal Men-at-Arms and Mamluk Horse Archers, except for Pikemen, and eliminating most of the one-faction units like Longbowmen and Italian Infantry (please see the spreadsheet for details). I did this because it was simply too easy to hire an overwhelming force early in the game by going on a merc “shopping spree”.
I also found that many Catholic units were subject to appear in Orthodox rebellions, and eliminated this possibility.
Starting positions: These have been adjusted to account for the changes to unit availability and size, and to reduce the double-strength Muslim units to standard size. I have also added a Goldmine to the Sinai province (based upon a post I read and to make this poor province more valuable), corrected some errors in the building lists and added a building or two to some provinces in the Late era. The only province I made major changes to was Sweden, and that was just to make this valuable province barely decent (it only had an Inn). I also adjusted the gathering point for agents in Palestine so that they are not obscured by the castle.
The Hungarians have been substituted for the Danes as a major faction in the High and Late periods. With the emergence of the Russians and Golden Horde, the avenues for Danish expansion are greatly reduced, and I thought it would be interesting to have a chance to play as what was a major eastern European power at this time, especially with the opportunities to expand into what were once Byzantine provinces to the south and east. Note: If you want to reverse this change, it is very quick and easy to do so. Simply go into the campmap/startpos folder, and find the “Active Factions” section (circa line 1290) in the High and Late files, and change the setting FT_MINOR back to FT_MAJOR for the Danes, and vice versa for the Hungarians below.
I decided that the best way to present the unit changes made would be to group them by category rather than by type of change, since I think this is how I would remember them if I were reading this for the first time. So, here goes…
Strategic Agents:
I only corrected a few errors with faction bonuses in this section, other than the change to the Spy’s building requirements which was explained in the Building’s section. The Poles were given a bonus for producing Orthodox Priests and Bishops; I felt that the Russians could make better use of it. I also switched the bonus for Inquisitors and Grand Inquisitors from the Aragonese to the Spanish. I am not sure if this was a bug, but it seemed to fit better.
Spearmen and Infantry:
Almughavars are now available at Inns all around the Mediterranean.
Kerns now fit their description as Irish peasantry, with 100 men per unit, but lower offensive stats.
Peasants and Urban Militia are now much cheaper to build and support, which puts them in line statistically with other infantry units.
I adjusted the stats for Feudal and Chivalric Sergeants to make the Chivalric unit clearly superior to the Feudal.
Swiss Pikemen, Armoured Pikemen and Halberdiers are now only available to those factions who can build regular Pikemen and Halberdiers.
Chivalric and Gothic Foot Knights: These units are now available as standard infantry units, with a Swordsmith replacing the HorseBreeder in the requirements’ list. This is based upon a post by Long John Jr., I believe, in which he described how knights fought more and more on foot after the development of weapons like the crossbow, halberd and pike. This adds some late-era infantry to the game where there was none before. I also added a feature so that these two units, along with Hospitaller and Feudal Foot Knights, may be created when a Crusade is launched. The Feudal Foot are available in the Early era, the Chivalric in the High and Late eras, and the Gothic and Hospitaller in the Late era.
Gothic Sergeants: I made a lot of changes to these guys, most notably the increase from 60 to 100 men per unit, with an accompanying increase in cost, and the requirements of a Baronial Court and a Master Spearmaker to produce. I also made them disciplined and with decent honor, which fits in with their description. Also, they can now be built by the Danes, Poles and Hungarians. These factions need help in the late game. From what I can tell, the Poles and Huns were the 12th and 13th factions, and certainly the Poles had the least amount of effort among the player-available factions put into their unit tree. Maybe this will help some.
Byzantine units: Pikemen are now available to the Byzantines. Since they are not now available until the late era, I believe it is ok for the Byzantines to have access to them, and with their knowledge of Greek history and the Phalanx they would certainly have been able to develop this unit had they wanted to do so. The Byzantines were already able to build all of the Town Watch improvements, even though none gave them any units past Urban Militia, so I believe this was another one of those last-minute changes, perhaps due to the “era segregation” bug in the original release.
I have generally reduced the cost and especially the upkeep of the Byzantine units. An exception is the Byzantine Infantry, whom I have reduced from 100 men to 60 per unit while keeping the costs about the same. I also increased the melee from 2 to 3, and gave this disciplined unit decent honor. These changes were made partially based upon the posts of players on the Assembly site, my own experiences, and the unit settings. I believe that this unit was raised from 60 to 100 men at the last moment, based upon the other unit settings which were apparently not adjusted to reflect the manpower change. I assume this was done to compensate for the fact that the Byzantines didn’t have a spear unit more powerful than common Spearmen. However, I always seem to get incredible generals when playing the Byzantines, which makes the spearmen competitive until the late game when Pikemen now become available.
Muslim units: I have adjusted many of the Muslim units, both infantry and cavalry, since I found that the units’ descriptions consistently did not match their stats and abilities.
Muwahid Foot: I increased the men in this unit from 60 to 100, which is what I believe it was always meant to be based upon the other unit costs and stats.
Almohad Urban Militia now require more buildings.
Nizari are now the equivalent of Chivalric Men-at-Arms, in order to give the Egyptians a heavy infantry unit equal to the Almohad Urban Militia and Chivalric Men-at-Arms, but they lose their bows.
Futuwwa are now available to the Almohads and Egyptians, not the Turks, and are a more balanced unit offensively and defensively in order to make it comparable with Ottoman Infantry.
The Janissary units have been completely overhauled. The Heavy Infantry keeps its role as assault troops, but its stats have been increased to match those of Foot Knights. The Bowmen have been changed to assume the role the Infantry had earlier- that of bow-wielding infantry, but now equal to Chivalric Men-at-Arms, while the Infantry are now heavy Spearmen equal to Gothic Sergeants. Before, I could not see why one would choose to build the Bowmen over Turcomen Foot; this new arrangement gives them each a distinct role.
Finally, most elite units, both infantry and cavalry, take two turns to build now. This will keep someone from being able to flood the game with elite units from a single province, and will also make the construction of these units easier to finance, since their cost will be spread over two turns. Please see the spreadsheet for details.
Cavalry:
Polish Retainers can now be produced in all Polish provinces.
Teutonic Sergeants are now available as a standard light cavalry unit in addition to a Crusader unit, and Gothic Knights and Teutonic Sergeants are now also available to the Danes, Poles and Hungarians.
Horse Archers can now reload on the move.
Lithuanian Cavalry: I don’t know why the building requirements for a light cavalry unit which has lower stats than a Polish Retainer included a level 4 HorseBreeder and a level 3 Armourer and Swordsmith. Anyway, I have increased the melee to 3, and reduced the building requirements to a level 2 HorseBreeder, Armourer and Swordsmith, and raised the price to bring it in line with comparable units. The developers may have tried to compensate for the building requirements by making the unit cheap, but what use is that if the unit is hopelessly outclassed by the time it is available, if it ever is in those three provinces.
Sipahi of the Porte: I increased the number of men in this unit from 20 to 40, which put it in line with its production and support costs, and matched the men in the Kataphraktoi and Boyar units.
Armenian Heavy Cavalry have lost the Heavy in their name, and are now a light cavalry unit available to the Byzantines and Egyptians as well as the Turks, where it helps fill out their unit trees, and can be found all over Asia Minor.
Kataphraktoi and Ottoman Sipahi now wield armour-piercing axes and shields as well as lances, and sport a new look.
Ghulam Cavalry are now equivalent to Feudal Knights.
Khwarazmian Cavalry are now only available to the Almohads and Egyptians, and have had their attack raised and a shield added in order to make them a viable heavy unit for the late game.
Missile units:
Artillery can no longer be mercenary units. I just can’t see groups of guys hauling Catapults around from province to province, and you can usually hire enough merc arty so that you don’t need to build your own, which I am sure is not how the game was designed to be played.
Mounted Crossbowmen are no longer available until the High era, when infantry Crossbowmen become available.
I reduced the building requirements of the Bulgarian Brigands some, and raised it some for the Trebizond Archers.
I have reduced the reload time of the Crossbow, Handgun and Arquebus by 33%. I don’t think that the current settings take into account the time it takes to aim your shot, but only look at the difference in time to work the mechanics of the bow and crossbow. I know that some players swear by the Crossbow, but in my experience the slow reload time renders them almost useless. To offset this some, I have reduced the range of the Crossbow and Arbalest by about 20%. The crossbow bolt was powerful, but it did not have the range of the short bow and longbow, respectively.
Graphics changes:
I have changed the look of some of the units to reflect the changes made to their stats and abilities. The Nizari now look armoured, and have lost their bows. The Janissary Bowmen look like the Infantry, and the Infantry look like Gothic Sergeants. The Lancers and Gothic Knights have gained shields, the High Royal Knights, Knights Santiago and Knights Hospitaller have gained melee weapons, the Khwarazmian Cavalry have gained both a shield and a melee weapon while the Ottoman Sipahi and Kataphraktoi have had their looks completely overhauled. The crossbow can now be seen on Mounted Crossbowmen when they are standing, walking and running, while their sword is now visible when charging and dying, and the weapon and shield now appear in opposite hands of the all cavalry units which have shields.
A huge thank-you goes out to Lord Crazy and Barocca, whose mods and threads allowed me to figure out how the graphics system works. I probably spent 24 hrs on these graphics changes, so if you think it’s an improvement when a knight exchanges his lance for a sword to melee with, please take a moment to say so in the mod thread.
Well, that’s it for now and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments.
Wes