Suggest improvements in realism of unit stats

[econ21]

I have been playing this game (SP) since it came out and think it is amazing, both as a fun strategy game but also, in the tactical battles, as one of the best engines for a computer historical wargame. Playing around with the unit stats text file and then trying WesW's mod, I've become interested in modding the unit stats to make them a little more historical. I am hoping to join up with WesW in this work, as he's already done a lot on this. I've read through the topic headings in the dungeon and what threads I could identify as relevant, and I don't think what I'm proposing is made redundant by the other work going on, although obviously I can learn alot from the work of Lord Krazy and other veteran modders

What I am proposing is similar to what Ray Schroeder did some time back with his "ultimate equipment file" to the Panzer General games. That is to say, he tweaked the unit stats to get rid of some errors, inconsistencies, inaccuracies and mispricing. He ended up delivering a simple file that improved the game a little but left it essentially the same. That's what I propose doing - basically I like MTW battles fine as they are in terms of balance etc and just want to tweak them. I don't want to debate whether it makes sense to talk about realism in a game like MTW because, as I say, there is no other computer historical wargame that can compete with it and I find it engrossing because it has some historical realism or flavour to it (a fantasy game would not appeal to the same extent).

Now, is it worth tweaking the stats? Well, to give one well-known example: the lower charge bonus of the Templars (4 compared to 8 for other order knight) because CA artists drew them with swords not lances. CA have explicitly said that they were making a fun strategy game, not a historical wargame. But they kindly left the stats tweakable so why not tweak them a little?

What I would like to do in this thread is to encourage people to suggest changes in the unit stats that make them more realistic or at least more internally consistent. I envisage two products: one, a minimalist set of changes that works only with the existing units and tweaks their stats; another, more ambitious mod that adds new units and maybe drops others.

Beyond tweaks, there are a number of "big" issues about units that I want to think about - for example, the relative effectiveness of the different missiles; the unit sizes (40 vs 60 vs 100); the costing of units; what should be "unique" about each faction; what should differentiate units in the three eras. My first reaction is to use the unit sizes to support "realistic" army compositions - so 40 will be for rare or elite units; 100 for common ones - and to price strictly on gameplay effectiveness rather than realism per se. I might experiment with points costs with a possibly optional "availability" factor, to encourage use of particular historically favoured units for some factions.

The overall aim will be to create a set of unit stats that produces a game recognisably like the official one but hopefully a little more realistic or at least consistent. My focus will be strictly SP, trying to make all the major factions playable but by no means equal or balanced (Poles should be left hard and early Byzantines easy, for example), while keeping the AI factions interesting (this could be the hard part). However, I suspect MP players may have the best feel for the relative effectiveness of units in the game.

The kind of things I'd like to people to post are things like:
(a) logic points "it does not make sense that lancers are faster than gothic knights with the same armour"
or
(b) historical points "English archers fired an average of 100 arrows per man at Crecy"; cites would be nice but not essential - we're aiming for a fun game, not a scholarly product.
or
© gameplay points - this unit Y is pointless because it is much better to build X; or this unit is way too cheap or too strong etc.

Lots of this stuff has been chewed over elsewhere, so a mention of where or a link would be nice. (I'll review the TOC and Kocmoc's MP stats).

I'll keep track of suggestions and acknowledge any that I adopt. I will ultimately post the complete mod in the downloads section. As I say, this work may end up dovetailing with WesW's med mods as I really admire his work on MTW and CTP2, and he's looking for mod partners.

I'll make a second post with a short example of the kind of thing I'd like to see in this thread, though other kinds of contribution are welcome. Thanks for reading and please post your pet peeve

[econ21]

To start the ball rolling, let's look at the Irish rebels. I found a nice article on the web:
http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armies/IV58.html

From this article, I would conclude:

(1) the game does pretty well modelling the Irish rebels; the Gallowglass and kerns are there and seem pretty historical in their role.

(2) there is a case for giving the rebels some jinette-like cavalry. Arguably, with worse stats - this would be for the more ambitious mod.

(3) The Gallowglasses should have axes, rather than two-handed swords but this is more of a cosmetic appearance point; they would still be AP. There is a case for increasing their morale (even with the +1 honour bonus) as they were renown among the English. There may be a case for upping the armour slightly as some had mail. The obvious comparator unit is the Vikings. Having them recruitable by all factions, but only in Ireland seems fine.

(4) The kerns stats look good, especially making them fast. I would want to review the low defence (-3) relative to, say, urban militia (0) as the kerns were professionals. There seems no reason to encourage a faction to build these units though.

More generally, on the Irish, experience playing the game makes me wonder whether the Gallowglass are not overpowered - arguably the best flankers in the game. I would be inclined to follow WesW and lower the charge bonus, also review the cost. I would generally want the English player to prefer deploying men-at-arms to Gallowglasses, but may be to consider using the Gallowglass on occasion (eg in the desert, where the lower armour does not matter so much?).

Anyway, that's the kind of thing I am thinking off. Obviously, any revisions are inter-related - what the kerns defence is depends on what other units defences are etc - but I think we can still make comparisons without getting too specific on precise stats. I know even a one point change in unit stat can make a really big difference in the game (for att/def, O think it leads to a 12% change in the kill chance).

[Elmo]

Simon

Speaking of the Irish...

On page 84 in Medieval Warfare there is a picture of a barefoot man with an axe and this caption:

"Irishmen, wrote Gerald of Wales in 1188, always carry an axe and are all too ready to use it. This 13th century English representation of a barefoot Irish axeman reflects the view, widely held from the 12th century onwards, that the Irish, like the Scots and Welsh, went 'naked' into battle. Their lack of armour left them so vulnerable to archery that they rarely got close enough to use the dreaded axe."

Take it for what it's worth.

Elmo

[cugel]

Well, LK has made a big start on this by modding his additional units There are now regional variations on units available for most of the factions. So, maybe you should have a look at these before changing the standard unit's stats. Generally, CA made these units with playbalance in mind. They wanted each faction to have units to fit into their "rock - paper - sissors" approach to warfare, i.e. an anti-cavalry spear unit, a heavy cavalry unit or two, a medium-light cavalry, a militia unit, etc. They also tended to try and make these units serve a distinct function. None of this is historical. I don't know how we would decide in the absence of much historical research what values these units should have in comparison with each other. Based on descriptions from historical texts? These tend to be rather general. How can these be the basis for a determination about whether a certain cavalry should have a 3 or 4 charge bonus? It all comes down to differing opinions about emphasis.

That said, I modded the game to even out the knight Templar's charge bonus. It's ridiculous to have it be any different from the other crusader knights.

[econ21]

Cugel,

I will definitely look at LKs work - I read his recent thread on new units with interest but decided it did not make my project redundant since his emphasis seemed to be not on historical accuracy of existing units but incorporating people's favoured new units - there was also some comment that the new units tended to outperform the old. You are right it is hard to infer stats from history and that ultimately we will need judgement. I am quite happy with the playbalance between the combat arms (spears vs arrows vs horse vs sword) as it is, so I'll just be tweaking around the existing stats - not fundamentally realigning them (for reference, I think the patch fundamentally realigned them, but in a subtle and plausible way).

What we can do is impose some consistency, the Templars being an obvious case. I'd start with weapons and armour, which are easiest to sort out, although we already can see that there may be controversies, eg were the Gallowglasses naked? (Personally, I doubt it). I'd try to relate them systematically to the stats, beginning by working out the implicit relation as now. I think this is what WesW has been doing when he says he's being looking at patterns in the stats.

The soft intangible factors are tricky. The current morale ratings presumably reflect CAs way of quantifying this and seem pretty systematic. We could match them up with the De Bellis Multidinus wargame rules categorisation of superior where units were viewed by their contemporaries as being of above average effectiveness or efficiency, ordinary and inferior. I interpret up morale=4 to superior non-elite troops eg Vikings; 2=ordinary and 0=inferior. 6 could be for "elite" soldiers, eg VG, that are the best of their kind and 8 for knights/fanatics. So based on my very limited reading about the Irish, I'd rate Gallowglasses as 4 rather than the 0+2(province bonus) as is. I'd leave kerns at 0 and make Irish horse 0 also.

Is such a project worthwhile? Personally, I find thinking about these issues a fun and interesting exercise in itself. In addition, I like MTW because I can relate it to history, so improving that fit would be small bonus.

I think I'm going to start with the Catholics, particularly English, as I am most familiar with those. The first issues I am grappingly with are the distinction between the different kind of spears (what are "spearmen" vs "feudal sergeants" vs "chivalric"?) and the contrast with sword-armed "men-at-arms". Billmen, longbowmen, knights, hobilars, mounted sergeants etc seem to correspond to something recognisable from historical accounts but I need to think about the other foot. To begin with, I'd see the difference between the various other foot partly in terms of kit (weapons+armour) and perhaps training /professionalism, both of which I guess evolved over time, but how precisely to relate this to the units in the game is my current problem.

[Lord Krazy]

Hi Simon,
I understand what you are saying with regards
to putting another view of how the historical
element of the stats should work.
i.e. change them http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

From reading your post I'v noticed you have a few misconceptions on how the game works
and how I work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
All to your advantage http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif


Quote[/b] ]Now, is it worth tweaking the stats? Well, to give one well-known example: the lower charge bonus of the Templars (4 compared to 8 for other order knight) because CA artists drew them with swords not lances.

this is not the case.
the only units that have weapons
drawn on them are the archers
I have modded them giving them a lance and sword.
Musket with bayonet has been added
It's more versatile than you think.


Quote[/b] ]I will definitely look at LKs work - I read his recent thread on new units with interest but decided it did not make my project redundant since his emphasis seemed to be not on historical accuracy of existing units but incorporating people's favoured new units - there was also some comment that the new units tended to outperform the old

I never said I did not want to make historical units.
I just said they did not have to be.
We would prefer if they were but
a little imagination never hurt http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Your project is not redundant by what we do
I think they would compliment each other.

The reason the units are unbalanced
is because they are not finished.
What they lack at the moment is what you want to do.

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Elmo]

Simon wrote:

"...I'd start with weapons and armour, which are easiest to sort out, although we already can see that there may be controversies, eg were the Gallowglasses naked? (Personally, I doubt it)...."

I agree they weren't 'naked'. The article you linked to makes it clear that the Gallowglass' were well armored. It also makes it clear that the Kerns were not and that is what gave them their relative speed.

The caption I quoted was from 1188 so it isn't relevant to the Gallowglass' because they didn't appear in Ireland until 1259.

Elmo

[econ21]

OK, after setting up stall, I have now had a chance to look a little more at what this "project" entails.

A quick trawl around on the internet turned up a set of wargame rules for miniatures, De Bellis Multidinus or some such, which looks an excellent resource - especially in terms of army list for the period (it has hundreds). To be honest, finding this reaffirmed my belief in the value of tweaking MTW, as the MTW seems a much better system for wargaming historical battles than DBM. (Combat resolution in DBM works by a rock-scissors-paste type assessment of different categories of units such as "blades" or "spears" or "knights" or "bows", some of which will be familar to MTW players, others (hordes, warbands, psioli, auxilia etc seem less well defined). But to avoid book keeping etc it does not allow stats to differentiate as much as they can in MTW; basically units are either superior, ordinary, inferior or "fast"; no further differentiation in arms or equipment). If anyone can recommend a more detailed set of wargame rules that allows for explicit modelling of armour and more types of weapons, I'd be interested.

However, I will note that some of the DBM army lists imply that MTW may be fundamentally wrong on some points - eg, I fear to say this, but I could not find anything resembling kataphractoi or "Byzantine infantry" in our period; also I got the impression that MTW may promote overuse of spears. These are all just impressions and I'll research them more.

The other thing I've done is look at the internal logic of the armour stats, as they seem the most "objectively" determined, and also peaked at the defence ones. This was informed by the strategy guide which usefully tells you the armour of each unit.

The good news is that my preliminary conclusion is that the armour stats are almost 100% internally consistent. Basically it seems to be:
Armour =
0 for no armour
+ 1 for light armour
+ 2 for mail
+ 3 for heavy mail/half plate
+4 for half plate/three-quarter plate
+5 for full plate
Plus for mounted units:
+1 for unarmoured mount
+2 for barded horse
+ 3 for fully armoured horse

About the only potential for confusion is the armour with the +4 rating - for foot, it seemed to be half-plate, as opposed to three-quarter plate; for cav, "heavy mail". But there were very few units with that rating and they were plausible.

I got confused about the shields (the strategy guide includes them in the reported armour ratings, but the txt file does not), but am coming to the conclusion that they are not factored into either the armour or defence rating, but presumably enters into combat as a modifier.

The bad news is that the relation between armour and defence seems really complicated. Why is an unarmoured feudal sergeant armour 1 but defence -1 whereas a mailed Chivalric one is 3 in both stats? Beats me - is it a reflection of the rise of professionalism? a balance against the much stronger knights in the Chivalric period? For foot, swords seem to be roughly def=armour-1; spears sometimes roughly def=armour; halberds often def=armour+1 for some reason. For horse, there is less variation but it is still not transparent. My initial impression is that there is quite a lot of scope for "fudge" factors in determining the defence rating. My instinct would be to try to systematise it by referring to weapons and troop "quality" (proxied by morale) but it would be nice to know more about CA's reasoning before leaping in.

Next thing I'll look at is the patterns in the charge and melee factors, relating them to weapons and troop morale. I'll also start researching the distinction between "sergeants" and men-at-arms.

[ick_of_pick]

I accually changed most of the units in my game to make them historically more accurate and significantly more fun to play, the first time i tried this i loved it... it was much better then the original. my computer has trouble uploading, but if you give me your e-mail addresses, i can send you a copy... you can then tell me what needs to be changed and all...

so far the changes are-

Islamic heavy cavalry is now heavy cavalry... khwarazmiams have been improved, they are very similar to order knights now.
Ghulams and ghulam bodyguards are much better, ghulams are like average heavy cavalry...ghulam bodyguards are like royal knights but they have less armour and defense and more melee.
Ghazi are now more crazy and suicidal, they are better in combat, but they still get whacked like monkeys so you still gotta be careful..
Nizaris are a tad tougher
J.H.I. are just a bit tougher...very difficult to tell past 0 valour though...
other jannisarries are bit better, more expensive.

Islamic horse archers are much better now, they were pretty useless before and took alot of micro manegment...

Mamluks are now the true egyptian elite... they are more expensive, and, more deadly...

Booms (ship) are slightly better, still hard to tell though...

siphis of the porte and ottoman siphi are much better...
Orthodox factions:

Boyars are a bit cheaper...they were kinda expensive for what you got...

Kataphrakoi are now pound for pound the hardest hitting cavalry in the game. They have a MASSIVE amount of armour and defence, high melee, and have a charge only a moron would stand against. The downside: They are very, very expensive, and dont even bother using them in the desert...theyre worse then bad there...lol. They get tired fast, and are still pretty slow, though not as slow...
they now need the highest horse breeder and armourer

Pronoiai allegion now have a better charge and are more expensive.

Gun galleys are now better as well.

Catholic factions: might have made some infantry changes, i cant remember though...

Knights Templar are now very good at melee and have more honor, considering they were the most powerful of the order knights...

Heavy cavalry was fine the way it was... they still get some of the best.

mongol units are now MUCH better, fear the horde lol

sorry i couldnt remember the exact changes

thats it, i might have made some more but i cant remember.
if you have any questions or concerns just reply to this post or e-mail me at rickeshoo@hotmail.com

thanx