View Full Version : The Caravel Mod
Greetings fellow Medieval Total War fans and orgahs and my best wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2011 :)
The Caravel mod is a modification for Medieval Total War VI v2.1 i've made with the help of friends and fellow orgahs that works in both domination and GA for the early period only of the main Medieval campaign, and is hosted with the kind permission of TosaInu here at the org, that thankfully provide the space for it.
You can download the mod here:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=163&id=6586
or follow the Download link in my signature.
Note: the latest version is version 3.3; for your enjoyment be sure to have this, as its better than the previous ones in every way.
Please also check out further down the thread:
-Caravel Mod game settings, how the mod is reccomended for play
-Information about the mod, its key concept(s) and gameplay
-Installing the mod, with detailed instructions how to
-Suggested iron-man rules and play modes; ways to spice up the game
and
-Credits, a whole hearted and well deserved thanks to all having contributed and kindly interested
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5205/5722491617_92b4513c44.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5722491617/)
Caravel Mod Game Settings
The mod was made and playtested with the following in mind, and it is strongly suggested/reccomended, for your own enjoyment, that anyone who'd be kindly interested to try it, to play thus:
1. Add the -ian and then the -loyalty:130 and the -green_generals lines to your MTW shortcut
(for instructions how to do this see here:
1. Make a shortcut of you MTW exe (if you don't use one)
2. Then right click the short cut and select "Properties". This will show you among other things the target box of the exe shortcut. Put then your cursor to the target box. Leave the text there as is, and also leave one space.
3. Then type: -ian
The -ian command line allows you to change factions mid game. It also allows you to add further commands, and zoom in and out of the battle field without limits on the camera angle, which is good for a "close to the action" feel as well as for screenshots. Every faction is represented by a number of your keyboard.
Factions are:
1. Rebels
2. Almohads
3. Byzantines
4. Danes
5. Egyptians
6. English
7. French
8. Germans
9. Italians
0. Polish
Shift+1. Russians
Shift+2. Spanish
Shift+3. Turks
Shift+4. Aragonese
Shift+6. Golden Horde (after they appear)
Shift+7. Hungarians
Shift+9. Pope
Shift+0. Sicilians
Furthermore, and after leaving a space for -ian after each, you add the following two command lines:
-loyalty:130
-green_generals
The loyalty bit makes the AI keep 130 loyalty in all his provinces at all times, This practically means that he is keeping small garrisons in them, and hence his long terms devlopment is much safer from rebellions civil wars and his attacks more prudent rather than recklessly opportunistic
The green_generals makes dead generals being replaced by the game engine by new statistically inferior versions; hence you cannot cultivate super generals over a long campaign. It also downgardes and changes their traits. or here:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?31445-A-Beginners-Guide-to-Medieval-Total-War
Chapter: 5.5 Cheat codes and command lines).
2. Choose either huge or default unit setting, hard (or expert) difficulty
(unit settings can be chosen from: Main Game Menu\Options\Performance and sroll the unit size bar to huge or leave it to default).
NOTE: While the choice is yours, my personal reccomendation is huge; the mod was conceived and received most of the playtesting with huge. Default was also playtested however and works just as well.
3. In the campaign/era menu, choose either "CRVL (huge)" campaign if you have set unit size to huge, or "CRVL (default)" campaign if you have set unit size to default.
NOTE: It is important to choose the right campaign as economics have been customised for unit size. If your unit size choice and Caravel campaign do not match, you'll get either too much or too little money available in the campaign.
4. Turn the battle clock off
(Clock can be closed from: Main Game Menu\Options\Game Options and tick the battle clock box off - found at the bottom).
All these settings make considerable difference and so please, for your enjoyment, remember to implement them. You can read more about their significance in the spoiler below:
-The huge unit settings are calibrated with the "CRVL (huge)" campaign income provinces' for good short and long term campaign pace and AI behaviour. They give more spectacular and tactically edgy battles that require foresight, as there are less blocks available for the most part. Battles also tend to be less tedius (because of the lower amount of reinforcements due to the lower amount of stacks - as every stack has more troops in it in huge). Generally huge slows the battle pace allowing better control, puts a greater strain on resources in the campaign map, requiring more planning. Its downsize is that in the battle units may seem - at first at least - unwieldy and there there is less room to maneuver and hence less flank attacks etc. Essentially battlefield gameplay becomes a bit more strategic in huge.
-The default unit settings are calibrated with the "CRVL (default)" campaign income provinces' for good short and long term campaign pace and AI behaviour. They give a more action oriented campaign game, as armies replenish faster, but also more tedious battles as there are many stacks floating and battles become too long with many reinforcements. In the field, default means more room to maneuver, however this is more taxing on micromanagement skill, especially since match ups resolve quickly and there are lots of flanking moves from the enemy to counter as well as to do. Essentially battlefield gameplay becomes a bit more tactical in default.
-The loyalty:130 addition in the MTW exe shortcut is particularly crucial; without it, the (many) factions that are set to be expansionist AI personalities burn themselves out by rebellions as they don't pay attention to loyalty of their provinces, no matter how newly conquered(!), when they invade.
-The clock off makes the AI use sensible tactics rather than trying to beat you by the clock, which inconveniences him as he turns his back to the player to use the clock and that can turn to a rout.
-The green-generals makes the engine replace your generals at their deaths with statistically inferior men, so you cannot cultivate them for the entire duration of the game, that results in huge command stars generals that makes morale redundant as a gameplay element (also known as jedis = unroutable).
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2389/5723046058_2e8498d545.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5723046058/)
Mod Information (a short description of the mod's concept and gameplay)
Mod Concept
In a way you can think of The Caravel Mod as MTW's version of Jack Lusted's "Lands to Conquer" series of mods for RTW and M2TW. It is based on essentially the same concept ie maintain the vanilla feel and flavor and improve on it.
So the mod is not:
-a mod providing more factions, units or provinces than the vanilla game
-a mod featuring new graphics, icons, models, portraits, unit cards etc in other words it does not have any new aesthetic touches.
-a mod geared for impossible difficulty, although it is by far more challenging than the vanilla game
-a mod that is geared to make the game strictly historically accurate, although it improves on the historical plausibility of teh vanilla game in a number of ways
The mod is a comprehensive and complete (but by no means exhaustive) take in bringing out the potential of the vanilla game and make it shine. All gameplay concepts, art, features and attributes of the vanilla game have been maintained; the existing core game has been improved/optimised for SP (single player).
What the mod achieves in the campaign and the battlefield
Improvement and optimisation consisted of small but numerous (too many to meaningfully list) alterations and in the (heavily playtested and proven) combination thereof.
The results are more meaningful faction choices and so behaviour without losing in diversity, flavor or complexity. By improving stack composition, AI unit choices and choice priorities and helping the AI factions to regenerate more easily and quickly decent stacks (through meaningful building choices and dependencies), the battlefield experience is also (considerably at times) improved over vanilla.
Overpowered or underpowered vanilla units/weapons were tweaked (mildly to retain familiarity) accordingly in order for them to become units/weapons with clear battlefield roles ie having clear plusses and minuses, which the AI can recognise and use as such, and so put them to good use on the battlefield.
Battlefield gameplay was then enhanced on the basis of combined arms.
Combined arms basically means that you need to coordinate your units and your unit types (missiles/heavy-light-missile-cavs/melee infantry/light infantry/artillery) in order to win on the field of battle, rather than having units that can do everything themselves (can fulfil multiple roles too well) and singlehandendly (ie so strong that they make other units redundant, hence overpowered) carry the day. I drew on this account from my own TW singleplayer and multiplayer experiences as well as of other players'.
In order to make navigation of units and buildings that have been tweaked easy for players and the game intuitive to play, the text descriptions of units and buildings were changed to reflect their attributes and intended uses. hence what you read in the description is what you get.
AI battlefield use of certain units was also tweaked (through the available parameters in the files), like for example BG units, xbows/arbalesters and guns, to improve their performance at the hands of teh AI, with good results.
Basically, if you enjoy the vanilla game, but are tired of slaughtering armies of peasants and ballistas (or other low end units) with your lancers, or of the AI wasting good florins in buildings that cost much, take forever and train no units or have no other benefit for that faction or in that region (say master merchant in a landlocked province), or of Lithuanian cavalry having building requirements that rival those of Gothic Knights, or sick of winning the early game with mercenary dismounted Druzhinas then this is a mod you might want to try.
NOTE: all levels of difficulty start with 2000 flrs treasury. This is because 2000 flrs is the default treasury, and all AI factions, that is the factions that the player does not choose, revert back to it. This is pretty easy to assert, just start a campaign in vanilla and after the first turn switch to another faction (note: by use of -ian every faction is represented by a number in your keyboard - press the numbers to change factions; also use switch+number). What you'll see is that (any of) the AI faction is down to 2000 flrns as starting treasury. Hence, its only fair for the player to start at the same money level - if the AI can do it, we can(?) too ;)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3486/5723348856_7bc54d9d90.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5723348856/)
Installation (instructions on how to install the mod - installation made easier since v2.9 as now mod comes with a self extracting .rar)
The mod comes with an easy to use .rar self exctracting archive. You need to target it for exctraction in the main game folder ie wherever you have placed a clean (unmoded) install of MTW/VI v2.1. It also includes a read me file that provides installation instructions. These are reproduced here for your convenience:
In order to play the mod, you'll need to target the .rar archive that contains the Mod,
to extract itself to wherever your Main MTW game folder is.
The location of the main MTW game folder varies according to edition.
If you have the original game and the VI expansion patched to v2.1,
then your game will be in: C\Program Files\Total War\Medieval Total War
If you have the Gold edition, that includes combined the main game and the VI expansion and installs through DVD rom, then make sure the game version is patched to v2.1 (for some gold editions you need to download and install the v2.1 exe patch); for them the game will be in:C\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Medieval Total War
If you have installed the game in a custom location, then target The Caravel Mod.rar to extract itself there
You will be prompted if you want the files replaced (with those of the Mod), choose "Yes to all"
NOTE: the Loc folder that contains game text (for unit descriptions etc) has been modified for the english language only. If you are playing in another language edition you can re-install the game in English before you install the mod or if you are playing in an edition that uses another language only, you can try installing the mod save for the loc folder; although you will be missing all changed text - and there is lots of changed text that helps navigate the role of units - but if you can live with this ommission, that should work.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5016/5722490655_d5e6487ac5.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5722490655/)
Suggested iron man rules/modes of play (iron man rules/modes of play you could try that may perhaps enhance your gaming experience; also applicable to other mods and the vanilla version)
There are also a number of iron man rules/play modes that you could try, that certainly make the game more interesting and challenging imo:
1. You can prohibit yourself from manually razing buildings and disbanding units - the AI cannot do the same; instead he has to raid enemy cities by the autopillage automatic engine function and rid of overbudget troops by making war.
2. You can grant land titles only to those generals that are either of royal blood or are married to the royal family (via a princess) or are given office. Once a general has assumed a title (after being eligible) he cannot leave the province he governs unless his title is revoked or the province lost. This has benefits as, if you keep governors in their respective provinces they get traits from what you biuld in those provinces (builder, stweard etc), traits that can keep the population happy and also increase your output ;)
3. You can play a single ruler and once he is dead, switch (note:by use of -ian every faction is represented by a number in your keyboard - press the numbers to change factions; also use switch+number) to the youngest ruler of any other faction on the map. If more than one are the youngest you can choose. This allows for:
a) much better roleplaying
b) many challenging new starting positions for all factions as history is rewritten
c) constant challenge as you never have time enough to make a faction so large that the game becomes a chore, and you would have to fight the factions you helped to make very strong with other, weaker, factions.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5260/5723046230_48ba64426c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5723046230/)
Credits (a thanksgiving to all interested and also kind enough to contribute and help in any way)
Full credits go to:
1. Anyone at CA involved in making MTW(1)
2. To Caravel, as co-maker, constant inspiration and raison-d'etre for this mod - you're the greatest mate ;)
3. To Raz, for his suggestion about BG behaviour and for making himself available for technical issues.
4. To victorgb, Glenn, Belisario, Stazi, Raz, Durango, Tristrem, Cyprian2, huth, armoros, virus found, faremisch, vanitas, RRMike, Togakure and drone for their feedback interest and encouragement
5. To Stazi for discussing issues related to loyalty settings effect in gameplay
6. To Axalon, Stazi Durango and Ra's al Ghul for making me aware that the weather modification was not working due to engine limitations
7. To Stazi for suggesting an increase in campaign funds or decrease in unit settings in order to make the camp game more dynamic by allowing to the AI factions the funds they need to be competitive and aggressive
8. To Stazi for suggesting increasing the priests' conversion rate to compensate for decreasing the same from religious buildings, that helped teh AI converting newly conquered lands, without sidetracking from the intended religious gameplay
9. To Stazi for detailed feedback that spotted lots o minor glitches and omissions in v2.3 and others
10. To the late TosaInu and totalwar.org for kindly hosting and the TW community - thank you for all these years :)
11. To TinCow and the new org admins for heping me out with tech issues and putting up with my ineptitude.
12. To Caravel, Belisario and Stazi for giving me courage to stick with the concepts and ideas i set the mod on.
13. To Stazi for pushing me to make the mod more user friendly by including a self extracting file.
14. To Stazi for cleaning and ordering the unit and build_prod files from the tail leftover by the gnome editor
15. To Belisario for notifying me for a mistake in the read me of v2.8
16. To Stazi and Caravel for providing advice how to clean up tails in txt files produced by editors
17. To Sazi for providing advice and aid on how to add famous rulers and heroes to the GHorde
18. To drone and the org for stickying the Caravel Mod thread at the org's Engineer's Guild (the org MTW modding section).
19. To Ishan and the TWC for stickying the Caravel Mod thread in the MTW section of the TWC
20. To Stazi for testing and advice he did and gave me on how to add the historical G. Horde characters.
21. To Stazi for spotting a mistake in the vanilla files that is resopnsible for the "Mongol Leader turns catholic" glitch on the campaign map while the Mongol leader piece moves.
22. To Stazi for spotting a syntax mistake in the txt file of version 3.0 and notifying me very early for it :)
23. To Stazi for suggesting to fix a glitch in the names of the new Horde Heroes - fixed in v3.3.
24. To Stazi for suggesting that the Byzantine unit builds is problematic for their AI personality which prompted me to change it in v3.3.
25. To Stazi for kindly thinking to write a review of teh Caravel Mod in a polish site - i am most honoured and thank him kindly.
I would be happy and grateful if anyone finds something that is awkward or downright wrong or simply has a suggestion or a question and wishes to post it - you are very welcome to do so in this thread, and i'll reply as soon as i can.
Last but not least, this mod is named after and dedicated to our fellow orgah Caravel :bow: Hopefully he, and others, from now on can play MTW SP without having to worry too much about the dillema of giving in or not to the modding urge... Unless of course its all about the modding urge ;)
I would also like to thank Stazi for his feedback and keen sense of observation that unearthed many issues that could be improved as well as for his skillful, kind and timely help. I am most indebted for your significant contribution to this mod :bow:
I hope you all enjoy the mod as much as i do :)
Yours truly, gollum :bow:
PS The naming and dedication of the mod to Caravel is completely unrelated with any forum politics issues that may have existed at the time of its original release (january 2011). Apologies if that came at a time when it could be misunderstood.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5226/5722490569_b39e025154.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/62920035@N02/5722490569/)
Togakure
01-08-2011, 18:58
Well hi there and nice to see you, Gollum. This sounds quite interesting and at some point I will give it a try. Meh, as it happens, I just uninstalled MTW1 to make room for some other stuff, as I use an aging laptop with a somewhat limited HD capacity. But my last run through of vanilla (the first in years because I'd been stymied by the CTD that has since been resolved by the button fix), was lackluster for reasons that this mod seems to have been developed to address. Nice touch on the dedication too :smiley:. Looking forward to trying it when I cycle back to a desire for "oldskool" TW.
Thank you for your interest and kind words Togakure,
i hope it adds to your enjoyment of the game.
:bow:
Trapped in Samsara
01-09-2011, 21:46
Hi Gollum
Just downloaded your new mod's files.
These days real life rather gets in the way of me spending as much time as I ought on MTW, but I anticipate a window of opportunity opening up in the near future so fully expect to be enjoying your mod in the next month or so, and will report back.
It's really great that chaps like you, Axalon, Cegorach et al are still developing mods for MTW. Thank you all of you.
Best regards
Victor
Sapere aude
Horace
Thank you for your interest and kind words victor, its nice to see you :)
I hope it adds to your enjoyment of the game.
:bow:
Woa, Togakure, i didn't realise immediately that you are Masamune.
Nice to see you again too...;)
PershsNhpios
01-12-2011, 02:21
I knew I would regret not keeping a fresh vanilla install on the drive next to XLTYB, P&M and NTW...
I will be trying this as soon as possible Gollum - I remember when it first came up in conversation! A fine contribution it is without doubt and it offers a very experienced and unique appreciation on the real MTW I'm sure, which is something not found in other mods.
I think everyone will be most fond of your mod and the new attraction it brings to the idea of playing vanilla.
Thank you very much for your time and effort!
Thank you for your kind words Glenn,
i hope the mod adds to your enjoyment of the game.
:bow:
Cyprian2
01-12-2011, 08:15
This intrigues me, gollum! I'd love to try it, but I can't get the download to work for me. Everything comes up as code! Am I missing something?
Hello there Cyprian2, and thank you for your interest.
I've just tried both links, the one in my signature and the one in the #1 post of this thread, and they both work for me.
When you say "everything comes up as code" do you mean after you download the .rar file or somewhere else?
Ok, i'm just guessing, i think your problem may be that you follow the link to the downloads page and then don't know what to do.
There is on the right hand side to the name of the mod a small icon of a hard drive with a red arrow on top of it. Click on it and you will get the download menu. Alternatively, you can just click on the Download link in my signature that is direct.
Let us know if you managed.
Cyprian2
01-12-2011, 09:05
gollum--thanks for the speedy responses. Actually, I knew to click on the red arrow to download. My problem occurs after I do so: I see the "redirecting" screen, then suddenly the .rar file starts unpacking on my screen. (That's what I meant by "code.") For some reason, I don't get to see the .rar folder at all... I'm a little baffled, as I've never had this problem before. I should clarify that I'm operating on Mac OS X (for downloading purposes only, and not, obviously, for playing the game :) ) I wonder if it has to do with my default browser settings?
Cyprian2
01-12-2011, 09:11
Aha! It's just as I suspected... I changed browsers (from Safari to Firefox) and now I'm able to see the folder as it downloads. All I can say is sorry for wasting your time! I now look forward to playing this mod! Thanks again, gollum!
I am happy you are all sorted Cyprian2,
sorry i wasn't able to offer any real help; tech savvy was never my strong point ;)
I hope you enjoy
:bow:
There will be an upgraded version (v1.2) of the mod up very soon. It irons some glitches - mostly edited text - and does some additional tweaks; again small but significant. Unless someone points out something awkward or wrong that needs fixing or suggests something that will work better than it does within the context of the mod, this will probably be the final version.
I hope you enjoy it as much as i do :)
Thank you
:bow:
PS The upgraded version is saved game compatible with the previous one, and better in every way. For your enjoyment, if you are interested in this mod, its worth redownloading and substituting the files again.
Latest (and most likely last) version (v1.2) is up. Enjoy ;)
By the way, the use of the :stupido: smiley in the signature that advertises the mod, is because it clearly portrays the relationship i had with the "creative" process, while making the mod :)
Cyprian2
01-14-2011, 23:44
Downloading now! (I've gotta make sure I wipe the older one off my hard-drive first...)
Honoured and humbled by the dedication but feel it was somewhat unwarranted. You've always had good ideas for mods mr gollum and never needed anyone else's input.
Alas, I would give it a go, but I don't have a PC that can run the game... I will be interested in Cyprian2's experiences however.
:medievalcheers:
Honoured, yes, humbled never. The Caravel Mod is as if was made by you and me, as it was originally planned before extraneous factors got in the way. Hence, while went on and made it on my own, i had to name it after you, as the reminder of who the other person who is responsible for this is.
Without the help of the org SP an MP community, Mr Gollum would be one clueless TWer. Thanks to all for what they taught me and for all the great times. Thanks also to CA of the time, for making MTW - an amazing, amazing game.
:bow:
PS Any ideas, observations, criticisms etc are appreciated. I actually (already!) did some more tweakings. All those are small and build on what the first release is - they don't radically alter the gameplay and are saved game compatible. Eventually, maybe next week, there will be a another upgrade: v1.21. Better playtest the tweaks before letting them out :)
Ok, in answer to Cyprian2 who asks if there are any unplayable factions in Caravel and what factions can Crusade:
1. All factions are playable (including the Novgorodians, renamed Russians) save for the papacy the Golden Horde the Swiss and the Burgundians. The mod is only set up for early, however, if one so wishes, he can use the building dependencies and unit stats and play the other two eras available by the vanilla game.
2. The factions that can crusade are the vanilla factions: Spanish kingdoms/France/England/HRE/Italy/Sicily, leaving out Poland, Hungary, Denmark, the Papacy, the Swiss and the Burgundians.
I know that there has been endless arguments upon arguments whether the factions that do not crusade should or should not be allowed to. My take is to follow the vanilla position which is historically plausible (ie following the kingdoms that historically did organise crusades and also were big/important enough to do so, however from a cetrain point onwards its silly to talk about accuray as the game is all about exploring potential historical possibilities) and fits with the GA gameplay.
There is nothing stopping you to add to the crusading factions any other you wish. Just make the crusade marker buildable for them and give them some knights and the order foot, as well as make the Chapter house buildable for them, and you are set to go on the path of the cross.
:bow:
PershsNhpios
01-15-2011, 09:19
You're addicted Mr. Gollum!
I will do this right now:
Delete all three copies of MTW, and go through the arduous process of reinstalling and recopying the vanilla (Leaving a spare this time!) and then I will download and install this mod so that I can make proper comment (Although I am not experienced enough in vanilla to know the real differences).
I will then start on my AAR, and after that meets whatever end it may - I think a Caravel mod AAR is in order...
----------
Welcome back Caravel, I look forward to your presence in our Hall.
EDIT:
Perhaps you could give instructions on how to make crusades available to all catholic factions sir? I believe that adds to the potential!! Greatly!!
I have never seen the Papacy crusade, but that would be a wonderful experience!
Instructions are: just make the chapter house buildable for all catholics of your choice; give them crusading knights of your choice and order foot, make the crusade marker buildable by the catholics of your choice.
To make the changes easily, use the Gnome Editor v2.0 tool, that helps you edit the units, building and projectile txt files:
http://www.mizus.com/files/files/Tools/
By the way Glenn, there is one more small mistake in your signature, but i didn't wanted to correct it too quickly (that is annoying). In the sentence "mistakes" is the subject so your "others" (αλλοι) needs to follow the gender of the subject. "Mistake" ("λαθος") in Greek is neutral, hence you need to write "others" as "αλλα". "Αλλοι" is "others" for male subjects only.
In english, of course, "other" works for all subject genders.
I commend you for your diy learning efforts :bow:
PershsNhpios
01-15-2011, 11:15
Having troubles with this Gollum!
I added all desired factions to the 20th column in the crusaders build file, and the game started without a hitch.
I then added these faction names to various knight units and I added all catholic faction names to OrderFoot.
I left everything untouched and just added 'FN_PAPIST, FN_HUNGARIAN' etc throughout, excepting the space for Hospitaller Foot which I changed from FN_ITALIAN to "FN_ITALIAN, FN_PAPIST, FN_SICILIAN"
Now when I start the game, I receive a message titled COLUMN_Unit_cost, saying "Too few values found in element data: column 3 data row 283
125"
I'll keep experimenting, but I can't see what was incorrect. I notice that Crusade was blank and thus available to all factions (?) so I imagine that is to be left blank... I haven't been anywhere near modding before..
EDIT:
Thank you for the correction Gollum! I am highly admiring of all things Hellenic! I hope to find experience in working somewhere in Ellada one day, and there are so many districts which I love even to see them in photographic form.
So I must write "αν ειναι άλλα λάθα, ο αν ειναι άλλα λάθοι;"
Ok then, its a common thing that happens at times with the editor.
Solution:
1. undo the changes that made the error manifest and make sure the game loads.
2. Go to the txt without the editor and do the exact editing you did before manually directly in the file
The editor shifts the columns sometimes and i have used the eitor many many times, which makes it more likely that this shifting will manifest, and then the game can't load because of it.
The crusade is blank because probably the filter is which factions can build the chapter house. So those that can't build it, can't crusade. In that case, leave the crusade as is and add the chapter house to the factions of your choice.
PershsNhpios
01-15-2011, 11:29
Thank you very much for your quick support.
I'll fix this and then we (That is, Cyprian2 and I) can get on with the task of enjoying and then glorifying this work of yours!
Cyprian2
01-15-2011, 23:30
I'll keep experimenting, but I can't see what was incorrect. I notice that Crusade was blank and thus available to all factions (?) so I imagine that is to be left blank... I haven't been anywhere near modding before..
You're a braver man than I, Gunga-Glenn! I've always worried that any modding attempts made by me at this late juncture in my MTW career would result in the game falling to pieces before my eyes. Here's hoping that you get your desired game to work without a hitch. Of course, with our savy friend gollum's guidance, I have no doubts on that score. And when you do get it working...I may be tempted to follow in your footsteps. (Sorry, gollum--but I really think that making Crusades available to all the Catholic factions adds a unique flavour to the game.)
That said, I'm going to try The Caravel Mod first as it was originally intended. In fact, I plan to fire up a campaign as early as this evening. (I'm currently on vacation, and away from my usual setup, but there's no such thing as a vacation from MTW!) I will be sure to share my initial experiences with all of you fine folks.
EDIT: Given the fairly heated debate in the Main Hall recently about the various merits and weaknesses (mostly the latter) of the HRE, I am tempted to try a campaign as Kaiser. I'm curious, gollum, to see how you've tweaked them. Hmm, yes. I might just do that... Even if it means I go down in flames.
No need to apologise Cyprian2. We all like our our personal twists and most people i know in the Main Hall make their personal mods. As i said, i will make available the mod as i intend it to be, but there's nothing from stopping anyone to mod it, and enjoy the flavor you like.
The HRE is no more or less difficult than vanilla, as are most factions. The factions that you will find have become more troublesome are: the Danes, the Byzantines and the Spanish (somewhat). Even these factions though are not made impossibly difficult or anything, just they have more difficult climbing curves than vanilla in which they are all too easy; the danes because of their spam cheap and deadly Vikings, the Byzantines because they start with huge forces as well as the jedi princes, and the Spanish because Spain is the richest area in the map for no good reason. All these aspects are tweaked in Caravel. The Danes still have vikings and longboats, but they are not so easily accessible neither so cheap; the Byzantines still start big, but with very little forces to guard their many lands, and Spain is a land with much more realistic wealth and far more divided than in vanilla so as to require a decent effort to unite and so as to have dangerous opponents elsewhere on the map after that.
There will be an upgraded version of the Caravel Mod up soon, which will have modified weather: more rain, more snow and more fog in the MTW battlefields :)
Cyprian2
01-16-2011, 07:45
Travails. I was hoping to be well into my campaign as the HRE by now, but the game keeps freezing during the initial campaign loading. I get the error message: "Attempted to place a unit in a region owned by a faction with a different cultural origin."
I wasn't sure if it was -ian, etc. that I'd applied, so I started it from the root .exe, and still got the error. I'm stymied.
EDIT: I'm going to try unpacking the batch-files again.
EDIT: No dice.
Right, it occurs when a unit of a certain culture/religion is placed in a province of a different culture/religion, and the game won't load. I was getting this during "development" but i fixed it long since, and the campaign plays fine for me.
You play MTW VI version 2.1, right Cyprian2?
What about you Glenn? Can you load the campaign?
Also, which era do you play Cyprian2? I know i said before the game can be played in the other eras, but come to think of it again, it might cause this trouble you are having as i have not "fixed" any other starting positions apart from the EARLY era, which is theonly era the mod explicitly treats. So the game will play in only that one if so.
PershsNhpios
01-16-2011, 08:18
Sorry to hear that Cyprian, but Gollum will set you straight I'm certain!
Last night I had a glimpse into the world of Caravel mod.
I can see Gollum that you are not at all in favour of an early blitz by any means. I looked at the Polish situation and decided on a quick Danish campaign. Unlike what I am surely accustomed to, everyone seems to start out with little other than sticks and stones!
I was unable to move anywhere militarily until exactly 1099 when I captured Sweden in a pitched battle, with about 500 men pitched against 1000 or more. Luckily the AI units became clustered and easily flanked. After this, I spent twenty years just trying to get out of debt and finally upgrading infrastructure and recruiting sufficiently so that I could take a few crossbow units, UM, RK and 3 units of FMAA with 2 pavise crossbows as mercenaries into Norway. Norway was actually a very interesting battle which occurred on a map I have never seen before, and it was more a series of ambushes defensive and offensive with mixed skirmishes in the heavily wooded hill country. Very fun.
Then I continued to upgrade my infrastructure, watch the south and recruit a navy in order to receive crucial trade income.
Around 1140 I had seen enough and decided to end my short experiment on a good note by sending a crusade to Granada which had been crippled by civil wars. I did not fail to notice how every faction bordering on the Almohads who were allied to me also went immediately to war with the Moors.
Having taken Granada successfully and seen many features of the mod, I quit around 1150. I will make a rough note of some things I witnessed.
Firstly, obviously, every faction seems to be given very austere beginnings, and no factions were willing to go to war with one another until about 1130. This is excepting the Byzantines who fought short wars against the Turks, Sicilians, Egyptians and Italians in this time. France went to war with the HRE around 1135, but put little effort into the offensive. The Egyptians attacked the Turks around 1125, but the Turks seemed to have a great success over the Byzantines and the Arabs simultaneously.
Then Castile and Aragon attacked the Almohads when I declared a crusade against Granada, but they were allied with the Moors until then.
No other inter-faction wars occurred in my campaign (1087-1150). Except for the Byzantines and Turks, there was a strong desire for peace (I think due to the destitute military status of most factions) which led to all factions allying with each other whenever given the opportunity excepting the enemies mentioned above.
No ships were built anywhere by anyone except my faction during the entire campaign, and it was 1138 or so before other factions began to build ports.
No crusades were launched.
Around 1150 when I quit, I used -ian to check the other factions. France had the second highest financial income, England the first, HRE had a small (350) income, Almohads were losing over 1000 a turn and were 18000 in debt. The Egyptians were also much in debt (Though they like the Almohads had lost a major war). The Polish expanded early into Pomerania and then sank into heavy debt. Novgorod was in the same position as Poland having taken Finland first. The Italians had a modest income.
I noticed also in the battles that the AI seemed highly unstable in formation. What I mean is that in all three major battles I fought, when I would place the defending AI in an awkward position by cornering it, the result would be an endless shifting of formation which was useless to both attacker and defender. In my other experiences, the AI would in this situation relocate to better ground or if forced, would attack the weakest part of my line.
----
Don't misunderstand the use of negatives as a dislike of the experience though Gollum, overall I was quite impressed by the financial and military challenge, since I was forced to expand north using very basic troop types which I would otherwise overlook. I wanted to post my first experience here so I could understand what of these occurrences is planned in the mod, what is unique, unwanted, and generally your thoughts.
I have a few questions related to whether you expect to happen in the mod what happened in my small game, but I will let you read this first part to hear your initial reply.
Thank you for the mod though, I am going back for more!
Thank you very much for ascertaining, first of all that the mod works and for being the first to make a report :)
The AI behaviour you report has to do with the battle AI which has not been modified from the vanilla one. The only thing that i have changed is the preffered rows of units in order to match them to the huge unit settings. May i ask which difficulty you used? The AI degenerates and retreats in battle much ore often in normal and easy and less in hard and expert. Also rebel forces with low command stars often do not play to their strengths (not an exclusive feature of the mod). In any case, what you get with vanilla in terms of AI in the battlefield, you get in the Caravel mod, and as far as i can tell in most - if not all - other mods.
Some of the things that contribute to a slower start build up are: the huge unit settings - they make building an army slower and more expensive, the loyalty:180 that makes the AI reluctant to commit to opportunistic attacks too much, and for that more stable, the much larger rebel garrisons, that make it slower for all factions including the player to acquire their lands an last but not least the 2000flrs starting treasury for all, which is, as i explain in post#1 of this thread the starting treasury of all AI factions in fact, hence it should be of the player.
The strength of the mod is in the AI stacks and building dependencies; notice those, and compare them (i know you don't play with vanilla, but if you ever) with vanilla, even vanilla without peasants and ballistas. They are considerably better because the tech tree and the dependencies have been extensivively re-worked and calibrated.
Another area the mod touches is the missile units; generally speaking bow units are quite weak especially in the hands of the AI in vanilla. In the mod they are better, especially the eastern ones. By the way, eastern factions have no crossbows, but composite slightly AP bows from early on (only the Almos have xbows and arbs). Catholics have xbows, and later arbs.
In any case, the mod is meant to be an optimised vanilla, no more and no less than that. It is also meant to make a campaign appealing in the long term, as the AI factions can train easier and faster decent unit stacks and are more stable.
I have playtested the mod playing full campaigns with the autorun - i have done about 15-20 of those already. I have also played about 7 campaigns in person. From the late early era/ high era when certain factions emerge as strong powers you will see that the seas become quite active and that because of the loyalty:180 setting the AI uses his ships much more prudently. In sum, the mod aims for a slower, more stable for the AI factions build up and in that its the opposite of what Tyberious, XL and other mods are; factions (including the player) take longer to mobilise and go to war more wholistically and less peace meal when they do. The seas being empty early on is due to the slower build up - except the Italians/Sicilians that start with ships.
This is the reason why you sound slightly dissapointed, as you play and prefer those mods (Tyberious/XL), which is understandable and not at all problematic for me. For my part, i am completely left cold by XL in general and Tyberious in particular as far as gameplay is concerned. In that mod, economic resources are peaked so quickly that you essentially have won after the first 50 turns. The vanilla game that is my matrix is much slower than that. It just suffers from many redundant building and unit choices for the AI and other imbalances and inconcistencies, which i have (i think :) fixed.
Thank you very much for your interest in the mod and for your input - both are greatly appreciated :)
:bow:
PershsNhpios
01-16-2011, 09:07
If I was anything like disappointed before, it was because I was met with something unfamiliar in the extreme. However, this is a natural reaction and was more of a serious intent to learn and understand the new concept, rather than the disapproval of it.
My only concern was that activity would remain low throughout the campaign. I should have known better than to think that of course, and your reply has confirmed that I did indeed quit just before things started moving!
I apologise for not mentioning unit stack composition, as this is certainly something which I noted and must praise you for. Although limited recruitment had occurred in my short campaign, I noticed no stacks full of a singular unit nor unintelligent combinations, as in other mods it will be found that units are brought together randomly. I saw the AI in every case using all units available in the positions they should fill, and also recruiting what troop types were lacking.
What you say of XL and such mods is true, and I look forward to doing something I have always wanted to: pursuing a campaign from early to late.
Can you say whether there are distinct trends in faction growth or whether there is great variety in development and individual fortunes in each campaign? Are factions like Poland and Novgorod likely to stagnate?
Have you modded the Mongol invasion at all?
Also, is there any way of selecting factions other than those accessible by 2 - 0 in the game? I believe the Turks and some other favourites of mine are not included in the nine. (I am really looking forward to playing with the house rule of one reign at a time which you use).
I always play on Hard difficulty.
Well, tonight I think I will play the Caravel mod again, although I really must get on with the AAR. I am enjoying the exploration of it Gollum. I have never actually conversed with any of the authors of the mods I use, so it is of course wonderful to be present at the opening of yours, having read many of your posts in the Main Hall and coming to know your tastes. It is impossible that I would miss out on it and as it happens I am enjoying it very much too.
More so than MedMod in fact!
I'm going off to try out a campaign as the HRE (My first ever in any mod! Cyprian, this is a challenge!) and I will make a report of that here too if you wish - I do love a discussion of our vintage game.
---
EDIT: Oh and for Cyprian; I should confirm that yes I have made all catholic factions able to crusade successfully. Gollum's advice was correct, use the Editor to make the changes in the buildings file, but you must change the unit file personally. The Editor will assist you in knowing what and where to write. It might take you about half an hour of fiddling. Thanks to Gollum for the help in butchering his work here!
Cyprian2
01-16-2011, 09:08
gollum: if by 2.1, you mean 2.01, then yes--that's what I'm running. (The VI expansion plus 1.1. patch.)
Glenn, though internet connection where I am is sporadic at best, I've read your account with interest. Way to beat me to it!
As far as Crusades are concerned, all AI factions that had a CRUSADER personality, that makes Crusades a priority for the AI (there are plenty of those Crusader_defensive,_offensive,_trader etc), they are all replaced with other personality types. This is because with those personalities the AI factions prioritise crusades even before they are ready in terms of stability or economy to do so. Without the Crusader personalities, AI catholics will launch crusades once their factions have become great powers. In this way, they are both: a) safe from failed crusade influence hits b) can come up with better organised crusades when they do that have more men in them, better transport back up (due to fleets) and so more chances of success, and jeopardize less the stability of their faction.
All this i have observed in the many playtesting campaigns i did, and did not pull it out of my behind. It does happen and if you bother to do a few autorun campaigns or play some more campaigns in person, you'll (hopefully) come to observe the same :)
:bow:
Apologies Cyprian2, yes i meant v2.01.
And you are trying the early campaign, is that right?
If so, may i, unimaginatively no doubt, ask you if you have copied the EARLY starpos file in the correct folder?
And you have patched the game before you installed the mod, yes?
Cyprian2
01-16-2011, 09:46
Apologies Cyprian2, yes i meant v2.01.
Lol, why's that zero even there?
And you are trying the early campaign, is that right?
Yes. I forgot to mention earlier that I made sure to start in Early as per instructions.
If so, may i, unimaginatively no doubt, ask you if you have copied the EARLY starpos file in the correct folder?
Okay, you've got me here, mate... Did I miss something in the instructions?
And you have patched the game before you installed the mod, yes?
To the best of my knowledge. VI + 1.1 patch = 2.1, correct?
The mod sounds uniquely challenging. Hopefully, I can get this issue sorted and have some experience of my own!
EDIT: Like a fool, I failed to read the instructions before rushing ahead to install the game. I'll make the required changes and report back.
PershsNhpios
01-16-2011, 09:50
That's it I'd say Cyprian (In case Gollum is currently away). Make sure you replace the EARLY.txt in your campmap/startpos folder.
I think the readme missed that part out.
EDIT: Sorry Gollum, the readme doesn't miss that part at all.
Regarding force buildup in AI factions, apart from being slow for the reasons previously mentioned, it can also be deceptively adequate, due to the huge units setting. In huge units, the banner that shows strength adjusts its scale to the unit setting. So a stack in huge that actually has more men than a stack in normal may show half empty, while the normal stack full.
For people who have not played in huge before, this may create the appearance of meager forces indeed, when in fact that is not the case. In any case, the mod improves over vanilla in all respects as that was its aim. If you enjoy vanilla, chances are you will enjoy enjoy the Caravel mod. If you do not enjoy vanilla because it does not have:
1. more factions, units, names, heros, provinces etc
2. quick campaign action/overaggressive AI
3. enough historical accuracy
4. cool/historially accurate graphics/animations/potraraits/map feel etc
then by all means feel free to play one of the many other excellent mods suggested in post#1 of this thread.
If you like vanilla MTW as is, but wish it didn't have a number of redundancies and imbalances, then this mod might be for you
:bow:
Cyprian2
01-16-2011, 09:56
Thanks, Glenn! (See my edit above.) I'm kicking myself for missing the obvious! And for wasting so much valuable game time!
Ok, copy pasted from the Read Me txt/installation instructions made available with the folders/files of the mod:
"In order to play the mod, you'll need to replace certain original files in your Medieval TOtal War folder,
with the files provided. This can be done by simply copy pasting them in the appropriate place and accept,
when you are prompted, to replace the existing files.
The files go as follows:
-CRUSADERS_BUILD_PROD13 txt
-CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11 txt
-PROJECTILESTATS txt
-regowner_table txt
-the "Loc" folder (containing many txt files)
all go in the main game folder, that is wherever you have installed the game into. You can find this by going to
your hard drive (C), and then in "Program Files", and then either "The Creative Assembly" (if you play Gold edition),
or "Total War" (if you play the original edition with the expansion and patches), in Windows operating systems.
-EARLY txt
goes in: main game folder\campmap\startpos
-the "Units" folder (containing many BIF files)
goes in: main game folder\campmap\Info_Pics"
I am reffering to the EARLY txt replacement. That is the txt file that sets up the campaign of each era. I have heavily moddified that file and its imperative to the operation of the mod that you have replaced the existing one with it. The poblem you are having indicates that there is something wrong in there.
No worries Cyprian2 - i am glad you seem to have found the problem :)
No worries Glenn. In my view all mod concepts are useful and fun in their way. Some people like it this way, others that way. Mod diversity is a good thing as is people diversity, mentality diversity etc. It makes the world more colorfoul :)
Neither you (or anyone else) should feel apologetic for liking other mods more than the Caravel Mod. Its absolutely fine and only natural.
Can you say whether there are distinct trends in faction growth or whether there is great variety in development and individual fortunes in each campaign? Are factions like Poland and Novgorod likely to stagnate?
Certainly i can.
Novgorod/Russians(in the mod) do stagnate played by the AI. I have tried to make them start decent (like say giving them Muscovy or Kiev etc), but then they become too powerful too fast, especially when commanded by the player. So in conformity with vanilla i decided to keep them a "Denmark/Aragon-like" faction that starts with one province. The alternative would be to split the Russians in 2 or three factions or add the Lithuanians as a counterweight faction and make them start bigger (as the many factions in the area would compete with each other), but this would alter the gameplay significantly from vanilla and would take it down the path that other mods have followed. I thought that the Medmod and XL are doing this very well and there is no need to do it one more time. Hence i left it as it is, and stuck to the improve/optimise vanilla MTW/VIv2.01 vision.
The major challenge for the Russians/Novgs is to survive the Horde as the mod offers no river crossing maps and no xbows for the eastern factions (they do have ap composite bows, though). Use the trees and hilly terrain when available and try with all your might to restrict the Mongols strategically - its quite a challenge.
The AI Poles do a little better than the Russ; they take Volhynia, Pomerania and Prussia, and sometimes they crush the HRE by taking Franconia, Bohemia and Brandenburgh and even Carpathia/Hungary if given the chance. In other words, they do just as they do in vanilla, more or less. I wouldn't know how they feel as a player, because i haven't tried them yet, however, i bet that they won't be very different than the vanilla experience apart from the additional challenge due to the stronger rebels and other factions having better stacks.
The Danes, also stagnate, as the Aragonese, like in vanilla. As with the Russians, i was faced with the same choice: make them stronger for the sake of teh AI doing something as them versus change the vanilla experience for those faction when played by the player. I decided to stay within the vanilla concept and provide experiences of those factions as the vanilla game - in order also to have a meaningful GA mode.
As far as the other factions are concerned, they have varied fortunes, usually one at the expense of the other.
The love triangle: Byzantines/Turks/Egyptians with the Mongols as the "joker" play one another off, and in many instances one of the three becomes a great power.
Similaly, the HRE, England an France eventually fight one another and either through glitches in their dynasties or military success or some civil war, one emerges as a great power eventually.
The Iberian factions are of far more local power character and it takes good play and wise management to turn them into major powers as the player. The AI Spanish sometimes emerge as powers - the Almohads wax and wane, as are hit by civil wars and become the targets of Crusades. Spain, as i said earlier is considerably less rich - but still rich - than in vanilla, and so the Spanish factions and the Almos are more worthwhile to play as, for the player. Also, if you play as France or England, moving to Spain is not the check mate winning move it was, because of the lower income, although its still a worthy prize.
Like in vanilla, the Hungarians emerge late in the game as a significant power, after they deal with the rebels around them and snatch provinces from either the Italians, the Germans, the Byzs or all of the above. Then, they are a force to be reckoned with, and can make up for some fun battles with or against.
Finally, the Italian factions (Italians, Sicilians and Papacy) can have quite mixed/varied fortunes from campaign to campaign.
The AI Italians use their fleet at the early game to interfere in other areas of the map (Balkans, Spain) or sometimes take over southern France and Germany and give headaches to Kings and Emperors. Depending on their dynasty and progress of the other factions this can either lead to their downfall or it can make them a major power. One time, the Italians became huge, as if a player empire with control of the seas and great armies sweeping all before their path, and it was only a Papacy re-emergence that curbed their growth. But i'd say that is a quite rare event, although possible.
The Sicilians are managing to be the pain to the Byzantines they were historically as they move against Naples and Greece relatively quickly and menacingly. With Byzantium starting as small as it does in terms of strength and so certain to lose lands to the Turks, the Sicilians can supplant the Byantines and make themselves into a new eastern empire, that however, has to keep fighting the enemies of the old one: the Turks primarily and eventually the Hungarians, the Mongols and/or teh Egyptians (if they crush the Turks an become large). For the player the Sicilians can offer other paths as well, as North Africa and Spain to explore or directly the Holy Land.
Finally the Papacy is far more assertive and bent to be the theocracy is meant to be. This is because the Pope cannot train assassins, emmissaries and spies, but only Bishops and (exclusively) Inquisitors and Cardinals. The fact that artillery pieces cost to maintain as much as a regular unit does (70 to 100 flrs) prevents the AI from spamming them, and so, the Papacy builds normal troops that enable it to take opportunities for expansion when they arise. The Papacy also has a roster with fine militia polearm infantry units (like the Italians) and Handgunners (exclusively together with the Italians and HRE; apart from their handguns they can fight well as heavy infantry with their swords) that are fine units an can be quite dangerous and powerful if circumstances lead it to grow.
Have you modded the Mongol invasion at all?
Also, is there any way of selecting factions other than those accessible by 2 - 0 in the game? I believe the Turks and some other favourites of mine are not included in the nine. (I am really looking forward to playing with the house rule of one reign at a time which you use).
The Mongols just have long range ap bows and no naptha throwers or siege engines (they can build siege engines in th camp, but they don't come with them). The better bows make them quite more dangerous and the lack of "rubbish" units make their stack composition better. Even after they take over what they take, they still give decent battles when you are wiping them out. Also their roster - for the rare event they manage to get out of debt- which happens once every full moon, has been made to give a more historical feel and better challenge - hopefully.
Yes there is: you do Shift+number(1to0 again) and you get the Novgorodians/Russians, the Spanish, the Turks, the Aragonese(1-4), then with 7 the Hungarians, 9 the Pope and 0 the Sicilians. When the Horde emerges they can be accessed by 6.
By all means try the 1 rulers reign per faction game mode - its absolutely great for both challenge and role playing. I am actually planning to make an AAR like that: one installment for every reign. To be honest with you, it works absolutely great with the Caravel Mod, but i would have thought with other mods too.
I always play on Hard difficulty.
Perfect, me too. Normal is too easy and expert makes for unrealistic results in unit behaviour which i dislike - however sometimes i play in that just for kicks.
Well, tonight I think I will play the Caravel mod again, although I really must get on with the AAR. I am enjoying the exploration of it Gollum. I have never actually conversed with any of the authors of the mods I use, so it is of course wonderful to be present at the opening of yours, having read many of your posts in the Main Hall and coming to know your tastes. It is impossible that I would miss out on it and as it happens I am enjoying it very much too.
Thank you very much for the confidence vote. I am glad and honoured by your interest in the mod, and enjoy the conversations very much :bow:
More so than MedMod in fact!
Exaggerations... its probably the shine of the new that will wear off in time :)
I'm going off to try out a campaign as the HRE (My first ever in any mod! Cyprian, this is a challenge!) and I will make a report of that here too if you wish - I do love a discussion of our vintage game.
Me too! I hope MTW was made fully compatible for new systems and hardware, and so its community would continue to live on. Its an absolute classic by all counts in my book.
PershsNhpios
01-16-2011, 11:31
I managed to lose decisively by 1104!
The Danes and Polish were eager to ally and appeared to be no threat so I ignored them. I thought Italy would be my main concern but France always is most aggressive to the HRE so I planned to remove them first.
After initial placement of watchtowers (Loyalty was horrible!) I intended to win all wars by simply out-producing the enemy, since at least for the next few decades the major military unit was the UM, and all I needed was a fort and militia barracks in each province.
This I did, and having reached an income of ~1800 through farming I levied a unit of UM from each province and sent my two 3 star heirs to Lorraine, to which all UM rallied.
I recruited a full stack of UM with the two princes which made up 1600 men. I had built a keep in Provence, intending to invade and defeat the main French army in Flanders and then receive their counter-attack passively in Provence, which would then be removed by the new stack of UM under the Emperor which wouldn't be ready until the year after the attack.
The French retreated to Ile de France, and I left 4 units of UM in Flanders and then went after Paris. There was a fine battle in which the French king attempted to destroy my numerical advantage by pushing all of his UM in a surprisingly tight formation against my weakest wing - the left. However I had also brought along the two viking units from Saxony and these were swiftly sent around the flank of the completely outnumbered French who routed before the move could even be completed on seeing the vast numbers of enemy infantry.
The French routed to Champagne and left Paris open. They invaded Provence and I retreated to the Keep with 100 men. The Emperor counter-attacked and also sent four units of UM to Ile de France, allowing the princes to invade Champagne. This was to mean excommunication. The French retreated from Provence but counter-attacked Flanders from Champagne, leaving Champagne open the the princes but forcing the small group of UM out of Flanders. No matter.
Then the Hungarians invaded Austria with 900 men and I was forced to retreat, having nothing but garrisons east of Burgundy. Seeing this, England, Aragon, Italy, Danemark and Poland cancelled alliances with me and the Pope excommunicated me. Pressing shift on 1104 showed every province other than my French gains to be glowing red!
Bam! I thought I was winning! Of course, I could have played on as the new France, but I had to leave it there for tonight.
Where did I go wrong Gollum? Is it possible to fight major wars within the homeland? Would you ever invade France first?
And where is your HRE commentary, Cyprian? (You are probably conquering Italy by now!)
EDIT: Hey thank you for that tip about Shift+1-0, Gollum! I never knew that! Now there will be some fun!
And you know I was thinking of doing a Caravel mod AAR in that manner either before or after my XLTyb one... Hmmm, well I should wait for you to set the example, I would love to read an AAR of yours - what with the mod and unique mode of play it would be one of the best!
(The VI expansion plus 1.1. patch.)
I'm sure you mean the 2.01 patch?
Thank you for this fine account of an interesting campaign Glenn :) I thoroughly enjoyed that. UMs are the easiest recruiting units and some with the cheapest upkeep, hence for the first 20 turns armies are UM, Spearmen and Archers heavy.
The HRE is always fragile for the first 70-80 years or so, hence i would start by taking out small opponents methodically and swiftly and keep the diplomatic balance as much as possible. The HRE needs to play a slow and steady game, a bit esoteric in fact rather than all out war. You need to be calculative, careful and considerate as the Western Roman Emperor.
If you are keen on swift action, try the Russians. They need to grow quickly, and then prepare as fast as they can for the Mongol onslaught - that should not leave you unsatisfied :)
The Aragonese are also a faction that is suited to fast expansion - otherwise they may stagnate. Since the rebels are much stronger, you need to snatch lands from England, France or both and will probably fight the Spanish Castilians too before the Moors.
The Italians are a good faction for rapid expansion, as they are rich, have a very good roster with exclusivity to pavise xbows and Italian infantry. They can thus make opening moves towards any direction in the map: Byzantium, the Balkans, Spain, France, Germany and set up a trading empire by having colonies in order to reduce ship maintenance costs.
The Sicilians are a similar case to the Italians, only much more slow starting but more challenging because of it, and with their Norman feudal armies, rather than the Italian city militias. You eventually might endup supplanting the Byzantines and having to fight the Turks, the Hungarians and eventually the Mongols, the Pope, the Italians and possibly the Egyptians in the process.
Factions that start potentially on the receiving end and need to be played with care and a balance between attack and defense in order to prevent them from crumbling, are, except the HRE, the Almohads, the Egyptians and the Byzantines.
The Byzantines in particular should make a much more challenging proposition both with and against, than in vanilla with a distinctly Byzantine feel in their armies. Start your campaign with some other faction, and once its leader is dead take up the position of the Eastern Emperor; a delight of a reign as most likely you'll need to fight as a matter of urgency a strong, able, determined and aggressive Turkish Sultanate.
:bow:
Cyprian2
01-17-2011, 04:26
I'm sure you mean the 2.01 patch?
Yes, that's exactly what I meant––a typo I made not once, but twice. And thanks for your discernment, Caravel!
And where is your HRE commentary, Cyprian? (You are probably conquering Italy by now!)
Well, Glenn: it seems that you've stolen my thunder! In fact, when I heard about your plans to play HRE, I resolved to try a different faction altogether…
So, I had the pleasure, last night, of beginning a campaign as the Aragonese. (My inattention to the small but vital EARLY.TXT replacement cost me a bit of time––but, thanks to gollum, I'm on track!)
I've only played to 1105, so it's early days, but here are some things I've noted:
Like Glenn, I was initially surprised by the underdeveloped starting provinces. Actually, I appreciate this. There's a certain satisfaction to be had in creating infrastructure where none existed previously; one then feels that economic viability and better units/weapons are things to be earned, and not merely taken for granted. It also provides better role-playing opportunities, because the player gets to chart a course for each province, rather than inheriting a readymade empire.
Another thing I find novel is the two-year training time for most (all?) units. This strikes me as a historically plausible feature, and may stop the AI from spamming substandard units and going on rampages. Also, it forces the player––in conjunction with Caravel's stricter economics––to really deliberate about which units to build. Gone are the days when one could build a unit (or seven) of feudal men-at-arms in the blink of an eye. Now, one must consider the cost and relative weight of the unit, before rushing it into the production queue!
I have yet to see a crusade or Jihad (like Glenn's, my campaign is relatively peaceful at the moment), but I'm hoping that they will ramp up once the Catholic and Muslim factions secure their respective defenses and economies. (I've always been a bit frustrated when 1200 rolls around and the Holy Land is still firmly in the grip of the Muslims.)
Finally, for my current campaign I have adopted some of gollum's suggested ironman rules: only giving province titles to "royals" by marriage (for example, I took Navarre in 1099, and it's still kingless!). Also, when mercs start showing up, I will severely limit my use of them. (Technically, one should view all recruited forces as mercenaries––soldiers for pay––since standing armies (with the exception, maybe, of the Byzantines and Ayyubids) were nonexistent in this period.)
As I've said, it's still early. Expect a detailed progress report once I've waded deeper in…
Also, I don't plan to use the -ian switch for this one—because I have some special plans for the Aragonese that could be called "long term." That said, I look forward to eventually trying gollum's suggested "Byzantine switch." I think this would prove an engrossing campaign, indeed.
Looking forward to hearing more about your HRE, Glenn!
EDIT: By the way, gollum: you said that the Men of Novgorod have been renamed "the Russians," but for some reason, I'm not seeing this––they still appear as "Novgorod" in campaign. This worries me. Also, it seems that they are not offered as a choice in the initial faction selection screen. Would I need to access them with -ian?
Cyprian2
01-17-2011, 04:34
There will be an upgraded version of the Caravel Mod up soon, which will have modified weather: more rain, more snow and more fog in the MTW battlefields :)
This sounds great. Probably not save-game compatible, though?
PershsNhpios
01-17-2011, 05:17
My HRE campaign was drowned early on, Cyprian and I was interested to see how long you could last in the same situation!
It seems I have become accustomed to small kingdoms employing blitz tactics, which means a steep learning curve for me in order to find success in this mod. Sounds like fun to me!
More about that later though, right now I want to help out with this problem of yours if I can Cyprian, as it seems you have missed something else. In my game, Novgorod is available to play as the Russians, as are all factions except the papacy.
Allow me to manufacture a checklist of what I did.
1. Copied a fresh installation of Medieval: Total War Gold Edition (Unofficially patched to 2.01) into a new sub-folder within Creative Assembly folder.
2. Opened Caravelmod1.2.rar
3. Extracted these files to my CA/Caravel/Medieval Total War - Gold Edition/ folder:
CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.txt
CRUSADER_UNIT_PROD11.txt
PROJECTILESTATS.txt
regowner_table
Overwriting all files of course
4. Opened 'Loc' then 'Eng' within the .rar
5. Extracted all files in Loc/Eng/ to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/Loc/Eng/ folder
6. Opened 'Units' in .rar file then copied all .BIF files and .txt file within to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/ folder
7. Opened folder 'Muslim' within 'Units' in .rar and copied all files to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/Muslim/
8. Finally, extracted EARLY.txt to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/startpos/
9. I also created a shortcut of the MTW.exe and added -ian -loyalty:180 -green_generals to the target field.
--------
I think though that you have done all these things, Cyprian. Have you installed the files on a fresh, plain copy of MTW:VI?
Cyprian2
01-17-2011, 05:47
My HRE campaign was drowned early on, Cyprian and I was interested to see how long you could last in the same situation!
Er, yes. But I thought there was talk of "the new France"? Oh, well. This challenge intrigues me. Maybe an HRE campaign is not off the table for me, after all. (At least once I've completed my designs as the Aragonese ;).
It seems I have become accustomed to small kingdoms employing blitz tactics, which means a steep learning curve for me in order to find success in this mod. Sounds like fun to me!
As I've said before "slow and steady" is often my strategy; and, when you're the little guy, you really have no choice!
More about that later though, right now I want to help out with this problem of yours if I can Cyprian, as it seems you have missed something else. In my game, Novgorod is available to play as the Russians, as are all factions except the papacy.
Allow me to manufacture a checklist of what I did.
1. Copied a fresh installation of Medieval: Total War Gold Edition (Unofficially patched to 2.01) into a new sub-folder within Creative Assembly folder.
2. Opened Caravelmod1.2.rar
3. Extracted these files to my CA/Caravel/Medieval Total War - Gold Edition/ folder:
CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.txt
CRUSADER_UNIT_PROD11.txt
PROJECTILESTATS.txt
regowner_table
Overwriting all files of course
4. Opened 'Loc' then 'Eng' within the .rar
5. Extracted all files in Loc/Eng/ to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/Loc/Eng/ folder
6. Opened 'Units' in .rar file then copied all .BIF files and .txt file within to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/ folder
7. Opened folder 'Muslim' within 'Units' in .rar and copied all files to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/Muslim/
8. Finally, extracted EARLY.txt to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/startpos/
9. I also created a shortcut of the MTW.exe and added -ian -loyalty:180 -green_generals to the target field.
All of these things have been done to the best of my knowledge and (seemingly limited--ha, ha) ability. My initial travails were the result of my thinking that I could simply unrar the modfiles into my main folder. Gah! I paid the price for my ignorance. Once you and gollum set me straight, I made sure to follow the instructions in the readme down to the last detail. I'm not sure why I should be having this problem. Also, based on my posts of late, I'm starting to look like someone who's never installed a mod! Well, I can tell you: I've installed plenty! Personally, I will blame my blunders on sleep deprivation––a perennial joy of my life.
Most importantly, Glenn and gollum: your efforts to help me get my act together with this mod are much appreciated––and if I can, someday, repay you both for all the help you've so readily offered, I will do so with interest!
Finally, Glenn, I will spend the next little while noodling with the files and following, again, the install instructions. One of these days, my talk will be of the gameplay and little else!
PershsNhpios
01-17-2011, 06:07
Don't fret, Cyprian, every post is a post in honour of MTW.
We happy three shall keep the fire well stoked. We have a similar experience with MTW in that we are both well advanced in our exploration of mods but when the wheels start falling off we must run for help!
This means that I can only assist by saying what I have done so that we can make comparisons. Unless due to an excess of fiddling there is an error somewhere in your installation folder, I can't offer any further advice good ally, and so we should wait for Gollum.
Good luck, and now I will return to a little project of mine... !
Cyprian2
01-17-2011, 08:23
Well, Glenn, since gollum seems to be taking a well-deserved :) vacation, it now happens that I need to ask you a favour. When you have a free moment (and no rush), please start a new campaign using the Caravel mod as the Aragonese. Build watchtowers in Aragon on your first turn. Now, could you look to the rebel provinces, respectively, of Navarre and Valencia? What units are there? In my initial attempts at playing the mod, the garrisons were quite small (navarre: 1 spearmen, 1 peasant; Valencia: 1 peasant, 1 jinette (I think--for Lord Cid).) Now, it's been a while since I last played vanilla, but it seems to me those rebel stacks were beefier––maybe containing some crossbows? Or is that the Caravel startpos? I'm confused. Your report will go a long way to clearing some things up (like, mainly, whether or not I'm playing vanilla right now!) Also, does the Caravel mod have a loading screen or any other indication that it is a mod and not vanilla? Finally, to bring you up to speed, I've just meticulously completed the installation as per the instructions (your list proved very handy––thanks!), and now I can see the Russians and they are playable, but I'm getting a different startpos with those rebel stacks from the one I saw last night (e.g. last night's garrisons were rather puny, while tonight I am seeing feudal knights and crossbowmen in Navarre (which I fear is the vanilla startpos). Does this make sense?
I apologize, finally, for potentially dragging you away from your other "little project"––which intrigues me, to say the least. I hope I've been clear with my explanations, though I fear I haven't. It's got me a bit frazzled, is all!
Ok, answers/clarifications:
1. The unerdeveloped provinces are not an exclusive feature of teh mod, but a feature of vanilla. Its other mods you play that change that (XL, Medmod etc) ie that they make at least keep level provinces to begin with. In vanilla early, strating conditions are the same as you see in the mod.
2. The stricter economics, are not a feature of the mod either. Its XL/Tyberious that make farms faster to complete. I have kept all vanilla economics in terms of build costs and times of economic infrastructure. The only thing i did was to redistribute/alter some provinces' agricultural income as they were far too rich and so were making it far too easy to choose a plan of action or were skewing the campaign outcome consiedrably for the native factions/ factions that occupied them. I just tried to balance incomes on the map in such a way that more varied campaign outcomes are possible, but without turning too much away from vanilla and i think i have sucseeded. If you have played vanilla, the provinces you knew were rich, will still be rich and worth it; just not as much rich as you knew in certain instances.
3. The weather modification is save game compatible for me. It should be for all others too; however, if you are worried - then simply keep a copy of your current weather file before you install the modified one, so you can revert back to it. All changes for the next version will be saved game compatible. Next version will be out within the week.
4. Rebel stacks are beefed up indeed. The idea of vanilla is to represent Kingdoms that do not appear as rebels. This is why i beefed them up, as well as for gameplay reasons. When you wipe out teh Scots or the Welsh or the Navarrese in vanilla you feel cheated - they are just a few low tech units that represent that "Kingdom". In addition, it takes now more preparation to take on the rebels, and if you decide to do so before you take care of your local opponents you might be risking be attacked while vulnerable ie after you have fought the rebels. In the case of the eastern side of the map, where there are many factions (the Khazar Khaganate, the Pechenegs, the principalities of the Russians) serious stacks were needed to represent these strong kingdoms/khanates. I did not like Hungary getting to Kiev in the first 20 turns or the Byzantines reaching Novgorod by 1130. Also the gameplay of the Russians was too easy for early - uniting Russia and the steppes was very easy for them as vanilla was.
5. No Caravel does not have a loading screen. The aim of the mod is to improve on vanilla and for the players to play what vanilla MTW could have been - gollum's edition. I like it the way it is, but you are free to introduce one your self in your own game if you like Cyprian2.
6. The 2 years training time, is not a feature of the mod either. It comes about by setting your unit seizes to HUGE. In normal settings its: spear unit=100 man, non-spear infantry=60, cavalry=40, and one turn to churn out these. Since in HUGE unit settings the sizes are double, this impacts on the training time. In STW its the same as well. However, playing in HUGE has significant repercussions for gameplay:
a) Units cost more money to build and more time (twice the money and the time), hence building up is slower which makes wars in general more wholistic and more dire in consequences. You can retrain a lost army faster in NORMAL an maintain a fast blitz pace more easily. Of coures blitzing is still possible and i do it all the time (without buying too many mercs). But its still not as easy to pull off as in NORMAL.
b) It makes the battlefield experience better in SP imo - you need more foresight to maneuver, there are longer haredr fought melees and also you are fully accomodated in the large maps of MTW.
7. The Novgorodians are made available for play in early as the Russians, with faction descriptions and GA goals for all eras, including early. I've played a campaign with them and they work fine, as does their roster and the few edited unit descriptions i did. Their -ian switch is shift+1.
Scroll down your list of factions in the faction selections and they should be there. If not... something has gone wrong i'm afraid, but i am unable to think what it might be if you have replaced all files/folders in the correct place.
8. The Loc folder and the Units Folder, can also be coppied as folders in the appropriate place (indicated in the readme). The computer will replace all the files the folder contains.
:bow:
PershsNhpios
01-17-2011, 10:37
How's that, Cyprian? An answer from the best possible source in under 25 minutes. You don't need me!
Really though, the first thing that can be noted about the mod apart from the underdevelopment (Which I had not realised was actually vanilla) is the great rebel stacks in all such provinces. Peasants and spears are a good indication that something is wrong.
Can you provide us with a list of everything you have done to install both the game directory and the files?
One notable difference between the two of us is that I have the Gold Edition and you seem to be using a seperate installation of VI on MTW. Though that shouldn't make any difference.
----
Scratch that - I just re-read your post and it seems to me that after your meticulous re-installation that everything is normal. You could select the Russians as a faction and Navarre has a stronger garrison than in vanilla.
You probably fixed it. Now on with the campaign!
Cyprian2
01-17-2011, 12:15
First, gollum, I thank you for your comprehensive response to my no doubt scattered questions. :bow: I hope I have not tried your patience too much! So, good news! With no small help from Glenn and yourself, I got the game working and can finally have the authentic experience. Do I go Aragonese or do I go Empire? That is the question.
The underdeveloped provinces are not an exclusive feature of teh mod, but a feature of vanilla. Its other mods you play that change that (XL, Me1dmod etc) ie that they make at least keep level provinces to begin with. In vanilla early, starting conditions are the same as you see in the mod. As I said in my post above, I appreciate this feature, even if it is a vanilla concept! gollum, it seems you've taken a good game, applied some common sense and flare––though not too much––and made a great one.
The 2 years training time, is not a feature of the mod either. It comes about by setting your unit seizes to HUGE.Yes, I realized this soon after posting and didn't have the gumption to edit it out! It's been a while since I last played vanilla on HUGE... :)
No Caravel does not have a loading screen. The aim of the mod is to improve on vanilla and for the players to play what vanilla MTW could have been - gollum's edition.Of course, I recognize that modding is all about creating one's distinctive vision/version of the game––and that choosing to release a mod to the public is essentially an act of generosity, a kind of gift. You, gollum, have bestowed such a gift on this forum, and those of us who still love MTW. What's more, you did so in honour of the much esteemed, and from what I can tell, agreeable, Caravel––and a pretty nice gesture, it was! Quite simply, I respect you for such an undertaking as Caravel mod.
Also, please don't take my loading screen question as, in any way, an expectation of the mod. I was not hoping for some graphic-laden monstrosity to leap up before my eyes! Mostly, it was a stab in the dark. I realize that the vanilla loading screen is more than sufficient for your purposes. However, I simpy hoped that there might be a small (read: unobtrusive) indication of the version (i.e. "ver1.2") on the nominally vanilla screen, just to help us novices (ergh!) know that things are kosher (and a feature you might consider for future releases) ;)
I like it the way it is, but you are free to introduce one your self in your own game if you like Cyprian2.I might do this, Master gollum, If I were ambitious enough and/or dissatisfied with your mod (or wanted it to be more like the other good mods out there), which I am not, and do not. Please note that I came to your mod with an open mind––as an erstwhile lover of vanilla and its various syncopated beauties. I don't think I misapprehended what Caravel was all about!
Finally, my main concern in making my recent troubles known––especially those addressed to our friend Glenn in my last post––revolved around my uncertainty as to whether or not I was playing Caravel, or––through my own mistake––some slightly fiddled with version of vanilla. (The lack of Russians, of course, tipped me off.) In no way did I intend my queries to be taken as statements of dissatisfaction or, indeed, XLism, or Medmodism, etc. Indeed, my imagination upon embarking on your mod, was firmly entrenched in your concept of offering a "tweaked" version of MTW. Now that I've had a chance to see some of your tweaks, I must say that I approve! I'm sure there are many I have yet to discover!
Well...so...um...apparently, I was playing good 'ol unmodified MTW-VI 2.1 and thinking it was Caravel (which might in fact be taken as a compliment to your mod and its authentic aims :) ) Perhaps in my bumbling through copying and pasting files, I inadvertently created a new mod? Who knows? :)
So, I will either retire from the forum in shame––or I may try to figure out what I did and release it as mod! :) :) :)
Okay. I look forward to the game now.
From observation only and from working with gollum on a modding project in the past, I expect this mod and the ideas behind it are for the "chess players" of MTW. If you're one of the "monopoly players", then there are numerous other "big" mods. The biggest fallacy of some mods IMHO is the "more" (factions! units! provinces!) approach, where as myself, gollum and some others (though there are few of us left now) are proponents of the "less".
A balanced roster of just enough units is better than a roster where the player has 6 types of archer and 3 types of spears. It also, more importantly ensures that the AI has the same units as the player, thus providing balanced engagements. I think the main argument for "more" is that it's fun, well I certainly don't think so - but each to their own.
Belisario
01-17-2011, 20:15
Thank you very much Gollum for your time and effort into the Caravel Mod. I installed it last week and I have been playing a campaign with the Aragonese this weekend (sorry for the coincidence Cyprian2). I have had a lot of fun after a year without playing the game.
Hey, Belisario! :) Nice to see you around again! Thank you for your ineterest in the mod. There will be a new version within the week, i'll make an announcement and also notify in my signature. Its saved game compatible and better in all ways. Minor tweaks, ironing glitches, nothing major.
I hope it adds to your enjoyment of the game :bow:
No worries Cyprian2; feel free to ask whatever and whenever you wish.
With no small help from Glenn and yourself, I got the game working and can finally have the authentic experience.
I am very happy to hear that.
gollum, it seems you've taken a good game, applied some common sense and flare––though not too much––and made a great one.
That is precisely the concept for this mod: an improved/optimised vanilla. I actually enjoy the vanilla game and its flavor more than any other mod in SP. Its just that its lacking terribly in optimisation and this gap, the Caravel Mod tries to fill.
It's been a while since I last played vanilla on HUGE... :)
Not many people play HUGE; for me its far better for the aforementioned reasons in SP.
Of course, I recognize that modding is all about creating one's distinctive vision/version of the game––and that choosing to release a mod to the public is essentially an act of generosity, a kind of gift. You, gollum, have bestowed such a gift on this forum, and those of us who still love MTW. What's more, you did so in honour of the much esteemed, and from what I can tell, agreeable, Caravel––and a pretty nice gesture, it was! Quite simply, I respect you for such an undertaking as Caravel mod.
Thank you for the vote of confidence and the kind words, but, in all honesty i am only giving back what i got in the first place. The mod is a big thank you to the TW and org community from which i learned and with which i shared, as well as to CA for making MTW. If the mod adds to the enjoyments of people playing MTW, then it has fulfilled its purpose.
Also, please don't take my loading screen question as, in any way, an expectation of the mod. I was not hoping for some graphic-laden monstrosity to leap up before my eyes! Mostly, it was a stab in the dark. I realize that the vanilla loading screen is more than sufficient for your purposes. However, I simpy hoped that there might be a small (read: unobtrusive) indication of the version (i.e. "ver1.2") on the nominally vanilla screen, just to help us novices (ergh!) know that things are kosher (and a feature you might consider for future releases) ;)
Yes, i know what you mean, its probably a good idea for many reasons. I like crude amateurish things though, and will probably keep it this way.
I might do this, Master gollum, If I were ambitious enough and/or dissatisfied with your mod (or wanted it to be more like the other good mods out there), which I am not, and do not. Please note that I came to your mod with an open mind––as an erstwhile lover of vanilla and its various syncopated beauties. I don't think I misapprehended what Caravel was all about!
No worries whatsoever.
Finally, my main concern in making my recent troubles known––especially those addressed to our friend Glenn in my last post––revolved around my uncertainty as to whether or not I was playing Caravel, or––through my own mistake––some slightly fiddled with version of vanilla. (The lack of Russians, of course, tipped me off.) In no way did I intend my queries to be taken as statements of dissatisfaction or, indeed, XLism, or Medmodism, etc. Indeed, my imagination upon embarking on your mod, was firmly entrenched in your concept of offering a "tweaked" version of MTW. Now that I've had a chance to see some of your tweaks, I must say that I approve! I'm sure there are many I have yet to discover!
Don't worry, i understood you. By the way, XL is simply not to my gameplay taste - that is all: i don't hate it, or devalue it, or try to bring it down with the Caravel mod or anything. I simply don't prefer it: i prefer moded vanilla in a vanilla context/concept, hence this mod. Also Tyberious' graphics are amazing; for me the best graphics ever in a MTW mod, and there are plenty others that have really good ones.
I hope the mod adds to your enjoyment of the game :bow:
Well...so...um...apparently, I was playing good 'ol unmodified MTW-VI 2.1 and thinking it was Caravel (which might in fact be taken as a compliment to your mod and its authentic aims :) ) Perhaps in my bumbling through copying and pasting files, I inadvertently created a new mod? Who knows? :)
So, I will either retire from the forum in shame––or I may try to figure out what I did and release it as mod! :) :) :)
Perhaps its worth letting it out :)
Okay. I look forward to the game now.
Thank you for your interest, i hope you enjoy
:bow:
Chess and Monopoly; indeed Caravel a good analogy :)
Belisario
01-18-2011, 03:12
It's a pleasure to return to the forum from time to time and find a surprise like this. I'm curious about your modding of the weather file.
I've been playing my Aragonese campaign until 1250 and I'm impressed by several things. During all the 12th century I needed to manage carefully my resources, choosing well what build or train and where. In general terms AI factions develop in a stable way and their stack army composition is very balanced (maybe the thing which I like most about Caravel TW). I've had tough fights against the English for the dominion of southern France, and against the Spanish and the Almohads for the Iberian regions. Now I dominate Aquitaine, Toulouse, Provence, and all Iberian provinces except Granada which is held by the Egyptians, the main superpower. After I suffered the entire campaign of limited funds, cash begins to arrive to my coffers from extensive trade (especially from Cordoba and Portugal) and Aragonese ships cross the seas from the North Sea to the Levant. Other factions - the English, the HRE, the Egyptians, the Italians, even the Hungarians - have built considerable fleets, and they are remarkably deploying well their ships. At this point I'm planning to begin a crusading war against the Egyptians.
Congratulations on this release of yours gollum! I knew I should've dropped by here more often, ah well.
If you need any technical help with your mod, I'd be happy to try and help out.
Thank you very much for this intersting account of your campaign Belisario :bow:
As far as the weather is concerned i did some initial minor changes for winter (thought not to take it too far too quickly) and played some in campaign. I don't think that rain in lush that i played, became incredibly more frequent, but when it did, it was more than drizzling and this i liked. I played a few battles in temperate that has the harshest weather settings. Again, all i can tell is that rain when it came was much more than a drizzle, and that visibility was also suitably and atmospherically reduced with the intensity of the rain. I only altered the precipitation(rain) and the fog vanlues for winter, and most in the climates that one would expect it to: lush and temperate. Also increased it somewhat for arid in winter time - it was too little before. I did not alter the summer numbers at all, they seemed ok to me. I don't know how snowfall is increased. It could be tied to precipitation (for snowy days) or it could be tied to the temperature numbers. It seems that the armor-in-desert-and-in-snow effect has to do with the temperature.
As a matter of fact, there are far more desert and temperate maps in the Caravel mod than in vanilla (where lush was the dominant terrain). In many mountain crosses and in Germany/Eastern Europe, temperate is the predominant terrain. Lush is present in the in-between arid and temperate provinces (Hungary, Venice, Bulgaria) and in France and England. In the near-east, in desert provinces, all province routes are made desert ones. In vanilla, the Crusaer states provinces (palestine, tripoli, antioch) have arid maps in the routes that connect them. All these are now desert maps and so they favor the native Muslim factions as they should. Similarly in Russia there is much more temperate terrain than in vanilla. In addition there are no river crossing maps. There were two reasons for this decision:
a) The provinces are too big (the size of countries in most cases) for so many river battles to occurconsistently as in vanilla
b) The AI does not "know" that the map he is invading will be a river crossing map, and so often he marches to his doom, as he does not bring the proper troops to attack the crossing and the player can keep him off and massacre his good stacks with a few crossbows/arbs and spears.
In this way, the plans teh AI makes are alwys suited and the player does have to fight the best AI stacks in open battle more often than not
Indeed, its the building tech trees, dependencies and calibrating the AI choices by correct prices/maintenance costs/dependency-availability at the various castle levels that in turn affect stack composition that is the main work i've done, aiming for a vanilla experience without crappy/rubbish stacks and without the AI waisting money in building options that get him nothing.
To make an example, the Byzantines in vanilla could build all levels of the Town Watch line, while the only building that was actually getting them something was the 1st in line. All the other upgrades of the building with their many turns to build and cost in forins were getting the Byzs nothing. However, many times the BYz AI would go on and build it to the point it could (level3 of the line, and one after the other) in Constantinople, essentially wasting florins and investement time (that could be crucial at the early game). In the mod the Byzs have only the first level and so they do not waste money and investment time; rather they proceed to build things that contribute something to their game. That isn't to say that the tech tree is simplified to the point there are no direction choices anymore (the main choice for Catholics for example is, as in vanilla, should i go for the higher feudal troops or for the advanced militia troops?). Only redundant branches of the tech tree have been pruned and on an individual faction basis.
Another such example is the trading buildings in landlocked provinces. A major waste since the landlocked provinces as we all know do not worth more than level1 trader. Hence i tied higher traders to ports that are themselves tied to coastal provinces which ensures that merchants, guilds and master merchants are build by the AI factions where they are needed.
The ship use effect is made by the loyalty:180 effect mostly. I was astounded by how well the AI used ships and his navies in combination once in that setting and so decided to "strongly reccomend it" and work on the mod with that in mind.
Thank you very much for the offer Raz :bow:
As a matter of fact, i have one question, in a bit of an aesthetic change i would like to make. It seems quite complex to me though, and so, as it is an extra aesthetic thing, i did not dare attempt it. I would like to replace the army and faction leader only campaign map pieces for the Orthodox factions with the ones from the Viking campaign - that suit the bill for Orthodox better in armour and attire. However, the game does not offer a special folder Orthodox category but rather lumps the Orthodox with the Catholics together as Christians. Muslims and Pagans get their own folders for map pieces, but Orthodox don't. If there is a way to make that change, i would be interested in making it part of the mod. I thought that its possible there isn't such a way, as the exe might not have it in it to reckognise an additional, extra category. On the other hand it may be possible that it does, as long as one places the folders/files correctly at the appropriate place. But i was too chickened to try it on my own :)
You can make your own folder and let the game know of it. Check the vikings.txt in the startpos folder. You'll find line like: <SetMapTexturesSubdir:: "vikings">
Put line like this in EARLY.TXT and copy your desired files from vikings folder to your own folder. I don't remember how the game choose the right pics for certain culture but you have something to experiment with.
---- EDIT ----
All you need is to create "Orthodox" folder inside the campmap\pieces\Units folder. I've just done it and copied all "ARMY_" files from the vikings folder. Works without problems. Byzantines looking like filthy vikings - I don't think so. But If you like it....
BTW I'm curios if we can set 5th culture. Originally there are 4: CHRISTIAN_CULTURE, MUSLIM_CULTURE, ORTHODOX_CULTURE, PAGAN_CULTURE but I've found something called GENERIC_CULTURE. I don't know if it's fully usable (like CUSTOM0-9 entries for units) or just a set of base parameters but it's worth to check.
Belisario
01-19-2011, 02:43
Those weather changes sound like a more intense experience of the battlefield, maybe this will remind us the rainy maps of Shogun. It would be nice to see more snowy maps, I hope you find the parameter. I totally agree with the removal of river maps, and more desert maps is always good, I love desert battles :)
I've played a few turns more this night and as I said above the Aragonese declared war on the Egyptians. I launched two victorious crusades against Granada and Morocco, and defeated them on the sea. The Egyptians had strong armies but an important factor played against them, the sultan was isolated in Ireland (they also had conquered Scotland and Wales). So after I attacked them, their provinces suffered a severe loyalty penalty with the consequent civil war and the reappearance of the Almohads in Tunisia, Algeria and Cyrenaica. Now I'm the main superpower of the game in terms of army and cash, so I reached the point when a campaign begins to lose interest for me, however it costs me a lot more effort. Maybe I'll use the -ian to play other faction in this same campaign.
I would like to do a minor criticism after today's experience. As in vanilla, the possibility of silly invasions is present and AI factions can suffer penalty for having their leader isolated. This occurred not only to the Egyptians in my campaign but also to the Byzantines which had all their royal line isolated in Crete. How do you think that this could be solved?
I would like to do a minor criticism after today's experience. As in vanilla, the possibility of silly invasions is present and AI factions can suffer penalty for having their leader isolated. This occurred not only to the Egyptians in my campaign but also to the Byzantines which had all their royal line isolated in Crete. How do you think that this could be solved?
If I remember Caravel's trials correctly, the more extreme solution is the removal of ships and the addition of land bridges to every island. Maybe just add the landbridges, but keep the boats?
The best solution to this is the removal of all shipping - otherwise this will always be a problem. The Sultan could have still been isolated in Ireland even with a landbridge to britain present.
You can make your own folder and let the game know of it. Check the vikings.txt in the startpos folder. You'll find line like: <SetMapTexturesSubdir:: "vikings">
Put line like this in EARLY.TXT and copy your desired files from vikings folder to your own folder. I don't remember how the game choose the right pics for certain culture but you have something to experiment with.
---- EDIT ----
All you need is to create "Orthodox" folder inside the campmap\pieces\Units folder. I've just done it and copied all "ARMY_" files from the vikings folder. Works without problems. Byzantines looking like filthy vikings - I don't think so. But If you like it....
HA! Beat me to it, I'd tested this just yesterday but didn't get a chance to reply. This is true, simply create a folder in the campmap\pieces\units directory and name it Orthodox, then just add the pieces you want. I also have reason to believe that you can create a whole new sub-directory with the pieces for your mod (if you want to) using the SetMapTexturesSubdir in the startpos.
Just like with the Viking campaign, the subdirectory is "Vikings", you can add your own. But with this you'll need to add a host of new stuff, such as adding in portraits as well as campaign map textures and what not.
Belisario
01-19-2011, 21:28
The best solution to this is the removal of all shipping - otherwise this will always be a problem. The Sultan could have still been isolated in Ireland even with a landbridge to britain present.
You are right, but IIRC Gollum don't sympathise with the removal of ships. Shipping and sea trade certainly add a nice flavour to the game. I know this matter has been extensively discussed in the past.
You are right, but IIRC Gollum don't sympathise with the removal of ships. Shipping and sea trade certainly add a nice flavour to the game. I know this matter has been extensively discussed in the past.
Yes I believe gollum is against the idea, I mentioned it as it's the only real solution to the problem of finding someone like the Almohad Khalifa stranded in Ireland. The land bridges don't really help with this, it's the sea travel itself that is the root cause. It occurs because the AI does not consider the implications of heading to a province by sea that will most likely result in the army being cut off (due to the inevitable destruction of the port). When it comes to the AI there is no distinction between two provinces linked up from port to port by a number of ships and a neighbouring province.
There are other workarounds, such as breaking the sea area into two or three zones, but from experience, this results in a lot more ships and can have other undesirable results. Artificial constraints like that also just feel wrong and don't make much sense. Trade is also severely limited to the extent that it makes it almost pointless.
It depends on the individual, some people just enjoy the shipping side of things, whereas I prefer the more solid territorial integrity that comes from removing it. The bloated and unbalanced trade income problem is then removed as is the potential for silly AI invasions and abuse of crusades by the player. It's far more interesting and challenging as crusades have to take the land route, which also prevents the AI from sending them to ridiculous places en route.
Yes I believe gollum is against the idea, I mentioned it as it's the only real solution to the problem of finding someone like the Almohad Khalifa stranded in Ireland. The land bridges don't really help with this, it's the sea travel itself that is the root cause. It occurs because the AI does not consider the implications of heading to a province by sea that will most likely result in the army being cut off (due to the inevitable destruction of the port). When it comes to the AI there is no distinction between two provinces linked up from port to port by a number of ships and a neighbouring province.
.
What about making ports indestructible? It should help keeping provinces linked after province is conquered. Removing of all shipping is not an option. What about all islands? Only land bridges?
What about making ports indestructible?
Impossible I'm afraid. There is only one hard coded indestructible building and that's the forest clearing from VI (some people say there is another, also from VI, but I only know of this one).
Removing of all shipping is not an option.
That's up to you, I can only make suggestions based on my own experience.
What about all islands? Only land bridges?
Land bridges are fine for all islands, even with shipping working as it does in vanilla, I would still suggest land bridges. Islands are death traps for the AI, as entire factions can often get stuck on them (it happens quite often with the Byzantine faction, but I've often seen the French or English trapped in Ireland).
Ok, version 2.0 of the mod is ready and uploading after i write this reply.
Stazi and Raz, thank you very much for your help :bow:
Stazi, i would argue that Byzantine troops with mail coats, beards and boots are far more fitting to the Byzantines than gothic plate armor, but "you can't argue about taste". Thank you however for reminding me my core concept, that is the vanilla game. I will stick with what makes the game immediately recognisable for anyone that has played vanilla, as this is meant to be an optimised version of vanilla.
Regarding ships:
Like Caravel said, i thought once that there might some obtainable solution to the silly invasions that isolate faction leaders. There is however none: cutting up the seas in regions, as Carevel says simply makes the AI go mad with ship spamming. Other such workarounds also are equally dissapointing and i tried most, if not all of them over the years.
The ideal would be to be able to trade while not able to embark for both the player and the AI factions. As far as i know, this is impossible, because trading is linked to the port, and as long as the port is present, the AI factions will invade by sea.
It would be possible to delineate the Shipbuilder line of buildings from the port; this would result in having ships, but then the ships would have only maintanence costs and bring no additional financial/strategic benefit to counteract that cost for the factions that build them.
Hence, i am afraid, the only true possible solution is to actually take out the ships and trade altogether for those that dislike them. That should be easy enough for those who wish to play so: go in the building production file and make the port (or the shipbuilding line of buildings) buildable by FN_NOVGOROD, that is the faction that is not present in the game, and so no faction will be able to have ships and you can play thus.
The approach of the mod is somewhat different: it tries to use what is given by the vanila game, only make it more easily available for the AI and so to have a sort of a dynamic competitive balance between competing factions. This works, for a while, that is as long as the AI factions put up a fight, but the player will always eventually crush them, because he is more consistent and more competent and avoids said mistakes (invade islands with faction leaders or invade lands that have little to no benefit).
As far as trade income is concerned, the same applies. I left in fact trade goods at their original values and tried to make building dependencies, province income distribution etc such that the AI factions take it to the sea and make considerable income from it. The results i have are quite encouraging: playtesting with autorun, that makes the campaign run essentially on its own, the AI factions do take it to the sea and do make quite a lot of money from trade. However, this comes with all the added risks that are present in vanilla: questionable invasions often with faction leaders, at lands of high rebelliousness and small income etc. When the AI factions play against themselves, this is not always lethal for them, and i saw them more than once, building ports and taking their leaders out of there, and even the troops (they redictribute them after their hold on the province has made it "theirs" to other areas they needs them). However, its still not bulletproof: a player will always be able to exploit these weaknesses.
The problem Belisario faces, as well as the trade problem (they are two sides of the same coin), that is the campaign becoming easier as you become the dominant power, can not be solved, at least to my knowledge, i am afraid. I can (and anyone else in fact can) make starting conditions for a certain faction(s) very difficult to begin with, but then that will mean that some other factions will be easier, and those factions are playable. Hence we are back where we started.
My personal solution is to play my initial faction for the duration of a King's reign. Then, play another for say, the duration of two kings reigns. Then pick a third one and play for three or more. This is because, with the initial faction the player can easily set it up so strong that its set to become the dominant one. The second will take a bit longer, hence the two reigns duration play. The third one, might be worth it playing for more, as yu might find that longer is needed before you can set that faction to be a major power.
I also try to roleplay: look at the Kings stats and his v'n'vs and try to set up a plan of action that such a character would favor, rather than the most "utilitarian" plan i could in order to win. If you roleplay the factions, and switch between them often, you will find yourself in situations that are great "what ifs?" and very challenging too. It makes the game really shine, as it gives great battles and striving turns - which are what this game is all about, and not become boring, as you are try to do your best for as long as the reign of you king/kings lasts - you won;t be there after it. And this is a lasting gameplay mode, at least for me :)
Or, you can play a GA game, and try to stricktly adhere to the GA goals. Try the French in early or the HRE, if you are set to play only one faction per campaign.
A few words about the latest version:
The weather modification seems to have worked; now, everytime its winter in temperate and lush (and less, but still more than before in arid), there is considerable chance for rainy weather, or fast fluctuations between sun and rain (especially in lush). For snow, i don't know if there will be more, but as stated earlier, the map has now far more temperate maps in it, and so you can expect more snowy terrain in winter time. You can tell when its winter or summer by the music piece played in the campaign map. Desert weather, i left as it is, as i find that sandstorms frequent enough, and this with much more edsert maps (all desert terrain provinces have desert crossings now) should give far more desert battles, that we all love, as it seems.
Version 2.0 is saved game compatible (for me at least), however, i did additional tweaking and finetuning of province/geagraphical area agricultural income, after Glenn's and Belisarios feedback. The result is a far more dynamic campaign, at least, so it would seem from the playtesting i've done. The weaks, are minor, but do have quite an effect, and i hope that those who try the campaign will be able to notice that.
Since the game seems to load the province/map details only once in a particular campaign saved game, you will only get the benefit of the tweaked incomes if you start a new campaign. However, you get all tech tree, unit stat, text editing, missile weapon stats and weather modifications in your saved games.
I also took the rosters and building dependencies to (what i think/hope is) quite a high degree for good gameplay. If you switch factions on a single campaign and play up to high and late, you will see the top level ships - booms, cogs, wargalleys, gungalleys - roaming the seas. You will see Ai armies that have one or two artillery pieces per good stack, including demi-culverins, culverins, bombards, serpentines. You will face Ottomans with a full Janissary corps: archers, infantry, heavy infantry. Catholics with pikes and decent halberdiers, Feudal Knights (quite often) and Gendarm cavalry in late.
All this comes without compromising (too much) the tech tree choices - you still have a choice between what you build and cannot build everything everywhere. However, its all far more accessible for both the player and the AI factions. The idea is to get the right units for the right era on the battlefield instead of making them a teching up bait for the player as they sem to have been intended in the vanilla game.
Additional tweaking has gone to missile weapons and now you will see that the AI can use better his xbows/arbs, arquebuses, handguns, javelins and even (once in a while) grenadiers/naptha throwers against you. I know, because he used them against me :)
The rosters and building dependencies had their final tweak, as did all text descriptions that match the stats of the units correctly: what you read in the text is what you get. The AI factions come up with really decent stacks and they do press their roster and land advantages against their enemies.
Nearly all factions have been set to expansionist that coupled with the -loyalty:180 setting in -ian makes them more dangerous while still stable.
Again, all this cannot counteract the fact that the player can set up his faction very easily the first 30 turns. I like long campaigns, but admittedly, you can win within a single era, especially in early if inclined to fast expansion, and when i play thus (expert) i do win. However, try the 1 reign of king per faction game mode suggested, if you will. I have recently had one of the best SP campaigns of probably my entire MTW gaming life with this mod, when, after starting as the Aragonese, i took over a Byzantine Empire at the point of collapse against the Turks. I had about 4-5 battles in a period of 15 turns my Emperor's life lasted that were among the greatest i ever had in an SP game. The AI Turks were rich, strong, aggressive and bloodyminded and i had to play to all the strengths i had - of both my units and teh terrain to win some very bloody, Pyrric almost, victories that ensured the Empire continued to exist - that was a great gaming time :)
Last but not least; if you would like to do personal custom modifications on the files accessed by the gnome editor (build_prod and unit_prod), by all means do so, but edit the files directly in the txt. The editor shifts the data columns everytime one modifies something (a thing of the editor, not a fault of my own as far as i know) and i have used that so many times, that now whenever i use it again, the game crashes because of it, if i edit by using the editor. Sorry about that, but that's the way it is, nothing i can do about it, unless i go back and make all the changes i did by now, by editing the file directly, which is way too much work only to have the files "modifiable" by the editor henceforth. Again apologies. You can use the editor, however, to find what goes where and what does what, if you are not familiar with the txt file you wish to alter, before proceeding to do the change directly in the file itself.
One last note: the infamous Clansmen rebellion from factions and in places it should't happen persists occasionally (not always! once every full moon) despite the fact that i made the Clansmen explicitly catholic and Scotland only. It especially comes about in provinces with high rebellion (Portugal etc). However, there are no siege engine rebellions at all to my knwoledge; i simply took siege engines from rebel groups and that (seems) to have worked - never saw a single one of them since then.
So, there you go, and just before the weekend :)
I hope you enjoy this as much as i do :)
:bow:
PS By the way, this mod IS the intellectual heir to the pocket mod undoubtedly, and as stated, it was meant to be a joint venture originally between me and Caravel, and be actually much more "from scratch", and from "the ground up" than it is. I am also indebted to the org MTW community, including all of you in this thread and more. Thank you - i only give back what you gave me.
:bow:
Regarding the parameters affecting snowfall in the WEATHER txt:
My guess is that snow is affected either by the precipitation values with conjuction with the temperature values, that are given individually per terrain basis, or by the temperature values alone. This, however, is clear speculation and i have no clue how it would work. I'd try first decreasing the temperatures a bit more in temperate and some less in lush and play some campaign battles in such terrains.
Another, quicker playtesting way, is to do the same modification values that affect the custom battles, and try playing battles in different seasons. I haven't checked this, it is however possible that the two txt WEATHER files (custom and campaign) are different, as the former is related to mp and the latter to sp, the former has 4 seasons and the latter 2.
To those who dare: good hunting :)
:bow:
Ok, coming soon, got to check with TosaInu, who is kindly providing the space for the mod.
Once TosaInu checks it and teh upload is complete, i will update the signature and post#1 in this thread to notify all...won't be long
One last note: the infamous Clansmen rebellion from factions and in places it should't happen persists occasionally (not always! once every full moon) despite the fact that i made the Clansmen explicitly catholic and Scotland only. It especially comes about in provinces with high rebellion (Portugal etc). However, there are no siege engine rebellions at all to my knwoledge; i simply took siege engines from rebel groups and that (seems) to have worked - never saw a single one of them since then.
I think this has something to do with the rebelling troop mixes. It happens a lot in mods that try to impose strict homelands. The clansmen appear because their unit is No. 1 in the unit prod file. IIRC you also get clansmen bodyguards for new factions if you fail to define a bodyguard type. They are in essence, the default unit.
This problem might be solveable by changing their order in the file. As clansmen are not historically accurate for the period anyway, they could be removed altogether and replaced with a more generic, i.e. peasant unit and set as trainable only by rebels..
In fact, i did take out all the rebelling values from the clansmen and they still keep appearing (again: occasionally). The only solution is, as you say, but, i'm afraid, its not something that will be in the current version of the mod.
:bow:
I remember doing the same with the same results. This still points to them being a default rebelling unit. I would check which provinces they are appearing in and ensure that there are sufficient rebelling troops in the roster for those provinces.
Its something i will have to look into for version 2.1
:bow:
If I could get the game running I could spend some time looking into it, but alas...
PershsNhpios
01-21-2011, 11:10
Hey excellent work Gollum, I will try it tonight!
I read all of what was relevant to the update (Will read the rest later) and I must say that it sounds wonderful - the closest anyone has come to my knowledge of creating a superior AI and I think you should be highly commended for it.
I'll say more soon and play it also, time is fleeting just for now.
Thank you!
However, this comes with all the added risks that are present in vanilla: questionable invasions often with faction leaders, at lands of high rebelliousness and small income etc. When the AI factions play against themselves, this is not always lethal for them, and i saw them more than once, building ports and taking their leaders out of there, and even the troops (they redictribute them after their hold on the province has made it "theirs" to other areas they needs them).
What about making port one-turn, highest priority building for all factions? It should reduce problem the kings being cut off from their empires (in case of port destruction after conquer of the province). I know - 1 turn may be still 1 turn too late but it should help in some cases.
My personal solution is to play my initial faction for the duration of a King's reign. Then, play another for say, the duration of two kings reigns. Then pick a third one and play for three or more. This is because, with the initial faction the player can easily set it up so strong that its set to become the dominant one. The second will take a bit longer, hence the two reigns duration play. The third one, might be worth it playing for more, as yu might find that longer is needed before you can set that faction to be a major power.
I understand it may be challenging but it's not my play style. I'm a kind of perfectionist. Watching how AI is ruining my previous prosperous country - it could kill me.:wink:
Nearly all factions have been set to expansionist
I've been thinking about this for some time. I have to try other mods with "full expansionist" option.
Damn, from the very long time this is the first time I really want play vanilla again. Thanks for sharing your ideas and for the mod.
P.S. I can't find download link for the 2.0 version.
Thank you Stazi and Glenn, for your kind words and enthusiasm. Let me in turn, share with all of you my enthusiasm: latest playtesting shows a campaign that is intense, dynamic and brings the potential of the vanilla game out more, just as i hope it would.
Following fedback from Glenn and Belisario, ports now cost 300flrns and take 3 turns to build. I would like to keep the port for more than 1 turn to build, although i understand that this may cause additional trouble for the faction leader Ireland invasions. However, playtesting shows that the AI that does such invasions has money and fleets and trade income, and so it should work better now.
Thank you for the suggestion Stazi, i'll go with the 3 turns and 300 flrns for the time being and see; if its not enough it may come lower, in the next version, or you can simply change that yourself :)
As for you being a perfectionist, so be it, but you have to pay the price, the price being that you are losing a hell of a lot of fun :)
Version 2.0 has just uploaded - there was a problem with the uploader from my pc, now its fixed, and so i await the administration to aprove the file. Won't be long now.
Belisario
01-21-2011, 19:48
I'm afraid I will haven't time enough to prove the new version until next week. The adjustment of rosters and building dependencies sounds very good, I really want to see high-end units more frequently. Did you some changes to maintenance costs? I think that Byzantines suffer from the high maintenance of Pronoai Allagion, 250 florins in huge size.
In fact, the pron cavalry is 250 from vanilla - that's one of the few i didn't touch in the maintencance costs :)
The maintenance costs were a primary instrument in conditioning balanced stacks, and although you are all welcome to tweak them as you see fit, they are all co-ordinated for inter-faction stack and numbers balance as well.
One such example are the maintenance costs of the siege engines (gunpowder and non-gunpowder): they were so cheap in maintenance that the AI was spamming them, as you all know. Now, its siege engine costs as much as a normal infantry unit to maintain (HUGE settings) about 70 to 100 florins, and teh AI has one per good stack at the most. The same thing happens with the naptha throwers; they are not spammed because they cost about 60something florins to maintain. The rest, i calibrated according to unit availability and unit stats.
The approach of vanilla is to have very high building requirements, and very cheap maintenance advanced units. This helps tremendously the player who can tech up very quickly and desicevely in vanilla and it burries the AI, that is hopeless at navigating the tech tree for his faction (in fact he has no clue how to do that) and he ends up recruiting low tech units. Now, high end units are far more accessible to the AI, and so included in his armies. They cost though more to maintain, and so both AI and the player, cannot have stacks of elites only. Anyway, i think the stack composition and building dependencies are really working as intended.
The Byzantines suffer from the great cost of their BGs first and foremost, that's what makes their armies meager; the AI thinks there is little need to make other units to win the autocalc with those full strength kataphracts. In the version that will be available within the next few hours, the Kat BGs are 20men non-scalable units, and that makes the Byzantines use all the range of their roster: tried and tested. They work much better now as a faction. Its true that their units cost more to maintain, but this is a follow up from vanilla, and also i think it should be this way: the Byzs should be disciplined, of so-so morale and outnumbered - at least they were thus historically.
Just try the new version whenever you will and can Belisario, and the Byzantine armies is one problem you will hopefully find solved (and its my hope many others too :)
:bow:
Regarding AI faction personalities:
Stazi, EXPANSIONIST its not the best setting for all factions by default. Its really good for factions that need to expand (including Aragon, Denmark and Russians, although it matters little in their case), like say the Almohads, the Turks, the Egyptians ie factions that have clearly defined borders and lots of cash, or for factions like the Sicillians that otherwise would stagnate. However, factions like the HRE and France disintegrate on expansionist and they make their neighbours disintegrate as well. They function better at defensive.
This is all the more so if you play with loyalty less than 180 for the AI factions; then EXPANSIONIST is a disaster; the AI factions melt like butter on hot bread. The defensive personalities are way better for low loyalty settings for the AI factions (through -ian).
Ok, version 2.0 is now available through the same links (in the first post in the thread and in my signature).
I am updating the signature and the first post on the thread.
Enjoy :bow:
This is all the more so if you play with loyalty less than 180 for the AI factions; then EXPANSIONIST is a disaster; the AI factions melt like butter on hot bread. The defensive personalities are way better for low loyalty settings for the AI factions (through -ian).
If I understand correctly loyalty:180 command means that AI has to keep loyalty in every province at 180% minimum, right? So it means low taxes or a lot of troops or good governor/king/buildings, etc? Are there any rebellions/unrests with this setting (rebellions caused by loyalty <100%)?
That's correct. if you play without this setting (or at a lower setting, say 140, 160 etc), the AI gets a lot of rebellions and he melts down with the EXPANSIONIST personalities. I reccomend to play the Caravel Mod (and in fact every other mod and MTW version) at loyalty:180, that makes the AI cautious of not leaving his core lands exposed to rebellions or to jumping like a grasshopper when taking new lands from other factions, because otherwise the ensuing rebellions really hurt him.
Basically, what it means is that the AI factions are far more stable and advance more slowly, more viably and more wholistically (with all their strength), rather than opportunstically. In terms of taxes it ensures that the AI keeps decent garissons and so squeezes viably every possible florin out of his provinces.
Rebellions are caused by loyalty less than 120%
Ok, after a mammoth playtesting session yesterday, i have noticed the following:
-Rosters/AI stacks composition/Tech tree/building dependencies:
I think in this respect the mod has met its goal almost fully now. If you enjoy vanilla MTW v2.01, but wished it was better balanced, the Caravel Mod will certainly not dissapoint you.
-Silly Naval Invasions/Ships/Trade:
The Ai factions (assuming always you play in huge and with -loyalty:180, hard/expert, so we are talking about the same thing) do use their navies quite productively, guarding their costs, disrupting enemy lines, making invasions (sometimes silly, but sometimes not at all), and make lots of money by trading. The Italians in one games built 3 Citadels by the late early era in their starting provinces and were making 2500+ per turn in Venice alone for several turns. In other games they do less extraordinarily, but still consistently good enough, and rake in high trade profits, as do many other factions that make it past a decent cash flow, decent enough to take it to the seas. The campaign, once the AI factions set up (which is slow enough that choices made matter at that stage) is quite dynamic and pretty comptetitive in terms of both war and in terms of naval activity and i would say that, within the context of hardcoded limitations and vanilla gameplay, the Ai factions press their advantages from naval use to their full extent. That doesn't mean that the problems you all know with trade and naval invasions are non-existent; it means that the early campaign in Caravel is, i hope at least, as good as it can be with what is given by the vanilla game (which is the goal of the mod).
The port costing 3 turns to build and 300 florins certainly hepls the AI amphibious invasions to re-establish communications within 5 to 8 turns on average (10 at most, 3 at best). It also helps their initial effort to set up, admittedly 750 flrns and 4 turns that are the vanilla settings for the port were a little too much. Thanks to Glenn and Belisario for their feedback on this. I also noticed that ports built in previously invaded provinces were not pillaged when the province changed hands among AI factions, even if that occured multiple times and there was no fort/keep there. That is also encouraging and good news, since it means that the next faction leader that will invade Sweden, Wales, Scotland, Lithuania etc will have direct sea access right away. I also noticed (not for the first time) that the AI factions that make the naval invasions, do redistribute their leaders and stacks after a few turns of "hard occupation" in order to build basic infrastructure in their new province and cower the populace with a big stack. So, yes, silly invasions are a problem, but one that is much less pronounced within the context of the mod. Its impossible to do away with the problem without doing away with navies altogether, and this mod following vanilla won't be doing that. Anyone who whishes to play thus are free to change things as they see fit.
Since the AI naval behaviour seems satisfactory, for the moment at least, in terms of results, i am not intending to lower the port build time/cost more, for the simple reason that then the player will be able to set up trade even faster, and so the AI will have to be given faster farm income to compensate for the player jumpstart, and lower shipbuilder times to get faster to the sea etc etc etc... in other words the infrastructure/economic game will be trivialised to a rush that takes so little and so quickly to do that its like it doesn't exist (its all up in a second), and this is certainly not what i want or what the vanilla game is like. Anyone of course who wishes to play thus are free to change things themselves.
The mod will have another update within the next 2 days or so. I have taken time to look more deeply in the Russian roster, and now it has a far more distinct, historical feel to it and also is more complete gameplay wise. I have also done more minor tweaks that improve unit availability and so stack composition without compromising balance. Most of these will go unnoticed by anyone who played v2.0, but they do make a difference for what they are intended. Version 2.1 (fittingly :) of the Caravel Mod will be fully saved game compatible.
Last but not least, the mod has incorporated so many changes now, that i would fully reccomend to play in domination only. GA mode is still available of course, but some GA goals may have been made harder, while others easier by the changes made. Domination, has the advantage that influence is hard earned and in the same way for all, as your ruler cannot get influence from completing the homelands GAs, that are far too easy for some factions and far too difficult for others, and that skews the game as King influence is an important part that affects rebellions, civil wars etc.
Also, due to the many changes and their degree of coordination, you may find it hard to change the game without it crashing, and playing the other two eras available by the vanilla game would be either impossible (the game won't load due to units cultural restrictions) or very awkward (some buildings that the vanilla game depends upon are not made available etc).
It appears that the best option is that this mod comes in the near future without GA, and with an exe self install that will take out the other eras' campaigns, as, (as i mentioned) they are very unlikely to properly work.
:bow:
Ok, v2.1 is 99.99% ready; i will be uploading either tonight or tomorrow and as soon as the administration aproves the file, it will become available.
Concerning GA, the mod will be fully comptatible with them, as they are present in the vanilla game. There are two reasons for this: one is that i feel i need to stick with the initial vision for this mod, which is an improved vanilla game, and two is that lowering too much building times of unique buildings trivialises them for both the player and the AI. The management part of the game (again) becomes non-existent if unique government buildings and church buildings can be built in a flash, and so most of these have been returned to build times close to those they originally had. The AI builds them in "waves" - ie as he completes the tech line of all military buildings say castle level, then he might do the Chancellery etc. The AI also does not prioritise them, and he only makes them from the cheaper/quicker to build to the most expensive and only after he does the military line. So they are not a hindrence to his game, but on the other hand, if made too easily available and easy to build they will kill the gameplay for the player. Hence i returned to very close their original build times, as said.
This means that GA is now fully available, and to be honest with you, i am very curious to try the game this way now as, with all the balancing, improvements, the AI factions playing way better etc etc taking up the French (say) for an early GA game must be a hell of a lot of fun (or just plain hell, depends how one sees it :)
I have also started having an incredibly hard time to find something to tweak/change/alter/improve since last night. Knowing me, this probably means that the mod is nearing completion or is actually done. I am pretty certain that i hunted down all text editing mispellings, grammatical syntax mistakes etc etc and that what you read in the text in all units/buildings is what you get both in the battlefield and in the campaign map. I have also edited some of the existing texts by adding historical info for the buildings/units etc and i hope that adds some additional flavor to the experience of playing the game.
If my enthusiam can be excused, i think that the mod now has met its goals, and if you enjoy the early campaign of the vanilla game, this mod can certainly give you many happy campaigns/hours in the strategic and the battlefield map. All the available potential of the vanilla game has been brought out to bear to the gameplay, as i hope people who are interested will discover and enjoy.
Playtesting shows campaigns that are intensely contested and in which nearly all the AI factions can manage to become very strong at some point (not all of them in the same campaign of course), save for Aragon, the Danes and the Russians. However, in one campaign, even the Russians managed to expand to Muscovy and get out of debt (just before the Mongols came); this is something i consider akin to a miracle to be honest - but i am not sure whether the mod is entirely to be cretited for it :)
The AI factions play to the best, of their (hardcoded) abilities within the vanilla context as far as i can tell; their rosters feel unique, historical and fully MTWish, and, assuming the factions have a decent cash flow, are used in their full extent. Speaking as a MTW fan that loves playing vanilla regularly, i am very pleased with this improved/optimised original game and really look forward to future campaigns in it.
I hope the mod adds to your enjoyment of the game as much as it does to mine. Thank you, once again, for your interest and patience.
:bow:
PS Caravel i hope you eventually try it. When you get grumpy about ships and Sultans in Ireland, think thus: "I am playing vanilla", and nothing will come to harm you :)
Belisario
01-24-2011, 21:27
I've been playing v2.0 with the Russians during the reign of two Princes, and I've noticed some of the latest improvements. In the previous version AI factions rarely upgraded from keep to castle until the high or even late period, but now almost all AI factions have constructed at least a castle around 1140. I am thinking about switch to other faction as you suggest, and the precarious situation of the Byzantines is tempting me.
And again thank you Gollum for all the effort that you've put into this mod, you can be sure it has been worth it.
Thank you for your kind and encouraging words Belisario, and for your interest and feedback :bow:
v2.1 will be up by tomorrow afternoon/evening, won't be long now. Therein the Russian roster is made complete and with a distinctly and historically plausible russian feel to it (always as vanilla allows). Many other small improvements in all areas are incorporated/build upon v2.0. Its certainly seems to be getting there :)
:bow:
hmm..I'd like to know why all types of bows and crossbows have the same range?
and a little suggestion - What you think about changing ballista parameters to PENETRATE on hitSoldier (and maybe hitTree)? It'll make ballista a little more useful and realistic. Reducing reload time may help too.
For the same reason most missile weapons have the same range in the vanilla game Stazi, gameplay balance. The only weapons that outranged others in vanilla were the arbalest and the longbow, and from these the arbalests was by ar the more lethal and common one. In Caravel, the arbalest does not have a higher range anymore but it has the same (and same higher) penetration etc it had, Basically all other bows/xbows have long range now. Stats of missile weapons weren't altered. Some units are given better weapons, but these weapons exist in vanilla. To be more precise, eastern foot units are given the composite bow ie the longbow and the mounted longbow is a nerfed version of the longbow. This may sound terrible and unbalancing etc etc however, not only it isn't, but it works well on the battlefield now. Catholics have their xbows that with long range that matches that of the longbow can fight it off.
One of the problems of MTW is that its units had a lot of armor (3 to 5 on average for melee infantry, 4 to 7 for medium/heavy cavaly + shields!), but its normal bows that were the most widely used, basically a transfer from STW, weren't up to the task. How many times you tried to shoot an armoured spear unit with any foot bow units and found out... little to no result. From my multiplayer experience, i remember well that TW with weak missiles = rush game. Basically you can rush all your army accross open terrain with impunity to the enemy and so there is little to no reason to bother with missiles anyway, and this is the case with most normal foot shortbow units, especially in high and late.
In Caravel, eastern factions have ap bows, gameplay is more cutting edge while equating the ranges (at slightly higher than in vanilla) allows for balance and for improved AI missile troop use.
The range of xbows/shortbows was altered (slightly increased to match that of longbows and arbs), as the AI moves his missile troops around too much to make good use of them with close range. Play the battles now and see how they work for you if you will. If not, feel free to alter the stats as you see fit. However, they were the result of significant playtesting and tweaking, and so try, at least once, if you will to see how gameplay is intended in the mod.
There is a recent post i did on the main hall about flat trajectory/long reload missiles. Basically, the problem the AI has is that he is using badly these (flat trajectory/long reload missiles). Such units have to be in front of an army to make a shot, but the player can engage quickly his melee line or harrass them with cavalry to the point they don't fire a single shot. I know because i do this all the time against missile heavy AI armies. The longer range does help the AI to make enough shots as for his missiles to have an effect. The player now may be drawn to a missile duel as charging head on may cost him too many casualties. In that context terrain (hills, forests) becomes more important as its more difficult to rush head on.
One could make a historical argument about range etc etc whether the longbow is better than the composite bow etc etc however, the line has to be drawn somewhere and historical plausibility and gameplay have to work with one another, not one against the other. The last thing i want to play is battles like those of RTW that certain archers outrange/outgun others by far. You can obliterate the AI and win battles withuot even engaging your infantry - that is really bad gameplay. In MTW there were such battles too: those when i had arbalesters. Try to fight the Horde now and see what you get. The usual arbalests/spear combo will still work, but you may find yourself in trouble as the mongols have ap bows and the same range. Something similar may happen when you are fighting the islamic factions in the desert or the Byzantines.
For proper gameplay, imo, you want most if not all missiles in the same range and in vanilla nearly all missiles (xbows, shortbows, mounted longbows) have 5000 range; only the longbow and the arbalest have more 6000 (in the original), but the longbow is English only and for that arbalesters dominated the MTW game in both SP and MP. If you read AARs, you'll see that most armies are "arbalesters and halberdiers" or "arbalesters and chivalric knights" etc that is arbalesters make up the core and are by far the favorite, and for good reason. This is of course due to the power and penetration, but mostly due to the (out)ranging. Now xbows are more viable overall as are bows (composite-longbows/normal), since they can inflict casualties on the arbalasters due to their matching range (all@6000). Gunpoweder missiles still have less range than bows/xbows, but longer than before as d javelins as do naptha grenadiers. I have received grenades much more than once now by Turkish, Almohad and Egyptian troops in my infantry line. Again these are slight increases and are proportinal to each other and keep the original game's in-between-them proportions.
The bottom line of gameplay i aim for is that use of the units should be the deciding factor and not the "better" units with the better weapons etc. This is how things were best in multiplayer when i was playing online and this mod will follow that principle. You are all free of course to alter things as you see fit.
As far as ballistas are concerned, there were indeed as you say historically massive xbows/ballistas used by the Islamic factions and the Byzantines. I thought to try to balance the unit out for battle use more or less as you suggest, and what you say is indeed a good idea, worth trying. However, there were so many other priorities to take care of in the mod that this will have to come at a later date, if it does. Feel free to mod and test the ballistas and share the results here if you will and like and we can talk about it again. Thank you for the interest and the suggestion/offer.
:bow:
Trapped in Samsara
01-25-2011, 14:09
Hi Gollum
Just to say I'm about 120 years into a 'hard', total domination campaign as the English. Am using one of your pre-2.0 Caravel versions with all your recommended switches.
The game has been rock solid on my Radeon 9800XT using 4.11 Cats.
It's been hard work. I managed to pick up three provinces, including the treasure chest that is Flanders, in the first couple of decades. I then had to pause and build, infrastructure and troops, before nibbling away, province by province, at the French, first and the HRE to get to the point, after a 100 years or so, where I could really get rolling.
I am by nature a builder, not a rusher. So no complaints about the pace of the campaign. And it hasn't helped that I've had some total eedjit kings which inspired very low loyalty forcing me to keep substantial (read expensive) garrisons. Province loyalty is a permanent consideration.
AI stack composition does seem much more balanced. Hurrah!
I anticipate that now that I have some half-decent trade income (albeit laughable by comparison with other mods at a comparable point in the campaign), and having secured modern France, England and Wales as my core empire, my billmen and longbows are going to start blitzing the Iberian peninsula and the Baltic basin.
Thank you and your collaborators so much. Am really looking forward to playing the most recent version soon. Shaggy, rough looking, Byzantines. That should be interesting.
Best regards
Victor
Sapere aude
Horace
Hello victor! :) and thank you for this interesting account of your campaign, your kind words and your interest in the mod.
Latest version uploads after i write this, and it would appear its the final one (deja-vu anyone? :).
By turtling you definitely get more fun battles out of the mod and MTW in any case, as the AI has time to prepare armies or even consider attacking you. Rushing early with small forces in Caravel v2.0/2.1 is slightly more difficult than vanilla and earlier verions as provinces change religion slower and also the happiness bonuses are a little more gradually given instead of all at once in the tech tree as in the vanilla game. So, although rushing is most certainly possible, invading quite quickly requires a little more care, foresight and adequate numbers, or else will be a little more adventurous than before for the attacker.
Version 2.1 is save game compatible, although a new campaign will make your game have the full benefit of all changes made (there was no province income changes, but many others affect among other things the early crucial part). So perhaps you might want to finish your current one before changing the files if in an interesting phase.
Having said that, version v2.1 is really really better in all ways including polish. I in any case, as a player, i'm very happy with it, and can't wait to finally enjoy the labour modding the game has been :)
So this is it, v2.1 coming up, i hope you enjoy :)
:bow:
Forgot to mention that latest version maintains all vanilla pieces on the campaign map and all artwork.
Thank you for the confidence vote victor, but Stazi's reply made me realise that this was the wrong move to do. I aimed for an improved vanilla and so i better keep it looking like vanilla.
:bow:
Have uploaded already and waiting for the administration to aprove the file, and as soon as i get the admins reply that its available i will let you know, and update the signature and post#1 to reflect v2.1 availability...
Ok, v2.1 is now available. Thank you all for your patience and to org and TosaInu for hosting.
:medievalcheers:
PershsNhpios
01-25-2011, 23:54
Baargh! Envy!
Between the calls of life which are like in power to the angry waves, and my Byzantine campaign - I have not been able to sit down and play a campaign in 2.0.
I really want to! I say to myself; 'Yes, this evening we are relaxed and have time, but let's first make headway on the new update for the AA- ZzzZZzzzZzzzzzZZZzzzz...'
Thank you Gollum for this, I do in fact believe it to be more suited to my tastes than MedMod, since your mod provides more of what I am looking for when I turn to Wes' work. That is, better, challenging AI and gameplay.
I will write more when I have some experience of it - and I await the final version of your final version!
I don't have time to play now but I've checked unit prod file and found some interesting changes e.g:
1. All crossbow units got armor piercing weapons. Why? And why no other ranged units got it? Answer is probably balance but I can't see the balance in this.
2. Now the only difference between all types of bows is armor modifier and most of the foot archers use longbows, hmm...
3. All provisional bonuses are gone. I'll miss them. It was a really nice strategic element.
4. No artillery for revolting armies - very good idea.
5. Cost of artillery - more historically accurate but if it will be worth to use? We will see..
6. Kataphraktoi has only 20 soldiers! This is unforgivable:wink2:
This mod is so different from the others that I'll have to try it as soon as possible. I'm a little short of time now so maybe next week..
Thank you Glenn and Stazi for your kind words and interest.
Glenn, play if an when you like and in your own time. There is no rush.
Stazi:
1. Crossbows/arbs are armoured, have poor morale (0), a tiny attack (-1), are slower than archers and fatigue faster (due to having more armor) and their missile weapons which are flat trajectory/long reload that require them to be in front of an army to shoot. Archers when threatened can skirmish/retreat behind their melee line and shoot from there, but crossbows often cannot (although as discussed previously the long range will help them do better); this is all the more for AI pavise units that are slower because of their shields. Since the Ai is poor at protecting them and moves them too much around, he ends up frequently using them to attack spear units and also resorting to hand-to-hand with them, when they are charged by the player's cavalry or caught by the player's infantry. Its for these reasons that they get an ap attack that will improve their survivability and usefulness at the hands of teh AI by a tiny bit - the attack rating (-1) is low enough to ensure that. The alternative was to increase their attack stat, but they die relatively slowly in melee already due to their armor and increasing the attack may have started to make them more powerful than missiles should be - i dont want units that can fulfil two roles at once, because obviously they make other units redundant/useless - in other words giving them the ap bonus was a compromise. The idea is to make them slightly better at the hands of the AI, while at the same time, this better not being an exploitable advantage at the hands of the player.
I've done some tests in custom and i got encouraging results, i mean that the tweak seems to work as intended. If, however, in the long run it turns out that it gives in fact more of an advantage to the player that it improves the AI performance of them, be certain that i will take the melee ap bonus out. Or it may turn out that regular xbows and arbs do not need the ap bonus. In that case it can be left to the pavise versions, and taken out of the normal xbows.
2. Yes, that's right. Shortbows used by catholics have a very slight ap effect (-10% of enemy armour), then mounted longbows have a slightly higher ap efect (-40% of enemy armour), and finally foot composite bows/longbows have the -50% of enemy armour of the "longbow" designation of weapon. There is a second difference and that is the speed of the arrow. Shortbow is lowest, then its mounted longbow, the the foot compositebow/longbow. This parameter determines teh arc of the missile, less speed more arc. Hence, an arrow from foot comp/longbow will reach the target first, from a mounted longbow next and from the shortbow last due to low speed/high arc.
This makes a difference on the battlefield in MTW. Archers in the medieval battlefield were not marksmen - they were sort of mobile artillery. They all fired a shot at the same time at the general direction of the enemy at a pre-determined angle, and the game models that very well with its drag-free physics engine. In MTW units that move are less likely to be hit by missiles - the engine calculates that, unlike in RTW/M2TW that moving does not have an effect while being hit by arrows. Anyway, If archers are made too accurate, gameplay will suffer - and many people mod the accuracy of the weapons. This mod does not do that. All acher units have the same accuracy, and this also helps in balancing them out against one another.
There is no reason why unit A of that faction be more accurate than unit B of the other faction. Again, it should be unit use, and not the better weapon/units that decide the outcome of battles, and this is the intention. Most missile weapon parameters are weapon related parameters; accuracy and lethality which are the most readily modifiable have very little reason to be different from bow to bow - they rather express the class of weapon, that is the bow, more than different bow types and you can see that in the original file, that significant differences in those are from weapon to weapon (ie from gunpowder firearm to bow to xbow/arb to grenade to javelin and then to the siege weapons).
Regarding inter faction balance between missiles, the catholics have (long range) xbows from early + short bow archer units and later arbalesters, while the eastern factions have composite bows (the vanilla "longbow" and a nerfe mounted "longbow" for mounted missile units). The intention is to give to the easterners ap composite bows with which historically they fought, while at the same time keep the balance of the vanilla game and i have played enough battles now to say that it works as intended. Only the Almohads have the best of both worlds, ie xbows an arbs and composite bows as a compensation for the lack of decent heavy cavalry in their roster and that they historically adopted tactics and weapons of the Iberian Christian Kingdoms they fought against and of course the English.
3. Yes provincial bonuses are taken out. I in fact miss them myself, however in MTW/VI 2.01, the AI is pre-determined to build up the infrastructure that would get him the unit that gets the bonus in that province and then he stops there. Do an autorun campaign in vanilla and notice that Provence (south of France), rarely gets more than fort level castle. This is because Province gives +1 valor to peasants, and peasants are trained by the fort. So the AI builts the fort and stops there. This is of course not very good for him, because Provenece is quite rich, as is say Constantinople that the AI builds to up he can make kataphrakts and then abandons. Without the bonuses, the Ai sticks to develop his more rich and more teched up provinces much better and to completion, than with the skewing effect from the provincial valor bonuses. So, they are out :)
4. Very good idea indeed. Since then i haven't seen a single siege weapon rebellion.
5. Maintenance cost of artillery has a much more practical reason than historical accuracy. Its now for all siege weapons (gunpowder or not) about 60 to 100 florins - depending on the weapon. The reasons is that the AI trains units on the basis of the (training cost)/(maintenance cost) ratio it appears to me. So units that have a high such ratio, like the naptha throwers, the siege weapons etc he spams because of it. By bringing the ratio down to closer to those for other units the Ai builds one siege weapon per good full stack at the most ie siege weapons in AI stacks are really balanced now. This works as described, tried and tested.
6. I know, i know, but, the huge meintenance costs of the Kata units was not allowing the Byz to develop their roster. The AI was thinking that there was little point to train other units, as he was calculating (correctly) he could win the autocalc with the jedi kataphraks. However, this was stagnating their cash flow and was unbalancing their stacks that were having mostly the katas and little else. Since i put the kata BGs to 20 men like other factions the Byzzantines work perfectly as a faction and i am looking forward to play against them as the Turks, teh Egyptians, the Hungarians and the Sicilians. Their stacks include their full roster, including Varangians and Byzzie cavalry which they now train regularly.
This mod is different, yes. The idea is to bring the gameplay potential of the vanilla game to fruition, have fun and challenging campaigns and fun and challenging battles above all with plausible historical feeling/setting. Balance is a key ingredient of the mod, while trying to retain all the flavor and the MTWish feeling.
This mod is not about more factions/units/provinces, not about new graphics, not about more historical accuracy than the game has, not about impossible challenge. There are plenty other mods that do these things and they are pretty good at that.
Thank you for your interest, and i hope it adds to your enjoyment of the game
:bow:
PS Stazi, the Polish Retainers now are really worth it ;)
Tristrem
01-26-2011, 05:43
I must say this mod is quite wonderful. I have not had time to try the newest version (2.1), but the first version was a nice change of pace from most other mods.
I have one suggestion, and that would be to lower the overall number of cavalry per unit. 80 man knight units on huge is just a little unwieldy, and I feel as though reducing them back to forty man units would be more accurate since knights were more historically rare, and easy to use on the battlefield.
I could do this myself for my copy of the mod, but I thought I would bring it up, and see what everyone else's general thoughts were.
Good work on the mod though!
Thank you for your interest and kind words Tristrem, i hope you enjoy.
Thank you for your suggestion, which has a definite historical point, but i must decline, as i would like to keep the ratios of unit strength between cavalry and infantry to those of the vanilla game. They affect both balance and reckognisability of the game, and i am keen on it being readily recognisable for anyone who has played vanilla.
If you haven't played on huge before, its possible that this is temporary and soon you'll get accustomed to it.
So, yes, feel free to make the change yourself. The BGs Knights are small units, but the reason (of the vanilla designer) was most likely that since the AI factions get them without their will (everytime a heir is borne), its better they cost less to maintain so they don't unbalance the cash flow of the Ai factions.
If you will and can, try when you have time the latest version (v2.1). Its much, much, better than v1.0 and far more polished. If you liked v1.0 you most certainly won't be dissapointed.
:bow:
Reagrding xbows/arbs having an ap attack:
I have made much more melee tests with these units against medium melee units (FMAA) and light melee units (UMs) and the tests show that the ap attack makes hardly any difference at all.
There is a possibility that the ap attack will be more pronounced when the AI controls the xbows/arbs due to the dfficulty bonuses (do they get extra attack points from expert and hard? i remember about morale but can't remember about attack). But that can't be bad - it only will force the player to attack them more properly (charge them properly, use the outnumbering morale bonuses etc) in order to dislodge them.
The other possibility is that the ap bonus will make some impact on the performance of those units when they are upgraded with the weapon upgrade, and from the +1 attack they get for every valor point - but then again, so will their enemies.
In any case, it seems that at th moment, i can't see anything too bad with it. If anybody finds out that xbows/arbs perform annoyingly well in melee, then i can certainly change that - as soon as you report it :)
:bow:
Regarding unit size of feudal knights as suggested by Tristrem interfering with campaign balance:
The problem with making the Knights half size, is that immediately this will drop their maintenance to half. This may lead the AI to "spam them" which will inrefrere with AI stack composition. It could besidestepped by halfing the size but doubling the maintenance cost which will give the same (training)/(maintenance) ratio, as so will lead (hopefully :) the AI to make the FKnights as often as he would normally do.
Huge setting cavs will feel a bit unwieldy if you are coming from playing normal all the time, and they require some adaptation to their size in terms of control. However, eventually (after 1/3 of a campaign i'd say) the "problem" is solved and you can deal with using the larger sizes. larger sizes have many benefits for the strategy part of the game, but they also make the battles more spectacular and more decisive - you usually have less number of units to use and if you make a mistake there are fewer and less space (as space armies take is larger and so distances from flankto flank say longer) to cover it up. They also require skilful micro to maneuver which is another plus. Flanking occurs in flanks, and it is in flanks of battle lines that a lot of micro is required. Melee lasts longer due to the larger sizes, and chain routes and morale outnumbering bonuses are more cutting edge due to the large numbers involved.
:bow:
Reagrding xbows/arbs having an ap attack:
I have made much more melee tests with these units against medium melee units (FMAA) and light melee units (UMs) and the tests show that the ap attack makes hardly any difference at all.
You won't see any difference when fighting with low armor units.
AP forumula is (armor - 1)/2 for foot, and (armor - 2)/2 for horse. And, shields don't count when making this calculation.
It's rounded down so the bonus +1 for attack starts with 3 armor foot and 4 armor cavalry. You have to start a fight with at least 5 armor infantry to see any difference. IMO now xbows will be useful for flanking heavy armored units like kata, gothic or chivalric knights. Say +5 for flanking (or +7 rear) , +3 for AP, + 3 if in wedge ... nice. I'll probably change my favorite pavise arbalesters for the faster shieldless version.
btw I didn't say that this bonus is a bad idea. I only wanted to know the purpose of giving such a bonus to units like xbows. Thanks for the very detailed info. I really appreciate it.
About unit size. I personally don't like the bigger unit size. Most of the maps are small and with huge units there is not much space left for tactic, only frontal charges.
Hello Stazi,
The formula is well known and when presented like this it shows that the attack rating of the unit isn't involved in the ap effect, but it clearly is. Its a different thing to flank with UMs, and a different to flank with Varangians or Ghazis. Try as you might to flank high armor units like katas, but with attack -1 of the xbows or arbs is not going to be very effective used as you describe.
I will think about this, and test some more, and see what to do.
You can play in any size of units you want although the campaign is balanced and playtested for huge, so i reccomend that.
MTW maps are actually very big for the fatigue rating of the units and in terms of space; some of the maps are used for 2v2 and higher in multiplayer. There is lots and lots of room for flanking in huge - you are probably just not used to it, like the vast majority of people play normal, and once you change the maps feel small.
:bow:
OK, some ideas and feedback.
1. Region bonuses - Yes, +1 valour bonus provinces are clearly detrimental to the AI. However, like Stazi says, they are a very
nice way of having certain regions be of extra strategic value. I sure enjoy "something to shoot for". The solution to the AI not teching
up the provinces beyond the requirements for the bonus unit is a tricky one to find, and I have been contemplating how to do so for
some time now.
One way to do would be to clone units into certain region specific versions of themselves, if there are extra unit slots to spare. With
this system, you would edit the new units to have better stats equal to 1 valour, and rename them according to their origin. Urban
militia trained in Tuscany would become Tuscan Urban Militia, i.e. a "Region-Name" format. They could also be set to have a higher
AI preference in the unitprod. All, in all, it would be a matter of using about two dozen extra unit slots to achieve the effect.
Perhaps the campaign map could show the changes as well, similar to the way that bonuses and trade goods are marked on the STW
campaign map.
2. AI costs and preferences - Are you sure, Gollum, that the computer makes decisions on what to build based on cost and
upkeep? Personally, I have been a bit reluctant to changes the vanilla ratio/balance too much for fear that the AI would bankrupt itself
training units it wants despite them being prohibitively expensive.
3. Royal BG costs - What I have done in my home mod is to make BGs non-trainable and have them cost zero in upkeep. Not only
is this greatly helping the small factions manage their economy, but also level the playing field between the player and AI, since the
computer does not retrain his BGs anyway. Is this also the approach taken in the Caravel mod?
4. Unit sizes - I believe that MTW is balanced for Default unit sizes in the battle mode. For one, you can only raise the camera so
much above the ground, and having larger units gives you less overview due to seeing less of your forces at the same time. Furthermore,
the maximum frontage of men is limited to about 60 men IIRC, and I remember being annoyed that my missile troops and swordsmen
could not spread out sufficiently thin playing on Huge. Thirdly, only some of the battle maps are large and spacious, while quite a few are
fairly small. The terrain, I think, is also optimized for Default.
However, I do concur with the advantages gained on the campaign map by playing on Huge, as I have raised the cost, upkeep and
training time to 2x, while keeping the number of men the same.
There is no reason why unit A of that faction be more accurate than unit B of the other faction. Again, it should be unit use, and not the better weapon/units that decide the outcome of battles, and this is the intention.
The most likely reason for differences in accuracy would be different quality of training, I guess.
Thank you Durango for your interest.
About valor bonuses:
There are various work arounds but they take long to implement and they never achieve teh full effect of letting the AI free to build what he wants were he wants it. Thank you for the suggestions and ideas, but i have playtested and tweaked the campaign around this assumption, and changing it now would maen to change everything all over again, and playtesting it. I might do one or two minor stat tweaks depending what i decide about the ap attack of xbows/arbs, and two other things i noticed, but these are three very very small changes, that will go unnoticed anyway - the mod is practically finished.
About costs and preferences:
Yes, i am absolutely certain, it works as described. Just try teh campaign and see for yourself. You can try it in autorun if you are not interested in actually playing and you can see that.
About BGs costs:
Yeah, that approach sounds strangely familiar to me :) I decided to follow the vanilla game and retain small BG units (20men), with a uniform cost of 65 florins, as are the Royal Knights/Ghulams for all factions. So are the kataphrakts and the Russian BGs - the mongol heavy cav is too cheap for its class and teh Horde in any case is a different case altogether, and i am happy with how it is in Caravel. The benefits of the approach you mention are indeed many, but this mod is meant to be an improved vanilla and i decided to do it while keeping it as recognisable as possible with the vanilla game, when there was a choice. The approach you mention certainly excludes AI factions to get into debt from BGs maintenance costs, and that is its strength. It also helps the AI factions that are 1 province only to gain forces as they get heirs and then use them to expand eventually and set up. However, it deviates from the way factions behave and are played in the vanilla game because of it, and so i decided to follow the core game.
About unit sizes and battle performance:
Battles are most certainly not balanced for default - there is enough space that (many of) these maps were used in mp to host 2v2 and 3v3 battles online and CA would never make maps that would be useless if more factions or more men were on the battlefield anyway - it woud make the maps bigger than default needed them to be, so they can accomodate the more men online and from higher unit settings.
The terrain not only is not optimised for default, but its not optimised at all - the maps on average are just huge for the fatigue rates/walking speed/scale of units. Only STW maps were optimised for the fatigue rate of units. The only reason it seems that it is, is because most people play normal - and i used to be one of you guys and thought the same. You are all free to play the game/mod as you enjoy - i reccomend how its intended to play because that's how i playtested it, but it can also play diffrently. All are free to customise their game, and most people in the forums play their own mods or mods of mods for that reason.
Regarding differences in accuracy:
If you read the post you quoted, i state my case that accuracy and lethality are weapon attributes and not unit attributes. Training/experience are reflected in valor (valor afects missile accuracy and high valor missiles are more accurate) that is given through general's command stars and through battle kills. It can also be purchased on the campaign map; in Caravel you have to build th Military accademy to get valor bonuses however :)
Bonuses in general are better kept to a minimum, otherwise the game becomes a little upgrading race for the player (to win) on the campaign map that then wins him battles by way of better valor, better weapons etc. I understand that many people play thus and enjoy, and in part i do too, but the AI doesn't know how to get the best out of the bonuses and navigate them. So i'd rather play more equal footing battles than have differences here and differences there that i can exploit to beat the game. The aim of the mod is to have better battles and the best way to get better battles is to get on a more equal footing with the AI in terms of bonuses/advantages etc etc.
This is one of the main ingredients of the mod, but of course you are all free to alter things/choose mods as you see fit.
:bow:
Also, Durango the huge unit size can be certainly played with the allowable camera, however the caravel mod is also reccommended for play using -ian (to add the -loyalty:180 and -green_generals) that allows you to zoom out (or in), as well as get any angle of view, as much as you want in the battle map.
Regardless however, battles are not about seeing where your units are at all times, but knowing at any time where your units are (and what they are doing). In mp you also don't have time to see everything all at once and its more in how you filter the flow of information from the interface and the perception of the units' position in space and time at the dynamics of the battle that guides you - vision is your RAM, while percpetion of battlefield your cpu, so to speak, and you don't need to see all units in the battlefield at all times to lead your armies. Of course its more difficult in huge because spaces between units are greater and armies take more space and require a wider sweep of vision to be seen, and so understandably people are finding it hard, especially at first. But that doesn't mean that the battlefield experience is optimised for default unit settings.
One useful setting that helps sweeping faster the field of campera vision in to increase, to teh point you are comfortable, the camera rotation and translation speed. This is available from the standrad Options menu in the game menu. I think its from "Game Controls".
Regarding the weather:
Snowfall seems most likely linked to precipitation values in the file, and so there is considerable chance for snowfalling on snowy terrain now, as precipitation is increased. The terrain with higher chance for snow is Temperate and the presence of it abounds in the map of the Caravel mod, so players of teh Caravel mod will get more snow and snowfalls in their battles.
If you like the weather modification, you can also use the modified WEATHER file in your own modifications or in other modifications for MTW/VI v2.01. It should work, and you get the benefit of that in the mod of your choice or in vanilla.
:bow:
What I have done in my home mod is to make BGs non-trainable and have them cost zero in upkeep.
This was actually one of my original ideas from the Pocket Mod. Nice to see that you've adopted it.
The approach also has it's downsides. It provides the player with lots of free heavy cavalry units that cost nothing to support. If you go one further and give them the full vanilla cavalry unit size (40) this makes those free units even more viable, especially if you leave dismounts in, and makes units such as feudal knights and chivalric knights almost obsolete. If you leave the units at 20, the AI still suffers as they make very easy targets. It's somewhat of a a dilemma and I doubt the perfect system exists.
Personally I think the Byzantine and Russian/Novgord BG units works better. It keeps the support and training costs, but gives a larger more worthwhile unit to the AI.
In most of my (theoretical, experimental, and likely-never-to-be-released) mods, I've always made bodyguards like this:
- bump up the attack
- drop defence skill significantly
- bump up the shield value to 2 or 3 to compensate (marginally, should still be weaker in defence than the vanilla equivalent)
- regular cavalry size
- no upkeep + untrainable.
- tagged as the most defensive and reserved troop possible (Unit Class - column 18 in unit_prod)
the overall weaker melee defence reduces the Jedi general effect.
the bumped up shield and extra soldiers improves survivability vs cheap missile attacks.
the shield also doesn't add to the effect of heavy armour fatigue in desert, can be used for desert oriented factions (it's assumed that the general's BG has the best ventilated armour money could buy at the time :D).
the extra attack and reserved status makes for a unit used more as a last-ditch attempt for a decisive blow in battle by the AI (which is utterly heroic coming from the general).
the already mentioned perks of non-trainable + no upkeep.
Some of these effects are mostly assumed from rudimentary testing. I needn't remind you that a lot of my past modding was experimenting with the boundaries of the game and radically changing the units and their vanilla roles.
It would seem to work in theory, I've never tested how reserved and defensive the AI would use it and just how powerful its offensive capabilities should be, but that's the general way I've always wanted to make the bodyguards.
Just my 2 cents. :)
Thank you very much Raz for your interesting suggestions :bow:
In fact i generally follow everything you do in my home mods as well, except the higher atack/nerf defence which makes sense if you give more men to the unit to compensate. The higher men indeed improve survivability against cheap missile attacks, like sniping/targeting the enemy general/king with xbows and arbs/bows en masse and having an easier battle and an easier campaign at the same time by killing him.
However, i wanted this mod to be recognisably vanilla in terms of gameplay hence i followed the vanilla 20 men, non-scalable, which though, as in your suggestion are non-retrainable (you can't train BG units in Caravel and all are unique and apart from the other cavalry of factions). This takes away from the player the luxury of retraining his BGs and forces him to pay attention to them, as the player suffers as the AI suffers from non-replenishable princes' BGs.
I like very much the idea to change the AI unit setting of the BGs to the most conservative defensive unit possible, and i am interested in testing it and perhaps even incorporating it in the Caravel mod if it really works, in which case i will give you full credit for it.
The potential drawback, is that the AI then may underuse the unit and miss perhaps his chance to win a battle if he had used it more assertively. But all this is speculation and it needs testing to find out what would happen. Which Ai unit setting would you suggest as the most conservative?
Have to play quite a bit of custom to find how it will work, and it will be some time from now, as i kind of had enough of modding by now for the moment :)
Again, thank you
Originally posted by Caravel
The approach also has it's downsides. It provides the player with lots of free heavy cavalry units that cost nothing to support. If you go one further and give them the full vanilla cavalry unit size (40) this makes those free units even more viable, especially if you leave dismounts in, and makes units such as feudal knights and chivalric knights almost obsolete. If you leave the units at 20, the AI still suffers as they make very easy targets. It's somewhat of a a dilemma and I doubt the perfect system exists.
Bingo. All that maint. cost free full size heavy cav after some time makes the trainable heavy cav units obsolete and unbalances the camp. And if you keep them small the player can snipe them during battle as you say.
Personally I think the Byzantine and Russian/Novgord BG units works better. It keeps the support and training costs, but gives a larger more worthwhile unit to the AI.
Maybe, but it would work with smaller maint costson the campaign. I really wanted to keep the BGs in the mod full size for the Russ and teh Byz, but, the Byzs were really dragging themselves financially because of it. Once i dropped the BG to 20, the Byz played like a different faction; greatly balanced stacks, great economic development, using full roster, resisting and even beating back at times the Turkish onslaught and once every full moon even conquering Anatolia and the Middle East and resisting the Mongols. Hence, i stuck with the 20 men BGs for them and for the Russ. The Russ get the Boyars as a recruitable unit from v2.1 and onwards - the Boyars were too much of a stapple unit for them to make it small and non trainable - and they have unique BGs: Druzhina in early and Dvor (Royal Khazar Cav renamed and slightly more able) in high and late. The Byz on the other hand get the pron cavs for full size heavy cav, and so the kats can be their dedicated BG unit.
The alternative would be to still decrease the costs and keep them full size - but that also skews the early battles very much to their favor. In any case, once i made them 20man size, battles with and against the Byzantines became far more fun, balanced and challenging (because the AI produced better stacks and because as the Byz you couldn't just rely on the brute kata strength - you needed to use the rest of your army to beat the enemy).
I am only thinking to give the kata BG normal speed, as with less men, the slow speed makes them considerably more vulnerable to missiles and more likely to get caught for ransom or killed in routs. Or perhaps i should leave them thus as a sign of decadence of the Empire - proud and of great lineage but backward and awkward like their cavalry :)
Hi Gollum and Caravel, and thanks for the responses.
There are various work arounds but they take long to implement and they never achieve teh full effect of letting the AI free to build what he wants were he wants it. Thank you for the suggestions and ideas, but i have playtested and tweaked the campaign around this assumption, and changing it now would maen to change everything all over again, and playtesting it.
I see. One other way that I tried was to limit the bonus units from provinces to Early only if I start in Early - but that was
nullified when I learned that the AI stops developing regions beyond the tech for the +1 unit. Shoddy design, I'd say, by
the Creative Assembly. I don't believe Shogun had such nonsense, IIRC.
Well, the issue is then likely to remain for all of us to rip out our hair trying to solve...
The approach you mention certainly excludes AI factions to get into debt from BGs maintenance costs, and that is its strength. It also helps the AI factions that are 1 province only to gain forces as they get heirs and then use them to expand eventually and set up. However, it deviates from the way factions behave and are played in the vanilla game because of it, and so i decided to follow the core game.
Yes, the one province factions in my game really get active with that setup, Scotland sometimes takes half of England, and
Bohemia can very much expand and carve out a kingdom in central Europe. The other nations do get more resources as well,
but just as in real life, it's important that the poor can afford to look for jobs even if that means more Champagne for the upper classes.
Battles are most certainly not balanced for default - there is enough space that (many of) these maps were used in mp to host 2v2 and 3v3 battles online and CA would never make maps that would be useless if more factions or more men were on the battlefield anyway - it woud make the maps bigger than default needed them to be, so they can accomodate the more men online and from higher unit settings.
The terrain not only is not optimised for default, but its not optimised at all - the maps on average are just huge for the fatigue rates/walking speed/scale of units. Only STW maps were optimised for the fatigue rate of units. The only reason it seems that it is, is because most people play normal - and i used to be one of you guys and thought the same.
Now, this is interesting. The definition of "optimized" is not universal, and being that I'm not interested in MP (battles for the sake of
battling is pointless) the number of players per map is to me irrelevant. It is true that most maps are never too small nor too big to play
on, but there is a map size that resonates for every individual player. I like lots of space for different stages of the battle to play out in.
Fatigue rates however, are too harsh for these environments, I agree.
If you read the post you quoted, i state my case that accuracy and lethality are weapon attributes and not unit attributes. Training/experience are reflected in valor (valor afects missile accuracy and high valor missiles are more accurate) that is given through general's command stars and through battle kills. It can also be purchased on the campaign map; in Caravel you have to build th Military accademy to get valor bonuses however :)
Factors such as accuracy are not only based on the weapon, but on the characteristics of the unit itself like other stats. In the
VI campaign, Berserkers are faster than other unarmoured units, because they're angry blokes! Certain unit types can be better
than other faction's equivalents, but only if they are balanced properly (I usually solve that issue by restricting "plain better" units
to single province only, like for ex. Swiss Pikemen).
Bonuses in general are better kept to a minimum, otherwise the game becomes a little upgrading race for the player (to win) on the campaign map that then wins him battles by way of better valor, better weapons etc. I understand that many people play thus and enjoy, and in part i do too, but the AI doesn't know how to get the best out of the bonuses and navigate them. So i'd rather play more equal footing battles than have differences here and differences there that i can exploit to beat the game. The aim of the mod is to have better battles and the best way to get better battles is to get on a more equal footing with the AI in terms of bonuses/advantages etc etc.
True, but it's always a matter of playing style too - the human player is after all the most influential factor in the game. I tend to
give the AI a lot of advantages with my heavily turtle-based play, and always face numerically superior forces. Though it's important
to minimize player advantages when ever possible, otherwise the game stops being a game, and turns into a role playing mental
exercise with only self imposed "rules". Care should be taken, however, to not reduce the campaign map tech trees too much, lest
you have nothing to build towards.
I like the changes in the Caravel mod, and they frequently mirror my own. I have removed valour upgrades for high end buildings,
since it does not make sense to have the oppurtunity to "build" valour that way. Same goes for morale, too.
Also, Durango the huge unit size can be certainly played with the allowable camera, however the caravel mod is also reccommended for play using -ian (to add the -loyalty:180 and -green_generals) that allows you to zoom out (or in), as well as get any angle of view, as much as you want in the battle map.
Only for close ups, not for overviews. The camera can't go higher.
Regardless however, battles are not about seeing where your units are at all times, but knowing at any time where your units are (and what they are doing). In mp you also don't have time to see everything all at once and its more in how you filter the flow of information from the interface and the perception of the units' position in space and time at the dynamics of the battle that guides you - vision is your RAM, while percpetion of battlefield your cpu, so to speak, and you don't need to see all units in the battlefield at all times to lead your armies. Of course its more difficult in huge because spaces between units are greater and armies take more space and require a wider sweep of vision to be seen, and so understandably people are finding it hard, especially at first. But that doesn't mean that the battlefield experience is optimised for default unit settings.
This is not multiplayer, this is singleplayer. MP gameplay is not relevant to how people want to experience singleplayer. It's also a
matter of playing style, since I personally enjoy spreading out my units a lot as well as using a large amount of mobile units such as HAs.
The interface itself has drawbacks (no symbols for unit types on the minimap for example), but the biggest issue is that units, unlike real
life, cannot take care of themselves without orders. Babysitting units is not very realistic.
Personally, I'm also a very micro management oriented player, as I like precisely controlling the actions of the units. When the battlefield
is too spread out, I have less time to do what I enjoy the most, so therefore Huge unit sizes decreases my satisfaction. Not to mention
the other engine limitations I brought up, such as maximum frontage.
One useful setting that helps sweeping faster the field of campera vision in to increase, to teh point you are comfortable, the camera rotation and translation speed. This is available from the standrad Options menu in the game menu. I think its from "Game Controls".
Yes, it's very useful.
This was actually one of my original ideas from the Pocket Mod. Nice to see that you've adopted it.
Very likely I read it in the Pocket mod forums, yes. I've read all topics there. Good concept, regardless of who invented it originally.
The approach also has it's downsides. It provides the player with lots of free heavy cavalry units that cost nothing to support. If you go one further and give them the full vanilla cavalry unit size (40) this makes those free units even more viable, especially if you leave dismounts in, and makes units such as feudal knights and chivalric knights almost obsolete. If you leave the units at 20, the AI still suffers as they make very easy targets. It's somewhat of a a dilemma and I doubt the perfect system exists.
The full sizes are not really compatible with the solution in question, though, because as you say the BGs become too good. My home mod
has 20 unit BGs for all factions (with some stat changes to go along with it). In the end, there is no perfect solution. It's plague or cholera,
so to speak. Although I find the free upkeep and non trainable setting the lesser of two evils. Heh, maybe I should give all units elite status
to counteract the general dying. Or maybe play with morale off and suicide my own general first. Or dress myself up like a duck.
OK, I'll stop...
Thank you again for the interesting discussion.
:bow:
Trapped in Samsara
01-28-2011, 14:50
I like very much the idea to change the AI unit setting of the BGs to the most conservative defensive unit possible, and i am interested in testing it and perhaps even incorporating it in the Caravel mod if it really works, in which case i will give you full credit for it.
Hi
If this change would go even a tiny way towards discouraging even a few AI generals from suicidally cantering up to within range of my missile troops and then halting, thereby allowing my chaps to interrupt their sunbathing to deliver a few devastating volleys of bolts/arrows/musketry... I'm all for it.
Also, Gollum, it really is refreshing to not be encountering absurd amounts of artillery in the AI stacks, and hence its initial deployments. This has been my biggest single whinge down the years. Thank you. At last, a BAI that doesn't cripple itself before it's even made it into the arena.
Best regards
Victor
Sapere aude
Horace
Thank you for your response Durango.
Its only natural that i would make the mod from my experiences and from my own playstayle point of view. In that sense, i am interested in having battles as intense as those i had online, if possible. I am certain that having battles that are a bit more on the edge might please/interest some people - certainly not all of course. Some people may like it, and some people may not. If you give the mod a try with the reccomended settings for a while you might end up liking the settings more than you now think perhaps... or not :) Either way no problem.
:bow:
Originally posted by Durango
Only for close ups, not for overviews. The camera can't go higher.
Oh, but it does in fact go as high as you want :) You can go so high as being able to see beyond the edges of the map - as if from a sattelite.
Originally posted by victorgb
Hi
If this change would go even a tiny way towards discouraging even a few AI generals from suicidally cantering up to within range of my missile troops and then halting, thereby allowing my chaps to interrupt their sunbathing to deliver a few devastating volleys of bolts/arrows/musketry... I'm all for it.
Also, Gollum, it really is refreshing to not be encountering absurd amounts of artillery in the AI stacks, and hence its initial deployments. This has been my biggest single whinge down the years. Thank you. At last, a BAI that doesn't cripple itself before it's even made it into the arena.
Hello victor, the change is now complete as is the next version that contain it and a few small stat adjustments. Indeed this was the main work on the mod: to work on the rosters/dependencies/prices(maint and training) in order to have worthy stacks. The mod has fully succeded in that i feel. If you haven't try it yet, try v2.1, but if you haven't don't worry: v2.2 is coming up by tomorrow morning. I'll also post what i did for as it might be of interest to others for their own mods. Thanks again to Raz for the inspiration/idea.
:bow:
Durango,
although the huge settings make the camera work requiring wider sweeps as you say (of course now that you know the camera can be taken as high as you want that might be less of a problem), the melee lasts longer - assuming always match ups are proper (ie not your spears to their swords etc). This gives you actually more time for micro on the flanks than in normal/default were often melees take up less time to resolve.
In my opinion, the settings issue you are having is a matter of habit more than anything. But of course its your habit and your choice :)
:bow:
Sounds pretty good, actually. I could swear I did, a long time ago, read in the numerology thread that -ian did not raise the camera.
But if what you say is correct, than I'll try Huge unit sizes and see if it plays better. Nice to hear! Ever since switching back to
Default form Huge, I saw the benefits of the latter apply mostly to the campaign map.
I too await the results of the changes Raz mentioned could work. If only we could remove the entire system in MTW where
the general's death gives a big penalty to morale... perhaps even where the general bonuses persist in battle whether
the general lives or dies. Personally I would accept that even though it's unrealistic.
There is a way to bypass this; and that was Caravel's idea and intention that we were discussing together, and from those discussions i went on to make the Caravel mod (we were meant to have made the mod together and it would have been much more radical and from the ground up than what it is).
Caravel suggested that all units from Keep (level 2 castle) level onwards be elite. This is easy to do, and it doesn't show up in the unit card info: you just say YES in the comumn of the unit prod file that asks if the unit is Samurai. This is a carry over from STW of course that shares the core engine with MTW. In STW, Caravel said, only the Ashigaru spears (Yari Ashigaru) and the Ashigaru gunners (arqs and musketeers) are not Samurai and hence get hefty negative bonuses from the death of the General as they are peasants.
In MTW, very few units are designated Samurai, elites in MTW terminology. Hence why armies melt down at general's death.
I have not incorporated Caravel's idea into the mod because i wanted it to be vanilla-like gameplay - i wanted the General to matter, and i wanted most armies/units to be fragile to the general's death. Also some other features of the vanilla game apart from the battles would get affected. For example, the Military Academy that makes units disciplined would become more or less redundant - being elites is better, and if most units are elites, becoming disciplined would mean little. Equally redundant would be the property of disciplined of all those units that are such in their basic stats - Byzantine Infantry, Mamelukes etc etc. So, ileft it as is.
However, there is nothing from stopping you to do it thus in your own mods. Set the majority of units to elite, say from Keep level and above, and the problem you are having with armies melting at the death of the General will be solved.
I'll post what i did with the BG behaviour; its a small setting, but i played from last night about 20+ battles in custom and campaign and it does make a difference. I'll explain once the new version is out.
:bow:
The most radical treatment you can do Durango is to turn off morale altogether. Battles will be a bit like... Warcraft, but never theless you won't be dissapointed by armies melting from the general's death.
:bow:
Ok, new version will be available soon. This is the final version, for 2011 at least. I feel that the mod has succeded in all its goals and more now.
The new version, v2.2, contains minor stat adjustemnts in 3 unit cases. Its fully saved game compatible and the experience of the game remains 95+% unaltered from v2.1.
The stat adjustments are:
1. Xbows and arbs are returned to their normal melee, ie not ap anymore.
I have fully becomed convinced that the ap does not infact give any melee benefit against low/medium armor opponents as i was hoping. It also certainly does not make them helpful against high armour opponents - try flanking heavy cavalry; i did and the heavy cavalry felt a slight mosquito bite from teh xbows and then turned around and routed them while it was still fighting the spear that had it pinned. Not to mention that they were slow and fatigued alot due to being armoured.
So the ap is taken out as it is misleading - it might tell people that these units can do some ap damage, when they are in fact not going to and you are much better off having them shoot instead all the while.
All in all, i think that the problem i was trying to solve (AI moving about too much his missiles and having them getting caught by infantry/cavalry) needs tweaking of a different parameter altogether. I will try to experiment with the engagement threshold parameter (and a fewothers i have in mind) and see, but this mod is now finalised and at least for 2011 won't be updated further.
2. Adjusted the maintenance cost of the Swiss BGs (Swiss armoured pikemen) - now they cost about the same as other factions' BGs and the player does not benefit from that as they are unique to the Swiss and BG only (non-trainable). The player can still train Swiss pikes and Swiss halbs in Switzerland normaly as in vanilla.
This will improve the cah flow of the Swiss faction considerably, and as they are set on expansionist, beware of them if they emerge in your general area.
3. Adjusted Byzantine Kata BG to adapt them at being a 20 man unit.
The original unit was slow, large and powerful. Since now much of this power is taken away due to them being a 20man BG, i restored their speed to normal cavalry speed. This does not make them speed race champions - they are still slow and fatigue easily - they have probably 2 max full speed charges in them - but faster than before - basically alittel slower and more easily fatigued than Kwarazmians/Avar Nobles/khazar royal cav of vanilla. The idea is that they should be able to apply their smaller strength around the battlefield where needed, as "charge and let them duke it out" doesn't work with them anymore due to their smaler size. Also with their very small speed coupled with their now smaller size they would be too easy to capture when routing and also be easier sniped by missiles.
In addition to these 3 small changes, v2.2 contains an adjusted BG unit behaviour for all BGs of all factions, after following a suggestion/hint fom Raz.
Raz suggested that the BG be more conservative in battle so as to keep behind the lines, and thus the player not having an easy time sniping it out - as that's easy due to its small size. I followed his clue to set the BG units to DEFENSIVE, instead of ATTACKING (as they are) unit status, but that made them too conservative, and they would not use their power in early battles where BG units are the most powerful cavs/units.
Hence, i left the unit designation (ATTACKER, AMBUSH, ANTI_MISSILE, CAVALRY) as i could find nothing wrong with it for the unit (the unit should use its strength to attack, should prioritise missiles, should be an ambusher and try to flank), and i experimented with another closely linked set of parameters available.
I am refering to column 53. This is stated as "No longer used" but i am absolutely certain that it is used as i tried changing the parameters there and they did make considerable difference.
A typical line of this from Heavy cavs/BGs looks like that:
"SKIRMISH(0), ADVANCE_PARTY(1),OUTFLANKING_FORCE(1), MAIN_BODY(1), HOLD_TERRAIN(0), RESERVE(1), REINFORCEMENT(1), ASSAULT(2), ASSAULT_COVER(0), ASSAULT_COVER_CASTLE_ATTACK(0), COVER(0)"
Basically it designates (seems to me) the position and role of the unit in an army. The highest i saw in any of these values from any unit was 2 and the lowest 0.
The meanings, in my view are:
Skirmish: self explanatory, and it might (?) hold the key to the answer for the xbow/arbs problem - if it denotes which units have skirmish amility on
Advanced Part: unit being on the front lines
Outflanking force: unit included in the splitting of forces the AI does when he outnembers or when heis more mobile in force composition in order to sandwitch the enemy army
Main Body: unit being with the main melee line
Hold tarrain: i have no clue what this might do, and i am intrigued by it, as it may make the AI use its xbow/arb missiles better if used. I haven't seen any unit having set to more than 0 on that.
Reserve: Unit beig part of the 3rd line behind the melee main line (main body)
Reinforcement: Unit to be prioritised for reinforcement - so unit will wait untill its needed while others melee - typically for missiles.
Assault: Unit is to lead the charge that initiates the melee
Assault Cover: Unit is to fire to the enemy lines while its own army is engaging/fighting in melee - typically for archers, bow units/xbow-arb/guns
Assault cover Castle: Same as before but while on a siege assault
Cover: Firing at the enemy to cover advanced units of own army - again for missiles
If you consider the above and then study the designation for BG units that, as said is the same for HC full size units that do not contain family members, its clear that the higherst priority of the unit is Assault (2). This explains all those heroic single handed, but doomed, charges of BGs, and this is what i reduced. I reduced Assault to 1 and instead put 2 in the Main Body.
With these settings the BGs now will not lead the charge alone and wait for the others to catch up - but it will attack together with all the rest of the main line. This is also the reason why the BGs units sit there while other units coming up to it when the battle has reinforcements, i think. Now the unit will be sitting behind the others, protected, and will not recklessly commit, but still commit, to charges/fighting. However, full scale HC/Knights were left to assault 2, as they do not contain heirs/kings and do not suffer from small size. For them it makes perfect sense to lading the charge and that actually is ok and desirable even.
The results are a clear improvement of the use of the BG units by the AI. He uses them now in coordination with his main body army, but without being too conservative with them - which will help him, particularly in the early battles. I did now about 40+ battles in custom and campaign letting the AI have full size knights and BG knights and observed the difference. The feature works as described and its a clear improvement over the previous setting, as i hope you all find out.
The exact setting i used for 20 man BGs is:
"SKIRMISH(0), ADVANCE_PARTY(1), OUTFLANKING_FORCE(1), MAIN_BODY(2), HOLD_TERRAIN(0), RESERVE(1), REINFORCEMENT(1), ASSAULT(1), ASSAULT_COVER(0), ASSAULT_COVER_CASTLE_ATTACK(0), COVER(0)"
If someone wanted to make the BGs even more conservative, i say you could try putting the advanced party to 0. If youput 2 to reinforcement, the unit will not commit at all until the point its own line is faltering. This makes it the safest from missiles, but at the same time, it wastes its potential during melee, imo. Perhaps putting 2 to reserve might also help. I am not sure if putting two values@ 2 will be meaningful; it might be better that the highest priority/role for the unit is clear.
So, this is it, the mod is now completed (for this year at least:), and i hope you all enjoy. Thank you for your interest and patience.
I will make a post to let you know when the new version is up, and also update my signature link to reflect that.
:medievalcheers:
Ok, i just got a reply from the administration. The admin is on leave and hence does not have the tools for making this available right now.
Final version v2.2 will be made available on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning CET.
Thank you.
Congratulations! Some very interesting findings you got here. I always wanted to check these settings but never had enough time and patience. Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Please, don't hesitate to make more "final" versions this year! I'm sure no one will complain about further improvement, especially like the ones from your last posts. This year has just started. We don't want to wait whole year for something new.
P.S. I've started Mamluk's campaign (on Hard, v2.1) yesterday with all your suggested settings. The main difference is very slow start for all factions. Empty provinces without any buildings, 2 years training time and loyatly:180 makes entire map really peaceful for a long time. It allowed me to cover whole Mediterranean with my ships and I have piles of cash (40 years have passed). I noticed that Byzantines don't develop their Asia Minor provinces (or develop not enough). It's hard to find one unit even in border provinces. When war started (after @20 years), Turks conquered all those provinces in just 3-4 turns and now they are attacking Constantinople. At the start of the campaign, Byzantines has highest income and it's strange that they don't build any troop producing buildings in these provinces. That's all for now. Just my first impressions.
Great work Gollum! Those are some true discoveries right there. Will be testing that tonight.
:bow:
Thank you Durango and Stazi for your kind words and your interest in the mod. Feel free to incorporate any/all ideas wherever and however you like in your mods. if there is a similar small but significant improvement i have found out in the battles, i will either post about it or make a new version with it or both.
Stazi, thank you for your campaign account.
The Byzantines do infact develop as hard as they can but they are slow to begin with because they start with 1x100men Byz infantry, 2X60men Treb Archers and 1x60men Varangs and the Emperor, that is 4 half size units that are found in Greece, Bulgaria and Const. They cannot possibly cover their huge empire with that (the Ai can't at least) so quickly and so teh Turks will nibble away their empty Anatolian provinces. Their Naples province also starts with nothing: no units, no buildings so they lose that usually to either the Italians, teh Pope or the Sicilians. Sometimes though they bring units there from their core provinces by sea and even take Sicily and teh Sicilians out or the blitz the Pope out of existence (and then the Pope comes back etc etc).
The campaign starts slow, as slow as the vanilla campaign of early on huge settings and loyalty:180 :) Other than the Byzantines that i greatly disadvantaged in their starting armies (as they were in vanilla, you had so many troops that you could get rid of teh Turks practically in 4-5 turns - no exaggerations) in order to have to fight for their lives as it was historically, and also to counteract the shamefully easy campaign they normally had in early without having to take starting provinces from them, no oterfaction has different starting units - they are all as you remember them from vanilla. I have seen teh Byz/Turk fight (which is the one that starts first in the vast majority of campaigns) going either way, sometimes the Turks outright crush them, sometimes the Byz stem the flow and fight back till they defeat them, and sometimes it ends in a draw of sorts till the Mongols arrive and re-arrange them or till the Egytpians take on the Turks. In any case its pretty interesting how things go in that area.
The campaign picks up speed among the AI factions at sometime around 1130-1150 once teh AI factions have built up strength and cash flow; then at least one or two wars go on and as time progresses and empires rise and fall, war brakes out between (any of) them. Once the campaign builds up, factions use all sorts of things: Crusades, agents, ships, trade - but more cautiously and wholistically.
The slow build up, which is partly due to teh loyalty feature and partly due to the huge unit settings that make units trainable in 2 turns, allows the AI factions to have more time to prepare and go to war more with all their strength, as i hope you'll experience. This is all the more true if you avoid to use mercenaries on a regular basis. I wanted to keep mercs in the game for flavor reasons, but i made them far more generic - ie not elite/exclusive units of factions but more common medium infantry and cavalry. If you make it a home rule to recruit one every 10 years say, then the AI may prove surprisingly good an opponent. The mercs feature really gives a tremendous advantage to the player, as you can conquer vast areas in no time and then disband them and replace them with cheaper home troops or burn them in battle and keep conquering.
Conquering areas with other faiths will also prove more challenging. Faith propagates slower now and areas change religion slower which impacts particularly on teh Orthodox and Islamic factions that are religiously outnumbered on the map. This, coupled with happiness bonuses coming available more gradually means that conquest will require a bit more effort and preparation.
It also depends how you play. For example, i have one campaign in v2.2 (which is practically identical to v2.1) that i tried to play as aggressively i could (including buying mercs!) with the French. I do that with vanilla, and, typically by 1180-1190, i own France, Germany, northern Italy, Britain and Spain. In Caravel i could manage France, half of Germany and the north of Italy by 1160, with much more difficult battles and far less income and teching up - my cash flow has just started picking up. Because of the rush i have no ships yet, and so i have a long way in front of me. I also have no clue what the Almohads and teh eastern factions are doing - who is growing, who is on top. So i look forward to see how that will go and compare notes to vanilla first hand (not by autorun) as i have played the French many many times. By the way, the battles were very good so far in my campaign. Only the Germans proved dissapointing, but they always do :) The Italians on the other hand proved really a hard nut to crack and if they didn't have a civil war (as their Doge changed in the middle of my war with them) that made their best stack rebel, fighting them would have been even longer and harder. By the way, i fougth that rebel stack and lost :) with an equally strong stack. The AI took up a splendind defensive position on a slight slope and used his Royal BGs excellently in that battle - that was one happy defeat :)
Usually as the Egyptians, like in vanilla, i turtle until i have decent armies and income to take Syria and then start taking over the Turks. My guess is that if you take too long to take on the Turks, you might find that they have become stronger due to snatching provinces from teh Byz. I have seen their AI often fight a two front war against the Eggs and teh Byz and sometimes (not always) emerge victorious.
For the player, being the first to have a good trading network, especially if you play factions that have well defined and easily defensible borders and good starting income; ie Almohads/Egyptians is the norm.
One of the things that this mod has succeeded in my view is that, once an AI faction becomes really strong it doesn't easily fall from power, i have seen factions surviving civil wars, Papal re-emergencies and teh Mongols. That's partly due to the loyalty:180 effect and partly due to teh tech tree reworking that makes teh AI factions getting something from nearly everything they build - be it better income or units or agents or province happiness.
In any case: don't expect impossible difficulty - that is not what the mod is all about: what it does is to improve the vanilla campaign on the camp map and on the battlefield - and i think the mod has succeded, as i hope you'll find out. Having satisfying battles at all stages of a campaign - be it an early rush or a middle game death struggle or a late game clear up - was also part of what this mod is aiming for, and i think this is also true and hope peolpe will experience that. To teh very end of a campaign you'll find good stacks and worthy opponents in battles even when you are rolling.
Also, please don't assume that things you see happening in one campaign happen the way you see them in all campaigns. There is a sort of a common start theme inevitably because of the same starting positions, but, things can develop very diferently from campaign to campaign; i have seen in autorun camps having very different superpowers nearly everytime and coming on top to superpower from varied developments/paths.
i hope you enjoy
:bow:
By the way, for those that look for a "from rags to riches" (start small) game, the Polish, the Danish, the Spanish, the Aragonese, the Russians and the Sicilians - ie all the starting small factions should prove much more challenging and satisfying now.
The Russians in particular will hopefully be giving you a good run for your money - they gave me one just to clear the steppe, in any case :)
And if all else fails (as it will, in all mods in all versions), you can always switch to another faction once too big :)
:bow:
I've been editing the unitprod as per Gollum's changes, and noticed that default Golden Horde HC was set at
MAIN_BODY 2 and ASSAULT 1...
...Looks like we've been duped from the start! Who decided that the stats were "not used anymore"?
Thank you for this observation Durango.
It points that the tweak was sound. The Mongol HC is much better at coordinating with the rest of their army than the knights/ghulams BG.
Probably CA wanted the knights to be rash and head on foollishly brave. Their setting actually suits full scale HC knightly units without family members, but its really bad for the smaller and more precious BG units.
In any case, CA was not making this game for people who had played for... 10+ years :laugh4: They were making it for people that would be mostly new to teh game - having it improved as much as it goes was as impossible for them as unecessary, i guess.
PershsNhpios
01-30-2011, 11:21
Just reporting to say that I am about to experiment with an English game in 2.1 at the expense of the AAR.
Recommend the use of the campaign time limit, Gollum? I always play on Hard and Huge, so that isn't a problem.
Even if I am defeated in my last province as the English, I will switch and play on as suggested in order to see the whole campaign evolve.
Hello Glenn :)
your AAR is great and its a pitty that you switch to Caravel before gracing us with more of your Byzantine exploits and your great writings and storytelling. I think you really have lots of talent for AARs (and writing in general) and hopefully will be trying to make one and match(?) your quality.
I reccomend you switch the battle limit off if that is what you are asking - the AI in some battles will do a "continual retreat" tactic in order to decide the battle by the clock, but that is nonesense - battles are meant to be decided in the field even with a handful of men, and then they are great:) In my recent French campaign i rushed Aragon in order to take them out and safeguard my Iberian frontier before i moved against the Germans. So i bought as many mercs as i could afford and moved agains King Sancho. The battle was decided with a 5 minute duel between the two Kings(!) as only them had remained on the field :) It was just what the stuff of epic balladry was made of :)
If you are asking how long to play, then i'd say play as long as you like :)
The campaign is meant to be fun on the battlefield even when you have reached the point of steamrolling (sweeping all opponents in your path) all the way to full domination. You'll defeat the opposition because you are richer and can replace losses at that point, yes, but still you'll (hopefuly :) get fun battles in doing so.
Another mode you can try (next/another time), if you haven't done so, its the Glorious Achievements, that the mod is fully compatible with. As the Catholics try to match the Crusades GA goals or teh Krak de Chevallier as France or the Jihads or the Ottoman Empire as the Muslims, or the Lombard League or a trading Empire as teh Italians, or to recreate the Teutonic Order as the Germans or to defy the Mongols as teh Russ and the Poles while taking points for having conquered your "homeland" provinces etc. Its a really fun and roleplaying way toplay the campaign as it makes you shift your priorities from sheer conquest to historical GA goal achieving.
:bow:
Also, Glenn, if your campaign comes to worst and you are defeated,make sure to switch factions/abandon ship a little bit before that happens; otherwise the game will end and if you have not saved recently that might force you to go back to your a save that is long before you reached the "almost defeated state". I tell you this, because it happened to me once or twice. Just when you see it really coming, abandon ship or save before you proceed.
:bow:
An additional benefit of teh huge settings is that it makes for less stacks being about (because every stack has as much men and costs in maint as the equivalent of 2 default setting stacks! The same number of men is available (that is determined by the agricultural income of provinces/faction wealth) but in fewer "pieces").
This in practice means that battles are more reasonable in time length, as there are less reinforcements. Battles with endless reinforcements in default can be pretty tedious, but in huge only a half stack of reinforcement will come in at some cases, and in most it will be even less than that, if at all. This also helps the AI as he isn't very very good at coordinating reinforcements (muc better than RTW/M2TW though were he is absolutely horrible and he attacks piece meal with reinforcements).
In effect, battles are more decisive, more epic and less tediously time consuming than in default.
The only exception to this are the Mongols, but even they have less (1/2) stacks for the same reason. Less stacks also means that you have less flexibility in rush conquering (as your men are pachaged in bigger blocks) and so rushing requires more skill in huge.
:bow:
The battle was decided with a 5 minute duel between the two Kings(!) as only them had remained on the field :) It was just what the stuff of epic balladry was made of :)
I had similar duel long time ago, playing Armenians and defending fort from Egypt. All soldiers were killed and generals clashed in final duel, luckily my armenian ruler defeated egyptian sultan - it was true epic fight :)
Going to try this mod after my exams, this mod seems to be totally different from big ones with new stuff, after reading first page I don't really know what to expect :P And those -ian etc. - what is it, how does it work?
Hello huth,
thank you for your interest in the mod.
expect an improved vanilla game in the campaign and the battlefield. With improved better AI stack composition and behaviour and all the original campaign MTWish feeling and flavor intact and more balanced battles. That's what this mod is all about. On coming Tuesday night/Wednsday morning or there abouts the final version of the mod will be available so you can play that after your exams.
The -ian is an addition you add to your MTW exe shortcut. You do this by right clicking the shortcut and then choose properties. You'll get to the properties menu where you'll see the target for the exe shortcut.
Then leave 1 space and add -ian (lower case). Then leave one space and add -loyalty:180. Then leave one space and add -green_generals.
The -ian mode allows you to:
1.manipulate the camera as you like on the battlefield (can go as close or as far to the action as you want)
2. Switch from faction to faction by pressing the number keys in your keyboard in the middle of a campaign
3. Loyalty:180 makes the AI retain loyalty 180 to all his provinces at all times - basically means that the AI will self destruct much lessby opportunistic attacks and rebellions
4. Green_generals will make your generals dies and be replaced with men of slightly less stats every time. This makes the game more diffcult and more realistic.
These settings work with all mods of MTW and are not a feature of the mod. I just reccommend it to play with them because they make the AI play far better.
I hope you enjoy.
:bow:
Thank you for explanation. Shame that I didn't know -ian earlier, great feature. "Real" generals' death is realistic and it's good, but I like immortal generals, they make game tough in some way(fighting against enemy generals) but also gameplay become more and more easy further in campaign(my last BKB game - above 10 generals with 8 or 9 stars also many with lower command). So it'll change game quite strongly, no more epic 9 vs 9 starred generals fights :P
Certainly I'll play when you release new/final version :)
Final version is already uploaded, and is waiting to be approved by the administration.
The admin is on leave and does not have the tools to make this available until Tuesday night/Wednsday morning.
:bow:
Regarding general stars, a balance needs to be stricken from a gameplay perspective, and this mod sticks with that.
The need for balance comes from the fact that General stars give +1valor per 2command stars to all units under their command and that means that every unit gets a +1attack,+1defence,+2morale per valor point.
Essentially most mods charge up the game with more command stars for generals and also from titles. This mod sticks to the vanilla command stars that are more moderate, because past a certain point, if too many high star generals are around morale is downgraded as a gameplay element - armies fight to the last man as a rule. This is not how this mod is meant to play at all.
On the other hand, reducing too much the initial stars of generals does not make much sense either because the generals upgrade command stars as in Shogun TW that is: 1star for 1 victorious battle, 2 stars for 2 vict battles, 3 stars for 4 victorious battles, 4 stars for 8 victorious battles, 5stars for 16 victorious battles, 6 stars for 32 victoroius battles, 7 stars for 64 victorious battles, 8 stars for 128victorious battles and 9 stars for 256 victorious battles. Every loss counts as -1 to the general's record and he has to counteract it with +1 victory and reach the numbers said before for the stars. So for example, a general that has 32 victorious battles and loses 1 battle will lose his 6th star.
However, ShogunTW had 4 turns(seasons) per year while MTW has 1 turn per year (1turn=1year). This means that generals in MTW are around much less time (typically a faction leader will last 25 to 45 turns) in order to accumulate stars with Shoguns system (where a faction leader would live from say 25 to 65 ie 40yearsx4turns per year=160turns! much more time to raise his command stars...). Hence it is necessary to give them some initial stars, especially since hero characters (Jeanne d'Arc, Saladin etc) make appearances as Generals.
If however, too many initial stars are given (or from titles etc) the gameplay becomes warcraft; ie morale practically doesn't impact on the battles, and battles are won by greater numbers and more uber units and upgrades.
This is what most popular mods are doing including XL and BKB. This is however NOT how this mod is made or its intended to play. This mod aims to keep command stars moderate and so morale always relevant in battles.
The general star issue is also another reason why i didn't follow Caravel's idea to make most units elites (elites + 4-5 on average stars = morale matters less). Of course, Caravel also suggested to make the default stars of heros and starting generals too small as well, but that would have run into the problem i described (too few years of life for generals to accumualte stars). To be honest from my perspective, that would have been better for gameplay reasons, but it would have skewed the vanilla gameplay too much and i wanted this mod to be reckognisably vanilla blah blah :)
:bow:
btw in my own fight previously described that the two Kings were left to duel, all other units had routed - they weren't killed.
:bow:
An additional benefit of teh huge settings is that it makes for less stacks being about (because every stack has as much men and costs in maint as the equivalent of 2 default setting stacks! The same number of men is available (that is determined by the agricultural income of provinces/faction wealth) but in fewer "pieces").
True, and battles are better for it. But I'm still reluctant to change back to Huge, due to the 120 man unit size tier I have
introduced in my game - exclusively for Pikemen, that is. Pikemen in Late get more men, so that they can utilize their
rank bonus to full effect, and I don't think there is a workaround for the crashes that occur when you go over 200
men per unit.
blah blah
It's never blah blah when you post. Post more!
:bow:
In BKB it's really hard if you don't have generals with high command, because of titles and offices which grant stars. I played XL looong time ago and I don't know whether it was the same, but in BKB is strong emphasis on generals' stars, eg title 'Champion of the Joust' +3 command, +3 dread, also almost every other title/office gives at least 1 star, almost every province in west Europe gives +2 command, add heroes and high density of factions on the map to this and I see stars everywhere :P My salvation were spies, assassins, bribes, but above all - Grand Inquisitors. It would be much harder without unconventional methods of ridding of generals.
Generally I think that it's an exaggeration in BKB with stars, I remember that in vanilla Byzantium was really tough to fight, because of its princes with 5 and more stars. And it should be like this imho.
My kings' duel took place in fort's siege, so for my troops it was fight to the death, but maybe some enemy units were routed. Anyway it was epic, I wonder whether similar rulers' duels took place in history.
In BKB it's really hard if you don't have generals with high command, because of titles and offices which grant stars. I played XL looong time ago and I don't know whether it was the same, but in BKB is strong emphasis on generals' stars, eg title 'Champion of the Joust' +3 command, +3 dread, also almost every other title/office gives at least 1 star, almost every province in west Europe gives +2 command, add heroes and high density of factions on the map to this and I see stars everywhere :P My salvation were spies, assassins, bribes, but above all - Grand Inquisitors. It would be much harder without unconventional methods of ridding of generals.
The only problem with command stars from titles is that when you whack them with strategic agents, the AI just gives the offices
to somebody else.
"Okay, who's up for 5 stars...? Anyone? The previous owner lasted at least 8 years..."
Glad to see you here at the .org, BTW!
:thumbsup:
Thank you for the confidence vote Durango, but i must have said that phrase (i wanted it to be recognisably vanilla) about a gahzillion times now and even i am annoyed by it. Its good not to take oneself too seriously.
PershsNhpios
01-31-2011, 11:19
Here's a little centerpiece for the conversation, my project while I'm pursuing that graphics issue with the AAR:
http://i56.tinypic.com/e88jk8.jpg
Hard & Huge. Most of what I have done so far should be clear from the picture. I am quite surprised by how addicted I am to the strategy of blitzkrieg. I really have no trust of my early neighbours, and whether Scot, English, Aragonese, or German, and whatever mod it may be, I always find myself devoting everything towards a war with France...
I stopped just short of being excommunicated in 1105, and now I am taking steps to put ships to sea and trade with Denmark and the HRE. I like the idea of the HRE being an entity for once.
My income is only 300, so I am attending this for now. Next will be swordsmiths in places such as Flanders, Wessex, Normandy and Mercia whereafter are large call to arms will occur, and then the frogs will be wiped out.
In the beginning I neglected Anjou and Aquitaine as I thought it would be only a matter of time until the Aragonese or French took them. I am still not building anything in Aquitaine until I am ready to garrison the region, which will be after the next war with France.
Aragon is building rather than recruiting, France is very determined to create many crossbowmen and upgrade siege and bowyer workshops. I don't know anything of the other factions yet.
I am on my toes!
Thank you for your campaign account Glenn :bow:
Taking Flanders as you did, is of course the key to taking France as teh English, as in vanilla.
You are aggressive alright, but i wouldn't say you blitz; you have built already 4 keeps! In "blitzing" you are better off putting all money to have a continuous flow of (the loewst class units you have - hence fort for the beginning of a camp) units instead of buildings (as required) and rush with them the enemy until you have reached your blitzing goal (say all of France), past that you can slow down and start building keeps for ships, men-at-arms, the occasional xbowman and perhaps one Castle for feudal knights.
In the mod, Feudal knights can dismount in battle, as can Chiv Knights as can Hospitallers and Gothic Knights. No other unit can dismountl. Basically only those that were given dismounted versions from the game.
If you go blitz all the way, you'll find out that even if you don;'t build keeps/castles is alright, because if your blitz is continuous and succesful, you'll eventually end up taking the castles other factions have built :) This is a common TW games feature, not a feature of the mod, by any means.
The AI factions can and do at times collapse the Germans, but that is less of a possibility when the player takes teh French or the English that are neighbours (as in vanilla), because the AI faction performance is skewed by what faction the player chooses.
The Aragonese are expansoinists, and sometimes they do make a move to southern France especially if you have too small a garisson in Toulouse/Aquitaine. Yet sometimes, teh AI of the 1 province factions prefers to go for a keep there instead for some reason - be it better cashflow or otherwise.
The French AI is basically left in a very bad shape in terms of cash flow and development once he loses Flanders at the beginning of teh game. Unlikely they recover now.
Belisario
01-31-2011, 19:34
Good find in the column 53 Gollum, alone charges of BGs never again! And thanks to Raz for his suggestion.
Are you sure v2.2 will be the last version :)? Anyway give you a well deserved rest after this splendid modding urge.
I am saying it will be so, Belisrio, so that i can maybe believe it and stop searching the files :laugh4:
That's one of the good things of getting something done - or trying to get it done: once you stop wondering abuot the usual same old-same old (eg what should be the building requirements of Ghulam Cav? How should i do teh BGs? etc etc) you reach a step further because you can see how the changes you made work as a whole. You can endlessly speculate how you "want it" at a basic level decision, but once certain decisions are set on stone, then you can go about see how they interact and polish/tweak/improve that to make more finetuned difference, and in this way it can take you a step further in fixing things you never bothered before because you were too busy with thinking all the initial stuff.
In a sense, this was the reason why i wanted to keep to the vanilla format. It simplified decisions for me as i had a constant standard by which to say thisway/thatway, and then the mod could be furthered.
About col 53, i noticed that missiles and cavalry had very different values, and such that matched their positions/behaviour i knew from the battles, hence i got the hint that its actually used and the idea to tweak that. It immediately had an effect in the battle tests i did, and that confirmed it.
Thank you for the credit you give me and your kind words. After a month+ of quite some hard work on the mod (the hardest being playtesting) i am feeling that it will take at least 2-3 months before i can see MTW as entertainment again - in fact i just started a STW v1.12 (this choice is NOT by chance :): its the only TW game version that i feel it doesn't really need any tweaks - not that you can make any anyway, but for me its absolutely perfect as is) campaign and feeling much better now :laugh4:
:bow:
That is a great find. It's a final justification to go with untrainable BG units for a better game. :2thumbsup:
Thank you drone :bow:
It can also prove useful in tweaking other units to more satisfying roles/positions etc.
For example, another (it was meant to be secret, but let's spill it out :) unit i tweaked in this way in vesion 2.2 (shortly to be available) are the naptha throwers. In the Caravel mod, naffatuns have slightly better range and accuracy - they are reasonably dangerous now if used properly and they can be used from behind your lines without too much danger of blowing up your own melee line (the rout, the frustration, the drama etc etc etc).
So i tweaked them to be used with the main body of teh AI armies, in a reserve position and for assault cover, that, hopefully should make teh Muslim factions more "explosive", so to speak, opponents on the battlefield :)
I will eventually attempt/experiment to fix the xbows/arbs for the AI - if i (or anyone else for that matter) manage that, the battles will become considerably better against armies with xbows/arbs, but i am pretty much burned out for the moment with MTW - sometime later. Any other(s) of course may have done it by then, and it'll be good news to know.
:bow:
Two more primary candidates for such tweakings: catholic handgunners and arquebusiers. The former are too good in melee to skirmish like lightly armoured troops and the latter suffer from the same AI use as the xbows/arbs.
Basically these strong shot/long reload missile units need to be closer to the melee line and stay more put to keep firing.
Just play Shogun for a while, Dear Gollum, so that your head does not explode and you start chewing the furniture
trying to fix MTW. Consider it a stint in a rehab clinic.
:bow:
If you haven't already done so, set all your bodyguard units to disciplined - should stop them charging without orders.
Caravel: Haven't even thought about it, thanks :)
Durango: there is no way "fixing" MTW unfortunately (or fortunately), imo. There is a lot of margin for different cooking of what can be altered in MTW. My sanity line to navigate the sea of possibilities was "keep it vanilla", that's why you hear me repeating it over and over :laugh4:
Ok, v2.2 is now available. Thank you TosaInu and org.
Enjoy :medievalcheers:
PershsNhpios
02-02-2011, 10:28
Congratulations, noble architect!
I will download this tonight, but understandably play it a little later on.
For the first time ever, for this occasion, I will make use of the toasting smiley:
:medievalcheers:
ΓΕΙΆ ΣΟΥ!
Cheers and thanks Glenn
Mission accomplished - its always good feeling.
:bow:
The mod plays slower for the AI, especially if you put it @180 loyalty with -ian (as reccomended). If you want teh AI taking more initiatives and pester you more and take opportunities, you can drop that to loyalty:150 i'd say.
This quote is from "Deus nolt! (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?132937-Deus-nolt!&p=2053259775&viewfull=1#post2053259775)" thread but it fits better here. gollum, do you know the default setting for the loyalty? Is it 100 or maybe any other value? I'd like to compare how the AI acts and it would be good to start from a base value.
Indeed it fits better here Stazi.
The default i think is 120. It gets on without you having to specify it in the -ian bit.
If you go for the default, i'd reccomend to put more factions to defensive or equivalent personalities (saythe English the Spanish teh Hungarians, but not the little ones). The AI at expansionist can fare better in the short term - that is he can set up and conquer quicker, but, he is also much more fragile in the long term especially at low loyalty settings.
Perhaps there is a golden ratio there, for the start position of vanilla/the mod. I mean a "best" setting for the loyalty of teh AI that compromises succesfully between short term climb and long term survivability. Maybe its around 140-150 loyalty or there abouts. 180 is really good once the AI factions pick up, but it slows them down as they take less chances in the short term, admittedly.
:bow:
Gollum, what is your stance on restricting units to specific eras only? I'm seriously considering it now, since I'm
tired of fighting outdated units. The Medmod, IIRC, had a similar setup. But the danger is of course, that the
AI (thanks to its stupidity) will just lack the tech to build up to date units...
Also, I'm just generally sick of the AI having larger stacks than necessary, due to the cheap trash units.
I'm certainly not gollum ;) but I think I can share some of my ideas/possible choices:
1. Restrict units to the specific eras and risk the lack of units for the AI to build. Eventually make some basic units available for all eras.
2. Give the AI some time (HIGH era) to build required buildings - some units EARLY, HIGH and others HIGH, LATE. I'm not sure if the AI can understand and follow this idea.
3. Make new units have the same or very similar requirements as older units.
4. Make 3 versions of the same unit - restrict each version to one era only. Raise the cost and upkeep for the unit in later eras. This should force the AI to develop and build newer and cheaper units.
5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?
They are only the ideas. I don't know which of them will be really useful but you have something to think and test.
I'm certainly not gollum ;) but I think I can share some of my ideas/possible choices:
1. Restrict units to the specific eras and risk the lack of units for the AI to build. Eventually make some basic units available for all eras.
2. Give the AI some time (HIGH era) to build required buildings - some units EARLY, HIGH and others HIGH, LATE. I'm not sure if the AI can understand and follow this idea.
3. Make new units have the same or very similar requirements as older units.
4. Make 3 versions of the same unit - restrict each version to one era only. Raise the cost and upkeep for the unit in later eras. This should force the AI to develop and build newer and cheaper units.
5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?
They are only the ideas. I don't know which of them will be really useful but you have something to think and test.
Thanks for your input, Stazi :bow:
1. Making basic units available will, I'm afraid, only create a situation where the AI builds just those anyway.
2. Doubtful that the AI will follow this scheme, though. At least from my experiences.
3. This is a good idea, but a large part of the campaign game itself (teching up to get new units) will be lost.
4. Could work, nice idea!
5. Numbers in the Unit Choices simply mean the probability that the AI will train that unit given the condition it is in.
Generally speaking, the basic problem stems from the fact that the AI, even if it's rich, still prefers to spam cheap units.
This is why the Castilians for ex. loads it armies with Jinetes even though they own all of Iberia and rakes in the cash.
Sometimes the AI builds an "advanced", modern unit, but always woefully few of them.
Modifying the unit choices likely holds the key to solving this issue, but I think it's a damn chore to achieve and
would require A LOT of playtesting. I don't want to be back at square one instead of actually playing MTW...
PershsNhpios
02-03-2011, 23:28
They are all good ideas, but I think most of those ideas stray too far from vanilla gameplay - which therefore stray too far from the aim of the Caravel mod.
Forgive me for speaking on your behalf Gollum, but I thought you would most likely see this as such.
I do like your ideas, but I wonder if either of you have played the mod through to the Late era or for a good length into High? (I haven't)
How do you know the problems which you mentioned have not already been fixed by Gollum's attempts?
Hello guys,
the approach in the mod is to take out the armour upgrades, as they are the ones that skew unit stats more than others, and also reduce somewhat the morale bonuses, that again were too many in vanilla, and were skewing the unit match ups too much. It also makes the base stats of units from fort, keep and castle level of the same class (say spearmen) a little bit more close to each other than what they were in the vanilla game. The units however, are all still fully recognisable in role and performance for anyone that has played the game in terms of capability and dependencies.
In this way, the majority of the units of the same class that are recruited from higher levels are not very much better than the basic ones from fort level, but still better. Their prices to be trained and maintained have been tweaked to represent more faithfully their difference in stats - now what you pay for is what you get and you have to maintain accordingly.
Obviously, this cannot be the case with elite units, like knights, varangians, janissary heavies etc: these units cost a lot in buildings to get and so they should be statistically head and shoulders above the others, and they are kept as in vanilla. In most cases, however, they cost as much as their due to maintain. The vanilla training costs weren't bad at all and in the vast majority of cases of elites the mod sticks with them or thereabouts. Their maintenance though, was judged to be in many cases too low and it was tweaked accordingly. For example, Varangians of late era (that's the varangian unit of all periods in vanilla) are practically speaking a late era unit in terms of armor and capabiliity (huge ap attack, lots of armor and shield when nopt meleeing, very good defence etc), so they cost a bit more to maintain now.
Hence, with this approach, the mod maintains the variety of the vanilla game without flatening the differences between units of the same class (essentially turning them into clones of one another), but also without making easy for the player to have an army of elites that would sweep less developed AI factions on the battlefield.
In the medmod, the other potential approach was used, ie have 1 spear unit per era per faction, one bow unit per era per faction etc, but this approach was taking away the variety of the original game. My goal for the mod was to maintain that variety but make it more balanced and hence less hurtful in the long term for battles.
In the vanilla game, low end units cost little to train but a lot to maintain, while high end units cost a lot to train but too little (less than the low end units in many many cases; for example Nizaris cost less than Desert archers in maint. costs), to maintain. This approach clearly favors the player, that can tech up quickly and efficiently and then have an army of elites at lower cost than an army of low end units.
In the mod, the accessibility of elite units was increased somewhat, and most importantly, buildings that were getting nothing to AI factions, were removed from that faction's building potential. A classic example is the Townwatch line of buildings that for the Eggs and Byzantines gets nothing other than from the first building of teh line. In the mod this is corrected - teh higher levels than level1 of the watch tower are not available for the Byz and the Eggs. This means that the AI won't be wasting many turns and money and the benefit of what he could get with these many turns and money to the higher levels of teh town watch that get him absolutely nothing.
These are the methods and rationale employed and, i can say that stack composition works really really well; you won't see any faction with stacks that are worthless at any stage of the campaign.
The spamming of the AI of cheap units has to do, as i posted earlier, with the ratio of teh (training cost)/(maintenance cost). Once the AI finds a unit that has high such ratio, with small training cost, he spams it (eg siege engines/artillery/javelins/slav warriors etc). This is all the more for units that are very easily available - like the Slav Warriors that are avalable from the fort in vanilla.
This spamming really hurts the AI because, in the long run, many AI factions may end up fighting with units they've build in the first 30 years of the campaign. If they are fodder units, the AI will have to live with them for much of the duration of the campaign, as the AI can't disband to make financial room to get new units, or burn them in battle too efficiently in order to build new ones. In any case, even if he could done so, the chances are taht he would still build...Slav wariors all over again :)
The mod does a great job with this, or so i think. It is its strongest point, imo.
:bow:
I also quote this post of mine from the Main Hall (the deus nolt! thread, Stazi refered to), as its relevant here.
The mod plays slightly slower than vanilla because faith propagates slower and because the happiness bonuses are given more gradually.
In vanilla you can rush very very quickly because the watchtoewers line of buildings gives +50 happiness (when both build) with 300flrs and in 2 turns - that's very cheap and easy cowering of new provinces
In the mod, only the border forts give +20 happiness and in 3 turns (watchtowers=1t, borderfort=2ts). The other extra +30 is given by buildings that come from keep level (basically teh church/mosque), hence you need to be a bit more careful and also will make a bit less tax money from newly conquered territories.
Also, the faith propagation being slower it takes more time to subdue different religion territories because of that, hence happiness is affected and there is reason for be careful for loyalist revolts.
The mod plays slower for the AI, especially if you put it @180 loyalty with -ian (as reccomended). If you want teh AI taking more initiatives and pester you more and take opportunities, you can drop that to loyalty:150 i'd say. if you do not use the loyalty feature at all, the AI may be hurt by the slower happiness bonuses, especially since many factions are set to expansionist that makes them aggressive and prone to burning out by overstretching and revolts that ensue. But who knows, it may play ok in that too - just i've never tried it.
Having said that, i like the occasional rushing campaign, and i tried to rush in Caravel and it does work without a doubt. Just the opponents are a bit more ready especially ones that are not immediately next to the player and i was able to make less quick cash flow - those were the main differences.
The mod is at this stage finished and there is no further plan to update it for 2011.
What i will/would update next, would be the rebel garrisons. Some of them are a bit too big and some would make for better gameplay between factions if they were considerably less strong without hurting the mod concept and intended gameplay. This should/would help people who like different unit settings to play the mod better, and also improve teh AI performance of some factions without upsetting the intended difficulty.
The fixes i would have done would be to:
-Make Navarre completely empty- it stands historically as teh Navarrese dynasty was merged with the Aragonese and Castilan one at the time the early era starts and so there is no reason to have a strong Kingdom there.
This would impact gameplay positively as it would increase teh chances of competition between Aragon/Castile/England/France and also, in case the Ibearians are the first to get it, it would aid them to power status sooner than they now do in the mod.
-Make the Prussia, Volhynia rebel stacks smaller. This is relatively historically accurate, and it would also help the Polish AI to develop a bit better than it currently does.
-take out a few units from the rebels in Lithuania/Livonia. As they are now they are overflowing and even attack the Poles and teh Russ occasionaly which is ok, but not as much as they are now.
An additional thing i would try to do would be to fix the strong shot/slowreload missile units in terms of battlefield role, if there is a way.
Other than these things, which won't be done for a while, the mod is done.
:bow:
Gollum, I seem to recall that you wanted no river crossings in your mod, no? I found some oversights in the startpos.
These are the lines:
SetBorderInfo:: ID_BLACK_SEA ID_MOLDAVIA
SetBorderInfo:: ID_POLAND ID_CARPATHIA
SetAttributes:: ID_CONSTANTINOPLE
SetAttributes:: ID_EGYPT
SetAttributes:: ID_HUNGARY
SetAttributes:: ID_ILE_DE_FRANCE
SetAttributes:: ID_PEREYASLAVL
SetAttributes:: ID_ROME
SetAttributes:: ID_SCOTLAND
SetAttributes:: ID_SILESIA
SetAttributes:: ID_VALENCIA
SetAttributes:: ID_WESSEX
I might be mistaken in that you have decided to keep rivers in some places, and I apologize if it is indeed so :bow:
Hello Durango,
thanks for this observation, i'll check it out in time. If the river is set in the province attributes it won't show in the map at all. If the river is similarly set in coastal landings, it also won't show up as a river crossing at all.
This is because, in the attributes,you set how the siege/castle map of the province will look like. It seems taht CA wanted originally to have some such maps with a river in them - i doubt it wuold be a rivercrossing map; just a castle map with a river. There were many such cities in the Middle Ages (Constantinople, Paris, London, Valencia etc), and i guess it was meant to represent that.
So i specified rivers in such provinces for their castles to make the game feel more historical, only that i realise that there are no such castle maps (castle maps containing rivers) in the map collection. The feature can be used if someone makes castle maps with rivers and denotes them as such in their names - so the engine can pick them - but as it stands at the moment they are simply redundant, hence why i left them as i set them up.
Similarly in coastal landings, the river may show as a map feature but it will be in such a way that you won't be fighting a river crossing map, as far as i know.
Another such redundancy is that of having coastal castle maps. Again, there were many cities that were next or on the coast in the Middle Ages (Const., Venice, Palermo, Valencia, Genoa etc) and it would be nice to be able to see that in the castle map. Well the option is there, but none have made such maps and so the feature - although seemingly functional - is essentially again redundant.
Also, when you right click in a province in the campaign map and hover the cursor over it to get info for it, you are told what is written in the attributes col of the starpos txt file. So, if you read there is a river there, its meant for the castle not for crossings. For crossings you need to right click on the provbice and then hover the cursor over the neighbour province to which the crossing you want to check, and this information is in the CROSSING_BORDER col of the starpos file, which is a different one altogether.
From what you posted, the one that seems that i have missed, is the Poland to Carpathia, which sounds strange as, i think there is no river there in vanilla and i can't think why i would add one.
But, in any case, thanks, i'll check it out.
:bow:
In addition to fixing the rebel stacks along the lines mentioned above and attempting to fix the strongshot/longreload missiles, the mod needs to tackle a little better the mercenaries feature.
Regarding mercenaries, the most balanced appraoch is of course to get rid of them altogether, but, for the sake of keeping all the flavor of the original i decided to let them in.
My take has been to make available as mercs more generic light to medium units of infantry/missiles/cavs, and keep elites/unique units of factions only for those factions that train can them normally on the map.
The approach certainly works for the middle game, that all factions can certainly have those medium units (that are available as mercs) with much better maint. prices, but, its still too much of an exploit for the player in the early game, as factions still fight with militias fort level units for the most part, and so the medium mercenaries can really make a difference and give the player an advantage.
This is all the more so since, the medium units that are made available as mercs. cost little comparatively to train.
I remind (or saying for those who didn't know it), that the mercenary system sells you mercs in their normal training price, but, with double the maintenance costs.
This effectively means, that the medium units i have available can still be bought in large numbers by the player as mercs. Increasing their training price will unbalance the unit's normal use in the camp map.
The solution is to designate certain units as mercenaries only. These would be again of medium stats, and so would have uses on the battlefield, but, since they would be mnercs only, they will have an appropriately calibrated recruitng price for their mercenary status - that is they would be costing twice (or more) to recruit than their equivalent normally trained medium units.
In this way, making a quick conquest with mercs will still be available availale to the player (if having the cash), but, the player would have to pay accordingly to make it happen - even if he disbands immediately.
Since this feature is not used at all by the AI, it's only fair to design it to the measures of its user ie the player.
Once the feature would be made such, any iron man rules for mercs would be made redundant. Now mercs cost cheaply to recruit and lots to maintain - which the player workaround by using quickly and disbanding. Once they cost lots to recruit as well as maintain, there would be no such workaround and hence no need for the player to limit artificially merc use.
:bow:
5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?5. Numbers in the Unit Choices simply mean the probability that the AI will train that unit given the condition it is in.
I know it's a probability but I don't fully get it. Is value 75.75 a fraction or two different values?
1. If they are two different values what are they referring to? What's the difference between them?
2. If it's a fraction - What's a point of making a fraction value when you have @0-300 range at your disposal? It's strange.
The probability - how to convert these values to the easily understandable and comparable percentage values?
What's the min-max range for this probability?
@Stazi: It's most likely a fraction value, even though it may seem redundant.
@Gollum: Making duplicate units is probably the most foolproof way of restricting mercs - albeit at the cost of variety. The problem with
regular units as mercs is that while you can change the magnetism value of the Inn, you can't stop lots of advanced units flooding
the borders when there is a war.
Also, you should consider making the Inn unique (as I have) and having it cost more and take longer to build. The AI, fortunately,
can be left out of the equation when it comes to Inns, so feel free to raise costs/build time however you want.
Hello Durango,
making the Inn unique is something that i have done in my home modding efforts in the past considered and rejected for this mod for the following reason that detracts from the vanilla gameplay: once the borderline moves and the Inn is no longer in it, the magnetism of mercs does not work, which means the player will have to manually destroy the Inn and rebuilt it on a frontline province to get the mercs, which is confusing if someone doesn't know how thge mercs are attracted (as many players i bet don't). On the other hand, leaving the Inn in the game can give a cheap/quick building that aids teh AI faction leaders (and teh player) to get the "builder" line of traits easier that makes them more stable (as it gives province happiness and general loyalty eventually).
In vanilla the Inn takes 2 turns to build and 400flrns. Since the AI is not using it, the cost to build it was downed to 200flrns, which is a reasonable price to pay for the AI leader's improved trait.
I was thinking to make available some of the extra units that come from the VI as mercs only, which won't impact on variety in any way, as most are not used in the mod and are sparsely used in vanilla.
:bow:
I'm not sure I follow you here. You are saying that razing and rebuilding the Inn makes it an exploit? Well, in that case, every building
in the game can be abused in that way. And what is the point of making the Inn cheap, when its disuse by the AI leaves you carte
blanche to make it considerably more expensive for the player?
No, i am not saying that makes it an exploit Durango.
I mean what i say in the post, ie that players who do not know that Inns attarct mercs in border provinces may not think that razing manually the Inn and rebuilding it somewhere else is the way for them to get mercs. For them, this will almost certainly be confusing, and they might end up not having mercs avaolable after they've built their first Inn.
If i was making this mod for me alone, i would have simply taken the Inn and hence mercs out altogether, as mentioned. The idea in making the mod available is that other people may play it, and its concept is that its an improved vanilla. I cannot assume that everyone who takes up the mod knows as much as me or you, and make the mod on this assumtpion.
The AI in fact uses the Inn, as in he builds the Inn. When i say he "does not use it", i mean that he cannot recruit mercs- not that he does not build it, because he does, very much in fact, at least in vanilla. Hence, making it cheaper, saves the AI moneys in building the Inn. The money does not go completely wasted as mentioned, because a cheap/quick to built building in all provinces helps AI faction leaders to acquire the builder trait, that makes the AI factions more stable.
The exploit for the player will be regulated by having dedicated, non-duplicate merc units, properly priced for merc use as discussed previously.
:bow:
OK, a simple misunderstanding then. I understand what you mean. Strange, I somehow never noticed the AI building the Inn before.
It's most likely that the base for my home mod is XL, where the factions start with more infrastructure and Inns already built.
I will probably try to tinker with the build priority then, so that my expensive Inns ("Mercenary Office") will never get built/rebuilt.
On to the new merc units!
Perhaps these units can have lower base morale than their regular counterparts?
Hello Durango,
i intend to make merc units very slightly more able than their normal campaign counterparts in terms of battle performance and equal in morale but cost much more (double or triple or in between these of what their campaign/faction counterparts would to train, and similarly to maintain).
Another approach would be to make them as you say less reliable morale-wise, which is something to consider in combination with higher costs (ie disadvantage mercs not only from their recruitment price, but also from their morale). I will think about this and see, in time, what to do. Thank you for this suggestion.
:bow:
Gollum, check the unit_prod file. There is something wrong with the end of the file. Viking Thralls are doubled, many empty lines, etc. I think it wasn't intentional.
It's the last unit so it may not cause problems but who knows? Better keep it right and clear.
---- EDIT ----
the same in build_prod. What text editor do you use?
Hello Stazi,
if you read this thread back to my initial conversation with Glenn, it is mentioned that the unit-prod as well as the build-prod files have a coda that is generated by repeated use of teh Gnome editor. Hence, i advised earlier in this thread to make any editions to the files manually, as making them through the editor will cause the game to crash.
This is something i am not responsible for - its a thing of the editor. The only solution is to have gone back to the files and done all the changes i did manually all over again, which i am not going to since the files work, due to not having the time for such an endeavor.
This does not impact the game in any other way for anyone who wants to simply play. Just those who want to do additional editing of the files need to do it manually, ie without using the Gnome editor. Only in that case the editor will further displace the cols and the game will crash. Any editing you want to do in the unit and build prod files, do it manually.
:bow:
Stazi,
quoting myself from post No75 of this thread:
Last but not least; if you would like to do personal custom modifications on the files accessed by the gnome editor (build_prod and unit_prod), by all means do so, but edit the files directly in the txt. The editor shifts the data columns everytime one modifies something (a thing of the editor, not a fault of my own as far as i know) and i have used that so many times, that now whenever i use it again, the game crashes because of it, if i edit by using the editor. Sorry about that, but that's the way it is, nothing i can do about it, unless i go back and make all the changes i did by now, by editing the file directly, which is way too much work only to have the files "modifiable" by the editor henceforth. Again apologies. You can use the editor, however, to find what goes where and what does what, if you are not familiar with the txt file you wish to alter, before proceeding to do the change directly in the file itself.
and also post No26
The editor shifts the columns sometimes and i have used the eitor many many times, which makes it more likely that this shifting will manifest, and then the game can't load because of it.
If i knew the editor would make that mess, i wouldn't have used in editing (only to help me "see" where is what) from the beginning. By the time it was clear what had happened, i had done so much work in the files with the editor that there was no going back.
There could be a potential solution i have thought about to copy/paste the "normal" lines of data (not the coda), in a fresh vanilla file, replacing it, but i fear that only copying the right amount of data would make it work. Perhaps it could be done very gradually (few lines everytime).
The result would, in any case, accomplish little for those that would want to use the editor again: when anyone would use the editor again, a coda would start all over again forming.
The files as they are work absolutely fine and do not affect adversely the game at all to the best of my knowledge, and i have tested this as extensively as it was possible. They only affect you if you want to edit the unit-prod and building-prod files using the editor - that won't work. In that case, just edit the files manually and no problem.
:bow:
My apologies :bow:. I didn't read the whole thread carefully. I saw the mess and wanted to let you know. Those additional lines at the end doesn't really change anything. I've deleted them and game works as before.
Many of the units don't show their deads. Are you going to make a proper deadpage file?
Originally posted by Stazi
My apologies . I didn't read the whole thread carefully.
No worries
I saw the mess and wanted to let you know.
I really appreciate it, thank you. Please feel free to keep posting about anything you observe/want to ask etc. I already added you and everyone else that contributed in the thread/mod in the credits.
Those additional lines at the end doesn't really change anything. I've deleted them and game works as before.
That's good to know. Iirc, i deleted them once and the game crashed :)
Many of the units don't show their deads. Are you going to make a proper deadpage file?
if you mean about dead bodies on the battlemap, the mod does not change the vanilla settings, so, whatever the dead bodies are in vanilla they (hopefully) should be the same in the mod; at least that is i think the case if i haven't understood you incorrectly or unless you have something to propose in which case i'll be very happy to hear it.
:bow:
There are some errors/missing units in the vanilla "deadpage coords" file causing that about 1/4 of the units don't leave dead bodies. I saw a topic about it somewhere and prepared one for myself. You can download it here (http://www.filefront.com/17907113/Caravel_DEADPAGE COORDS.ZIP). As you mentioned, it works with vanilla and your mod too.
That's good to know. Iirc, i deleted them once and the game crashed :)
Strange. I too have removed the extra lines, and the game works just fine.
There are some errors/missing units in the vanilla "deadpage coords" file causing that about 1/4 of the units don't leave dead bodies. I saw a topic about it somewhere and prepared one for myself. You can download it here (http://www.filefront.com/17907113/Caravel_DEADPAGE COORDS.ZIP). As you mentioned, it works with vanilla and your mod too.
Are you sure that a whopping 25% of vanilla units have no dead bodies? That would be a serious bug. Could you, off the top of your head,
give some examples of the units that are affected? I would much appreciate it.
:bow:
Are you sure that a whopping 25% of vanilla units have no dead bodies? That would be a serious bug. Could you, off the top of your head,
give some examples of the units that are affected? I would much appreciate it.
Check the duel Jobbagy vs Spanish Jintes. Organ Gun crew doesn't even have an entry in the deadpage file. All these units (and many others) don't leave bodies. Game engine looks for the right body in the deadpage file but when it encounters any error it stops looking further. That's why good, innocent units are affected too. Maybe it's not a serious bug but most of the people like to see the proofs of their hard work lying around the battlefield :grin:.
Check the duel Jobbagy vs Spanish Jintes. Organ Gun crew doesn't even have an entry in the deadpage file. All these units (and many others) don't leave bodies. Game engine looks for the right body in the deadpage file but when it encounters any error it stops looking further. That's why good, innocent units are affected too. Maybe it's not a serious bug but most of the people like to see the proofs of their hard work lying around the battlefield :grin:.
Heh, that's shoddy of CA to let slip...
Well, all units in XL have dead bodies at least (checked), but I haven't seen any posts by either Vikinghorde or Tyberius
that proclaims fixing this issue. Good work nonetheless, the Caravel mod deserves to be as polished as possible.
When someone creates new units, he simply has to make proper deadpage file. Some of the mods (like Hellenic, Napoleon) go step further and give their own dead256 file with new dead bodies graphics (e.g. destroyed chariots, guns).
IIRC, to be sure if all units leave bodies you only need to check last unit from the unit_prod and last from the deadpage. If they leave bodies, all others do too. The right solution for the issue was announced by Barocca about 2004.
Hahaha, if you were in the mob, your nickname would be "Deadman" by now :beam:
If you want dead bodies, Stazi is the man...
It's good to know that the extra lines are deletable, thank you Durango. I'll try again, when i pick the mod again.
Stazi, thank you for this information, i have noticed that certain units did not give out dead bodies but... i thought it was an engine quirk :) not that CA did not specify them. If it is a fraction of dead bodies from every unit it's possible that it had to do with performance perhaps and they wanted to keep it low.
Whatever the case, thank you for making me aware of this, i would most certainly like to include it in the next version, and i'll pm you eventually in due time.
:bow:
PershsNhpios
02-08-2011, 05:45
Excellent work, Stazi! You will effectively coerce our friend into making another final version!
I am just adding crusades for all catholics, and I will be installing your patch, then starting a new game.
Thank you for your time, Stazi, you have done so much for us this year!
Indeed, i have to say already quite a number of small and perfectly doable within the the vanilla context but significant number of things have piled up for the next version. It might be that i get around to do them within the month, actually. But we'll see. The mod is certainly getting there - ie to be an improved and more balanced but clearly recognisable vanilla. Thank you all for your interest and contributions in the mod, i really appreciate it :bow:
virus_found
03-25-2011, 19:59
Hello. I'm a vanilla player (since those times, the game was issued). The only thing, that bothers me in vanilla, is an AI being effortless at establishing overseas trade. It is the hugest possible exploit of this game. Last time I played Novgorod (expert, indeed), my income was 25k, expences were 5k. That was without farming, it's useless to spend a lot of money on farm upgrades, since there is such an imbalanced trade. And after you are the richest, the strongest, the vastest etc., it's plain boring to continue.
The question is: "How does this mod address the abovementioned issue?"
The only way to make it less abusable, imho, is to make AI twice as agressive, as it was. So that you never feel safe, just sitting at the edge of the map (Novgorod and some other countries) and accumulating wealth. But that's just my assumption. Or there are more reliable and tried ways of make it less exploitable?
Also, I would like to know all (or most) changes, this mod does to units (price, availability etc.). I was a bit shocked, after seeing somewhere here, that vikings landsmenn/carls/huscarls were "modded out". It would be, unfortunately, too much for me to try this mod, as, it seems, not only vikings are touched, aren't they? There is nothing wrong in an imbalanced unit, wars are never balanced. After all, AI is the most restricting and imbalancing factor for most games in the genre. No, for all games in the genre. That is why, I'd love to see some mod for MTW, that would touch only AI behaviour, both strategically and tactically.
By the way, is there a possible way of making all tactical maps at least twice bigger? It irritates me the most, when my cavalry stumbles upon an invisible wall somewhere. By the way, it is a bane of most computer games with realtime field battles.
Hello virus found, and welcome to the org and the MTW section.
Trade is boosted by making more meaningful AI tech tree choices that help him set up a network quicker and more effectively. Also naval stats of ships and ship availability have been altered so that the naval game is morebalanced and more dynamic. if you play with the suggested settings ie with a high loyalty setting for teh AI, the AI factions are better at managing their network too.
There are various solutions in tweaking trade; these range from tweaking the value of the goods, to teh % of profit made for the trader, to scrapping the whole system out. This mod does none of those, as it aims to improve on vanilla gameplay, and so maintain vanilla gameplay whenver this was possible.
All changes of stats and prices are aimed towards the principle of correctly pricng units according to what they can do on the field, and also to rationalise their availability. Certain units are too easy to get and others too difficult for no good reason and this has been altered.
Statistical changes are minor in order to keep units in the same role as in vanilla while making them more useful/less overpowered - depending on what each unit needed according to my and Caravel' judgment.
It would be too tedious to list all changes as there are too many of them; if you are absolutely bent on it, i suggest you download the gnome editor and simply open the vanilla unit production, and the one the mod uses, and compare column by column. The best way however, and by far teh more enjoyable, is to play the game with the mod on. However, i repeat that despite the changes, factions and units are recognisably vanilla - not vanilla easier and more unbalanced though, but harder and more balanced.
As far as balanced is concerned, it is in fact a key ingredient of the mod - perhaps the key ingredient. If you wish to play the game with units are just too good and too cheap, you can either stick with vanilla (that has such units) or try other mods that have such units. You could also make your own modifications to vanilla or to the mod if you so you wish, and i'd be happy to answer questions as to how to do changes you wish to make.
Regarding AI aggressiveness, it can be good for the AI factions in teh short term, but its a killer in the long term, especialy if you play in low loyalty settings. If you play in loyalty setting at about 140-180, the AI will be more tenacious in teh ling term but less aggressive in the short term. If you play at 120 loyalty (the default one), aggressive AI personalities burn teh AI factions out very quickly - its generally a bad idea for a satisfying campaign.
As far as maps are concerned, you could delete the small maps for every terrain type (steppe, plains, hills, mountains); the engine then would pick the large ones only that remain.The maps are IIRC in the battle folder - and then choose maps.
:bow:
virus_found
03-25-2011, 23:42
Thank you, gollum, for the fast reply.
As I'm very interested in only one part of your mod, that does wonders to AI tech tree choises. I would really, really like to apply only this part of your mod to my vanilla installation, do you see it possible? Will it become "vanilla + great AI tech tree choises modifications" or "broken vanilla due to the lack of your other modifications, which can't live one without another"? If the former, then I'm really glad, first of all, and I'd really appreciate your help in pointing me to the filename, I need". I'm also interested, what I would miss, if I applied only that single part, regarding tech trees. From what I already know, I will miss some adjustments to some units' price/availability/stats. What else (in common, not in details)? :)
Thank you in advance.
Hello virus found,
you could of course try substituting only the buildings prod file. However, this operates and is worked together with the units prod file. You'd still have to mod all the unit dependencies at least to the tech tree of the mod, otherwise you'll get nonsensical results and perhaps even crashes. Then you would have to test them all for crashes and see how they play out too (ie do they have the intended effect? etc), then iron out the crashes and the misfires and proceed iteratively - essentially it would turn out you making your own vanilla mod rather than customising teh Caravel mod.
While this is fine by me, i can't guarantee you the considerable commitment and help that such an undertaking would require. You are free of course to do it alone, and i'll try to help you as time allows if you decide to go down that route. I doubt that it will be short, simple and smooth though, especially as you seem inexperienced with the basics of modding. Most likely the amount of answers i can provide would be very very small for the amount of questions you'd have and likely it wouldn't come timely enough for you to maintain a steady, fast work pace.
In effect, i think yours is a bit of a "you can't have the pie intact and eat it too" case :)
It all comes down to preference in the end and thus each person is selective in a personal way in what they want to change, and less in a purely objective way. For example, you say you want a more challenging game, but at the same time are unwilling to accept changes for the sake of balance it seems. However, its precisely these balance changes that make the game more challenging, both in teh camp map and in teh battle map.
At the end of the day, the only thing that can persuade or dissuade one, is playing for a while the mod as is with an open mind, but of course not all people are prepared to do that understandably. On the other hand, equally understandably as i hope you'll agree, i made the mod as i and Caravel saw fit, and there is no point in changing it to please persons x, y or z, as otherwise it wouldn't be our mod.
:bow:
PershsNhpios
03-26-2011, 06:09
Welcome to the Org and to the Caravel mod, VF.
If it is not possible to be compliant immediately with your wish to institute only one facet of the mod, perhaps it will be found possible to grant your wish or at least agree on a comprimise if we can know how familiar you are with the features of the mod and which you are uninterested in.
You will discover that Gollum has created a mod which alters the cosmetic appearance of MTW not a whit, and that it is in fact mostly comprised of tweaks which assist the AI and enhance gameplay very much in the manner that you wish AI production preferences to be augmented.
If you are interested in the AI choosing more wisely what to produce, and thus establishing a more stable and stronger economy, you will find that all of Gollum's modifications are strictly employed in this respect - to enhance AI performance and also balance.
As Gollum has said, increasing AI aggression causes large factions to form and then disintegrate extremely quickly, as is often seen in vanilla, and many find this unrealistic, annoying and ruinous to the feeling of immersion. By increasing loyalty penalties however, as has been done, the AI refuses to quit its borders before the kingdom is stable.
What this means is that although you can indeed still sit in the corner of the map and make money, the AI will also sit unmolested and make as much money if not more (And now it will know exactly where to put that money), if you are for example Denmark and your rival the HRE. You will also find it extremely difficult to make excessive amounts of money, especially in the early game, and garnering enough money to challenge the rebels militarily will also ensure you are often without any change.
Please do not underestimate the value and challenge presented by Gollum's work. I know the feeling of disappointment regarding the loss of a household favourite like Huscarles (Though I feel none on this point), but it would be ridiculous to ignore the strengths of this mod for such a negligble loss.
Is it also possible brother Gollum that our friend could keep the Scandinavian units whilst employing your major preference modifications?
virus_found
03-26-2011, 12:14
Hello, Glenn (if you don't mind me asking, isn't your nickname from Chrono Trigger/Cross?).
You two are a bit biased towards your creation, and I can understand this totally. It can be a really wondrous mod, indeed, and probably it is. But I can't cope with modified units in any way. They must be virgin, like CA created them, be them balanced or unbalanced, it doesn't matter for me, believe me. On the other hand, I'm very interested in "better" building choises, AI makes, like in overseas trade (i.e. it chooses merchant buildings and shipyards more often). And I'm also interested in tactical AI enhancements, described before.
The only way out is starting carving unneeded (for me) things out of your precious mod, in which, I hope, you'll help me a bit :) And no, I had a lot of modding experience in many games in the past, but now I became somewhat purist, and mod only things, that totally ruin my gameplay experience, like overabusive trading in MTW.
PershsNhpios
03-26-2011, 13:16
You must have your triggers crossed, VF, for if you ask of the name Glenn, you are mistaken in referring to it as a nickname, for it is indeed my own. If however you refer to the mark of Cauallero, this is not a nickname, but rather a title, which in addition to my 'location' is a reference to my respect for a certain knight-errant of considerable favour, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha.
Of course, I am nowadays less a knight-errant and more a sedate member of the Hall's brotherhood, curtailing my travels without this realm since they have only led me into trouble.
Now before you begin slinging about accusations, I must make you aware that the mod is not my creation, but the brainchild of two fine brothers, Caravel and Gollum. I am simply enthusiastic. I am not however not a modder, and so your only assistance in reaching a comprimise will come from brother Gollum.
I can't speak for him, so we must await his opinion, but meanwhile I suggest you read the discussions of this thread regarding the gameplay of the mod, and that for the sake of experiment you even download the mod (Which is tiny in size) if you have time and simply try it.
If none of this is possible, then it is most advisable to at least maintain an open mind.
And please, if you will, visit us in the Hall.
I try not to step on gollum's toes when it comes to his mod, but if I may be so bold as to comment?
If you want to create a mod based on this mod for your own use, that's very possible. It's a case of finding the parts you like, studying the changes made and implementing them in your own creation. It will take some work on your part and some knowledge of the files, as simply cherry picking certain files is likely to leave you with a broken game.
In as nutshell - yes it's possible, but it will require a bit of work.
:bow:
virus_found
03-26-2011, 17:59
Thank you, that concludes all my story :)
Dear All,
the latest version of the mod - v2.3 - is now up and available for download.
It incorporates the following:
-Unique mercenary units that are worthwhile but expensive to recruit. Now there is no need to put artificial caps in your mercenary buys, while at the same time it will cost you considerably at the opening stages of the campaign to overwhelm the opposition with mercs
-Improved starting garrisons for the rebels and some of the factions
-Minor statistical improvements in missile weapons and some units to make them more worthwhile/less overpowered while keeping them in their vanilla familiar role as always
-Improved use of xbows and arbs by the AI by fiddling with the AI use of them parameters (as with the BGs)
-Further improved Catholic BGs by taking out the impetuous state of theirs as per Caravel's suggestion. They are now very cautiously deployed in battle by the AI
I propose to set loyalty to :140 if you want a good early/middle game or :150 if you are a turtler and want a long game. Loyalty 180 was good but it was making the AI factions too cautious and thus prevented them from exploiting opportunities. I think that, after testing, loyalty:140 setting is actually better. This came about after some discussions we had here with Stazi whom i thank for it.
The weather modded file was withdrawn as the engine returns the values automatically to the default ones of the file once used. Thanks to Axalon, Stazi and Durango for making me aware of this and apologies for the mistake The weather is in fact hardcoded from the file but it can be modded by importing textures to MTW from STW as per Ra's al Ghuls instructions in the modding weather thread (see here:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?111355-Modify-weather-in-MTW). The Samurai Warlords mod has this feature. While the modded weather file does not really work, this does not create any side effect so if you have a previous version it will play fine, just the weather features i talk about in this thread are unfortunately not so.
Part of the reason why i was fooled into believing that it was working was because the temperate terrain type that has the most harsh weather abounds in the Caravel Mod, unlike in vanilla where Lush is the most common. Hence i was experiencing more severe weather for the most part, but that was due to the terrain rather than the modifiction of the file working.
Apologies for the mistake and thank you for your patience.
Enjoy :bow:
Faremisch
04-11-2011, 12:41
Thanks for the info Gollum, I´m certain the mod is a true gaming experience. I have one question for you on loyalty. I followed your advice and tested setting loyalty to 180 (in other mods currently playing), and I´ve been appreciating the, at least as appears to me, more stable AI-empires consolidating. At the same time I´m used to auto-managing taxes in order not to get random uprisings. Do you play the same way and in fact put the same strings on yourself as on the AI. Loyalty 180, or do you micromanage each territory to get 120, which is normally enough? Never mind the figure 180. The question is the same for for 140 or 150?
Hello Faremisch,
i always micro, because in that way i can stretch my forces to the limit when attacking in achieving the most in attacking armies with the fewest in defending as a calculated risk that the AI automanage could never hope to match. Sometimes i do get rebellions of course in newly conquered territories or the AI attacking me on my own underdefended home territories but they are partof the calculated risk and i have (or make up on the go) usually the means to deal with them.
PershsNhpios
04-12-2011, 09:24
Brother Gollum, please forgive that I am a little pressed for time lately (Else there would be an update to the Reigns AAR), but I would like to congratulate you on this new release and thank you for it.
Is it 'save-game compatible'?
Hello Glenn, thanks for the congrats;
play when and if you like. The mod is a labour of love for me - making it and playing it is already more than enough satisfaction.
Sharing it is also equally satisfying but always presupposes free will - otherwise its not sharing.
Yes, it is save compatible, although you'll find that some things have changed in your game (the mercs you get for example etc).
Trapped in Samsara
04-16-2011, 22:03
Hi Gollum
Just want to say I played two campaigns of Caravel - v2.1 English and v2.2 Byzantine, both hard - and enjoyed them both. Thank you.
I see that you are now recommending loyalty:140. I approve. I felt that the AI was being 'unnecessarily' cautious, even timid, on occasion in the two campaigns. I thought that this was possibly due to its determination to preserve its troops to ensure sufficient garrisons to meet the loyalty threshold. But that's just speculation on my part.
I will get 'round to playing v2.3 at some point I'm quite sure. But I want to check out Redux next. You modders really are spoiling us old-school TW-ers these days.
Best regards
Victor
Sapere aude
Horace
hello victor, you're welcome, i'm glad the mod adds/ed to your enjoyment of the game.
If you want the AI taking even more opportunities, loyalty:130 will help towards that. You could even try the default (without loyalty setting ie 120) but maybe the game won't be as good then in the long term (past 40-50 turns) - there are many factions in expansionist and usually they burn out due to rebellions ect - the AI factions can hardly tech up properly as they pay very little attention to defending their provinces. In 140 loyalty its considerably better.
If you have played 2.2, 2.3 is very similar other than the mercenaries bit and slight improvements here and there, so essentially you've seen it all :)
Enjoy redux :bow:
Trapped in Samsara
04-18-2011, 13:42
Hi Gollum
Bit off topic, but your PM box is full.
Regards
Victor
hello victor, made some space now. No worries for the off topic - anytime.
Dear all,
just wanted to say that unless future feedback identifies a flaw or problem of any kind, the only thing that i am considering to add in the future is a dead men page - essentially corpses - for units that miss it as suggested by stazi earlier in this thread.
I have playtested the mod as extensively as it was possible by both playing campaigns and running autorun camps, and i have to say that i can't as yet find any flaw that would require fixing (within the intended context of the mod) - be that in text, or gameplay factors.
:bow:
Dear all, after some more playtesting and playing i did over the easter weekend, The Caravel Mod v2.4 is now out :)
It includes fixes of one glitch and two small errors i found, as well as some text fixes, and also some more tweaking of the starting positions (infrastructure, infrastructure location, garrisons and garrisons locations, but not different lands - they are kept as in vanilla) of factions that gives more varied, more contested in the long and short terms campaigns. After experimenting some more with the loyalty setting, i think that loyalty:130 is a terrific comporomise for competitive short term perormance and long term development for the AI factions. The AI keeps small garrisons in his territories that provide a lot more stability than in the default mode (loyalty:120) that he leaves his core territories empty and so prone to rebellion and invasions. On the other hand those are not as large as with loyalty:180 that made him waste short term opportunities.
Many of the tweaks in this version and the previous incorporate lessons learned from past experience and feedback and i feel that now the mod has piled up a considerable number of improvements that are harmoniously coordinated into a single whole. Hopefully, you'll reach the same conclusion if you happen to try v2.4. The mod has grown in scope and improvements beyond anything i could imagine and with each subsequent incarnation, i think it is reaching more and more its intended concept.
As there will not be a new version for some time, let me add that this mod is meant to bring out the potential of the vanilla game by cutting off imbalances and weaknesses of the AI and game without killing the flavor and feel of teh vanilla Early campaign game. If you like MTW vanilla, early campaign, then the chances are that you may want to try this mod. GA mode is fully suppotred and all factions, except ones that appear later (Mongols, Burgundians, Swiss) and the Papacy, are playable.
It is for MTW/VI v2.1, preferably English edition (uncertain if others can really work, but check post#1 of this thread that i propose a way they might), and it is suggested you play with loyalty:130 and green_generals following the -ian extension in your MTW shortcut to provide better AI cohesiveness and long term development. It is also suggested to play in huge unit settings as this gives battles without endless reinforcements, more strategically cutting edge decisions on the camp map and more cutting edge tactical situations on the battle map. Also certain AI settings (as the number of unit ranks) where adjusted for huge unit settings.
Last but not least, i would like to thank once more Caravel with whom we came up with the mod concepts and ideas, and all the people here at the org in the MTW section who contributed in the mod via this thread or otherwise and also to those who had/have fun with it, as well as the org and the late TosaInu for kindly hosting it here.
Thank you for your support and i hope you enjoy
Yours truly, gollum :bow:
Some thoughts about new version of your mod.
Saracens - Hard - Huge - loyalty:130
I chose Saracens because I wanted silent place as far away from the "action" as possible.
Now, about 100 years past and there are some problems with the campaign mode. The main problem is that nothing really happens. Factions have hard time to gather enough cash to build significant army and move somewhere. This mainly concerns "one province" factions: Russia, Denmark, Aragon. Spain and Sicily have nearly the same situation. Spain (not being attacked by anyone) finally after 80 years managed to conquer Navarre. Almohads constantly fights with rebels in Portugal. The worst situation is on the east. Provinces to the east from the Lithuania-Kiev line have never seen any enemy army. Russians like other small factions are not able to expand due to high cost of their royal units. They have 10 druzhinas and 6 other units (vikings, horse archers, etc.). All these units make Novgorod exactly 130% loyal. All surrounding provinces are owned by not so powerful rebels. Russians have many opportunities but not enough cash to recruit troops and move somewhere. The same for Denmark ("free" Sweden and Norway) and Aragon (Navarre, Valencia). Poland fights with notorious rebellions in Pomerania and Prussia.
Factions that have more provinces (France, HRE) or are naval/trade oriented (England, Italy) can handle the situation better but they are still very slow.
All problems vanishes when you play with default unit size. It clearly shows that AI was designed for smaller units' size. AI has huge problems with managing big, costly units. IMO reducing the units' cost should help.
Tactical mode is another story. You did truly great job with tweaking units behavior. AI can still be outmaneuvered but it tries to keep right order/formation for the most of the time.
I think I'll try another campaign to see if it will go the same way. Russians look interesting and challenging.
Hello Stazi,
and thank you for your feedback :bow:
If that's what you are getting, and you want more action and faster (as you may well want :) then by all means play in default or normal.
I agree with you that the AI is having trouble with managing financially costlier units (the recruitment and maint is scaled to the men of the unit by the engine) indeed and that the pace of the campaign is slowed down in huge for certain. This is because he has less "pieces" to invade with and fill in. That is something that can appeal to some people (like me :), but perhaps not to others indeed.
Playing in huge is a suggestion, not an obligation. By all means play in normal/default if you prefer quicker campaign action. I think that default is 60 man sword unit and normal is 80 man sword unit. The recruitment and maintenance costs are scaled automatically from the game engine and so nothing is lost there - all the thought that went into balancing prices to performance is maintained.
In my view is a matter of the AI apptitude relative to available funds. In default and normal, the AI has always much more financial room in his cash flow to make good his losses, as he spends less per unit, that leaves more funds unused for farm upgrades, navies and tech upgrades. In huge he has less as there is less room in his cash flow after building the same number of units. So a potential solution would be to raise the income in the map in proportion and another of course to play in smaller sizes.
One disadvantage of default (60 man sword unit) and less of normal, is that the AI has so much financial room that he makes multiple stacks that give these endless reinforcements battles that i am not very fond of. A good compromise for people that also loath endless reinforcements could be normal (80 man sword unit).
I have playtested the mod in autorun and things in most campaigns do start to boil after 40-50 turns, but i have no doubt that in smaller unit settings as i mentioned the campaign action will be more "hot" and quicker no doubt. And yes, war starts in the east first (typically the Turks and Byz and eventually the Egyptians) as factions there are in one way bottlenecks and have pretty good funds.
However, the loyalty:130 i think is significant. In effect anything above 120. I have played vanilla in default loyalty to death, and the AI factions really can show no coherense in their empires with default loyalty. They leave all their lands undefended, while alrady with 130 they place small garrisons that greatly enhance their stability and even their survivability in civil wars.
From the previous version i reduced the rebel garrisons as well as the very high rebelliousness in high rebelliousness provinces so that AI factions can expand. Provinces like Lithuania, Portugal and Livonia were death traps for the AI factions due to the high rebelliousness and were throwing the AI factions into an endless take-rebellion-retake-rebellion cycle that was draining them and making them easy targets for the player and their opponents.
I have also placed garrisons and initial training centers in relatively safe or easily defensible locations for the AI factions so as for them to be harder to rush - and i speak by experience as i like rushing lots :)
The trouble the Russians have believe it or not, is that they don't use the title of Novgorod at the beginning of the game always. Once or twice they gave it to a general with average accumen and then they played great; they took Smoliensk (that i gave on purpose a small. garrison for them to expand on) and even Lithuania and started making ships too. They are indeed challenging though. If i were to change them in order for the AI to do well, they would become much easier for the player. One idea for that is giving them one more province, say Muscovy. They are then dead easy as the player - tried and tested. Even the Mongols can seem little then :)
The upkeep for all BGs was set (non scalable) to 37 florins/20 man unit, that is pretty small to give a chance to AI factions to expand potentially. The alternative is to make the BGs no maintenance (free) something that i have tried often in my modding efforts but that detracts from teh vanilla standrad and also has disadvatntages. We infact had a discussion on this here between myself, Caravel and Durango in posts no 113, 118, 121 of this thread:
Originally posted by Durango
What I have done in my home mod is to make BGs non-trainable and have them cost zero in upkeep. Not only
is this greatly helping the small factions manage their economy, but also level the playing field between the player and AI, since the
computer does not retrain his BGs anyway. Is this also the approach taken in the Caravel mod?
Originally posted by Asai Nagamasa
The approach also has it's downsides. It provides the player with lots of free heavy cavalry units that cost nothing to support. If you go one further and give them the full vanilla cavalry unit size (40) this makes those free units even more viable, especially if you leave dismounts in, and makes units such as feudal knights and chivalric knights almost obsolete. If you leave the units at 20, the AI still suffers as they make very easy targets. It's somewhat of a a dilemma and I doubt the perfect system exists.
Originally postred by gollum
All that maint. cost free full size heavy cav after some time makes the trainable heavy cav units obsolete and unbalances the camp. And if you keep them small the player can snipe them during battle as you say.
Thank you for your kind words for the tactical aspects. In my view it is a direct consequence of tweaking the BGs and xbows for the AI use as well as tweaking the tech trees and the rosters for meaningful only choices for the AI as well as tweaking the prices that affect the stack composition of the AI factions. So it partly has to do with the campaign map side of things too, as well as tweking and balancing the unit stats to make sure there are no redundant units and that all units have clear roles that the AI recognises and uses accordingly. Another thing that contributes to that that is a feature of the mod, is that neither the AI nor the player can win so much by bringing the better units or through upgrades. There are still better units and upgrades, but these are available as such as to never make generalship on the battlefield irrelevant as in vanilla and in some mods. I really think that this is the strongest point of the mod and something that i am also happy with.
I am considering to withdraw the play on huge suggestion in the very near future and replace it with play in normal. In practice it affects little other than the default unit ranks, but to my experience the AI adjusts this in battle, so there is nothing much lost. Of course it will have the effects discussed as per your observations in the game progression.
Again, thank you very much for your praise and feedback - the Russians are a challenge yes and by all means if that's what you prefer play in default or i would say on normal :bow:
Regarding factions starting small; Russians, aragonese and danes, as mentioned i could make them play better as the AI, but then they would be too easy for the player. The Spanish and the Sicilians in autorun often perform relatively well - perhaps if you play a few more campaigns you might see it. The Almohads do much better with a less rebellious Portugal than before. The Polish and the Hungarians also do better but later on.
Again it is a matter of keeping these factions challenging when played by the player versus them making better as the AI. If i give them more lands or various other things (like starting troops or farming upgrades etc) they will be also that much easier to play with. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
The Italians, the Germans, the English, teh Byzantines, the Turks, the Egyptians and on occasion the French do really well, as well as the Pope also on occasion.
Also in TW the AI expands relative to the pace of expansion of the player, especially at the higher difficulty settings. If you had been turtling all the while, it does not suprise me that the AI factions have not done much to some extent.
All these comments are again for the huge setting - i don't deny your observations; i certainly agree to what you say as per the effect of the smaller unit size on campaign action and i will playtest when i get the mod in my hands again in normal unit setting for a bit and consider very much to change my suggestion to play on normal settings.
Again thank you for the feedback Stazi, it is much appreciated :bow:
I understand that you want all factions to be challenging for the player (like Russians) but they should be playable for AI too. Maybe give them a little more base income in their starting provinces?
Royal units and all low in number units. Imo they should be cheaper than units with the same stats but larger numbers. Units like these have to be used much more carefully cause they are easy to outflank or even surround. Due to this they are less valuable and should be priced much lower. btw I don't like the idea of making them totally free.
I agree with you that the AI is having trouble with managing financially costlier units (the recruitment and maint is scaled to the men of the unit by the engine) indeed and that the pace of the campaign is slowed down in huge for certain. This is because he has less "pieces" to invade with and fill in. That is something that can appeal to some people (like me :), but perhaps not to others indeed.
Ok. It's probably the matter of personal taste but I can see nothing challenging in the situation when you have 40-50 free turns at the start. After such a time of peace I can literally swim in cash, doesn't matter which faction I play. That's why I like to be under constant pressure from the start of the campaign. Germans fits this scenario the best - everybody hates them ;). I think I'll try them after Russians.
One disadvantage of default (60 man sword unit) and less of normal, is that the AI has so much financial room that he makes multiple stacks that give these endless reinforcements battles that i am not very fond of. A good compromise for people that also loath endless reinforcements could be normal (80 man sword unit).
I like one stack per province idea. The campaign needs simply a little more balance. Now only big factions mean something. The small ones looks like dead from the start. I don't want to be them as powerful as the biggest factions but they surely deserve to have more chances to expand.
However, the loyalty:130 i think is significant. In effect anything above 120. I have played vanilla in default loyalty to death, and the AI factions really can show no coherense in their empires with default loyalty. They leave all their lands undefended, while alrady with 130 they place small garrisons that greatly enhance their stability and even their survivability in civil wars.
I think loyalty:130 is perfectly balanced. Rebellions happen sometimes but not too often and factions are not drained by them exactly like you said.
I have also placed garrisons and initial training centers in relatively safe or easily defensible locations for the AI factions so as for them to be harder to rush - and i speak by experience as i like rushing lots :)
I'm a turtle type. I like to have steady cash flow before going to war. That's why I like when someone tries to spoil my turtling behavior. E.g. sinking my precious fleet makes me really angry. This is the kind of pressure I mentioned before.
btw I'm not trying to criticize you but I think your mod has a potential to be the best ever made in terms of the AI and gameplay. Imo it just needs some more attention.
But, in the end, it's your mod so keep it as you like. Thanks for all your efforts.
P.S. Now, I'm starting new Russian campaign. I'll keep you informed.
Hello Stazi and thanks for your reply; lots of interesting things to talk about :)
Originally posted by Stazi
btw I'm not trying to criticize you
Oh but please do :) Its by putting our ideas to the test that something can be proven or disproven in practice. Every person views a different angle of the truth of things and that is great as it showcases things that on my own i would never be able to spot or i would never be willing to spot (self bias) :)
There are some criticisms that i can do very little about as they are about people being fundamentally unhappy with the concept of the mod; this is entirely possible and in such cases i advise to play mods that have the aspects they prefer. But even these criticisms can be useful as they may point out things that i entirely missed, so all are welcome to express them, and i will try, as time allows, to reply or accomodate their querries or requests as best i can.
Your (and other people's in this thread) criticisms are from within the concept of the mod, and this is the most precious type of criticism that i am very very happy to get. It touches the core of the issues and points out where things can be done better. I am very greatful for it, and i greatly thank you :bow:
The campaign needs simply a little more balance. Now only big factions mean something. The small ones looks like dead from the start. I don't want to be them as powerful as the biggest factions but they surely deserve to have more chances to expand.
Certainly, more tweaking at the starting positions is definitely and always an option.
This is a very strong point and an important case you are making no doubt. I will lay here my point of view and please let me (Stazi and all) know what you think, if and when you have time.
The Aragonese and the Danes and teh Russians and the Sicilians and the Spanish (those are the small factions that start "dead from the start" as you say) can be given more lands or more garrisons or more income at the start.
With the more land approach there is the "problem" of diverging from vanilla and also of messing with the GA points - for whatever that is worth. There is also the "problem", as i wrote previously for the Russians to end up making factions too easy for the player. Similarly if i say give to the Aragonese Navarre and to teh Danes Sweden, it may greatly improve those factions performance, but at the same time, they become much much easier to play with.
One solution to these is do what RTW/M2 do ie give factions lands that are roughly historical (that's what vanilla is anyway doing) and then put rebels between them so they can expand there before making contact. This is an appraoch that works, because factions do not start with common starting points between them and hence they can be engineered for better performance as there is no more the danger to blitz the neighbours as the player with them. By the time you meet other factions they have grown and are ready.
While this is certainly worthwhile to consider, it means that basically the GA mode may be potentially made impossible - and i am not talking about teh homelands as those are fixable, but for the special GA goals, many of which depend on the vanilla starting positions of the factions. Of course i could change the starting lands without changing the GA homelands, and allocate factions while having GA in mind.
Another "problem" with it is that the game will be less "recognisably vanilla", but admittedly that may be sidetracked if it makes the game much better.
Giving more garrisons means again that as a player you can blitz too easily, and also that warring starts way too early for the AI to prepare.
Perhaps there is a switch as you say with giving more income that may prove possible in keeping the challenge while also improving the performance as the AI.
I will certainly look into these solutions once i pick up the mod again.
The one solution that resonates more with me, is to leave small rebel gaps between factions while maintaining GA homelands and goals in mind and more or less the vanilla starting positions. Till then i would be very interested to hear what you (Stazi and all) think about this.
I think loyalty:130 is perfectly balanced. Rebellions happen sometimes but not too often and factions are not drained by them exactly like you said.
When i statred the mod i was too conscious of factions not being able to maintain cohesively their empires as big, and so i used the loyalty and partly also the unit sizes setting to counter that. I think i went too far the other way though with loyalty:180 and huge unit sizes, and i will playtest normal and large unit sizes and try to find a golden cut, a good comprmise for that, with all that means in terms of the campaign boiling sooner as you mentioned. In my view it is a matter of finding a balance between the money available from agriculture in the map and unit prices ie sizes. From what you post, there may well be a solution in normal or large unit settings for this, and i will certainly playtest them both. The alternative is to change the money on the map, but its much more labour intensive without any additional benefits, and so i will go with playtesting normal and large unit sizes.
Ok. It's probably the matter of personal taste but I can see nothing challenging in the situation when you have 40-50 free turns at the start. After such a time of peace I can literally swim in cash, doesn't matter which faction I play.
This is certainly an issue and a very real one. However, the coin has (unfortunately!) another side too: that is if you make the early game too quick in development and faction progression, the campaign can be exhausted in terms of what there is to see and also won far too quickly (early high era typically) or (even worse) taht faction progression is so chaotic that they give early challenge but in doing so burn the AI factions out.
One solution is of course to play 2 rulers per faction and then switch faction - but this is only a side measure and perhaps not all people like it of course. However its still something that i enjoy very much and itreally solves the problem of the short term challenge versus long term stability and development pretty well.
Having said all this, i think that if we apply some of what discussed in the previous section about starting positions, that would make all factions more viable for the AI but also somewhat smaller that may contribute a solution towards that, as most would start medium (and so viable for the AI), with rebels in between and so the player would need to expand accordingly in order to keep up pace. The vanilla starting points have factions in full contact with one another and also some starting large. Admittedly its a short route to victory from there.
Playing in normal or large unit setting or in fact default if that's what you prefer may also provide some relief regarding early challenge in that respect as you mention.
Till then, one thing that can be done is, since you are a turtler, to play with smaller factions as you say, or with factions that have less good cash and are more in the middle of the action than the Egyptians like France and HRE as you mention or Aragon or the Sicilians or the Italians. They may provide with some more pressure. Egypt is pretty safe and rich, and yes if you choose to turtle you can become very rich.
...but I think your mod has a potential to be the best ever made in terms of the AI and gameplay. Imo it just needs some more attention. Thanks for all your efforts.
I'm very thankful for your kind words :bow:
Indeed its in gameplay and AI that efforts are primarily directed with, and if you find that it adds to your enjoyment of the game i am one happy guy tonight :).
I certainly agree with you that it needs some attention and i'll strive to improve it along the lines you and others have been kind enough to suggest by their feedback.
Thank you again for the feedback, as this is what provides me with the direction of how to do so :bow:
I think I've found a little bug. Russian Royal Palace's description says that I can recruit Druzhina (VikingLandsmenn) when combined with Spearmakers' Guild. Unfortunately, Spearmakers' Guild and Master Spearmaker are not available for Russians. They are available for Novgorod but this faction doesn't even exist in EARLY.
There are some minor errors in other descriptions but nothing really important e.g. Longboat's description suggests it's a deep sea vessel while it's limited to coastal waters.
Thank you Stazi, i get on in fixing this. I use Novgorod for signaling buildings out in the building prod file for cetrain factions precisely. It is a very convenient device as it allows you to give specific tiers to specific factions in places and exclude other factions by leaving only the Novgorodians in (that are not used hence nobody builds it).
It is indeed a mistake not having the spearmaker3 for the russians. I will fix the longboatstext as well. If you see others let me know :bow:
Halberdiers - in theory available for Russians but they need TOWN_WATCH4 which is not available (TOWN_WATCH2 and 3 too). If I understand correctly they need SPEARMAKER4 or TOWN_WATCH4 right?
Why SPEARMAKER4 needs GUNPOWDER? It makes Halberdires very late unit and looks really strange. IMO SPEARMAKER3 and CASTLE10 is very similar requirement but avoids GUNPOWDER which is generally useless for halberdiers.
Rebel units look totally random. Full stack of Highland Clansman in Portugal, Steppe Cavalry in Pomerania, etc.
Hello Stazi,
If I understand correctly they need SPEARMAKER4 or TOWN_WATCH4 right?
That's right. You can set a unit dependency on multiple builds. I did this as the predominant training place for the Halberdiers for the many catholic factions that get them is the town_watch4. I wanted however to give Halberdiers to the Russians (historically plausible as late era Novgorod and Muscovite armies used westernised equipment) did have them and also for gameplay reasons to have a late era heavy infantry unit. However, the town_watch for the Orthodox did not have that many dependencies and so i ended that line of buildings in town_watch1. Hence i needed to give the Halberdiers through another way, and sincemany polerams and axe units are given through the spearmaker (varangians and billmen and Janissary heavies say) i decided to give the Halberdiers through the spearmaker4 (it is also equivalent to the town_watch4 ie you get in in Citadels, the same tier).
Halberdiers, as well as pikes, gendarmes and arbalesters, are intended as late and latish era units in the mod. I did not like them being introduced in 1204, as that is pretty historically unplausible and also gives everything out all at once that makes many other units of that period (high and late early) obsolete.
So i tied the buildings that make them to the gunpowder event that allows them to be build at about 1270's iirc. but not before that. This is the case with arbalesters, as well as the other high level militia units like handgunners, as the town_watch3 (and so 4) require gunpowder.
You can think of this, or at least i do, to reflect the social changes (shift between the feudal monarchies to more centralised monarchies and more numerous mass armies) that reflect organisational and so tactical changes in the field of battle and in armies.
The spearmaker being tied to gunpowder falls in the same category. There are very few factions that get those very high level buildings (the Turks, The Russians and maybe no other iirc).
The alternative would be to make the arbalesters, late era units only, but in that case, the AI factions would be building the buildings for them, and would have to wait for yars and years to build the units,
In this way, the latish era units (like arbalesters) come at the end of the high era, and the buildings that produce them are allowed by teh AI factions to be build at the end of the high era as well. Some of the high level militia units are iirc late era only (like the halberdiers and pikes and arquebusiers), but for them again there is no problem, as the buildings to produce them are build late in the high era by the AI factions as mentioned. In this way, the AI factions do not waste money and build time for units they will get 60 or more turns later, so they can concentrate on the builds of their era and have better stacks.
By the way the halberdiers are something like a mild version of Chivalric Foot Knights. They are still slow, but they have good attack, good morale and really top notch defence of course. They are not a fodder unit as in vanilla and cost also lots to get.
Rebel units look totally random. Full stack of Highland Clansman in Portugal, Steppe Cavalry in Pomerania, etc.
Actually the rebel groups are relatively ok, apart from 2 or 3 exceptions. The most notable is highland clansmen. i have taken them out of the rebel groups, given them only to catholics and also made them Scotland only. Despite that they keep appearing in every rebellion that happens in high rebelliousness provinces particularly in Portugal and Valencia. I am really desperate with them, to the point that i am thinking to take them outcompletely.
The equivalent unit to clansmen for muslim units are the Murabitin.
One potential reason is taht both these units are on top of teh list in the file and also are very cheap, hence they are very much preferred by the engine in the rebel groups.
Many other units (most actually) are part in the rebel groups and apart from the ones mantioned they can come alright.
Steppe cavalry are Golden Horde only in the mod and have no homelands (so the Horde can build them anywhere). Hence why you may get rebellions with them especially when the Horde occupied there etc. However there are plenty of eastern steppe specific units in the rebel mix and most of teh time it comes out ok and with the right flavor.
EDIT: the Steppe cavalry being Horde only is also exclusively pagan, and appearing in Pomerania (that is in its base pagan) makes sense. If i take them out of the rebel mix, maybe there is a risk that they won't be included in teh Horde's stacks in the Horde appearance and re-appearance. So i am reluctant to do so.
:bow:
By the way i will do some playtesting with the autorun over the weekend and try medium (80 sword man unit) settings and see what that gets. I have a feeling that it may be something like the loyalty:130, ie a very good compromise between factions being more aggressive and the campaign start boiling sooner as you suggested and having not too many stacks with endless reinforcements in battles.
If that turns out to be so, i will then adjust the rebel stacks to medium unit settings and playtest some more with the autorun. At present the rebel stacks are geared towards huge exclusively and i think that this is a bit too specific for my own tastes - the mod should be addressed to other tastes as well. By reducing rebel stacks to medium, AI factions will perform ok nearly in all unit settings without too much deviation from the intended effect of the rebels.
The most important effect i am expecting it to have is teh AI being able to manage its financies better as his builds will not choke his cash flow as you observed.
Just in case the Halberdiers dependency logic was not explained well (as it well might be :), an example perhaps might make it more clear.
halberdiers are late era units for the Russians dependent on the spearmaker4 (top tier). Say the Russian AI (he won't but other factions for which the logic applies might) builds a Citadel by 1200.
If the sparmaker4 is not dependent on gunpowder, the AI will build it, as he takes buildings in turn and builds them to comlpetion without much consideration for what possibilities they give him often.
This means that he will be wasting good money and build turns for a building that will provied him something (the halberdiers) in 120 turns.
With the spearmaker tied to the gunpowder event, the AI will build teh spearmaker4 if he has the chance much closer to the date he can get something from it.
The same logic works for the town_watch3 and 4 tiers, that all catholic factions can build and upon which arbalesters, pikes, halberdiers, gendarmes and handgunners depend on.
Arbalessters were not used from 1200 onwards but much later. Hence it makes sense to erlegate them after gunpowder both from a historical and gameplay perspective.
The gameplay perspective has to do with making xbows obsolete too quickly as it happens in vanilla and having a missile weapon that can obliterate even late units' armor, and so much more high units' armor.
Thanks for the clarifications. I really like the idea of limiting buildings by compass/gunpowder events. It's a pity that there are no more events like these. This would really help the AI with buildings choices.
About rebellions - not a big deal. It's a little funny when you see clansman wandering around the continent :). You can try to put another unit on the top of the list and name it "Rebels" or similar. I saw something like that in other mods. This unit will fit wherever it'll appear.
Russian campaign - hard - huge - loyalty:130
Everything was very similar to my previous campaign.
Factions "dead from the start": Aragonese, Danes, Spanish.
Factions "nearly dead": Sicilians, Hungarians.
War started early in the east but only there. War in the western Europe started after @80 years. In the meantime Almohads tried to conquer Portugal and Valencia but never really did it. The funny thing was a Jihad contest - Egyptians conquered Tunisia - Almohads sent Jihad and took the province back. Then Egyptians sent Jihad and took the province again. Then Almohads... 3 Jihads from each side.
I decided not to go too far to the south. I've taken Muscovy, Smolensk, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia, Finland and additionally Sweden and Norway. My account hit 300K when the Horde arrived. Unfortunately, they weren't fooled by my tactic and sent the most of their forces to the north. We've met in the open field of Muscovy. 2500 of my newly recruited soldiers against a group of 10500 barbarians. Hmm.. what can i say.. Battle lasted @7 minutes. I've defeated first wave and captured general. Second wave didn't even get near my line. They turned back back in the middle of the field and run away. I've lost 250 brave man, killed 550 and captured 900. I thought it'll will be long and tough battle but it ended before it really began.
Golden Horde certainly needs better generals. 2-3 stars are not enough. I think they should be like Byzantines 6-8 stars at averange (but we probably can't do anything about it). Numbers mean nothing when they don't have any anti cavalry capable units. Their generals use standard heavy cavalry unit so they go to the first line and get killed/captured very fast. IMO they need designated BG unit with AI settings as others royal units. They should get some of these BG units along with other units immediately after they appear in 1231 (maybe one per stack). Now, they are not a challenge at all. Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.
That's all for now. The next will be HRE (or maybe Aragon).
I dl the mod and it works fine, playing with byzantines had no problems till now.
Is very nice work well done gollum
ps:not important but are you greek gollum...
Welcome to the Org, armoros! ~:wave:
Regarding Highlanders in rebellions, has anyone tried swapping them, position-wise, in the unit_prod with, say, spearmen, or another fairly vanilla unit to see if their participation in uprisings can be limited?
I suppose you can role-play it some, when you get a horde of Clansmen in a rebellion, you can guess where Scotland was playing an international.
Some more about Russians. They have two different units named "Vikings" and two named "Druzhina" - one cavalry (early BG unit) and one infantry. Sometimes it's hard to recognize which is which (especially at the battle summary screen). Maybe "Mounted Druzhina" for cavalry version?
Religions. I think it's a main problem for the AI when it tries to establish stable control over the province (like Almohads in Portugal). Without churches spreading faith and weakened priests/imams an average 1500 man army doesn't guarantee the 100% loyalty (even with lowest taxes). And with high units' support cost (huge setting) 1500 man army seems a really big one (for the AI). It's fun to play with huge units but factions' income should be altered to reflect the higher prices of units.
Another thing connected with low income/high support cost ratio. You don't have to worry about that any faction will be able to build high tier buildings and units too early. Around 1240 most factions still have only Keeps. Only English, Italians and Byzantines have one Castle each. It's a really long way for them to reach the Citadel or Fortress level. Smaller factions will surely never get to the Citadel level.
Hello Armoros, welcome to the org enjoy your stay :bow:
I am glad the mod adds to your enjoyment of the game, i hope you enjoy.
Yes, i am Greek (as you saw from the Byzantine unit and building descriptions probably :)
Hello Stazi, thank you once again for the feedback :bow: hello drone :)
Originally posted by Stazi
It's a little funny when you see clansman wandering around the continent :).
You can try to put another unit on the top of the list and name it "Rebels" or similar. I saw something like that in other mods. This unit will fit wherever it'll appear.
Originally posted by drone
Regarding Highlanders in rebellions, has anyone tried swapping them, position-wise, in the unit_prod with, say, spearmen, or another fairly vanilla unit to see if their participation in uprisings can be limited?
"Funny" yes, Stazi :) Sometimes i don't know if i should laugh or cry :)
I will most definitely try the solution your propose and that of drone.
This will mean however that the next version (coming up within the weekend as there is lots to do and relatively easy to do it) will have a re-arranged unit_prod file, that means no save compatible campaigns. This is not a problem for me, but it might be problem for anyone that started his campaign, so just letting you know.
Originally posted by drone
I suppose you can role-play it some, when you get a horde of Clansmen in a rebellion, you can guess where Scotland was playing an international.
"By order of the King, all the kingdom's travel agents that sold tickets to Scotts are to be immediately beheaded"
Originally posted by Stazi
I decided not to go too far to the south. I've taken Muscovy, Smolensk, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia, Finland and additionally Sweden and Norway. My account hit 300K when the Horde arrived. Unfortunately, they weren't fooled by my tactic and sent the most of their forces to the north. We've met in the open field of Muscovy. 2500 of my newly recruited soldiers against a group of 10500 barbarians. Hmm.. what can i say.. Battle lasted @7 minutes. I've defeated first wave and captured general. Second wave didn't even get near my line. They turned back back in the middle of the field and run away. I've lost 250 brave man, killed 550 and captured 900. I thought it'll will be long and tough battle but it ended before it really began.
Right, i see. Well the numbers cetrainly seem to be right for a good challenge. By the way, what stars your general had? The AI usually retreats when he is heavily outclassed in quality. And did they give you any more trouble or the rest of the campaign?
Its certainly weird because apart than giving them exclusively the Steppe Cavalry, i haven't changed much to the Mongols and in vanilla they keep coming very tenaciously again and again until almost they are spent. Will have to look into this.
Golden Horde certainly needs better generals. 2-3 stars are not enough. I think they should be like Byzantines 6-8 stars at averange (but we probably can't do anything about it). Numbers mean nothing when they don't have any anti cavalry capable units. Their generals use standard heavy cavalry unit so they go to the first line and get killed/captured very fast. IMO they need designated BG unit with AI settings as others royal units. They should get some of these BG units along with other units immediately after they appear in 1231 (maybe one per stack). Now, they are not a challenge at all. Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.
6-8 stars would be maybe a bit much with so many troops, but i agree with you to raise the average comamnd stars to above 4 (that means +2 valor to armies). 6 means +3 valor and 8 +4. I would say give them 4 as a minimum and 6 as a maximum when they land. Is that ok?
As far as teh BGs as concerned, it is certainly a worthy idea to try and give them particular BG units that are small and conservative in use by the AI and so their generals do not get captured or killed to fast in action that impacts negatively on the battles of course. This is something that i will change also in the next version.
Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.
No it isn't at all. Too much jedaism in expert in MTW. The campaign and its battles should be challenging enough in hard.
They have two different units named "Vikings" and two named "Druzhina" - one cavalry (early BG unit) and one infantry. Sometimes it's hard to recognize which is which (especially at the battle summary screen). Maybe "Mounted Druzhina" for cavalry version?
Absolutely, you are right. This is an oversight on my part. I will name the BGs, Druzhina BGs and the foot unit will be left as Druzhina. Will do something about the Vikings too - currently it does not hurt for them to have the asme name as they are exaclty the same unit apart from the skin. I used the VI one for recruitable by the Danes and Russians as its cooler. Units should have distinct names as you say.
Religions. I think it's a main problem for the AI when it tries to establish stable control over the province (like Almohads in Portugal). Without churches spreading faith and weakened priests/imams an average 1500 man army doesn't guarantee the 100% loyalty (even with lowest taxes).
The idea behind taking out the faith propagation from religiuos buildings is to balance the conversion happenings on the map. This is because the vast majority of factions are catholic and when there is a faith propagation bonus from Churches, they swamped other religions even in other factions' lands. Now only cathedrals/greatmosques iirc give a faith propagation bonus, and cathedrals/gmosques are much more rare and so they don't have the same effect. The idea is that conversion happens from:
a) The factions natural conversion rate (every faction has that, but its slow, and by the way its tied to the piety of the King most likely)
b) From priest characters
The priests/imams were too strong in vanilla - they could convert too quickly, hence why i nerfed them. Having conversion depending on agents rather than on infrastructure is better imo, as then you can have a whole game-within-the-game with trying to assassinate them etc. as they are the only ones that can do it.
The Mongols, that are pagan and have no priests, have their BG units acting as priests very slightly (smaller than the normal priests but still have an effect), in order to facilitate the Horde conquering. This is an idea i copied from the Medmod.
Another fature of this approach is that because its slightly harder to convert enemy lands, factions cetainly retain their "core lands". At the same time its easier to conquer lands of your own religion, than say of other religions (as it should be). Again in vanilla this is very much flattened because priests are too able in conversion but most importantly because religious buildings boost too much faith propagation.
The downside of course is that the AI is finding it slightly harder to expand in other religious lands than his own. However, as mentioned minority religion factions, like the Muslims and the Orthodox and less the Pagans have now more equal chances with the catholics.
So this is the rationale and context for gameplay.
The problem you describe happens most often in high rebelliousness provinces like Portugal, Livonia and Scotland. As a said before, its now less pronounced, as the rebelliousness was lowered. The highest rebelliousness province is Livonia (4 in vanilla, now 3) and then Portugal, Scotland and Lithuania (4,2,3 in vanilla now 2,2,2). Again the mod is following the vanilla pattern so things are familiar to players who have played that.
In other provinces (0 or 1 rebelliousnes) the problem you describe is either very very small or inexistent in my experience. Is that right?
If so, one thing it can cetrainly be done is slightly increase the priests conversion bonus. this will make their use more effective by teh AI factions and reduce the times the AI factions take to convert other religions in their new lands. In addition i will further reduce the rebel stacks so the AI factions take on rebel lands earlier (more on this coming up).
It is a bit again of finding the right balance for competitiveness and stability for the AI factions.
The funny thing was a Jihad contest - Egyptians conquered Tunisia - Almohads sent Jihad and took the province back. Then Egyptians sent Jihad and took the province again. Then Almohads... 3 Jihads from each side.
:laugh4: Sounds fun, i played once a great sand war as the Egypts versus the Almohads. It was really enjoyable.
War started early in the east but only there. War in the western Europe started after @80 years.
Yes indeed. I have playtested your suggestion for medium unit sizes already (and still doing), and i agree fully with your observations. Basically the same things happen in terms of what factions do, just they happen much faster and the campaign is more closely contested while stability is still acceptable although somewhat reduced - but not much.
I will calibrate AI preferred ranks for medium unit size, as well as the rebel stacks sizes. This will also reduce the rebel initial stacks and will make teh AI factions jumping to it somewhat faster, while maintaining teh intended effect. I will reduce also some rebel stacks in terms of units (take 1 or 2 from some that are key for faction development).
Another thing connected with low income/high support cost ratio. You don't have to worry about that any faction will be able to build high tier buildings and units too early. Around 1240 most factions still have only Keeps. Only English, Italians and Byzantines have one Castle each. It's a really long way for them to reach the Citadel or Fortress level. Smaller factions will surely never get to the Citadel level.
Fortresses i've seen very few times in the mod, and perhaps never in vanilla (starting from early) and always come in late. Citadels should be coming about at about the mid/late high era or there abouts. If its too easy for the AI factions to have them, then the tech tree is trivialised. I agree however, that there should be more tech up. It may again be a matter of funds available in the campaign and if so, switching to medium unit size may actually prove a solution. I will be paytesting these this weekend.
By the way, the castle tech level reflects the economics of a faction. Factions that remain on positive financies, but never make "the jump" to lots of income (either by conquest or trade) they will stay in keep level for most of the campaign and maybe for all of the campaign. For those cases nothing can be done. This is all the more as the AI prefers to build keeps in all its provinces before he makes a Castle, unlike the player who may have say a few forts and a castle (in order to benefit from the higher techs of the castle).
The factions that do have money, typically like the Italians, the English, the French at times, the Egyptians, the Almohads at times, the Turks, the Germans at times, the Hungarians at times, the Byzantines do make castles and eventually Citadels.
All in all some more speed needs to be given to tech development, and i have a feeling that switching to medium unit sizes will help towards that.
In terms of worrying for the high tier buildings, the Turks, the Pope, the Italians and the Byzantines or whoever gets to build in Constantinople, all have the potentially for that occurence to happen. From these factions, the Turks and all the Catholics have units dependent on the spearmaker4 and the town_watc4 that are tied to gunpowder. It isn't too frequent indeed for the Citadel level buildings, but when it happens it does take away florins and build turns.
Such things by the way happen in vanilla big time, and it this to a great part that makes teh AI a sitting duck as he spends endless money and time wandering the tech tree without getting anything. In this mod, this is solved down to its details as far as i know, as in this example. I have made lots of efforts for all the AI is getting to mean something and for him to be able to use it.
Regarding the town_watch4 is also connected to town_watch3 that gives arbalesters is also tied to gunpowder and that is available in Castle level that is more frequent. This is for gameplay reasons regarding the arbalesters as explained previously.
Factions "dead from the start": Aragonese, Danes, Spanish.
Factions "nearly dead": Sicilians, Hungarians.
I have decided to keep the vanilla format in starting positions, because:
a) I am famliar with it and hence tweaks i make i can predict better by projecting them into the future
b) players are familiar with it
c) it may be too much work in playtesting very different starting positions that we are all unfamiliar with. The problem is not that i am work shy, but that such work needs playtesting and playtesting needs feedback and time. Feedback is coming in but slowly as MTW is not a very new game anymore, and time is often hard to find in such large amounts as to set and playtest the game up from scratch - at least for me.
For these reasons as it has been the concept and sanity line for this mod and its maker :) and it has helped thus and so i feel i better stick with it. I may siedtrack only very slightly from this rule.
As mentioned, the problems you bring to the fore will be dealt with by change of unit sizes (the alternative is to put more money in analogy to provinces and so into teh campaign, but i feel that few people play huge anyway, and so forcing people to my preference is a bit much - i'd better make the mod enjoyable for unit sizes that are closer to more people's preferences, and that does not exclude anyone he likes it to play in huge still anyway - the engine scales costs and sizes just for that) and also by changing initial garrisons and infrastructure.
This however means that the one province starting factions (Danes, Aragon, Russians), will remain "dead from the start" as otherwise, it seems to me, they will be made too easy for the player.
However, i will certainly strive for Spanish, Hungarians, Sicilians and Poles to perform better than they do by the AI at the moment. The Almohads also need a very slight boost. These tie with the issues we have been discussing (rebel stacks, religion, unit sizes and hence economics), so please just wait till the next version that is imminent :bow:
This will mean however that the next version (coming up within the weekend as there is lots to do and relatively easy to do it) will have a re-arranged unit_prod file, that means no save compatible campaigns. This is not a problem for me, but it might be problem for anyone that started his campaign, so just letting you know.
I can't remember, does this require messing around with the description text files as well? Might be more trouble than it's worth.
Not that i know of. The text description is in the Loc file and completely independent from the list in the unit prod file AFAIK. I did change the order in another case (placed Druzhinas under Boyars) and it wasn't affected.
It is cetrainly a change i will leave for slightly later, when the mod goes through a "hybernation period" as it will make the game non-save game compatible with previous versions.
Priority is to fix the glitches Stazi found, and also tune in the unit ranks AI uses to medium unit settings as well as slight adjustments in the starting positions and playtest with those, for v2.5. Will also increase Horde command stars, and if time allows this weekend will also give the Mongols unique and small conservative BGs. The dead men page and the rebellion glitches with the clansmen and the murabitin will have to wait for the next next version. :bow:
IMO you shouldn't abandon the huge units idea. Just alter the province income/support cost. It may take more time to balance the whole thing but battles with bigger units last longer, are harder and more interesting.
Save game compatibility it's not a problem. The beginning if the campaign is the funniest part for me, especially with strong and dangerous foes around.
Concerning battle with Golden Horde - my general had 6 stars against 3 stars Horde's general. I know, it's totally different quality. That's why I voted for some Horde's improvements.
btw What do the quality and numbers of the Horde depend on? The main variable is probably the army that stays in Khazar when the Horde arrives. What are the others?
Pavise Arbalesters and xbows. Why factions that can recruit them don't have access to standard versions (without pavise) and vice versa? Maybe give them option to "dismount" pavise xbows to standard version? This seems logical that unit can throw away heavy pavises when needs more speed. Mounted xbows should be able to dismount for foot version too. The same for other mounted missile units like horse archers, etc.
Citadels, Fortresses and other high tier buildings. It all depends how much money AI has. I remember a campaign that one of the AI factions owned 1/3 of the world. Most of its provinces had Fortresses. It had so much money that its most feared unit was an emissary. Why? Because AI constantly tried to bribe my armies. 6 of my provinces were producing nothing more than assassins. Every battle was like fight with Golden Horde. It was a really epic campaign.
Και εγω αδελφε Ελληνας ειμαι...ναι το βυζαντιο τα σπαει..
συγχαρητηρια για τη δουλεια που κανεις.
Thanks for all the welcomes.
I love mtwVI and believe it i put my old laptop in use just to play the best game with the new mods.
new cards as you all know cant play mtw.
and i realy like better mtwvi than mtw2..
Anyway is nice to be here thiis forum rocks...:drummer:
Γεια σου πατριδα!... Να'σαι καλα... :)
Enjoy armoros :bow:
We have here a small but dedicated community for MTW, a little bit like Asterix's village of TW :)
Hello Stazi,
IMO you shouldn't abandon the huge units idea. Just alter the province income/support cost. It may take more time to balance the whole thing but battles with bigger units last longer, are harder and more interesting.
Well, for me personally its cetrainly much better to go that way ie customize and gear the whole mod for huge unit settings :). The problem with adding more income, is not so much that i am shying away from the work for it, as that for smaller unit settings the money will be so much as to blow the campaign out of all proportion.
Perhaps other people that are interested in the mod can give their opinion's on this?
The difference between medium and huge unit settings in terms of recruitment and maint. costs is something like 30%. This means that i would be required to pour about that much (+30%) in agri unit income (ie +(current province income x .3) ) for the factions to play in huge as they currently play in medium. This then mean that for people who play say in medium the campaign will have +70% extra income ie it will be perhaps way too much to be enjoyable.
So owing to this, please good people that you are interested in the mod, give us your view. I am currently undecided as to what to do for this (set up campaign for medium unit settings or gear the whole mod for huge and add income for quicker campaign boiling (waring etc)).
Concerning battle with Golden Horde - my general had 6 stars against 3 stars Horde's general. I know, it's totally different quality. That's why I voted for some Horde's improvements.
btw What do the quality and numbers of the Horde depend on? The main variable is probably the army that stays in Khazar when the Horde arrives. What are the others?
Right, thanks. I will certainly be increasing the command stars to be within the range of 4 to 6. The one factor i know of for Hored numbers is the one you mention. Quality seems same all the time to me.
Pavise Arbalesters and xbows. Why factions that can recruit them don't have access to standard versions (without pavise) and vice versa? Maybe give them option to "dismount" pavise xbows to standard version? This seems logical that unit can throw away heavy pavises when needs more speed. Mounted xbows should be able to dismount for foot version too. The same for other mounted missile units like horse archers, etc.
For arbs and pavise arbs: The rationale is to give only to the Italians the pavise version for some historical flavor. All other factions get the standard variety. This was in order to make armies a bit more personalised and historically flavored in the styles they fight.
As far as dismounts are concerned, i have disabled them all save for the units that have dismounted versions by vanilla FeudalKnights, ChivKnights, KnightsHospitallers (and maybe one or two more i forget, like Gothic Knights). I left those in for maintaining the flavor of the vanilla game.
All other units though do not dismount simply because the AI can't dismount units in battle at all.
There is only one solution in this, namely make the dismounted versions available for recruitment and take them out as dismounts. In the mod, i wanted to keep some vanilla flavoring hence i kept some dismounts but i took off all others in order not to disadvantage the AI.
For the player dismounts mean more flexibility of options that teh AI does not have. Imo the player should also face as much as possible the same hurdles as the AI, and fight while having to deal with them.
Citadels, Fortresses and other high tier buildings. It all depends how much money AI has.
Absolutely, hence why i said that if we put down the unit settings you'll see them coming around sooner. Either by giving more money and keep the game huge or set unit size in medium, this will be to some extent adressed.
I remember a campaign that one of the AI factions owned 1/3 of the world. Most of its provinces had Fortresses. It had so much money that its most feared unit was an emissary. Why? Because AI constantly tried to bribe my armies. 6 of my provinces were producing nothing more than assassins. Every battle was like fight with Golden Horde. It was a really epic campaign.
I can certainly see the point, but if i apply this logic to the end of it, teh player will also become very rich very quickly.
In teh XL mod and XL Tyberious, the economic game is trivialised as there is so much income coming from farms and farms are built so quickly that there is no essentially management.
While i agree with you that the current level of money in the campaign for huge unit settings is not ideal (hence either increase funds or decrease suggested unit setting), and something will be done to adress this, i would not want to give that much money as in XL or XL Tyberoius to the AI factions at the start, as then for the player too the economic side vanishes completely.
:bow:
By the way Stazi, if you enjoy the opening stages and being harassed by the AI, just try once the mode of play i suggest ie play one faction per one King's life and then switch via -ian to another faction.
You'll be amazed how much fun it is and how refreshing because every time you have set up a strong Kingdom you end up in a completely new starting position taht you have never played before and that is totally unique and potentially very challenging.
My rule after teh King dies is to play the faction with the youngest King that still is in the black (no debts).
Just try once, and almost all of the problems you mention will be solved without us tweaking the unit sizes and incomes and starting positions :)
I thought to tell you this because you said that the opening is the most interesting part for you. Then its like having all the time a new and natural opening. But of course its up to you :bow:
Dear all, just to let you all know; please let me know if you consider i should calibrate province incomes completely for huge unit settings or for medium unit settings. I will wait until i get some other opinions too before i proceed to teh next version with this :bow:
Haven't played the mod, so feel free to tell me where to go, but you should definitely design everything against huge units IMHO. If the mod needs to be played a certain way with certain settings, then the player needs to accept this and give it a go based on that.
Thank you master Asai, for (edit: i mean for giving me) the courage to pursuit our ideas to the end :bow:
I think you are right. Its true that not all people are familiar with huge unit settings, but if one comes to play in huge with an open mind then its possible to discover their qualities. Some people have expressed this here and its good to see. Also battles now in huge work really well, and it would be quite an upset to throw away all the improvements that have been cumulated over time.
While everyone is still very welcome to make their views known, i am now leaning towards calibrating the mod fully for huge. This practically will entail to add 30% extra base farming income in all provinces with respect to their current base farming income and playtest. The income proportions per area and per province are well worked out imo and i am happy with them, hence i won't be touching them. Still waiting for other people's opinions to be heard though.
I will also fix all glitches Stazi reported, give the Mongols unique and conservative BGs (i already have picked the unit i will be using) and 4 to 6 stars as they land, increase the priest/imam conversion somewhat to compensate for taking out faith propagation from churches and mosques. Once done and playtested to see if the intended effect in the campaign has been achieved, i will release a new version.
Should take only a day or two after the unit setting issue is firmly decided.
:bow:
A few explanatory notes;
1. the difference between income/maintenance from medium to huge unit settings is approx. 30% and not 40. This is now corrected in previous posts and it is also how much i will be giving to all lands in proportion to their base income in the new version.
The difference is calculated thus: medium units settings=80man sword unit and huge unit setting=120man sword unit; 120-80=40men in recruit and maint costs difference. Then 120/40=33%down in recruit and maint. costs when switching from huge to medium. Then to reach that in the campaign with huge its 33%up in agri income on all provinces in proportion to their current base income. There are various factors that will play in this, that make it not precisely the same in effect, however this calculation is a useful rough guide, a rule of thumb. One such factor is that in huge the training time is 2 turns and so even with more income the campaign boiling will still take longer than in medium.
2. The reason church/mosque faith propagation is a problem and hence taken out is that it overspills to other lands. However the default faction faith propagation (that happens without churches/mosques) does not. This is what makes the game unfair to Orthodox and Muslims in vanilla and what also balances it out and makes it agent dependent (as apart from the King's piety that affects the faction faith propagation only priestly characters can affect it further) in the Caravel mod, as in the mod you convert people only in your own lands and not in neighbouring ones, unless you put agents there of course - but agents can be killed (unlike churches in neighbouring provinces).
With the faith propagation as mentioned on, and so faith overspilling to other lands, the Catholics have a huge advantage is the religious game. Without it, they stll have an advatntage (as they are more numerous and so have more priests overall) but it isn't of the magnitude of vanilla. In vanilla the overspilling effect is such that you can basically ignore agents altogether as a catholic as the huge amount of churches chokes other religions at the borders.
2. The reason church/mosque faith propagation is a problem and hence taken out is that it overspills to otehr lands. However the default faction faith propagation does not. This is what makes the game unfair to Orthodox and Muslims in vanilla and what also balances it out and makes it agent dependent in the Caravel mod.
You can make it a little more fair if you give their imams/orthodox bishops more faith propagation power (or eventually add faith propagation to their units). Increasing the build importance of Town Watch, Church and Imams/Priest/Bishops should help the AI to keep order and peace in provinces too.
Hello Stazi,
You can make it a little more fair if you give their imams/orthodox bishops more faith propagation power (or eventually add faith propagation to their units).
Yes, as mentioned before i will be doing this in the next version. I am thinking to put it up for priests/bishops/imams from 2 (current) to 4. Admittedly it is a bit over nerfed, and it takes too long for conversions for the AI to be able to use priests effectively. This is on the list since you brought it up. I only wanted to explain that its the overspilling that made me take out the faith propagation from religious buildings, apart from Cathedrals and G.Mosques iirc. They are too rare to have the overpowering overspilling effect churches have in vanilla.
Increasing the build importance of Town Watch, Church
This is another gameplay region that i gave quite some thought in, namely the distrubution of happiness bonuses to early buildings. This is a huge issue as it affects greatly the speed with which new provinces can be conquered and hence the speed you can rush an opponent.
The aim was for rushing to be a viable option but to come with some risk (ie people not have enough time to adjust to the new rule and rebel) and that risk should be greater the more cultural/religious diferences there are between the new conqueror and the people he is conquering.
In vanilla, the watch towers have a huge happiness bonus of altogether (both buildings) +50 in 2 turns. This obviously makes rushing all too easy.
In the mod, the watch towers give +30 iirc in 3 turns. Then in fort level the town watch gives another +10 - as in vanilla, and after that, the Church/Mosque in Keep level gives +30. Essentially this means that you get the same amount of happiness vanilla provides but more gradually over time, in order to introduce some risk to quick conquests.
After that you need to build the brothel or the Monastery (monastery is unique in the mod though) in Castle level to get more happiness, as in vanilla.
Of course the trick is to have this gradual happiness bonuses slow enough for a rusher to be inconvenienced, but also quick enough for the AI to be able to expand. After quite some playtesting i think that the current system works pretty well, except occasionally for provinces that have high rebelliousness (2 and above). There the AI may face one or two large rebellions, and the player might too. One idea is to reduce further rebelliousness in western provinces especially, however, this will take out some vanilla flavor and some strategic challenges as they now exist in the path of certain factions.
The problem is more pronounced in Spain, for the Castilans and the Almohads not being able to get Portugal quick enough.
As far as the AI being able to maintain order in his already conquered and brought in his culture provinces is concerned, this is something that in the mod works well throuh the huge units, that make decent garrisons and the loyalty:130 that makes the AI keep small garrisons in his lands and never leave them empty.
At the moment i will leave things as they are till i playtest things with the increased incomes. Its possible that more armies avialable through more funds will solve this naturally rather than needing tweaks in the rebelliousness or the happiness distribution. If not, then this can be re-examined :bow:
Belisario
05-08-2011, 20:23
Hi Gollum, I'm glad you continue working in the mod.
I would prefer that you keep the huge unit settings because it makes a big difference in battle. So, my vote to the 30% increase in farm incomes to play more challenging campaigns. My recommendation to all, and in particular Stazi, to prove the game mode suggested by Gollum of changing faction after playing with one or two rulers with the same faction. As he says "it's like having all the time a new and natural opening" but usually in more complex scenarios.
Hello Belisario,and nice to see you, i hope you are well :)
Version 2.6 of the mod is ready, and after overcoming a few slight technical difficulties (of my onw making) with the upload by help from the org admins, i will upload as soon as its possible.
In it i added the 30% agri income as per Stazi's suggestion and maintained the huge unit settings. Its only fair to keep to the vision we had with Caravel from the beginning and not give it up now - this mod should retain all the uniqueness it was thought on.
I have to say that the extra funds has proved the ingredient that released the potential of the mod. The campaign game now is amazingly dynamic and very much fun, even when you play with the same faction for many faction leaders. The AI also techs much sooner and has more troops for invasion and so waring starts much sooner and its much more contested - the AI counterattacks and does spoling attacks pretty often. At the same time the number of stacks remains relatively low - max two per province, so no endless reinforcements battles. In terms of tech the AI factions that have the funds to do it have build at least one castle by 1130, and one citadel by 1210, while having many castles atthe same time.
The Mongols now also have unique BGs that are a missile/heavy cav hybrid that the AI is set to use on the back and very conservatively. This means that shooting up the Mongol Khan/general with missiles or killing him in the melee in one of the attacking waves will be much more difficult and the Horde thus a tougher opponent.
I thank Stazi and all of you guys, the mod is really coming into focus on the campaign map with this version, its like it couldn't really take off the ground till now and now it shoots straight up. Finding the golden cut in income and loyalty settings as well as conversion rates took a while, but i think now its spot on :)
I also corrected nearly all the glitches Stazi reported and a few i found too.
v2.6 is coming up as soon as the uploading tech issue is solved :bow:
Congratulations on your new release! I can't wait to play it.
Yesterday, I've been playing Spanish campaign. This time it was much more action. War began in the west during first 10 years. During 20 years war French were eliminated by English. About 100 years passed so I assume they will never come back. The same for Turks but they eliminated themselves due to lack of heirs. English eliminated Egyptians and Almohads too (with my little help) so now, shortly before Horde attack, the world is free form Muslim factions. Italians, fooled by Pope, attacked English and ... they will probably be the next faction on the extinct list. Byzantines (undisturbed by anyone) took Turks' lands, went north and reached the Baltic sea. All happened before 1230! Except mentioned factions only HRE means and does something.
Egyptians reappeared once with two BG units and 3 full stacks of town militia. Can you give a little more variety to reemerging Egyptians' units? Maybe check the others factions' roosters too.
P.S. Check your PMs.
Hello Stazi,
the variety in reapperances problem happens only with the muslims and even with them not always. All other faction reappeances work ok, including papal ones. In very short order if the re-appearing Muslims take on lands and have a half decent income, they blend their stacks with new troops and they become pretty balanced. Similar story happens with the Almohads and ocacsionally teh Turks.
It is something that also happens in vanilla and i will have to look into for the next version - it was a long long weekend and i fixed nearly all we discussed and more that i found to fix (glitches). Mod now has reached version v2.8 :) I'll take a break for a while after this.
Again thank you for the feedback. I am really indebted for your suggestions and for taking teh mod apart and allowing me to explain how i think of things.
Glad to hear that warring this time started earlier, however with the new version is much more intense guaranteed from very early on, without making the tech tree trivial or having endless reinforcements
I haven't heard yet from teh admins, however i am ready to upload as soon as i do :bow:
PS Check your pms :)
Ok, courtesy of TinCow and the org admins, the upload tech issue is now solved and the mod is now uploading. Won't be long...
Dear all, v2.8 is now up. Enjoy! :)
May i add that with this the mod really takes off. All the elements of it come together, so all of you people who have experienced it as well as everyone else who yet hasn't, give it a try if you will and can now. I can only say that (hoepfully) you won't regret it :)
v2.8 is save game compatible, and yet it has solved teh clansmen rebellion problem completely (and very shrewdly as you will see :)
:medievalcheers:
PS While the mod is save game compatible as mentioned you are advised to start a new campaign to get the full extent of the benefits coming from the significant changes in this version - partiularly the 30% incomes up that customises the campaign for huge very well.
I kindly thank drone and the org for stickying the mod thread :bow:
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