Mongol invasions Online is a joke

[Swoosh So]

Sorry guys but mi is a joke online they should have just made 2 units available ashigaru and guns, a great online experience is ruined due to players taking all ashigaru and guns ie ashi raised honor and wep/armor upgrades even out playing/manuevering them wont give victory we are now playing shogun command and conquer and its a joke hardly any of the new units or their abilities are used and i see some clans adopting these ashigaru tactics how sad.........

Again its all down to the morale issue and the cheapness of these upgrades on certain units the balance of the game has been ruined, ill play old shogun till something else comes out, tho i will pop on th mi server to play with those who fight with imaginative and creative play

Swoosh of greywolves

[BSM_Skkzarg]

Swoosh - I can sympathize - but instead of being ticked off at those who would EXPLOIT the system, find those of us who would rather fight a REAL battle...

------------------
BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

[theforce]

Well swoosh yes you are correct about this but a well balanced amry can overcome the ashi, gun combo. I also have seen high honor players using it so that makes things worst.
Well you can avoid playing with such players.

------------------
Don't use only honour, use theforce, too.
http://lod.fateback.com

[Hertston]

What they said - just find an opponent who plays the game as it should be played.

[RageMonsta]

Swooshy,
Like I have said before...let these unskilled players have their fun for now....hopefully the patch release will fix the honour issue.....then we will have our day......then we will turn the tide...release our hatred.....unleash our RAGE.

A message..no a warning to all you newbie rice farmers who ignore the true ways of STW........enjoyed what you have now....smile with your C&C arcade tactics.....fore soon you will just another head in the soup.....p.s..grrrrrrrrr.

Quote Originally posted by Hertston:
What they said - just find an opponent who plays the game as it should be played.[/QUOTE]

Thats what I tried to do for weeks. MI is only fun and fair when played within a group of friends. The problem is that most don't give a damn about getting all ashis and some vets copy these dishonourable armies too...grrr what a boring game.

Monsta, remember that this game is made to sell to newbies not to the veteran or hardcore gamers that are in a minority. Secondly, the ashi n' guns problems won't be solved with a patch.

I remember when STW as full of monks, how did we overcome this problem? We need to do the same thing on MI - but this is like cancer, probably too late to cure.

I don't play MI much, I prefer good old, skilled and varied STW.

Tera

------------------
Visit my resource centre here! (http://terazawa.totalwar.org)
Evil is within us... http://terazawa.totalwar.org/emo.gif

[qwertyuiop]

I am sure if we can get some reasonable people in there it would get better. For now I will not bothering playing anyone in a competitive game peroid and stick to people I know.

[qwertyuiop]

Tera: you think they will come out with a patch to solve the world hunger bug?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I think I they got a cheat code for that or somthing.

[This message has been edited by T (edited 09-17-2001).]

[TheLordofWater]

i was gonna play stw online but my password and name i,m pretty sure they were right but it didnt work

[TheLordofWater]

im a newbie and i woul'nt do that............

[MagyarKhans Cham]

dont be suprised swoosh, your Khan knew this was gonna happen. so better show appearrance in the old room.

[Swoosh So]

Just a note in the games i played v these rice farmers i had a balanced army and had all flanks! attacking the rear with 2 or 3 monks and shooting them to sh-t now unlike the monk rush, this is pure mathematics the ashi are far too strong the casualties they took from my attack was laughable

Yep guys i still will play the MI but only with peeps i know from b4 but even some of them are using these tactics.

Swooooooooooooooosh

[Swoosh So]

Another problem i have is that u cant tell wich units have upgraded armor and weapons so say i see a nodachi unit i charge it with my monk head on but the nodachi wins because it has upgrades and i dont this makes the game a lottery this goes right across the board for all units, you will have yari sams beating monks, nodachi beating monks, yari cav beating monks maybe even cav archers beating monks hth, how on earth are u supposed to apply your army you cant match units with confidence just by checking a units honor, the vital aspects of the game are gone for me, most of the battles ive played arent even fun and the new units dont even get a lookin except the naginta cavalry on occasion, I wonder even if the morale problem gets sorted i think online play will still be poor, for the simple fact u will never know what unit beats what unit, therefor wheres the progression and the learning? the curve now seems to be this I instead of this /, what a pity


Swoosh

Ps: maybe when you put pointer over a unit it could say like a3 w2 (ie armor3 weapon2)

Swoosh

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

The upgrades are a very good thing. It's realistic that you can't see the upgrades, one can only see that the enemy has better quality weapons when they broke your weapon with theirs. Problem is, they made the upgrades too strong.

I don't know whether it's possible to use decimal values, but I guess an weapon upgrade should give marginal benefits. Yes swoosh san, that would mean that the outcome is a bit unsure. But a stronger unit here will give a weaker unit there as both players have the same amount of koku (I'am missing something here).

This is what takeshida san found:

"3). UPGRADES>

Since custom and online units start with H2, they already have a 1 pt. increase to defense, over their base stats. It takes 2 Honor upgrades, at 96% over the base units cost, to add one pt. to defense. Armor upgrades add 1 pt. to defense, and armor. Armor upgrades can add 3 pts. to defense, at a cost of 75% over the base, and also add 3 pts. more armor protection than was even possible in STW. Honor upgrades do not improve armor, just defense. Raised by 60%, the highest armor is now 8. Raised by 33%, the maximum defense is 9.

Solution:
Double the cost of Weapon and Armor upgrades.
Alternate:
Double the cost of Armor upgrades."

Not only does an armor upgrade add a full point to a unit defence (used to calculate hth) but also a full point to armor (protection against missiles). If I recall right TWO honorupgrades are required to add ONE defencebonus (apart from some added morale).

In the case of armorupgrades (if we assume that decimal bonusses can't be applied) a solution is easy (not sure whether this would result in a 100% fair solution, but at least much fairer):

As said STW uses two defence parameters: armor -missile only
defence -melee only

Yariashigaru have (too high imho) an armor of 2. Arrows have a power a 4. If an arrow hits an ashigaru (accuracy which depends on honor (?) and accuracy stat) 2 is abstracted from 4, yields 2. The 2 is then used to calculate the likelyhood that a ashi is killed (or maybe the 2 just says that it's less then 4 and yashi gets killed; that is unlikely as a naginata has armor 5 which would mean that a naginata can't be killed by an arrow which is not true).

By adding only 1 point to the armor, hth stats won't be effected. But yariashigaru will now have armor 3 which will protect them better against arrows.

Bullets have a power of 16, so 16-2=14 or 16-3=13 doesn't differ much. Thus a musket would almost as easily kill a A0 ya as a A1 ya.

A second armor upgrade could add another point to armor, making yashi even better protected vs arrows (still easy to kill by guns) and their hth properties won't be changed!

A third armor upgrade could add another point. Perhaps the third could add a point to defence not to armor as I agree that a very good armor could add some extra protection in hth.

Here's a very rough explanation how hth is calculated. HTH consist mainly of 2 stats under fair conditions (flat ground, no trees, enough room, identical formation and melee mode etc), an melee and a defence value. Each unit performs 1 attack in an animation cycle (say some 2 secs; I think that a light armored and skilled unit like a wmonk should be able to perform 2 attacks in the same period of time that a heavy armored naginata would do 1 attack. Due to the Japanese preference for speed (light flexible armor/weapons), this might be neglected, but in crusaders there must be a difference between a medieval knight and a Arab).

Back to 2 units in hth. A wm and a nodachi (both Honor 0).
wm 5 melee 2 defence
nod 6 melee -2 defence
(default stats from STW MI/WE).

Same goes for hth as for missiles: a number only determines the chance that a unit gets killed.

Wm and nod attack each other at the same time.

WM attacks Nod, change that the nod gets killed: WM melee - NOD defence = 5--2=7

Nod attacks WM, change that the WM gets killed: NOD melee - WM defence = 6-2=4

Simply stated a NOD has 70% change to get killed and a WM has 40% change to get killed.
(Both values are probably much lower as the battle would be over in 2 seconds).
Casualties are removed and now say 57 WM will face 54 NOD. That means that 3 NOD have to face 2 WM and will thus have a bigger change to die.

If a NOD has 3 armorupgrades his armor would go from 1 to 3 which reduced the likelyhood that he gets killed by an arrow from 3 to 1 (better than a yarisamurai worse than a naginata), and his melee stats would go from 6 -2 to 6 -1.

Again WM hth NOD:
WM attacks Nod, change that the nod gets killed: WM melee - NOD defence = 5--1=6

Nod attacks WM, change that the WM gets killed: NOD melee - WM defence = 6-2=4

The NOD is better protected against WM attacks, will live longer (if Buddha agrees) and will thus get more oppurtunities to try to kill a WM.

The way it is now in STW MI/WE when a WM mee/ats a Armor 3 NOD.
The NOD will have armor 4, which makes him better protected vs arrows. His defence will be -2+3=1

Again WM hth NOD:
WM attacks Nod, change that the nod gets killed: WM melee - NOD defence = 5-1=4

Nod attacks WM, change that the WM gets killed: NOD melee - WM defence = 6-2=4

Now it's even! A H2 WM costs 500, a H2 A3 Nod 518. Sounds fair? It does not!

-First WM have a much bigger change to get killed by arrows, armor 1 whereas nod have 4.
-Second NODs have a much bigger charge bonus than WM, if both charge NOD will make a lot of initial kills.
-NOD and WM honor are both 8, no extra gain for the WM here.

Conclusion: a H2 A3 NOD is slightly more expensive than a H2 WM, but more of them will survive the arrows and they will beat WM under fair conditions. It could be 50 NOD vs 40 WM if both face the same amount of arrows.


Now weapon upgrades, a weapon upgrade does add a full point to melee (hth). A H0 W3 Nod vs a H0 Wm:

WM attacks Nod, change that the nod gets killed: WM melee - NOD defence = 5--2=7

Nod attacks WM, change that the WM gets killed: NOD melee - WM defence = 9-2=7

The NOD doesn't have the extra benefit of protection against arrows, but I'm fairly sure that another stat is changed too: chargebonus.
So if the NOD get 3 extra chargepoints, the WM will have no change.

The charge is only used for the first contact, if both charge the full charge is used to calculate the likelihood that the other gets killed (it might be that the charge consists of the chargebonus + melee).
If one charges and the other does not, then the charge will be charge-defence value. Thus a H0 NOD charging a waiting (not holding as that adds another bonus) H0 WM will give 8 (8+6?) - 2=6 (14?). That means that the NOD get a extra attack round and have a chance of 6 to kill a WM.
The charge won't be used in normal melee. Thus the chargebonus is a small modifier for the overall stats of a unit, 'excactely' like the armor does.

A good solution seems to be: W1 gives 1 extra chargebonus, W2 gives yet another extra chargebonus. W3 could give either a third chargebonus or 1 extra melee.

Conclusion:
I think that the upgrades are a very good thing, and I don't want an indicator that tells me how many and what kind of upgrades the enemy has. I do agree that the upgrades are much too strong.

Another thing is annoying to me. For a game that uses so many parameters to calculate the outcome of hth (height advantage, flanking, morale, charge, fatigue), it has quite a lot of statistical fluctuation.
Attack 1 unit with another under the same conditions, and repeat that several times, the outcome will be quite different every time. That was already the case in STW. So the illusion that you could predict the outcome of an engagement in STW is false.
I would suggest to lower this fluctuation.

Some also observed that units tire much faster in WE/MI than in STW. Fatigue effects morale, it seems to me that the developers increased the fatiguerate to counterbalance the insane high morale a bit. Units are quite tired after 15 minutes of doing nothing, thus rushtactics wil become important.
(I haven't done measurements on this, just some feeling).


------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi
http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 09-19-2001).]

[Swoosh So]

Lol and its realistic to see honor?

[ElmarkOFear]

A good all round army for the new game consists of: 5 ashi, 5 guns, 2 nodachi, 3 yari sams, one arch. I agree that guns are even stronger in this game than the old. They even shoot in rain!! Archers actually need to be bumped up so that they kill more as in the old game. As for ashi: They are the new "monks" of shogun. For the price you cannot beat them, but there is a law of diminishing returns. An all ashi army will die easily if you use your missile troops and a few high honor ashi with no dachi/monks as flankers. Routing is a lot more difficult since units fight a lot longer before wavering. Then there are the troubles with balancing the Mongol army which has some very powerful units for the money. A few tweaks to the old game was what was needed, not a whole remaking of the battle calculations and unit values. All-in-all, the game is fun, but completely different then the old.

[Swoosh So]

I HAVE NO DOUBT U CAN WHOOP AN ALL ASHI GUN ARMY ELMO :-) , but i dont find it at all acceptable that i should have to use this mix in everygame versus peeps i dont know, yes ill play with the oldies but theres hardly ever any of them on, i think you make a good point they tried to change too much instead of just intergrating the units into the old system. I dont know if this is true but there seems to be more randon elements involved in the routing or maybe its this new stat.

The good thing about old total war was any army of the same values could beat each other, in the exp pack this seems not to be the case


Swoosh

[This message has been edited by Swoosh So (edited 09-19-2001).]

[Krasturak]

*opens coffin*

*creeps out of coffin*

Hmmmmm. Interesting discussion.

Krast will keep waiting before buying MI/WE because it seems a waste of time.

By the way, did they fix the rout bug? Krast recalls reading that it is still there ...

Why buy game that is not better in a meangingful way?

Krast is happy with STW despite it's flaws and hopes to maybe get MI/WE when it is 'fixed', 'patched' or 'modded' to make it playable, interesting, and fun.

Please lett Krast know when this has been accomplished?

P.S. Krast loves Swooshie! Gah!

*creeps into coffin*

*closes coffin*

[shingenmitch2]

all this makes my head hurt.

Swoosh is correct, the ability to guage matchups is critical to the fun and skill of game. I agree that upgrades are good, but should not be overwhelming in value.

The reason that MI went to SH*T is all the crap that EA had to do to ballance the Mongol effect. -- All this says is that they got THE MONGOLS WRONG.

They shouldn't have had to rework all the stats to fit the Mongols in. When they realized that the mongols were super killers and had to reballance everything, A BIG RED FLAG should have smacked them in the face.

And by the freckin way -- NO thunderbomber existed that could nearly wipe out entire units -- OTHERWISE the mongols would have been the Explosive experts of the medieval age.

TB's should be BANG = huge temporary MORALE HIT from the scare, not BANG = lots of dead.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa Swoosh san,

I haven't said that seeing honor is realistic.

To some extend an armystandard was regarded important, so better units would be entrusted with that.

But indeed buying honor, and displaying that with flags. Lol.

The upgrades on the other hand are things one could buy. But then, a honorupgrade can be seen as invested koku in training a unit; discipline might be a better word here.

Honor 6 ashigaru and h2 nodachi in the same army. A weird situation. In the campaign a unit did have some honor (depended on battles waged; apart from the palace bonus etc), but it was 'enourmously' boosted by the taisho.

In online battles, the taishos honor isn't taken into account (Puzz3D worked on that), actually the taishos honor is 0.

In the sp campaign a taisho gained honor in won battles.

I think it's an idea to implement something like that in online battles. One can buy weapon/armor upgrades but only h0 units. The honor of a unit is determined by the taisho's honor. The taisho starts with h0. Each time a player wins a battle, his taisho will gain honor (but only to a limit of course). The tasihos honor will increase the unit honor. When the taisho dies in a battle all his units will drop back to honor 0, thus it will become extremely important to protect the taisho.

Also one might decide to retreat his taisho if the battle doesn't goes so well thus he can strike back the next time. Of course once the taisho is off the field his units will be 'honorless'.

If the taisho dies, the player will start the next battle with a h0 taisho.

At this moment honor increases the defence stats of a unit. Not sure if this is good in the 'normal' case, but here it's more a matter of getting inspired by a great leader and thus increasing the willingness to fight and die. So I think honor should only/mostly increase morale and not (so much) hth stats.

Perhaps it's also possible to carry over any unit to the next battle, so that units grow in morale (veterans). Halved units will be restored with new h0 men (30 h2 men + 30 h0 men gives 60 h1 men, like in the campaign). That would require a file which could hold the progress of 16 units of every type; so the player isn't forced to use the same army in every battle; he can select armies from that pool.

About the morale as it is now compared to the morale in stw. I've never been in a battlesituation and I've never seen a Japanese battle, so I could be totally wrong here. I feel that the stw morale system was bad and I feel that the WE morale system is bad. Of course, the old morale sytem did a good job for a normal army. But samurai were not normal soldiers. A/most samurai would fight till the dead if his taisho wanted that. 'Sorry taisho, I was prepared to fight, but they were so scary...'. 'No problem, take a few days off, you'll do better next time'. He would be a big dishonor to his family and clan.

So a mass rout when 30 naginatas are killed looks unnatural to me.

When Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Kyushu 5,000 Shimazu warriors charged him. Hideyoshi had an army of 170,000 (hundreth seventy thousend) there! Toyotomi was certainly not an inexperienced general, and his soldiers were no rookies either. I don't think you can get 20 nods to charge 600 enemies in stw.

Not sure what a samurai would do when his lord dies or runs away... err retreats.
At that point normal behavior might come in play: the general runs, the battle is lost.


Back to the situation as it is (should be) now. A Honor 9 yariashigaru is quite different from a h0 yariashigaru, so I think it's good that one can see that. (It would be different if a unit could be h2 max). Does anyone know how to differentiate from a distance a h0 kensai from a h9 kensai? ;-)

The weapon/armor bonus comes at a low price and therefor must have only a little influence (which isn't the case at the moment). I think it's nice/acceptable if these remains hidden for the enemy.

Biggest problem with WE/MI is probably not the morale but the bad balance of the units AND the upgrades that are too strong.



------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Elm,

Monks are nothing compared to high honour ashis high honour A3 W3 - theyre much cheaper and just too strong.

And with an Armor 3 ashis it's like firing at a naginata - they will get killed but at a much less rate to have much effect.

But ashis hordes are beatable of course, just like monks hordes are beatable in STW. Just it's unfair to use unbalanced troops.

Tera

Tera

------------------
Visit my resource centre here! (http://terazawa.totalwar.org)
Evil is within us... http://terazawa.totalwar.org/emo.gif

[Swoosh So]

At the end of the day there would be no way on earth a daimio would arm ashigaru with legendary armor, and erm legendary sticks?

Swoosh

Ps: perhaps a limit on ashigaru honor

Swoosh

[MagyarKhans Cham]

from my Khans greatest opponnent Amp i received the message of just leave the upgrades out

it is unbalanced and adds just a little

[Vanya]

Me likes upgrades! It gives a new meaning to troop selection. More choices, more strategies. Are you gonna improve those ragged ole peasants with armor, or will you give new swords to those hornets-without-a-stinger Naginatas you've always wanted to use?

Leaving it out is simply a cry from old-timers against the inevitability of change. Like the idiots in the middle east: get a grip on yourself! You cant stay living in the golden age of centuries past just because you liked it then!

[Swoosh So]

Actually vanya the wepon upgrades dont add to strategy its just a blind lottery

Swoosh


Maybe why u like it?

And dont go making comparisons about the middle east like that its quite out of place in this situation



[This message has been edited by Swoosh So (edited 09-20-2001).]

[MagyarKhans Cham]

my Khan likes the "new" idea where u can make an hidden upgrade of units

he dislike the idea that the upgrades are unbalanced. so a "too good" value for money upgrade. just look at the farmers armies online at MI with s3 and a3 upgrades.
-----------------------------------------
my khan just want to enter a new idea, perhaps for further versions.... Dont show the number of banners until the unit(s) enter combat.

[Swoosh So]

I agree if the price is right it will be ok but 20 koku an upgrade for ashi that has to be changed.......

[Krasturak]

Gah! Krast comes out of coffin again to speak!

To Tosa: interesting ideas about Taisho hon. However, the idea of carrying forward wins/losses is much like the 'hon' comp system, which is broken by the escaping and dropping problem. Imagine the castle-camping Taisho that adds 9 hon to his men after defeating hordes of curious newbies!

As far as the superashis go, perhaps you all could try this: ashis not allowed upgrades. Only samurai allowed upgrades.

Then super-ashi go out window, replaced by super-samurai ... which is kind of the idea, right?

Gah!

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

I agree Krasturak san (thanks for reading that post).

Things would be very extreme if a H9 taisho could add Honor 9 to all the units that serve him, at least with the honor as it is now.

The carry over of honor can be a nice extra mode; I'm quite sure that I would play that mode only with friends. This mode would also make MP campaigns like Magyars one 'possible'.

I doubt whether the honorupgrades do what they should do, in STW there was only 1 upgrade (honor) but now we have honor, weapon and armor; thus Honor can be more specialised.

A high honor taisho will inspire and motivate his men to fight and die, I doubt that it would actually improve their skills -a bit is possible but I don't think that it's realistical that a H0 yashi has -1 defence and a H8 3.

High honor should 'only' mean that they can suffer more casualties before they rout.

At this moment, when a low honor Nodachi strikes the back of a high honor Ysam, the Ysam will lose some at first (say 60 Nod vs 60-5 Ysam). But due to the extra honor the Ysam has better melee and will beat the Nodachi in the end/quite quickly.

Higher morale should mean that the Ysam will suffer more deads from the Nods, but that they'll stand and keep the Nod occupied longer thus enabling the player to flank the Nods with another unit.
(A high Honor Ysam will/might still win from a low honor Nod as they can take more damage before they rout, but it will be much less dramatic as it's now: 40 dead Nods vs 6 dead Ysam now and 30 dead Nods vs 40 dead Ysam then).

This way yashi won't become monsters at H8; +4 defence.

As said: it might be acceptable to change the melee values a bit with increasing honor.
A good stat to add some value but not too much is the charge bonus, this one will be applied only once when two units engage. It could at least be the bonus for little honor upgrades. As the higher cost much more, one could think to add 1 melee/defence point. Say H3 gives +1 charge, H6 gives +2 charge, H9 gives +2 charge +1 melee/defence. Now every 2 honor gives 1 extra defence, not only will H6 give 3 extra points instead of 2, the defencebonus is also much stronger than a chargebonus.

The carry over could give some problems, but it could be implemented that only the taisho buys honor in a game (16 units are h0). The taisho will play an important role in the battle then.

The TroopStats.txt in STW WE/MI can be manipulated to show what individual fights will be like then (the influence of the taisho can't be incorporated).

I really don't know whether it turn out to be nice, but I think it might be something to think about to implement in Crusaders.

No matter how the battles are fought, what upgrades will be used, how they'll be implemented, people who escape the battle to save their digit on the EA ladder will always be there.




------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[theforce]

Ashis are tooo strong. I just came from a game like that. He had 8 h7 ashis and l think they were upgraded with 3weapons and 3 armour and 8 guns in green. I attacked. My men got shot to pieces by the superior firepoer of the enemy but still l had h4 ys with nd to back up. I sent 8 ys to attack 8 ashsis , 2 nd to back em up and 4 nd were flanking those ashis!!!! While one of my flank was winning the other was losing. That wing runned. I also had 8 guns firing me at close range in heavy rain. How could l win? My gen died and l runned.
Wm in the old game were easy to beat because of their weekness to projectile so if they rushed you they were blowed to pieces. Now those ashis with h7 and armour 3 are durable against projectile, they are fast and wipe out cavalry and they are cheap and they don't run!!! I have never see them run even if they are 10 left or lower and being flanked and under fire! Patch might do something to reduce their power and l want the guns to stop firing while raining!!!! It's unrealistic this way!

------------------
Don't use only honour, use theforce, too.
http://lod.fateback.com

[TosaInu]

Yashi have armor 5 with 3 armorupgrades.

It might not (only) be the morale that messes MI. The stats are changed and the upgrades are too strong

The stats are weird, and I strongly believe that they are different here and there from STW (apart from the morale). Add the strong upgrades and you'll get a different game.


Nodachi which are samurai have poorer armor than yashi, 1 respectively 2.

I almost never used hcav in online battles, they are slow, tire fast and cost the same as a nod + ysam + yashi/arq. The new Nag cav is something I frequently use: it's cheap, still slow but almost as strong as a hcav.
hc 5 2 6 killchance 0
nc 4 5 2 killchance -1
and have a much better honor.
Hcav should be stronger then they are now.



------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Swoosh So]

Lol just played a game 3500 koku had to kill a guy 700 kills with all flanks then i moved to get his team mate but whats that! 1 ys 1 man! totally surrounded h2 his gen just died fighting like crazy geez the patch i think must have radical changes.

Swoosh

[Major Robert Dump]

8 ashi and 8 guns is very hard to beat. I try to stay with 4 ashi and 4 or 5 guns, then vary the rest accordingly. But without taking at least 3 or 4 high honor ashi you will most definitely lose. Hoepfully the patch will change this. I liked the old ashi-dominoe effect in routing better

[Kraellin]

well, right from the start of this armor and weapon upgrade thing, i couldnt figure out how a weapon or armor is tied to a unit. armor is armor, a weapon is a weapon. a smithy makes both. who cares who wears it as far as the cost. this is illogical.

now, if you could just 'buy armor' and put it wherever you wanted to, where do you think you would put it? you'd put it on your BEST units, not your lousy ashi's. you'd stick on your front melee guys or your charging cav or whatever. this would eliminate those nasty easy ashi upgrades that are based on the cost of the ashi themselves. make a +1 armor a fixed cost across the boards. a +2 is not just double the cost, but maybe 250% of the original, and a +3 is even more progressively expensive. same with weapons. a sword is a sword and why fix the cost based on the unit. makes no sense....or at least little sense.

now, as far as 'seeing' upgrades, why not? certainly i can tell if an enenmy is wearing leather or banded or chainlink armor. weapons would be a little harder to tell so leave them hidden if you want, but armor is usually pretty obvious.

also, there shld be a penalty to fatigue and speed if you buy armor upgrades. leather is fairly light, but this stuff generally gets heavier as you upgrade, at least in that time period. they werent working with special lightweight alloys or something. there was no kevlar plate mail in old japan ;) so let's penalize the speed and fatigue factor of units that upgrade in armor. weapons, not so much, but yes with armor.

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

[TakeshidaSo]

I suggested doubling the cost of Weapon and Armor upgrades. It was a quick conclusion, and a better solution has now been suggested. I knew that the doubling of cost wouldnt really solve the imbalance, but I think that it can now be solved.

I thought of maybe changing the Armor upgrade, so only defense increases, and not armor. I thought, as others have, that it's better without them. But clearly someone, I wont say who, has stumbled, or possibly climbed, onto the intricately complex solution.

Upgrades of equipment, Weapons and Armor, should be the same cost, no matter which unit is upgraded. The cost of the unit should not be the basis for calculating the cost of these upgrades. Legendary equipment could not be so easily, or cost-effectively, provided to inexpensive units.

Solution:
Establish a set cost for equipment upgrades.
Alternate:
Disallow equipment upgrades.

[TosaInu]

No please don't disallow them and please don't make them more expensive than a honour upgrade. Make them weaker not more expensive.

Consider the other request please: all units are h0 and only the taisho can get honor. Units will gain some honor due to the taisho, if the taisho dies the morale will collapse to 0.

Good idea about the fixed upgrade cost!

The TroopStats.txt and Projectile.txt are great, but it would be better if we can control all: costs of upgrades (and (dis)allowence of them), cost of the units, flank and backstab bonusses, ample room penalties, cavalry vs yari bonus, cav in wood penalty, number of attackcycles per minute per unit, rate of getting tired, editing of the model that calculate casualties.
Recall: all players need the exact same stat, so this is not a way of cheating.

The game should have a directory in which stats.txt are stored. The game should recognise which stats are in that folder (like the game automatically recognises which map are in the maps folder). The host should then be able to select a stat(set) when building a server. People who have the same stat can then join the server and will play the game using that stat (stats should have a clear name like Yuuki.txt or Yama.txt and that name should be displayed).

Anyone can play the game (s)he fancies without the need to wait for a patch (5 mb). And there's no need to swap files or patches, as all the stats you or your friends like are installed on your computer ready for use. (A stat file is a less than 3 kb download).

Stats will be available for download at the shogun fansites. Newbies might not know about downloadable stats, but newbies also don't know that they need a patch or can download maps, so thats not an excuse not to do it.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[CeltiberoSkullXIII]

Quote Originally posted by TosaInu:
Konnichiwa Swoosh san,

I haven't said that seeing honor is realistic.

To some extend an armystandard was regarded important, so better units would be entrusted with that.

But indeed buying honor, and displaying that with flags. Lol.

The upgrades on the other hand are things one could buy. But then, a honorupgrade can be seen as invested koku in training a unit; discipline might be a better word here.

Honor 6 ashigaru and h2 nodachi in the same army. A weird situation. In the campaign a unit did have some honor (depended on battles waged; apart from the palace bonus etc), but it was 'enourmously' boosted by the taisho.

In online battles, the taishos honor isn't taken into account (Puzz3D worked on that), actually the taishos honor is 0.

In the sp campaign a taisho gained honor in won battles.

I think it's an idea to implement something like that in online battles. One can buy weapon/armor upgrades but only h0 units. The honor of a unit is determined by the taisho's honor. The taisho starts with h0. Each time a player wins a battle, his taisho will gain honor (but only to a limit of course). The tasihos honor will increase the unit honor. When the taisho dies in a battle all his units will drop back to honor 0, thus it will become extremely important to protect the taisho.

Also one might decide to retreat his taisho if the battle doesn't goes so well thus he can strike back the next time. Of course once the taisho is off the field his units will be 'honorless'.

If the taisho dies, the player will start the next battle with a h0 taisho.

At this moment honor increases the defence stats of a unit. Not sure if this is good in the 'normal' case, but here it's more a matter of getting inspired by a great leader and thus increasing the willingness to fight and die. So I think honor should only/mostly increase morale and not (so much) hth stats.

Perhaps it's also possible to carry over any unit to the next battle, so that units grow in morale (veterans). Halved units will be restored with new h0 men (30 h2 men + 30 h0 men gives 60 h1 men, like in the campaign). That would require a file which could hold the progress of 16 units of every type; so the player isn't forced to use the same army in every battle; he can select armies from that pool.

About the morale as it is now compared to the morale in stw. I've never been in a battlesituation and I've never seen a Japanese battle, so I could be totally wrong here. I feel that the stw morale system was bad and I feel that the WE morale system is bad. Of course, the old morale sytem did a good job for a normal army. But samurai were not normal soldiers. A/most samurai would fight till the dead if his taisho wanted that. 'Sorry taisho, I was prepared to fight, but they were so scary...'. 'No problem, take a few days off, you'll do better next time'. He would be a big dishonor to his family and clan.

So a mass rout when 30 naginatas are killed looks unnatural to me.

When Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Kyushu 5,000 Shimazu warriors charged him. Hideyoshi had an army of 170,000 (hundreth seventy thousend) there! Toyotomi was certainly not an inexperienced general, and his soldiers were no rookies either. I don't think you can get 20 nods to charge 600 enemies in stw.

Not sure what a samurai would do when his lord dies or runs away... err retreats.
At that point normal behavior might come in play: the general runs, the battle is lost.


Back to the situation as it is (should be) now. A Honor 9 yariashigaru is quite different from a h0 yariashigaru, so I think it's good that one can see that. (It would be different if a unit could be h2 max). Does anyone know how to differentiate from a distance a h0 kensai from a h9 kensai? ;-)

The weapon/armor bonus comes at a low price and therefor must have only a little influence (which isn't the case at the moment). I think it's nice/acceptable if these remains hidden for the enemy.

Biggest problem with WE/MI is probably not the morale but the bad balance of the units AND the upgrades that are too strong.

[/QUOTE]

MAN! WHAT A LONG POST!!!! eek!



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"It's better to let the enemy alive as to kill it ... To TORTURE it!" http://gifanimados.ya.com/terror/calaveras_banderas/flag_wht_blkbns_clr.gif

[MagyarKhans Cham]

just 4 levels of unit would suffice

[theforce]

Things that the patch must solve:
1. The ashi power must be reduced or the cost to be increased.
2. Muksets should only fire in very light rain, anything more must render their guns useless. Nowadays all of the armies have guns. In the old days you could take an enemy sitting on a hill by attacking on the right weather but now guns are blasting all the time and the battle is won from the projectile army most of the times.

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Don't use only honour, use theforce, too.
http://lod.fateback.com

[Puzz3D]

Kraellin,

It certainly makes sense to me to make upgrades a fixed cost because they add a fixed enhancement to the unit. I advocated this even for STW. The super ashi upgrade almost worked in the old STW, but not quite. Now there are additional upgrades available in WE/MI, and it does work. If the cost was fixed, then the high value honor sellback to buy lower value honor wouldn't work. This is an effective strategy to increase the melee strength of an army. It's even more effective in WE/MI because you don't need the extra morale boost on those high value units which fight to almost the last man at H0.


Swoosh,

While I think it's possible to balance the units so that no single unit type dominates, I doubt that we will see that much work put into it by CA/DT. Another suggestion, that was passed on to CA/DT in a letter, is to incorporate unit limits in the online game. The host would set the limit, and it would be displayed in the foyer. If this is done along with a reduction in the overall morale (I favor an 8 point reduction), I think you would have a very good WE/MI online game.

The invisible weapons and armour upgrades does inject a lot of uncertainty into individual unit matchups. I can't be as deterministic in setting up my battle plan, and tend to fight in a more piecemeal fashion which was not my style in STW. Ironically, you can do that now with the higher morale in WE/MI. The style of play I used in STW does not work well in WE/MI.


TosaInu,

Nice analysis of WM and ND. The taisho characteristic that affects the army's morale is his "rank". In the online game, the taisho's rank is always 0. Since we now have weapon and armour upgrades, you could do away with the honor upgrade as it now stands. Right now increasing honor raises both attack/defend and morale values. Morale goes up by +2 for each +1 honor, and attack/defend increase by +1 alternatly. So, increasing honor by +2 raises attack by +1, defend by +1 and morale by +4. Buying units at H0 and increasing the cost of the upgrades would make a 5000 koku game more standardized. You wouldn't get into the completely transformed units that are possible with all these upgrade options unless you played a high koku game.

The honor upgrade could be changed to only infuence morale or your intriguing idea of taisho rank. Right now, in WE/MI, these morale increases are not needed, but, if the overall morale were lowered in a patch, then an interesting choice between higher morale or weapons/armour upgrades would present itself. Your idea of having the army's morale raised by the taisho would make it imperative to keep him protected. There is already a game type called "assassinate the general" which effectively gives you that type of objective. Buying morale for individual units would be more flexible. Although, it does seem a bit abstract to "buy" morale.

I believe the statistical uncertainty in a battle's outcome for a unit is typical for the number of individual attack/defend actions being carried out. You would have to increase the number of individual actions to reduce the variance. Using larger units would be one way to do it. This weighted probability of a kill is a great feature of the game, and adds to the realistic feel and tension of the battles.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

Yes, Yuuki. I agree that some fluctuation both keeps things exciting and is realistic.
I wonder whether it should be a bit less. I wish we could edit all stats and calculations, not just those which are in TroopStats/Projectiles.txt now.

People should then be able to select a custom stat from a list like they do select custom maps now.

Does the honor upgrade alternate melee & def?

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net