Feedback on Multiplayer after VI release

[Crandaeolon]

There are 2 "portions" in the poll; one is about the overall experience of Multiplayer in Viking Invasion, the other is about balance. The choices should be fairly self-explanatory.

Please vote only after a few days of playing VI. And, once you vote something, feel free to add some commentary to the discussion thread. BUT IMPORTANT If you decide to enter into arguments, please be polite and try to prove your points by actually playing the expansion and by providing examples.

Here's a link to another VI feedback thread in Main Hall, which seems to be dedicated to the SP part so far. (VI feedback (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=6575))
----------------------------------------------------------

Now that there's some feedback, I'll gather important points and concerns here in no particular order, and all are subject to change, so check back here once in a while.

In Viking Era:

- Mercians are the only faction with Militia Sergeants, one of the most cost-effective melee units. (Fix: Perhaps Mil Sarges should lose one point of attack or go up in price? I don't think they were originally intended to be one of the best hand-to-hand units in the game...)

- Some have called the Mounted Sergeants overpowered.

In Medieval Eras:

- The Fearsome, Amazing Organ gun is supposed to have a range of 3000, but can only fire up to 1600 on level ground. Set velocity to 110 to fix it. (110^2/4=3025.) *Update: According to LJ, the Organ Gun is balanced to use the range of 1600.

- v3 Byzantine Infantry cost 860 florins in 1.1; in VI they cost 983 but with +2 to morale. As the result of +2 to overall morale in MP, Byz Inf may have become relatively stronger than before.

MP in general:

- The separate foyers are causing division in the community.

- If any one person quits or loses connection to server the game may crash for everyone else as well. (Does not happen always, but fairly frequently judging from all the comments about it)

- Overall +2 to morale had very little effect. A better solution could have been to increase the morale of spear units only.

- Fatigue is not optimised for the larger maps that most players like to play. (The simplest fix would be to speed up the recovery rate. Double it perhaps?)

- Currently, running units get the same bonus than units that are actually charging. As the result it takes less micromanagement to orchestrate large charges. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, but IMO units that are just running shouldn't get the full bonus. Perhaps half bonus if units are moving at run speed and full bonus if they're moving at charge speed? (Units won't move at charge speed unless they're ordered to charge or they charge impetuously.)

- Spear prices were unchanged, spears may still remain too weak vs. other infantry, compared to their cost. (One way to increase spear and pike effectiveness while preserving the need to stay in formation could be increasing the rank bonuses of spears.)

- Now that there are more and better Javelin units available, it would be important to make sure that they can use Skirmish mode properly on flat ground to avoid oncoming infantry. I'd suggest a range of 1800 and a velocity of 85 to fix it.

- Quite a few players are complaining that performance has decreased in comparison to 1.1.

- Using the "-ian" command line switch enables the player to move the camera anywhere and to tilt it to any angle. "Restricted camera" does not prevent players from using it in MP.

[Crandaeolon]

Here's what Cran's Amazing Magic 8-Ball said (without seeing the expansion, that is):

"Overall experience" will probably be voted as better than before.

"Balance" will be voted better with some imbalances still remaining, unless the special units and other additions _really_ screw something up.

* Update after release: 8-Ball might have been right after all, but there's a lot of spread in the votes.

Now, some specifics:

Missile units and missiles in general will get a slight boost in usefulness. Nothing major, and there probably won't be any big changes in strategies involving missile units. If Pavs get moved to Late, regular Arbalesters will simply replace them in High. If there's a +2 to morale and the "discounts" of missile units are not removed, it will be harder to rout those Arb lines than before. It may come as a nasty surprise to those who think that Pavise Arbs are more difficult to rout than regular Arbs; they are _not_.

* Update after release: All Arbs got moved to late. It remains to be seen what the effects of this will be.

Depending on the boost to horse archer accuracy, they may actually become a useful addition to armies rather than a novelty unit. Hybrid horse archers (Boyars, Byz Cav) will probably benefit from this more than the lighter horse archers.

The relationship between cavalry, swordsmen, spearmen and polearms will remain roughly the same. Swords will still beat spears in frontal attacks, but the fights will be longer and the swordsmen will suffer more casualties. It will be more meaningful to use Wedge formation to break spear formations.

Halberdiers and other polearms will still lose to swordsmen, but they probably tie with spears, maybe win with a small margin if the spearmen are armoured.

Cavalry will become a bit weaker because of the increased overall morale and valour gain removed from MP battles. Frontal cavalry charges against any type of unit will be less effective.

Depending on the boost that spears get, their status will either not change at all (polearms will still be the better anti-cav units) or they will become roughly interchangeable with polearm units, both being able to beat cavalry but losing to swords.

* Update after release: looks like the hand-to-hand unit balance will change very little, if at all, in the Medieval eras.

----------------------------------------------------------
Cran's Ideal Hand-to-Hand unit balance would be: Cavalry ties with Swords in frontal attacks (Swords in hold/hold; cavalry does a lot of damage in the initial charge but if the Swords do not break, they put up a good fight), loses to Polearms and Spears. Spears win cav with least casualties, but the fight lasts longer than with Polearms. (So far so good, the current balance is quite close to this.)

Swords beat Polearms and Spears, but lose if they attack cavalry head-on (Engage at Will on, or pretty much any situation when Cav and Swords meet head-on, both units moving/charging.) The fight with Polearms is bloody, especially if the Swordsmen have lots of armour. The fight with Spearmen is rather bloody and lasts for a long time unless the Swords manage to break the Spear formation. (Currently not quite like that. Close, but not quite.)

Spears beat Cavalry and Polearms, but lose to Swords. (Currently Spears can't usually defeat Polearms.)

Polearms kill Cavalry the fastest and beat heavily armoured units, but lose to lightly armoured Spearmen and Swordsmen.

[FearofNC]

im a long way from saying that i know what im talking about... but these are my first impressions of vi

cav are very weak.. ive been playing more with the viking era than the mtw eras... and this is just my first impression... but it seems that the cav are not anything like they used to be... not even like mi... the cav remind me of stw when 2 or 3 heavy cav were the norm..

no improvment in archers... if there has been some i just dont feel it yet... this might be because the rush is sooooo strong in viking era.. in a few battles vs fucyuman.. we found missles were basicly not needed..

the new troop... armoured spearmen... are very nice... they stand well vs swords and slaughter cav quickly.. other spear units are weaker and i havent found them efective .... yet... its still so early...

my opinion on +2 moral is still in the works... but so far i dont like it at all... i noticed that units were standing and fighting much longer.. but this didnt lead to more flanking or manuver ... just more chaos... some units break very quickly some stand for unreasonably periods of time... it also seemed that units rallied quicker and more often making the chase phase of the battle very dicey.. units ralling on all sides and harrasing ur flanks.. im not saying this is a bad thing ...yet.. i just need some time to get adjusted... then ill decide if i really like +2 or not..

my limited experience with the new mtw side -
the 4 new factions are interesting...but not that strong.. the hungarians are probably the best of the noobs but the verdict is still out..

moving pavs to late was a mistake... just my gut feeling for now.. but we will see http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif i didnt really think pavs were that strong in mtw.. just that archers were very weak..

more to come http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ive been here at the guild for too long now...need to get back to vikings and do some more playing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Kongamato]

Javelin infantry units have been added for the Spanish and Russians. Are these going to add a new combat option or are they just novelty units?

[Puzz3D]

A bit of a surprise which should please many players is that there are no arbalesters at all in high era.

The additional MTW playable factions in custom/multiplayer by era are:

Early: Argonese, Hungarian, Novogord, Papacy, Sicilians (no Russian)
High: Argonese, Hungarian, Papacy, Sicilians
Late: Argonese, Golden Horde, Hungarian, Papacy, Swiss

Some important price changes on units are:

Spanish Lancers was 800, now 850 (late era only)
Chiv Knight and equivalent mounted knights was 650, now 675
Byz Inf was 175, now 200
Hangunner was 175, now 200
Spears are unchanged

Russians pick up an armored spearman and Lithuanian cavalry in high era. They also have the mounted xbow which I don't think they had before.

HRE losses the swiss halb in high era which the Papacy picks up. There are no new units for HRE in high era.


Archers:

longbow: (can now shoot full 6000 range) lethality was 0.63, now 0.68
shortbow: lethality was 0.63, now 0.68
mountedbow: accuracy was 0.4, now 0.55 and lethality was 0.63, now 0.68

Other ranged units are unchanged.

[FearofNC]

sry for the mis-information on the new mtw factions... i only tried high era hence why i never saw the other factions... thanks for the correction puzz http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

on the topic of the javalin units... i luved em fucy hated em... verdict is still out.. although i did trash his cav nicley with them, im not sure if they are cost effective compared to other units or if there space is better used by another unit... but they will not be a novality... they were decent enough to ensure they will be used in mp..

[Puzz3D]

Hi NC,

I checked the archer projectile stats after I saw your post saying they were not improved very much, and the stats bear out what you are saying. A 0.05 increase in lethality is quite small. The mounted bows got a significant 37.5% increase in accuracy though and the better lethality as well, and there are no arbs at all for them to contend with in high era. My position has always been that the arbs gave the game a ranged aspect, and I thought only pav arbs were going to late era. I guess there is a good historical argument for all arbs going to late. For better or for worse, high era will now play more like early era, but hopefully with better balance with the cost changes.

I have some experience fighting against Almughavars in the all 20 mod, and I found them very tough in hand-to-hand fighting. I just noticed that the Turks picked up Ottoman Inf in high era. I don't know how effective that unit is, but I believe some players like it quite a lot. Turks should definitely do better in high era with the arbs gone, but the Byz didn't loose that much with the modest price increase of the Byz Inf either. Russians have also picked up some anti-cav power, and those Boyars are going to be better now.

[Magyar Khan]

new software is mostly 2 steps forward one step back

[Kongamato]

I think that the florin levels in MP games are going to go down a bit after my initial observations. Maybe 12500 or so.

[baz]

NC, as for the +2 morale, i think the idea is that the troops will play at the same morale levels as before, the difference being that you dont need 15k to get the morale that high .. anyway puzz will be able to tell us more about that.

As for Arbs, i was under the impression that just Pavs were going to be moved, if Arbs have been moved all together i am surprised as now i think we will just use late era as archery is so crap vs armour, we all know how many unbalanced units are in late .. yet again it looked like it would work and .. oh well let me play it first http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[ELITEofGAZOZ]

i haven´t got VI but all the informations i can read makes me confident...

...is there a new foyer for VI or is it the same one?

[baz]

ive been trying to find out myself Gazoz, and it seems that (from what NC told me), that you are in the same lobby for both games .. but if you are running VI, you can only see VI games and vice versa .. this is good move imo and hopefully should not split the community http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[FearofNC]

chat room bug (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=6603)

[Kocmoc]

this was 1 of the mainporbs as we got MI, that we got devided, now we dont see games but still are together, thats very good

[LRossaRikimaru]

thx for the news m8ty

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

LRossaRikimaru

[baz]

sorry koc seems i spoke too soon .. the ingame lobby in VI is seperate to MTW lobby .. just the gs arcade room that is linked together but it is faulty .. lmao

[Crandaeolon]

Unchanged spear prices? Damn.

Yuuki or NC, did the javelin units get an increase in range so that they could use Skirmish mode properly? (In retail and 1.1 they would start withdrawing before they could throw their javelins)

HRE lost Swiss Halbs but didn't get anything to compensate? ROFL, my favourite faction just became less strong.

Horse archers got a much needed boost, though archery may still remain a bit too weak.

Moving all Arbs to Late was a huge mistake, if the English still have Longbows in High era If that's the case, the English have the _only_ 6000 range unit in High Gah, I say http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif 8-Ball predicts English dominance in High... the weakish Templar knights don't really matter if the role of cavalry is diminished a bit with +2 morale and no valour upgrades in battle. And, they got Billmen. Edit: Since no one's been complaining about this, looks like it may have been an overreaction. We'll see when more players get the expansion and play it.

Turks got a _lot_ stronger in High with all Arbs in Late. Perhaps one of the strongest factions now.

The news of a lobby separation is none too good either...

[baz]

baz predicts .. we will all play VI late games, and play in an era where there is more imbalance than M:TW high .. the saga cointinues ..

[Crandaeolon]

There are still crossbows in High, they're almost as good as Arbs against armoured units.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 08 2003,12:50)]Yuuki or NC, did the javelin units get an increase in range so that they could use Skirmish mode properly? (In retail and 1.1 they would start withdrawing before they could throw their javelins)
I got the missile stats from Yuuki yesterday. No changes done to javelins http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif but darts with better range but less armour piercing and lethality and apparently heavy spears with same range as javelins but more damage http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

CBR

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 08 2003,13:03)]There are still crossbows in High, they're almost as good as Arbs against armoured units.
Yes but only 5k range and 80% lethality compared to arbs.

I know Im pessimistic by nature and havent even played VI yet but right now I just feel an urge to finish next version of MPwars as soon as possible..

CBR

[Crandaeolon]

The 5k range would be ok without those Longbows... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Kongamato @ May 08 2003,02:42)]I think that the florin levels in MP games are going to go down a bit after my initial observations. Maybe 12500 or so.
Hm yes ... good question what the best amount would be. One problem IMO was that you could upgrade swords a lot compared to spears. 12.5K or even 10K might be the best. Then you dont have so much for upgrades and especially not for massive upgrades.

CBR

[spacecadet]

Sounds like no Longbow rule games are going to start appearing soon..........
(ps. who called for arbs to be moved anyway?........bah i always thought they were fine - not too strong and not too weak.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif )

Space

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

[Kocmoc]

to have the same moral liek we had right now, i think around 8k are needed. if we stillplay with 15k, than the +2 moral are useless imo.

koc

[Orda Khan]

Quote[/b] (CBR @ May 08 2003,06:17)]
Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 08 2003,13:03)]There are still crossbows in High, they're almost as good as Arbs against armoured units.
Yes but only 5k range and 80% lethality compared to arbs.

I know Im pessimistic by nature and havent even played VI yet but right now I just feel an urge to finish next version of MPwars as soon as possible..

CBR
Well I wasn't holding out much hope for VI and the comments I've read so far don't sound too promising so I would say the sooner you finish the new MP Wars the better....

.......Orda

[Swoosh So]

Quote[/b] (FearofNC @ May 07 2003,22:43)]my opinion on +2 moral is still in the works... but so far i dont like it at all... i noticed that units were standing and fighting much longer.. but this didnt lead to more flanking or manuver ... just more chaos... some units break very quickly some stand for unreasonably periods of time... it also seemed that units rallied quicker and more often making the chase phase of the battle very dicey.. units ralling on all sides and harrasing ur flanks.. im not saying this is a bad thing ...yet.. i just need some time to get adjusted... then ill decide if i really like +2 or not..
Just what i feared... I hope it works out allright.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Kocmoc @ May 08 2003,14:25)]to have the same moral liek we had right now, i think around 8k are needed. if we stillplay with 15k, than the +2 moral are useless imo.

koc
Hm 8K thats low heh..but could work I guess. A western "balanced" army would cost about 6.3k so not much left for upgrades.

CBR

[Crandaeolon]

I started to gather some stuff into the first post, be sure to check it out so you can comment on existing points or add more.

[Puzz3D]

I don't understand why Kocmoc says playing at 15k makes the +2 morale useless. The idea of higher morale was to make cav less effective and inf better. Playing at 8k basically throws out the +2 morale increase, so you are right back to the equivalent of 15k in v1.1. However, playing at 8k is still not low enough florins to limit the purchase of many elite units and many cavalry. I think you're going to have to play at high enough florins to use v2 Order Foot for spears and for infantry, in general, to stand up better to cavalry. I don't see upgrading to be as big a problem as low morale since you get dimminishing returns on valor at a cost of 70%, and what good is a defensive unit like spears that won't stand and fight. From the perspective of team games, I think you want units to fight longer so that allies have more time to come to the assistance of an ally who is under attack. You can try splitting the difference on this with something like 12500 florins as Kongamato suggests.

I haven't confirmed that the battlefield upgrade is removed in multiplayer. I know it is not removed in custom battle.

The community is split by VI since you only see VI players when you login throught the game. The only thing that seems to remain compatible from MTW to VI is maps. MTW savegames and replays are not compatible with VI. My suggestion when installing VI is to first reinstall MTW v1.0 to a new folder if you have the disk space, and then install VI over that. This will preserve your existing MTW v1.1 installation, and any mods, savegames, and replays you have installed. MTW v1.1 requires 1.7 GB and VI an additional 400 MB.

There is no question that longbows are now the prefered ranged unit in high era, but they are not all that powerfull with the bow. On standing Order Foot at max range you get around 50 kills with longbows. Of course, they are also a very effective hth unit with the cheap upgrades.


CBR,

I think there is still a very important place for MP Wars in VI.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ May 08 2003,15:37)]I haven't confirmed that the battlefield upgrade is removed in multiplayer. I know it is not removed in custom battle.


What?? dont like the sound of that




Quote[/b] ]CBR,

I think there is still a very important place for MP Wars in VI.

Yes after having a 2 day "depression" I have decided to work on it again. I still have to use a batfile because I simply cannot use the current projectile stats.. but I think I can make it a lot simpler for people to install...I wonder why I didnt think of these changes before..oh well

CBR

[Cheetah]

What is the problem with the longbows? They are far from overpowered. Now, at least one can put them to good use. And IMHO it is much better to have the English as the "strongest" faction than the Spanish or the Byzantine. Though Byz will be as strong as before.

[CBR]

Well I dont think longbows will be that overpowered. Pav crossbows should be able to deal with them..they just have a shorter range.

CBR

[shingenmitch2]

Okay, I'm being Mr. Negative, but here's the PREDICTION:

All will finally realize just how balanced MTW, High really is/was-- Again, just think of how many truely viable (i.e. u can win with them) factions there are (Byz, Turks, English, Ger, Ital, Spain, Alahm, even Egypt) All have unique strengths and weaknesses. I predict a lessening of viable Factions and the return of foot rushes.

Loss of Pavaise will make you see A TON of English in High era... the RANGE of the longbow will trump any crossbow.

The High era game will either be an all English affair, or a bunch of ground rushes (Byz or Turks perhaps?) with cav useable only for chasing off routers. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif This will be back to old STW... you won't even need the spears now (even tho they are stronger) because Cav won't really be used. You will just need to find the best overall anti-armor/chopping unit ala Monk or NoDachi.

Welcome to rush/chop-fest VI.

[MF_Ivan]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ May 07 2003,17:59)]Russians pick up an armored spearman and Lithuanian cavalry in high era.
Ah Excellent I was asking for Lithuanian Cavalry for the Russians Now I cant wait.

One more thing: Are the flaming arrows in multiplayer or is that only in the VI campaign, or only when assaulting a fort or castle?

[tgi01]

Thanks for the info guys , one more day until VI is released here, one question are the pav xbows also gone to high ?


TGI

[Puzz3D]

ShingenMitch,

I don't think it will be quite that bad. Fatigue will still work against a rush, but there is no question that high era games will take on more of an early era character. I'm sure we'll see a lot of English in high era, but the Byz may well still dominate since the price increase on Byz inf was quite modest and the morale increase reduces that unit's one weakness.

CBR's MP Wars mod will be one way to go for battles with good ranged units and good overall balance.


TGI,

Early: archer, naptha
High: archer, longbow, xbow, pav xbow, naptha
Late: archer, longbow, xbow, pav xbow, arb, pav arb, arq, handgun, naptha

[theKyl]

Did I buy a different game?

When I got online a few minutes ago there were 4 players in the lobby, I don't think theres a Lobby for both games. And inb game I checked the unit stats and for some strange reason the morale listed there hasn't changed at all. (?)
Normal spears still got basic morale of 0.

[tootee]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ May 08 2003,01:59)]Some important price changes on units are:

Spanish Lancers was 800, now 850 (late era only)
Chiv Knight and equivalent mounted knights was 650, now 675
Byz Inf was 175, now 200
Hangunner was 175, now 200
Spears are unchanged
Yuuki, I looked through the stat file provided by NC, but the price for the mentioned units are still the same as v1.1?

[Shahed]

I like what I hear so far. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif The Longbows will be more influential, and they should be as they were. The Turks should benefit from the arbs being gone, but really how much will they benefit ? I'll be cautious on that one if I were you.

So far it sounds like positive improvements to MP in general.

[Shahed]

Sorry just wanted to add that phophecies are quite self fullfilling. So if we say we will see loads of English armies we will.

In any case there are some players that occasionally play with no Spain, no Byz rule, this may now be extended ?

In my case if I ever used rules in MP games, these were it:
No Spain, No Byzantine, No Arbs.

[Crandaeolon]

Kyl, the morale was increased for MP battles only. (Has anyone _verified_ that morale increase, BTW?)

Shingenmitch, cavalry will still be a very important part of the Medieval eras. Playing 15k games with +2 to overall morale is a bit like playing 25k games. Cav can create a plenty of chainrouts in those. The Viking era is more infantry-oriented.

About the longbows... they'll require some skill to use to their full effect, just leaving them on Fire at Will won't work. Just like before. But, I think the range advantage will be a great tool, possibly too good, in forcing opponents to move. (Edit: This may be a good thing if it leads to more maneuvering and not just rushing the English player.) Think about a 1.1 duel between Turks and some other faction. The Turks have to be fairly aggressive in their moves. Longbows aren't as powerful as Arbs per volley, but with micromanaged fire they can cause plenty of casualties. On top of this, Longbowmen are very good as shock troops because of their AP bonus and high morale.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]One more thing: Are the flaming arrows in multiplayer or is that only in the VI campaign, or only when assaulting a fort or castle?

I think the flaming arrows will appear in the entire game. Can anyone verify this?

[Kongamato]

Longbows are a dangerous subject. The myths surrounding their accuracy and deadliness are going to complicate any idea of balance. Should they be better or just different? We will find out. Anyway, I believe that the armor of a Pavise Crossbowman can protect from Longbow fire enough to put the missile war at a stalemate for less cost. If not, we can always play Late or Early. With the morale boosts, slight archery improvements, and removal of Crusader knights, Early period might be quite fun at a low florin level.

[shingenmitch2]

English --

3 possibilities:

1. The Longbow decimates the Rush -- all players switch to English

2. The Longbow too weak to hurt rush -- most players switch to infantry oriented factions

3. The longbow is balanced almost perfectly -- can still be rushed, but this is moderately difficult, crossbows are able to balance them...

With the history of having things balance perfectly... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif


BTW: I hope you are correct about the cav. Crand.

Also it may just be that Xbows are enough to stop rushes and that they only sucked in comparison to to the Arbs. But with the English, then u get both xbow and Longbow...

Yuuk, I'd like to see things work without dealing with mods and stat swapping and "agreed" upon rules... I guess it seemed that Early (foot-oriented) and High (cav-oriented) MTW 1.1 games at about 15k per was about as good as can be expected and gave both gamestyles, whereas VI doesn't appear to do the same.

It is also a shame that for each version a new foyer is created. This just kills the online community. Someday they need a unified foyer for all. So that at least you could talk to buddies even though you got other game running.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]Longbows are a dangerous subject. The myths surrounding their accuracy and deadliness are going to complicate any idea of balance.

The solution is easy: let's just discard the myths and historical data and try to balance the longbows finely within the limits of the game. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif (I'm half joking here... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif)


Quote[/b] ]Anyway, I believe that the armor of a Pavise Crossbowman can protect from Longbow fire enough to put the missile war at a stalemate for less cost.

But, those Pav X-bows won't be in a range war against Longbows. They'll shoot the English Pavises. Longbows should attempt to take opportunity shots at the enemy infantry, there's no point in engaging in a range war with the Pavs. Just like in 1.1, but the Longbows will be _much_ more effective in VI.

The English player doesn't really lose very much by taking both Pavs and Longbows. For example, 3 Pav X-bows and 3 Longbows would be more than a match for 4 enemy Pav X-bows. The Longbows could shoot a few volleys at the enemy X-bows to take their firepower down a notch, after which the X-bows would simply cancel each other out. This was very hard to do in 1.1 because Pav Arbs actually had a greater range than longbows.

During the Pav shootout the Longbows could be used to snipe enemy infantry or to drive off cavalry attempting to attack the Pavs. After the shootout the L-bows can function as reliable shock infantry, better than Gallowglasses actually.

So, there's no reason for the English to _not_ take Longbows.

This is all just theoretical, of course. Yes, I know, I have too much free time right now. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Puzz3D]

tootee,

I went onto custom battle and looked at the prices. I just looked at the stat files, and they are changed there as well.

I just played a 15k high era game with English vs Papacy, and Crand is correct that longbows can't do much to pav xbows. I pumped the longbows to v3, and ended up loosing to the more standard 4 low valor xbow, 8 inf and 4 cav Papacy I think because my inf was weaker. I doubt that you'll be able to take 6 ranged units and hold against a good rusher.

It does appear that the battlefield upgrade is gone in multiplayer. In a game where one player said the end status screen showed valor increase on 4 of his units, there was no increase in the small flags on any of his units when I viewed the replay.

Verifying the +2 morale could be difficult because it may have been implemented by lowering the rout point by -2. I played a few Viking games at 15k, and the overall morale still feels pretty low, but those units are all unfamiliar to me.

[Magyar Khan]

better expect a big dissapointment, after all its most safe for yourself

furthermore we cant blame the devs for not being able to create a balanced game, they are working on teh tw series for about 5-7 years now and never were able to balance it. its high above their heads.

[Knight_Yellow]

those flaming arrows look sweet from the screenies.

ill have to see them moving of course but from the stills there looking sweet.



I feel that viking invasion will be a good expansion pack overall, those saying it will suck seem to be the ones who diss/dissed MTW.


im confident in VI

[Kongamato]

Can someone give me some feedback on how those Bonnachts do? Their power is fearsome, a 100 man unit that throws not Javelins, but Heavy_Spears

[Kongamato]

Ok, that was a bit of an overreaction. They only seem to have 2 shots and can be hurt badly with archery. Still, they are powerful.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]I feel that viking invasion will be a good expansion pack overall, those saying it will suck seem to be the ones who diss/dissed MTW.

There's no doubt that it's a very good expansion for SP since most of the new features and, of course, the new campaign are SP. But, even minor tweaks can make the MP part less good, and that's what this thread is all about.

There's a feedback thread in Main Hall which seems to be dedicated mostly for SP. Any non-MP feedback should be directed there. Here's the link: VI feedback (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=6575)

[Aelwyn]

The only thing I would worry about with Longbows is the speed in which they fire. If they fire much more quickly than other ranged units, then that will kind of hur the game a bit, since many people will just shoot a bit then rush in. I don't think it will be too much of a problem though, and I have yet to play MP with VI, so I guess I will find out.

[longjohn2]

I think I can explain any discrpencies in stats that you're seeing. There are now two stat files, one for the Viking era, and one for the old game. The Viking era stat file still has stats for all the units, but without some of the later changes I made. However, what stats these units have is irrelevent because you can't choose them in the Viking era.

[Skomatth]

Longbows arent a threat to xbows in 1.1. They get about they SAME KILLS with an EQUALLY ARMORED xbows UNTIL THEY RUN OUT OF AMMO, then its all xbows. AND THEY COST MORE They range isnt really a problem just a couple feet, easily covered by cav. someone should test it in vi tho, I dont have it yet. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Shahed]

Someday I'll understand what "balance" means.
Coz to me it means very little or nothing.

Hope I'm right, but I expect to see improvements in MP.

Some old vets here seem to have no faith in CA, which is, I guess a product of their experience.

[Crandaeolon]

LOOK at this POST SEE my POINT I'll write in CAPITALS and with SIMPLE GRAMMAR so you might UNDERSTAND better http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif


Quote[/b] ]Longbows arent a threat to xbows in 1.1. They get about they SAME KILLS with an EQUALLY ARMORED xbows UNTIL THEY RUN OUT OF AMMO, then its all xbows. AND THEY COST MORE They range isnt really a problem just a couple feet, easily covered by cav.

I don't _care_ about how the Longbows fare against crossbows. Really. Not one bit. If I'm playing as the English, I sure as hell won't waste those clothyard shafts on pavises. Longbows will be used just like crafty players have used them until now - they'll just be _much_ better at it. (See my above post.)

Now, let's put the Longbow discussion into rest until we've actually played the expansion and have seen it for ourselves. This kind of yes/no arguing serves no purpose.

[baz]

Well, we are just going to have to wait and see, if it turns out moving normal arbs was bad move i will not be happy as in the VI thread this is not what LJ said would happen .. hopefully there is good reason for it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

my biggest disapointment is not having a joint foyer for MTW and VI, it will really hurt the community.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Div Hunter]

I don't think the improvement to longbows or any of the archery will change the tactics all that much or make the english a more popular faction (they get used a fair bit anyway). At any rate each LB unit an English player chooses they get one less meele or cav unit. I faced an english opponent recently (v1.1) who was looking good till our lines met and he routed in under a minute. The Turkish hybrid troops will gain the most benefit from the archery upgrades as now they are more deadly in their secondary (well for me anyway http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif ) roll and finish off their direct opponents fairly well. But I can't comment I don't get VI till the 12th http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

[Skomatth]

Quote[/b] ]Longbows will be used just like crafty players have used them until now - they'll just be _much_ better at it

And when they do I'll rush just like an intelligent player would do now. Its not much different than bringing an extra arb and not using it till the enemy arbs are worn out. Different in effectiveness and name, but not in strategy

Wait I forgot to use bolds...btw when you make really long posts people are more likely to miss out on the point.

EDIT; Apparently your post was too long...yes lets put this to rest until we have played it.

[Shahed]

I think this is a good time to express my opinion on the longbow discussion.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

http://www.mcspotlight.org/company/company_pix/usa_ad3.jpg

no offence intended

[MF_Ivan]

Ok, I got the game like 5 hours ago. The longbows could be considered to have a SLIGHT advantage. But even this wont matter much at all. Because once the English run out of arrows they will be forced to rush the opposition and if the opposition is x-bow pavs they are bound to take a few hits.

Either way, this whole Longbow discussion has gotten out of hand. It still remains that Inf & Cav remain the order of the day.

By the way I found out that only archer type units not arbs or x-bow have the ability to have their arrows set on fire and ONLY under the circumstance of when they target a building like a fort wall or a house on the battlefield.

[tootee]

Quote[/b] (longjohn2 @ May 09 2003,00:42)]I think I can explain any discrpencies in stats that you're seeing. There are now two stat files, one for the Viking era, and one for the old game. The Viking era stat file still has stats for all the units, but without some of the later changes I made. However, what stats these units have is irrelevent because you can't choose them in the Viking era.
Hey LJ.. long time no see http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

Thanks .. that'll explain the difference I saw.. probably NC's stats is the Viking era stats.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]And when they do I'll rush just like an intelligent player would do now. Its not much different than bringing an extra arb and not using it till the enemy arbs are worn out. Different in effectiveness and name, but not in strategy

Err... no. I dunno about others, but I've used Longbows _during_ shootout, in concert with Arbs, when the enemy Arbs have lost some of their firepower because of casualties and tiredness. In VI, there should be no need to wait because Longbows have range advantage. And if you decide to rush in team games... better ask your allies first. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Since practically no one else is worried about Longbows at all, I'll stop bitching for now and I'll remove the Longbow item from the list in the first post.

[baz]

well i agree with you Cranda that longbows can make a good advantage if used correctly .. but what bothers me is .. is it worth buying missiles at all?

will the fact that you have 4 xbows be able to stop a rusher with 16 h2h units or 12 that are more beefed up .. i wonder if CA test this before they make these decisions .. lets hope they do LJ2?

EDIT:forgot the ? mark http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Mithrandir]

Quote[/b] (baz @ May 09 2003,05:29)]well i agree with you Cranda that longbows can make a good advantage if used correctly .. but what bothers me is .. is it worth buying missiles at all?

will the fact that you have 4 xbows be able to stop a rusher with 16 h2h units or 12 that are more beefed up .. i wonder if CA test this before they make these decisions .. lets hope they do LJ2?

EDIT:forgot the ? mark http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Can they now ?
No, unless it's low fl...

pav arbs dont reload fast enough to effectivly stop a rush, neither do archers, however they are useful for their money for the morale penalty and a few kills for little money, but not really stoping a rush.../end ranting\.

[baz]

Mith at the moment if you rush at inf behind full arbs head on your 60 men h2h inf (obviously varies with armour value) will get depleted to around 45 before it reaches them which is sufficient to give the rusher a disadvantage in h2h combat .. sadly an xbow will not get as many kills, but i have not tested that directly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif //end of rant

[shingenmitch2]

Baz --

u hit the nail on the head. IF the range game is effective, then I predict lots of English. IF range can't stop the rush -- Look for 90% infantry armies -- cause it sounds like cav won't be able to touch a good Halb-type army.

In one scenario many Factions are eliminated from play, in the other 2/3 of unit types are eliminated from a game-deterimining role. --- hmm--- balance Seljuk? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Magyar Khan]

every good battle needs a foreplay of little skirmishes around and with missile units to build up the tension.

[spacecadet]

All this argument about the loss of arbs to late - just play in late. You may say Lancers are in late, and i'll say with that slight price increase and loss of battlefield upgrades then they are no longer the game ruiner that they were before.
Is Late era really so unbalanced?

[Crandaeolon]

Remembered something from the VI balancing thread... do the archers now hit moving targets better? Should be easy enough to check.

[Mithrandir]

no but it has gunpowder http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif.

[shingenmitch2]

Ah, the spice of the game is that it can be much more than foreplay...

In good balance sometimes the range fight by itself can win a game, but sometimes a good foot rush will do it, but sometimes a quick cav flank, or maybe a good cav strip of the enemies ranges allow u to win range... sometimes u win range and it doesn't matter cause u lose the foot anyway...

That is the variety that a well balanced game provides... I think late patches of STW were real close with that balance, MI never quite got past the super-Ashi -- but with rules achieved something close, I think MTW High is darn close. Hopefully VI brings us closer to this than further. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[shingenmitch2]

I beleive it is spacecadet... something about handguns and Napoleonic style field artillery...

[spacecadet]

While i personally didnt find the handgunners as bad as everyone else felt, with MTW we are already playing no lancer/byzantium games as the average - this can just be switched to no handgunner and no artillery (most already state no artillery on their games)...is this really so tough?..old vets should also realise this is no great hardship, what with all the old no rush army, 4 unit type limit rules...i only forsee problems joining games with newer players who dont care about the rules you set and then you dont have to play them http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

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

[Knight_Yellow]

Well id give my verdict if i had a correct CD KEY


i tried

1. the original

2. with -'s and without

3. all caps

4. replaced 0 with O's

5. tried the cd key i then found on the Vi maunual

6. redone steps 2-4

got an incorrect message everytime gave up and logged on to the org.

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

maybe its just gamespy acting up, ill try again

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

[Knight_Yellow]

tis working now

1 tip fresh install

[shingenmitch2]

Space,

I play High with no rules... except I make sure the game is 10,15,20k per player and the balance is fine.

Any rules are just add a minor tweak -- such as 5 combat cav max. (Personally I dislike rules because it requires trusting players I may not know to "do the right thing") Byz and Spain rules don't have to be in effect all the time because they don't change the nature of the game.

The anti-guns rules almost have to be a perminant fixture "rules" because they can completely change the nature of the game... it is no longer a pseudo-Medieval game, but something very different.

[Puzz3D]

I checked the battlefield upgrade in multiplayer again, and it does seem to be gone. It's a bit confusing because the F1 screen and the unit icons show valor increase during the battle, but if you check the unit flags they don't change from what they were at the beginning of the battle.

It's true that the longbow has more range than archers or xbows, but it is nowhere near as much of a mismatch as arbs vs archers or xbows. The longbow has a slight advantage and is the best ranged unit in high era which is what most players expect. Archers, mounted archers, longbows, xbows, pav xbows and mounted xbows will all get used in high era now that it isn't dominated by the arb. The faster reload of archers does compensate somewhat for the lower kills per volley compared to an arb when countering a rush, but you have to conserve ammo, which is still 28 arrows, if you want to use them that way.

The relative strength of the combo archer/hth units can be controlled by varying the total florins since they gain ground on regular hth units the more they are upgraded. So, battles should be tried at 15k, 12k, 10k and 8k to see which offers the best balance keeping in mind that lower florins also benefits cav and the rush. A new standard for florins per player will emerge after a while.

[Paolai]

I have played about 10 games, and the MP/game seems really better

[theKyl]

hmm now i regret having voted so qwuickly.

I voted Mp is roughly the same....
but now I find MP better, much better.

The only thing that has caused a mass-rout was a few minutes ago when my gen first routed and then got killed, but even after that some units fought on and the others reegrouped rather quickly. can any of the mods change my vote in "MP is better now..."?

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

cu

[Puzz3D]

Played some more Viking games, and viking era MP is starting to look like it's rather unbalanced in the factions. A quick look at the stats supports what I saw in one particular battle. I don't see any way to counter the army I was up against with the faction I was using. My opponent and I are close in skill level. I've already been warned off from using two factions by players who say they are very weak, so I wasn't using either of those.

Archers work fairly well in viking era probably due to the light armor on all the units. It's not too hard to get 50 kills with a foot archer.

[Alrowan]

gah... i want it

[FearofNC]

im a little upset... after further looking at the stats today... i discovered many units have the same stats as old ones.. just different sprites... ex.. huscarles... these are the standard infantry in vi era... they are exactly the same as byz vanguards.. exactly.. .. or frydman... just a new sprite for fudal sergents.. im already very familiar with these units and their abilities... after relizing what they really were ive had more success with choosing correct florin levels for each troop based on my previous useage of these units.. v3 fudals worked well in mtw and they work the same in vikings too ...

im must disagree with the stament that vikings is more imbalanced than mtw.. its not.. its just balanced differently.. the factions now have stronger strong points and weaker weak points.. i think this might lead to some very fun team games.. but for those interested in 1v1 matches... im afraid that its probably best, in the interest of balance, to battle competitvly with same factions... otherwise you could be bringing scissors to a rock fight...

currently players are just streching their legs... team matches are basicly multiple 1v1's played on the same map... that will change as time goes by .. to win in vikings.. teams must learn to use all 64 pieces (4v4)of their armies effectivly together... otherwise probility suggests that one player will be matched up against a counter army tailored to his defeat..

[Cheetah]

well, this sounds interesting ... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I just cannot wait for my copy ... ooops I have to order it ...

BTW, imho it is good if there is a rock-paper-scissor system on the army level, just every rock must have its paper.

[Kraellin]

havent played much yet so didnt vote in the pole, but my observations say you're not going to notice the +2 morale much. units still seemed to rout pretty quickly to me. and the archers did seem a bit better, at least against unarmored. also, i'm told that the organ cannon has an error in the range. i was told it's 1000 and was supposed to be 3000, so it's essentially a bit shotgun, but it can stop a cav charge, particularly those harrassing the missile unit cav charges. kind of nice, but extremly short ranged.

K.

[Puzz3D]

NC,

I didn't say vikings was more unbalanced than mtw. Also, you just supported my statement that viking era factions are unbalanced by recommending that people use the same faction in 1v1.

[FearofNC]

"im must disagree with the stament that vikings is more imbalanced than mtw"

i think we both agree with that statment... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

yup http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif in 1v1 same faction or at least similar is best.

[Paolai]

my first impression is that now, late era is quite balanced, with a lot of tactical solutions

[tgi01]

Well so far i find the picts , irish , vikings and welsh to be really good altought good at quite different things http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ..

I wouldnt call it unbalanced but i dont think teams can afford to have the same faction in a 3 vs 3 or 4 vs 4 ...
and that is very positive IMO ....


TGI

[Puzz3D]

NC,

I wasn't making a comparision between VI and MTW v1.1. I don't know if the imbalance is bigger or smaller, but there is definitely imbalance in viking era which isn't surprising.

[spacecadet]

Having played it for a few hours, i'd say that the balance is definately better than it was in mtw. 12000 florins is definately a lot nicer in feel than 15k, where units hold a far too long even with flanking. As for the viking era, i think this could end up being just a novelty, like the mongol era was in shogun - fun but no where near as good as regular high and late era games. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Space

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

[Daevorn]

I'm agree with Yuuki, as i can say from my few battles, i found the some faction i viking are stronger than other

but i'm really happy for the "normal" faction... maybe is just an psycolocical thing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif, but i really find the MP improved...
more tactics, spears beat cav and don't rout... well, imo it is VERY good http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

See you

[Paolai]

I have played about 5/6 games vs LRossaRikimaru today, and the game in late era is brilliant, I had a lot of fun: spears work, cavs are now weaker and do the same job than on STW/MI and archers are good. I like it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Magyar Khan]

i played it a few hours and it feels much better now at 10k. to play mongols i have to play late and encounter the pavs still, i wonder why mongols are in late anyway

[Puzz3D]

I had a very nice 3v3 high era game with all good players at 12k florins per player. I haven't tried 10k yet.

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ May 10 2003,23:14)]In 4v4 games i have hosted if any one person quits or loses connection to server then I (The host) is immediately dropped from server as well. Not good for 4v4 games. I also think it happens at 3v3 2v2 and 1v1, but not sure. This is a major bug.
Major annoyance...

Maybe no good deeds goes unpunished

It seems that dropped armies automatically withdraw. And the next thing is everybody crash.

Automatical withdrawing of dropped ghost army is IMO a good feature... Too bad it's buggy.

Louis,

[Kongamato]

The dropping feature causes everybody to go out of sync. I am extremely upset by this. This is a bug of mass destruction. VI feels like a good game so far, but this is ruining the MP end. I really hope it gets fixed.

[Dionysus9]

Well Konga, dont hold your breath....might be awhile.

Other than the fact we now have a drop/sync bug, I'm liking the "feel" of the battles. Some good, epic clashes already.

[baz]

reading posts from paolai and Yuuki, shows that some good has come here and hopefully it will be an improvement http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Tempiic]

Am I the only one who has the opinion that by lowering florins more and more, that army selection becomes more and more important than actual game skills (excluding fast clicking which is not the same exactly as micromanagment)... especially since fast clicking (and rushing your army at a point behind enemy army) is playing a much bigger role then as well rather than positioning of units and unit match ups.

Seems to me the patch value of this expansion is quite meaningless, since everyone wants to play it just as mtw 1.1 15K... rather than changing their playstyles. Seems we will have roughly the same complains soon again when we all play this at say 8K florins.

Oh I dont want to hear the you dont have to play 15K (in mtw 1.1)/8K/10K (whatever the VI standard will be) games counter-argument.

[tgi01]

Quote[/b] ] Tempiic : Am I the only one who has the opinion that by lowering florins more and more, that army selection becomes more and more important than actual game skills

Yepp I couldnt agree more Im quite happy with the game without the chain rout and the better rallying is quite ok ..., I dont have any intention to lower florin in my games ...

Played mostly vikings this far it is fun , the late era felt the same ( just used swiss pikes for the first and last time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif )

It is a pity mongols arent availiable in high ...


TGI

[Puzz3D]

Well, 12k doesn't throw away all the morale gain in v2.0, and units still fight longer than in v1.1 at 15k. Even 10k will retain some of the morale gain, although, not much. The lower you go the more of a rush game it becomes, and the more effective the cavalry will be vs infantry.

[longjohn2]

It seems to me that the more florins you play with, the less skill is required. At high florins the only things that matter are match ups and who got the most combat power for their buck.
With lower florin levels, the morale system comes into play more, and transitory advantages gained by manoeuvre can be turned into routing enemy units.

[tgi01]

Quote[/b] ] longjohn : It seems to me that the more florins you play with, the less skill is required. At high florins the only things that matter are match ups and who got the most combat power for their buck.

Lower thats form 15 k to maybe 10-12k ... noone in this forums plays at anything above 15k ....

TGI

[Puzz3D]

I think it's a matter finding a florin level where the maneuver aspect and the fighting aspect are roughly of equal importance. Combat power is still important at that point, and imbalances in combat power vs cost results in fewer unit types being useful.

[Magyar Khan]

10-12k so it seems/feels now

actually the feel reminds me of koc stats 1.15. now its waiting till the first comments here that teh devs listened to much to "certain vets".

sigh

[Tempiic]

Ok... i stupidly ignored the possibility one could play with 35K or above a player... Which makes it hard to compare with what you consider high florin than what I meant with it longjohn... Course what you referred to would be high... while what i actually meant is low end of mid range... 15-25K back in 1.1 MTW... Oh well i give up with it... Im just unable to say what i want to say anyway.

[Alrowan]

tempiic, i seem to understand your point, i also find it silly that people wish to go for the lower florings all the time. i prefer a mid end of mid range (20k in 1.1) its always provided me with the more exciting games, and not left it down to the who-charges-best-wins syndrome. As for getting any of these players to try change style, well i say good luck to a lot of them http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Puzz3D]

10k plays like v1.1 at 17k
12k plays like v1.1 at 20k
15k plays like v1.1 at 25k

[spacecadet]

Tempiic,

the reason that i prefer lower florins is that I find the game more challenging as flanking and so maneuvering are of more importance, and much tighter control is needed to prevent routing. Also, mistakes are punished more (e.g. letting a spear unit get caught too far from others will hold a long time in higher florins but get routed as it deserves in lower florin games).

Yuuki,

I felt that 12k VI games were like 15k MTW http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

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

[Polish Crusader]

I also agree that 12k feels like 15k in MTW 1.1. But i always did think that units did rout just a little too quickly in MTW 1.1. So for me, 15k in VI feels better. I think ppl still run quick enough after flanking, just not immediately.

[Magyar Khan]

i played all games on 10k, it felt good for me. and yes baz all games were in Late

[Magyar Khan]

another advanteg of teh lower florins settings is that u have to think twice what to upgrade and what units not to upgrade

[Puzz3D]

Spacecadet,

I can see how it can happen that 12k v2.0 feels like 15k v1.1. In one v2.0 12k game, I took mil sgt of one less valor upgrade than I used to take in v1.1 15k games. The morale is thus the same for that unit, and it's routing characteristic is the same. I also took swiss halb, but I didn't drop the valor on them from what I use in 15k v1.1 games, so I had a unit that stood and fought a little better. My chiv knight cav also fought better because I fielded it at the same v1 that I used in 15k v1.1. The differences were very noticible to me. You do need 15K in v2.0 to feel the increased morale across all the units that you typically use.

I don't want maneuver to be more important than matchups. I'd like to play at a level where they are of about equal importance. If you have to always fight in a compact formation, it takes away a lot of the maneuver options. You're reduced to moving your whole army together as a single entity. Right now if you field v1 knights, they can operate fairly well independently.

As an example of a spear unit, you're going to need v2 Order Foot at 1156 florins, to notice any improvement in their ability to stand and fight since spears didn't get a price reduction. If you allow 1200 for 4 ranged units in a 12k game, that leaves 900 on average for each of the 12 remaining units. So, spending 1156 on a spear means cutting back on morale somewhere else.

[Krasturak]

Quote[/b] (Tempiic @ May 11 2003,15:56)]... Im just unable to say what i want to say anyway.
Have you tried saying 'Gah' when that happens?

Works for Krast.

[Tempiic]

Hmmmm lets try then......Gahhhhhhh


another advanteg of teh lower florins settings is that u have to think twice what to upgrade and what units not to upgrade

Hmmm I thought you were against having army selection be one of the major influences of winning a game http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif


I also agree that 12k feels like 15k in MTW 1.1. But i always did think that units did rout just a little too quickly in MTW 1.1. So for me, 15k in VI feels better. I think ppl still run quick enough after flanking, just not immediately.

Sounds like a typical 20K or 25K MTW 1.1 game http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Alrowan: Good http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif I dunno how busy you are with VI nowadays, but please drop by and offer me a few 20K MTW 1.1 games

[Kansuke]

Hi ALL,

Short and sweet, based on trial and error, all played in late era.


15k - Good battle where infantry are the major deceiding factor, not saying that cav are not good, oh yes btw, Lancers still rule

10k - The pendullum swings back in favour of the Cav units.

I feel that the best games are going to be around 12-13k.

If any of you are thinking of taking rush armies, your in for a nasty suprise.

A more balanced army selection is required. I won all my games taking 6 cav, 4 pavs, 6 h2h until someone came along with the following:

4 cav
2 cav archers
4 pavs
6 h2h

The only noob in those games was me, well we all noobs in Vi anyway.


Kansuke.

[MF_Ivan]

Quote[/b] (Kansuke @ May 12 2003,03:57)]The only noob in those games was me, well we all noobs in Vi anyway.
Oh so true.

[tgi01]

Well it is kind off depressing that a lot of people are concentrating on late which is the most similar to the now old 1.1 ....Why would anyone go back to pavise battles when there are so many other choices ... ( only excuse for playing in late now is the mongols IMO http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif )

I played mostly vikings so far maybe 20 games in total and 15k felt quite right ... the viking factions got some very different special units and you need a chance to uppgrade the right units ..., early also needs the 15k ...

In high era lowering of florin might be needed 12-13k as someone mentioned will probably be right ....

And do whatever you want in late I will not be there anyway


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


TGI

[spacecadet]

Yuuki,

All i can say is that i liked the morale at 15k in MTW and so feeling the the increased morale isn't something i want - you and many others may disagree - and so i prefer the game at around that 10-12k mark.

Where i said that i liked a greater emphasis on maneuvering, i didnt mean at the expense of unit match ups...again it comes down to that mythical word "balance" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

While you may quote stats at me that i find difficult to disagree with, i can only go by my gut feeling that the game seems more fun at less than 15k. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

As for playing in late era - I say that i always liked pav arbs as they were useful without being the monsters that they were in Mongol invasions.

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

[ErikJansen]

While we're at the subject of florin levels:


Quote[/b] ]the reason that i prefer lower florins is that I find the game more challenging as flanking and so maneuvering are of more importance, and much tighter control is needed to prevent routing. Also, mistakes are punished more (e.g. letting a spear unit get caught too far from others will hold a long time in higher florins but get routed as it deserves in lower florin games).


aaaand....


Quote[/b] ]It seems to me that the more florins you play with, the less skill is required. At high florins the only things that matter are match ups and who got the most combat power for their buck.
With lower florin levels, the morale system comes into play more, and transitory advantages gained by manoeuvre can be turned into routing enemy units.

These two quotes agree with my point of view, though it shall so be stated I've not played VI yet http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

The fact that I prefer my games low florin doesn't mean I never play 20-25k games... I do, and I enjoy those a lot as well. However I feel that for competitive games and such, the florin amount should be at about 10-15k for a 'balance' to be had. I'm still on MTW v1.1 terms btw http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Regards,

[shingenmitch2]

Dammit, okay I convinced... need to spend money and buy game. I like the sound of the discussion about the overall balance and game play -- I'm glad my doom & gloom appears proven premature & incorrect http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I still don't give a poop about LATE tho...

"The over-powered Cav of choice..." http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif let's just eliminate cav altogether...

[Kongamato]

I have an idea.

Why dont we play this game by having two combatants pick their armies, deploy, and then exit the game. A panel of judges will then declare a victor. Sound good?

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

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (Kongamato @ May 12 2003,10:26)]I have an idea.

Why dont we play this game by having two combatants pick their armies, deploy, and then exit the game. A panel of judges will then declare a victor. Sound good?

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
Do they need to deploy?

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

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (shingenmitch2 @ May 12 2003,10:05)]Dammit, okay I convinced... need to spend money and buy game. I like the sound of the discussion about the overall balance and game play -- I'm glad my doom & gloom appears proven premature & incorrect http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I still don't give a poop about LATE tho...

"The over-powered Cav of choice..." http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif let's just eliminate cav altogether...
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

See you in VI foyer soon

Let's cook the goose

Louis,

[LRossaRikimaru]

I've played a lot of fun games with Paolai and in late era all the game seems better balanced at 15k. Then i've played some battle with EliteofKyl in early era (and without balester i suck http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif ) and also in this game i found it well balanced.

I think that Multy is better now http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

LROssaRIkimaru

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (Tempiic @ May 11 2003,09:41)]Am I the only one who has the opinion that by lowering florins more and more, that army selection becomes more and more important than actual game skills (excluding fast clicking which is not the same exactly as micromanagment)... especially since fast clicking (and rushing your army at a point behind enemy army) is playing a much bigger role then as well rather than positioning of units and unit match ups.

Seems to me the patch value of this expansion is quite meaningless, since everyone wants to play it just as mtw 1.1 15K... rather than changing their playstyles. Seems we will have roughly the same complains soon again when we all play this at say 8K florins.

Oh I dont want to hear the you dont have to play 15K (in mtw 1.1)/8K/10K (whatever the VI standard will be) games counter-argument.
Maybe I kind of oversimplify it, but is sums up to; do we want units to rout above or below the 50% MIA line?

In 1.1, with 1.1 routing point / 15K, and without outstanding manoeuvring skill (the kind I don't have), it was pretty tough to rout a morale 8/10 unit without killing half of it.
Sure, with ally routing, exhausted from running, charged and surrounded by cav, a morale 10 unit would still rout on contact, but that does go into the 'outstanding manoeuvring skill' category IMO.
A morale 2/4 unit can pretty much rout on basic manoeuvring even if winning because of wrong match up and even if above 50% of guys alive. Tough to kill 50% of a unit with the wrong match up.

Routing points have changed in VI. (Might need a real confirmation). Those who like 15 K in 1.1 will go down to lower fl level.

At low fl vs high fl, you also move from a unit selection game to an upgrade selection game. At 25 K, it is not what you bring (well ok... a little bit) but how you upgrade it ; wrong upgrade = massive loss of Fl = defeat.

I wonder why 15 K is considered OK across the board for all eras, all kind of map. Is 15 K needed for early desert game? I somehow doubt it...

5K/15K/25K games * kind of map * eras = plenty of different kind of games requiring different skills.

Depending on what kind of skills you value, choose your game. But IMO, it is not enough to be good at low fl 5k early era game, to be a complete, well rounded player, you also need to be good at arty gothic 25K late era game...

2 cents from a noob,

Louis,

PS; and I don't have the pretention of being a complete well rounded player... there are armies that I am not able to move correctly, and weapon that I don't master... I am just barely OK with one specific set... So I still have much to learn.

[Puzz3D]

SpaceCadet,

It's definitely a personal preference where you want the balance between maneuver vs matchup to fall. I see a lot of complaints from people who's units rout with more than 50% of their men still alive.

I mostly played MTW v1.1 at 15k because it became established more or less as a standard soon after v1.1 was released. Over the course of several months I joined many 4v4 99,999 florin games which gives 25k per player. Some things I noticed in those games was more use of reserve units, more time to come to the aid of an ally, more difficulty rushing, less tendency to chain rout and more time to come around a flank. Matchups are definitely very important, but you can use a poor matchup to block enemy units and buy yourself some time.

At 15k in v1.1, you really can't afford to be outnumbered because you'll chain rout. Certainly if outnumbered 2 to 1, you are history. You're better off hitting with maximun force as quickly as possible when the attack finally comes. Having the first unit rout can easily trigger a chain rout. To this day, numerous players, including many vets, don't understand how the chain rout happens. It's not a problem when everyone in the game has a grasp of these morale bonuses and penalties, but I've been in many games where my ally sits and watches while a teammate get's double teamed. I just had this happen twice last night in VI, and, after one of those games, my ally made fun that I had routed before I even engaged. If you think that pisses me off, you're right. So, I will probably end up playing at the higher end of this 10k - 15k range because I don't find the low end to be much fun in team games. Too many players simply don't understand the morale system. In 1v1 games, more emphasis on maneuver is fine.

[shingenmitch2]

Well Yuuki,

As Louis has so astutely proven through testing -- winning has nothing to do with army choice, unit match up or this needless debate on rout point -- and everything to do with Teammate choice.

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


Oh, BTW -- 1806 posts http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

And Louis, dammit -- you've already got my pretty picture. You realize it's taken me YEARS for that silly thing...

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (shingenmitch2 @ May 12 2003,14:33)]Well Yuuki,

As Louis has so astutely proven through testing -- winning has nothing to do with army choice, unit match up or this needless debate on rout point -- and everything to do with Teammate choice.

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

Well experience seems to confirm my view on the most basic skill in MTW; ally picking.

Basically there are three different basic strategies;
1/ going with good famous player and just assist them in winning the game vs noob like me.
2/ finding 'blamable' allies
3/ playing with Mitch, cause it makes you look good http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Louis,

Sometimes you get surprised by shogun vet scoring 0 kills / 0 killed while you do all the job ; http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Matchup / manoeuvring relative importance debate;

Got a couple of questions;

You have one sword unit morale 4 flanked by 2 spears units morale 2 (facing one, flanked by the other); who wins and how?

Same question with a sword unit morale 10 and 2 spears morale 8; who wins and how?

Last question; what do you think SHALL be the results of such a fight?

Louis,

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (shingenmitch2 @ May 12 2003,14:33)]And Louis, dammit -- you've already got my pretty picture. You realize it's taken me YEARS for that silly thing...
The secret is posting 6 times in the same page http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

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

Louis,

[spacecadet]

Yuuki,

I understand your point about team games with newer players. The way i deal with it is to use 1 of 2 styles - 1st to help my allys and generally boss them about in the hope of some success (which occasionally happens http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif ) or 2ndly failing that to play my own game of just attacking my direct enemy or maneuvering so that an uncooperative ally gets the brunt of the enemy attack and smack into them when their armies are at there most chaotic and so chain rout them.

At the end of the day, if youve been playing the Total War games as long as we have, then the greatest fun is to be had playing with and against other competant players (although some fun is sometimes to be had trying to save a newbie team against a bunch of good team players)

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

[Magyar Khan]

i accept only noobs as ally if they give me centre spot, know what units do and what to buy and above all have some big waving ears wrapped around their heads. if not, i mostly quit joining

[Krasturak]

Quote[/b] (Magyar Khan @ May 12 2003,18:56)]... above all have some big waving ears wrapped around their heads...
Huh?

http://www.clanwarbelt.org/RageKrastpic.jpg

[Skomatth]

can we try to keep this on topic?

[LRossaRikimaru]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif @Krast

GAH

sorry Sko http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Kocmoc]

moral is 1 of the last great differences from this game compared to the arcade games

without the moraleffects this game lost his maincharakter
i want massiv routs if u did massiv mistakes, look ....ofcourse units should rout if they are lost a few or rout if nearby units run away, thats ok

we need to clear up when a unit should rout, a unit like a spear shouldnt rout if 5 cavs in front of this spear
it shoudl rout if 1 is in front 2 on the sites or 1 in back, thats ok.

so massiv chainrouts will happen if u did mistakes, in mtw the cav just spoiled this aspect as u just needed to move many in 1 point, without any nice moving or thinking about it. now VI with less effectiv cav is ver nice, u still need cav and still the cav is very important as 1 of the tactical points.

i hope the moving skill becomes important again, i colelcted many replays about the damn cavmoves where u won if u was first who started charging and where u didnt need to move very well.


koc

[baz]

i would be interested to see some examples koc http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Kocmoc]

i collected around 300 replays, and still i need to upload the replays from the tourney http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif ....im very bussy last times http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif but try urself.

Exemple: move back with ur cav from a coming cav, than turn and fight u never get the same chargebonuss liek the other cav, u always will lose, just if ur cav is much more better u have a chance.
so sometimes i just make my enemy bussy on 1 side and "killed" the cav/cavs on the other flank as he noticed too late.

sure its "realistic" but this means u cant draw back without to risk a massiv loss.
this means furthermore the chargebonuss was too big, i would love if CA would split the chargebonuss in 3 categories.

1. charge vs normal h2h units
2. charge vs other cav
3. charge vs 100 men units

the points is that if u have a charge of 8 + an attack of 7
and the enemy dont get a good charge u kill 15 in the first secs thats nearly half of the enemy cav remember less than 50% means -2 moral.
well, if u use 1 or 2 lines the first line get bonusses as well, so its not a fight, its a massacre http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

and it means, the attacker wins all what i say is, imo its important to get advances if u move back, as it need more skill to move very nice and u can create traps.

NC will remember 1 of the nice moves we did in a 1v1... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
in MTW u got punished for moving back and with the strong cav u8 got punished as well if u did flank.

sometimes i did flank my enemy in the center so nice but it was useless as the nearby cav effected my flanking h2h unit so massiv that they did rout.

i need to sort the replays than i will upload a few


koc

[Orda Khan]

Quote[/b] (Kocmoc @ May 13 2003,04:34)]moral is 1 of the last great differences from this game compared to the arcade games

without the moraleffects this game lost his maincharakter
i want massiv routs if u did massiv mistakes, look ....ofcourse units should rout if they are lost a few or rout if nearby units run away, thats ok

we need to clear up when a unit should rout, a unit like a spear shouldnt rout if 5 cavs in front of this spear
it shoudl rout if 1 is in front 2 on the sites or 1 in back, thats ok.

so massiv chainrouts will happen if u did mistakes, in mtw the cav just spoiled this aspect as u just needed to move many in 1 point, without any nice moving or thinking about it. now VI with less effectiv cav is ver nice, u still need cav and still the cav is very important as 1 of the tactical points.

i hope the moving skill becomes important again, i colelcted many replays about the damn cavmoves where u won if u was first who started charging and where u didnt need to move very well.


koc
I agree with Kocmoc's point about cav, I've seen the enemy mass their cav on one flank too often http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif Throw all your cav at one opponent seemed a very popular choice. Also if you had to turn your cav to engage an oncoming cav unit it was as if it were the case of whoever started moving first had the advantage.
I would like to see a unit at least try to engage though, rather than just chain rout. Unless hopelessly outnumbered of course.

........Orda

[Kanuni]

It seems to me that the majority of the people (especially the vets) were unhappy about the morale system in v1.1 for 15k and how easy the units routed. So I'd only like to ask that if this is somewhat improved in v2.0 why do you want to return to the previous morale system in v1.1 15k by lowering the fl. standard to 10-12k?

[Kocmoc]

kanuni,

exactly this is my point ur wrong we are not unhappy about the moralsystem alltogether. just a few units spoil the system, just a few bonusses cause the problem

the cav with all theyr bonusses is/was the prob, not the moralsystem at all. the cav could cause some chainrouts without some real reason

so i never said and dont say it now, that the moralsystem all together was the a prob. my suggestion long time ago about the +2 moral for all units is just useful if we look at the original stats, and what the unit was made for....but now this changed so it doesnt realy matter....

long time ago all spoke about the playing with valour 0, i remember player and vets spoke about this...:o

i agree that this would reflect the orinal stats of the units but it wasnt possible as we got too many routs with valour 0. the +2 moral jsut help as we go back with valour and money and some pushed units dont get changed to much.

example would be:
maa for 175 florins, with valour 0 a crap unit with v3/v4 like it got used mostly its a good unit, but with a complet changed charakter so it got a standart main unit, and this wasnt this unit made from the devs.

i hope i did explain it correct.


koc

[Puzz3D]

Kocmoc,

Last week you said the morale bonuses were too big and spoiled the game. You've been saying that for the last 6 months. The +2 morale of VI effectively reduces all of the morale bonuses in the sense that you need to accumulate more bonuses in VI to rout a unit. Of course, the only way you will fully get that effect is by continuing to play at the same florin level that you were using in v1.1, whatever that was. You also made a custom stat that added +2 morale to all units, and said you liked how it played.

Now you say that certain units were the problem, but individual units didn't get adjustments to their morale, and the bonuses weren't changed either. Dropping down from 15k to 10k will throw away practically all the improved fighting ability of the non-elite units. Players were already using elite units a valor 0 or at most 1 in 15k games so the non-elite units could get the most morale boost possible with valor upgrades. The +2 morale gain is minimal. I played v1.1 games at +6 morale that were fine. There is still plenty of routing in VI at 15k per player. So, playing VI at 15k is not a case of removing maneuver or punishment for mistakes. It's more a case of making something like a steppe cav or a spear unit more useful. Of course, play the game at whatever florin level you want, and, as someone else here pointed out, a really excellent player can play over a wide range of florins.

I've tried both 12k and 15k 3v3 and 4v4 VI games so far, and the 15k games were highly praised by all the players involved. All the 12k games were good, but none of them were praised by anyone involved. The best game I've been in so far was a no arb, no art, late era 3v3 at 15k. Something at work here is that at 15k people can bring the same or almost the same army they were using in v1.1 15k and can get a good feel for the changes since they are familiar with the previous performance of those same units when used together.

[Paolai]

I have played 10000, 12000 and 15000...12000 and 15000 are both good, but i prefer 15000

[tgi01]

Yepp 15000 still feels the best 12000-13000 are ok too ...
To be honest 22500 didnt feel that much different either
( TGI got impatient when the 3 vs 3 wouldnt fill up http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif )

At 10k we will just end up with cav armies as usual ...


TGI

PS : edited for typos only as usual

[longjohn2]

Hmmm. Maybe some of the morale factors are behaving slightly differently in large team games, to 1 on 1 games.
From some of the comments above, it seems as though the penalties for being locally outnumbered may be causing some problems.
The reason for these penalties is primarily to help bring battles to an end quickly, by making it easy to see of remnant units rather than have to chase them all round the map. However the effect of the penalties for small groups is mitigated by (IIRC) counting the strength of the testing unit double. In one on one games of course the unit limit stops you outnumbering a large group to any significant extent.
Maybe it would be better if there was some strength threshhold beyond which the outnumbering penalties didn't apply.

Personally I've been playing Viking games online at 10K and finding it working pretty well, but mostly they were 1 on 1 games. Sadly my computer isn't up to anything more than 2 vs 2

I'm not surprised that charging cavalry beat a similar unit that has just turned round. Charge bonues are determined on a man by man basis, so to get the bonus an individual man must be moving at charge speed. Soldiers that are jostling against there friends during a turn may not yet have got into their charge.

[tgi01]

Longjohn - check the strictserver / crash bug topic please http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif


TGI


stricserver topic (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=18;t=6804)

[longjohn2]

Sorry I know nothing about that. Gil's area.

[tgi01]

Communicate with Gil ??? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif


TGI

[Puzz3D]

LongJohn,

That's an astute observation seeing as you don't actually play in large games. In big games, concentration of numbers is highly effecive in breaking an enemy army quickly. The -4 morale for being outnumbered 2:1 is a pretty substantial penalty, and 2:1 is a pretty easy concentration of force to achieve. I wonder if simply starting the effect at -4 morale for outnumbered 3:1 would be better? It's much harder to achieve a 3:1 advantage at the beginning of a battle, and I see a lot of players who are willing to continue fighting at the end when outnumbered 2:1. It could still ramp up to the -12 morale at outnumbered 10:1. I notice the +4 morale for outnumbering the enemy starts at 3:1. It might be easier for players to develop a feel for these outnumbered morale effects if both kick in at the same threshold.

[theKyl]

agreed Yuuki.

[Skomatth]

It seems like there's an obviously strong viking era faction. Why takea nything else when you can take it? I want people to figure out on their own, but if anyone can tell me otherwise please say so.

[Kanuni]

So how will the florin amount be decided by the vets? I'm asking this because I do not know how it was decided for originial MTW because in those times I wasn't playing the game.

If there are disagreements will there be a poll to determine the amount (for example for CWB games)? If there would be a vote and if I had a right to vote, I 'd vote for 15k. Oh let me make a poll now anyway (of course it won't determine the amount, but I just want to learn what people think)

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Kocmoc]

well, i said this already months ago ***
so i wish u luck with ur points elm, as i full support u

koc

Edited by TosaInu.

[TosaInu]

I would suggest to look at another (related) thing first.
I'm not sure whether it is that, but it could be and would address the same problem without changing the 1v1 game, making large peasant units even more useless and reducing a 'realistic' aspect of the game.

It seems to me that a unit sees enemies and units of its own color, but is less/hardly/not aware of allied units.

I remember some STW 4v1 games: defender 16 units and 4 attackers 4 units each. It felt like the attacker armies didn't give each other morale support.

We've also played with specialised armies and mixed them along the frontline. A lot can go wrong there (communication, manoeuvring), but it also felt like allied units didn't give sufficient moralesupport (this may be realistic since allies can be turncoats).

A different case: STW AI armies withdraw when the odds are against them. I've made battles with 3 sides. My AI ally saw 2 enemies (each about equally strong as he and me together) but not that they were each others enemies too (different and harder case) and just routed every time.

It's true that you can 'overload' one flank in a 4v4 and more decisive than in a 1v1. It would have an influence on the soldiers, but there are also allies 'nearby'.

What I'm actually saying is: maybe don't change the being outnumbered penalty but (slightly) increase the moralesupport by allied units.

[Puzz3D]

If you disagree with Kocmoc he takes it as a flame. Saying "the morale bonuses are too big" covers a lot of things. There are at least 10 seperate negative morale effects and 9 postive effects. Kocmoc, do you mean they are all too big? Well, you have +2 morale in VI which makes all the morale penalties seem smaller. You're more likely to have to engage and enemy unit to rout it VI rather than just going behind it. That is unless you discard the increased morale by playing at lower florins.

One problem I can see with oblong zones of influence is that it takes extra computation to figure out if you are inside the zone. Being at the center of a circle allows this distance to be a constant. Although, the computation is only done for whole units, so may not slow the game down.

The penalty from being in the vicinity (1.8 tiles) of an enemy unit is not actually the same regardless the enemy unit's facing. If you are within a 90 degree arc of the front of an enemy unit, you can be getting an additional penalty from being flanked if you are not facing that unit. Although your unit is making a flanking maneuver, its own flanks are exposed. Also, it appears to me that the proximity penalty was reduced from -8 morale in STW to -4 morale in MTW.

How small should the morale circles be? They are 1.8 tiles. You want to go down to 1.5 or are you thinking something really small? It's a very simple system with a discrete step at the edge of the circle. If you are close to the edge but still outside, it's like the enemy isn't there at all morale wise, but I see both you and teh enemy would be in closer striking range. Is that what is behind this suggestion of reduced morale circles? You want to be able to get a single unit closer to a large enemy formation without your unit getting scared and running away? As soon as you step over the edge, the effect would kick in, but the outnumbered effect would probably be less since more enemies would be outside the circle. It seem to me it's a matter of scale, but, if a unit is within a distance to threaten you, it should certainly be having a morale effect on you.

If you are trying to come behind the main line but in front of the reserve line, then the reserve line would have to be closer to have any effect on your flanking unit. You can do that with an elite unit now and I do it all the time, but lesser morale units have trouble. All the possible positional morale penalties don't add up to enough to rout either an elite or disiplined unit. I don't enounter the problem Elm has with a unit routing because it tries to squeeze through a small opening in the enemy line. I just make sure I use a high morale unit for that.

If the idea is to allow a lot of maneuvering near enemy formations but have quick routing if you make contact from behind, I think the game is pretty much like that now. You can rout one enemy unit after another along the line by striking at their back with a good cavalry unit while they fight. No, I can't take a low morale unit and do much with it on it's own. Those unts you have to keep together. Raising the florins does allow units to spead out more and operate more independently.

I don't see why a lowly unit like peasants should be able to operate independenly or even be effective if it costs next to nothing. The 70% cost of valor ensures that cheap units can't be upgraded to be better than a more expensive unit. The peasant unit isn't really useful in MP, but so what? We don't need 80% of the units we have in MP.

Reading Elm's post again I see the statement, "A 3:1 would be fine and would give a flanking unit a chance to actually flank an enemy unit before routing due to help being near but not close enough to engage.". Can't it be argued that 1.8 tiles is close enough to be a threat to engage? And, whatever the distance, the morale penalty would always kick in before the units actually engaged. Maybe the issue of what distance constitutes a threat to engage has to be addressed. Unit speed is apparently already taken into consideration when calculating the outnumbered penalty which I think is just an extension of the proximity penalty. Presumably faster units are considered more of a threat.

My impression of the game is that leaving your flank open is suicide now, but regular ranged units, not combo units, are too good in hth and can repell cav. This is a problem made worse in VI if you drop the florins back down to 10k because ranged units like pav arbs were already being fielded at v0, so they won't go any lower in valor while the rest of the army will drop.

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Dionysus9]

Skom,

You must be talking about either Mercians or the Vikings. The Mercians have militia sgts. and mtd. sgts., both of which are unique to Mercia and which have various strong uses on the field. Mercia is certainly one of the stronger factions, but they lack crossbows and mounted crossbows.

The Vikings of course have the Joms and the Landsmen which are unique. Thralls too, although they have a critical weakness. The Vikings suffer from a lack of viable cavalry, and that is their weakness.

The Picts and Welsh are not all that powerful in terms of shock infantry, but they do have their benefits in terms of ranged units and cavalry (esp. pict cav).

I challenge you to take your uber-faction [whichever you mean] vs. my Picts. I can skirmish back for a long time, all the while hitting you w/ xbows and cav skirmishes. Until eventually your Joms are weakened and tired...then my V4 Celt Warriors will give you something to think about http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif.

I think its too early to say that the Viking Era is "broken."

------
Yuuki and Elmo:

I think going to a 3:1 outnumbered penalty makes a LOT of sense. If I have an elite/disciplined unit and they are outnumbered 2:1 by peasants, I really dont think they would be sweating too hard. But add another 100 peasants and is starting to look bad... 2:1 isnt that big a deal for an elite unit. 3:1 is more of a problem--Even if you can fight 2 at a time, the 3rd will sneak around behind. I think something should be done to help suppress the chain routs I'm seeing in 4v4's where one side rapidly builds up forces in one area. Then again, the other side should counter with a buildup of counter-forces...but 3:1 gives them time to respond.

Another option would be to make the penalties start at 3:1 for elite/disciplined units and 2:1 for regulars, but I think that overpowers the elites. Currently, elite units are very well balanced.

Morale circles:
If an enemy unit can "reach out and touch you", you should be concerned. But, also, if you can not move toward a certain direction because an enemy unit is in your way, that should also concern you (whether or not you are presently within their "arms reach").

These morale circles are always going to be arbitrary--we can only guess what our units are thinking. I think 1.8 tiles works fairly well, myself, although I think making morale "oblongs" would add a little spice to the game. The additional calulation work for my CPU should be so minimal as to be unnoticeable. As Yuuki says, there is already an "arc" in which you will face additional morale penalties for presenting a flank to your enemy's front, but adding an oblong to the arc would make telecope that effect out a bit more. By inceasing the depth of the front-facing morale penalty arc, you would be increasing the value of unit-facing-- that is a good thing in my opinion.

Imagine a unit of Joms surrounded by 3 enemy units of lower valor spears. The spears are all facing the Joms but the Joms can only face one unit of spears at a time. As a unit of spears advances to engage, the Joms would want to turn to face them and add morale penalties... If the zone of influence is oblong it gives the Joms a chance to "stare down" an advancing unit of spears in time to rout them and turn to face the next advancing spear unit. If you keep the zone as a circle, you can really only stare down one spear unit before the others hit your flank.

"Oh crap those Joms are looking right at us...run away"

I think it would add spice and make facing more important and make mistakes more dangerous.

Punishing mistakes is the main thing. Just my $.02.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Elmo, Yuuki,

I am not sure you really speak about the same thing here... Is the question are pav or cav overpowered? Or is it that range are a little bit too good when charged by cav?

I am a little bit disappointed by light cav against pav. Heavy cav do the job of breaking a pav arb line pretty nicely (if given the opportunity).
But light cav can run into trouble and it takes a little bit too long IMO for them to runover some missile unit.

I have a disheartening replay in a 4v4, where, in a lonely corner of the map one Turco Horse charge then fight vs one pav arb without too much interaction... Well the Turco Horse almost lost... I don't really expect that to happen and would like cav to fare slightly better when facing pure
missile troops (not hybrid like longbow, or JI...), instead of getting somehow stuck in an indecisive fight.

I also got 2 cents MasterBachus, we shall start a collect.

Louis,

[Crandaeolon]

Oh no... not that can of worms again... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

I can still vividly remember the old Lancer-debate. Many vocal peeps kept saying that Lancers and cav in general were overpowered. I didn't, but after I had studied AMP's techniques and developed my own "cheese charge", I went over to the "cav is bad" -camp. In retrospect, that was probably not right. CBR and others developed pretty reliable setups that could win the all-cav and compete fairly well with balanced armies.

I still (or should I say: "again" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif) don't think cavalry overpowered. I haven't yet played VI, but in theory cav should actually be less powerful than in 1.1... so what's the problem, exactly? That cavalry are good for flanking? Well, isn't that what the cav is supposed to do? Or is it the morale system? Problems with the morale system should reflect in all other units too. (And cavalry are not the only units that are elite and thus suitable for flanking.)

Edit: And what exactly is the reason why Mounted Sarges are overpowered? In 1.1, they aren't a very hot unit, Alans are much better.

[Skomatth]

Bacchus- I dont doubt that you can or anyone could beat me with specific tactics, but the point is that Mercians-yes mercians- are the only faction with miltia sars, which cant be beaten by any other VI infantry unit as far as I know. It doesn't matter that they have weak armor or can be beat with special tactic or by cav, because why should u have to use a special tactic? You should be able to fight it with another inf unit that is available to all factions and expect an equal outcome. It's not that major of a problem and you can hold against them for very long (compared to lancer vs chiv unbalance) but I'm just wondering why Mercians got an exclusive unit that stronger than normal units.

I've played picts a few times and while xbows will beat normal, they dont really dominate. I've also done a allcav/cav archer with picts which is a lot of fun but not in team games...

[baz]

ive only played a couple of games on VI but the one thing that struck me was the dropping of the whole game, if one player drops .. this needs to be fixed asap http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Puzz3D]

First of all, I've never seen a big VI game with almost all Spanish and Byz factions. I see that in MTW v1.1. I'm well aware of the many players who liked the muskets in WE/MI v1.02, and even if 1000 players were still playing that game, I wouldn't be interested.

Second of all, I have a replay of a 4v4 from last night where I flanked the enemy line by fighting my way through a small opening. It wasn't even an opening when I started. I had hack it into an opening using 3 inf units and sending my gen at the spot after it was weakend. My gen was being shot by xbows and the enemy had reserve units stationed to support his line that I turned my flank to. My gen was a v3 Lithuanian cav which finished with 218 kills and 15 losses. If I had used my gen incorrectly I could have easily ended up with with less than 15 kills and a routed gen.

Third, if a mounted sgt is the best cav unit, then that's a mistake just as the handgunners being a shock unit makes no sense to me. Elm and I differ in that I don't think low end units should be upgradeable to the extent that they can beat high end units. It doesn't make sense intuitively. It's a drawback of having to play at high florins to raise morale, but the high cost of upgrades is quite effective in preventing that except for the ranged unit discounts which you can play around with and possibly find something strong.

Fourth, I used pav arbs as an example to point out that cav is not a strong anti-ranged unit. I handle that in VI by upgrading my cav knights, but it still takes several attacks to really hurt a v0 ranged unit that maybe got some armor upgrades. I think this is what has led to the long shootouts, and pav xbow has replaced pav arbs in high era, so you still get the long shootouts. This is a sidelight, and not related to the issue of morale circles except that some of the lower morale cav types might not even make it to the ranged unit before routing if that ranged unit has many friendly units backing it up and the cav takes casualties on the way.

Fifth, I don't want to get into, "is cav overpowered?". The cav in v2.0 is less powered than it was in v1.1, so that's a victory for the "cav is overpowered faction".

Sixth, all the extra non-optimal units do is make the learning curve longer. You can look at this as part of the fun or part of the work.

Seventh, the oblong morale circle suggestion is now becoming confused. One person is taking about oblong proximity circles, and another about oblong flanking arcs. My point here is that as you focus the effect you eliminate it from areas outside that focus. The effect doesn't have a gradient. It's a step. Also, I'm not sure what's to be gained by adding to the micromanagement that already has to be done. The reason you see units standing around facing in various directions is because the player can't get around in the heat of battle to correct the facing on all of his units.

Eighth, we don't need upgraded archers taking out cav of unsuspecting players. We have the anti-cav halb units for that. It amounts to a trick because players are expecting a rock, paper, scissors system which is how you make correct unit matchups. Right now people are learning the hard way that their cav won't beat that ranged unit.

Ninth, the +2 morale improves the ability of units to stand and fight, and to withstand positional morale penalties without routing. It's very noticible in the v2.0 battles that I've played so far. It will make more units useful. For example, a v2 Order Foot of morale 6 now has the morale level that an elite unit did in v1.1. This is a victory for all of us that felt units were routing too easily in v1.1.

Tenth, I agree that imbalance causes a convergence of armies to a few "best" types which gets stale after a while. I think VI high era is certainly better balanced than it was, and the tendency to take Spanish or Byz games should diminish, but it's not perfect. I made it through about 1000 high era v1.1 battles without resorting to Spanish of Byz except that in one CWC battle I took Byz. I don't know about the other eras in VI except I already posted that viking era has some issues, and I don't play viking era anymore unless specifically requested. I did play one late era, all vet game with no arbs and no art, and it was a very good game. I also played one late era with no art and that was also very good, but songle games certainly don't tell the whole story.

[Kocmoc]

***

i remeber the times as someone said....." u should play with valour0" ....ooops....times change http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif


koc

Edited by TosaInu:

..The Guild expects its patrons to remain civil even in the face of disagreements. Any kind of "flaming", slurs or insults adressed to an individual or a group is extremely inappropriate. Please respect etiquette at all times.

This is a discussion forum. That means that one has an opinion and the other MAY have another. It doesn't mean that one must accept the opinion of the other after he voiced it.

[Cheetah]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 15 2003,15:54)]Oh no... not that can of worms again... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

I can still vividly remember the old Lancer-debate. Many vocal peeps kept saying that Lancers and cav in general were overpowered. I didn't, but after I had studied AMP's techniques and developed my own "cheese charge", I went over to the "cav is bad" -camp. In retrospect, that was probably not right. CBR and others developed pretty reliable setups that could win the all-cav and compete fairly well with balanced armies.

Crand, remember that CBR's anti-cav army consisted of at least 4 billmen or 4 chiv.footknights. Now, how many times do you see an army with 4 billmen or 4 chiv.footknights in a 3v3 or 4v4 MTW battle? And how many times do you see and army with 7-8 heavy cavs? There must be a reason ...


Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 15 2003,15:54)]I still (or should I say: "again" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif) don't think cavalry overpowered. I haven't yet played VI, but in theory cav should actually be less powerful than in 1.1... so what's the problem, exactly? That cavalry are good for flanking? Well, isn't that what the cav is supposed to do? Or is it the morale system? Problems with the morale system should reflect in all other units too. (And cavalry are not the only units that are elite and thus suitable for flanking.)


Well, IMHO the problems are with the morale system, but the cavalry is the best unit type to exploit the shortcomings of the system.

The problem is, in general, that you can rout enemy units with ease by simply massing huge amount of cavalry on the flank of the enemy army, and charging in with a side-sweep at the same time as you charge in with your main line of MAAs. Of course, the opposing general can counter this move by massing the same amount of heavy cavs on the flank, but this is not much fun and requires very little skill.

The other problem with cavalry is that the click-behind charge works too well. I dont know whether it can be disbaled or not, but it would be good. If you attack the enemy cavalry unit with a click on charge, but the enemy general attacks with a click behind charge, you can lose half of your unit on the impact, this will give the unit a huge morale penalty, which in turn will rout it immediately. Of course, there is nothing new with the click behind charge, I remember that AMP used it back in the days of STW/MI, but in MTW it make cavs even more powerful.

Another problem with the morale system is that it is not fine graded enough. For example, 31 CMAA is quite a force to recon with, but 29 CMAA is just a bunch of cowards. Also, IMHO the morale penalty caused by casulties kicks in too ealry. 10% means that units starts to worry about casulties after losing 5 cavalrymen or 7 swordsmen. Add to this some flanking penalty and some routing friends and you have a nice chainrout.

Yes, mistakes should be punished, but the problem is that one can lose facing a brute force, and lose badly, even without making any mistakes or making only minor mistakes. Of course, brute force is always a factor in war, but what really hurts in MTW is that there is no "clever" response.

[Kocmoc]

thx cheeeta i jsut can agree with any of ur points

i played a viking game today with 20k, i used my archers properly and killed from his 100 men units 20 men (average)each units, but sadly i jsut had 60 men units, i made a fwe very nice moves and he wasnt able to even react. but in the end his 100 men units just walked over me.... oops http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

he did many other mistakes but he won, all i see is still the same unfunny thing, silly units beat other units u can move like hell but its stupid as just ur unitchoice win or lose. why care about losses by archers? it doesnt matter



koc

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Cheetah @ May 16 2003,00:56)]Crand, remember that CBR's anti-cav army consisted of at least 4 billmen or 4 chiv.footknights. Now, how many times do you see an army with 4 billmen or 4 chiv.footknights in a 3v3 or 4v4 MTW battle? And how many times do you see and army with 7-8 heavy cavs? There must be a reason ...
Pffff Cheetah, remember I also did it without billmen and I used cmaa instead http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

But you are right that you never see so many footknights or billmen in normal battles. Now I know its this historical rant again but...why dont we see more bills/footknights?.. back then they were used a lot in combination with spears/pikes. When cav is powerful its only natural that infantry use weapons that are good against cav.

But we still have these damn powerful swords and when we are playing with a lot of florins we can even upgrade to make them even better compared to the more expensive spear/polearm units.

In the last few months I have used a 12 cav 4 arb army a lot. In a 4v4 I stand back with my cav and wait for the right moment to launch a powerful charge with my 8 heavy knights while having my 4 feudals as a reserve.

Now..is it an overpowered army? well yes and no. If the enemy has several spears and polearms I cant just charge without having a clear advantage..flank or rear attack. If Im not careful I will waste my cav in no time. And even with an advantage its not always easy against those damn polearms. Even high valour swords are causing enough problems frontally.

It is of course a very mobile army and can be used to help an ally to overpower one enemy army quickly but the main problem, that might make it overpowered, is still that both spears and polearms are simply not good enough when swords are so good like they are now.

I have done loads of my 8 cav charges and I really try to mass them as much as possible, depending on the situation of course, moving in 10 ranks. I dont see the enemy suddenly chainrout because of cav alone. Ok I dont use that single line thingie but that doesnt work frontally against spears anyway, only with some time consuming fancy maneuvering.

If enemy units is caught alone they will rout very quickly but if they are closer to each other its not that easy. But if I can get in behind them with a charge a line of enemy units most if not all will rout quickly.

I did a lot of tweaking on the pike/swords balance in the Italian Wars era of my Mpwars mod. I wanted swords to have a role but I wanted pikes to be important if not the most important infantry unit. And I think it was a succes. Swords cant take the pike charge but are more agile and can outflank pikes or exploit holes in the line and get many kills. In MTW its just a head-on charge and spears are wiped out.

Ok long rant...but the point is that if cav is not the real problem. Cav is the just the obvious unit that everyone notice and therefore wants to change. Its the anti cav units that are too weak compared to swords.

Yes the "click behind enemy unit" thing is something to fix.

The morale system...hmm yes it could need a few changes. We dont want units to run out of nowhere and we dont want units to be surrounded by enemy units and still fight. But again..thing doesst improve when your spears are losing badly with silly casualty rates against swords from the front AND then the flank is rushed by loads of enemy units..


CBR

[spacecadet]

Kocmoc

Just out of interest , have you been seeing the same thing happen in high or late era games at 15k or lower? Like ive said before, +15k mistakes go unpunished with big 100 man units being far too tough to break - even with skilled play. However, so far 15k and below this has not been the case with games, especially the ones ive had with top players, being far more memorable than MTW and as close to the enjoyment i had with STW as id hope for.

Are other people not enjoying VI? Just about everyone ive played so far has seemed to enjoy it as much as me......... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

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

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Cheetah]

Quote[/b] (CBR @ May 15 2003,19:10)]Pffff Cheetah, remember I also did it without billmen and I used cmaa instead http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

CBR

Hm, yes I remember, but I made lots of mistakes in that battle, moreover, you were deployed in your "fortress" formation, so it does not count http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

BTW, I think that most of us agree that spears are too weak.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Cheetah @ May 16 2003,04:17)]BTW, I think that most of us agree that spears are too weak.
Yes but I see several people who talks about spears should be better versus cav...thats not the problem.

Maybe its just a matter of the glass is half-empty or half-full...

But all the talk about tactics, skill and matching enemy units is pretty much meaningless as long as we have swords like we have right now.

CBR

[Dionysus9]

Yuuki,

I was trying to describe the effect an oblong zone would have on the flanking arc...it would extend the frontal area covered by the arc. I think that would be a good addition.

Sko,

Militia sgts. are unique, but so are joms vikings. Viking Karls are close in stats to Militia sgt and cost the same. Viking Landsmen, also, are close to Militia Sgts. Saxon Huscarles are expensive, but they can eat Militia Sgts. for breakfast. I'm more worried about the Mounted Sgts., but even they have counters. I think its too early to say any one faction rules over the others, although it seems Yuuki disagrees with me. I'd challenge him to beat me w/ Mercians too.

*moons Mercia*

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Puzz3D]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ May 15 2003,08:41)]If you are within a 90 degree arc of the front of an enemy unit, you can be getting an additional penalty from being flanked if you are not facing that unit.
I said this, but it's wrong. The orientation of the flanking unit doesn't matter except that, if it's not facing the enemy unit, it is itself flanked. So, two units will be flanking each other if they are each presenting their flanks to one another.


I'd like somebody from the "I want smaller morale circles" to say just what size circle they are talking about. I'm not against smaller morale circles for the sake of making the map seem larger, but you have to take into consideration the ramp up of the outnumbered penalty. If that stays at -12 for outnumbered 10:1, you will increase the tendency of a local concentration of force routing units. I can imaging some bizarre things being done with multiple units and oblong shaped morale zones to effect routs.

I agree with CBR's point that you have a very strong paper with the swords vs spears, but substantially weaker rock and scissors in the spears vs cav and cav vs swords matchups. That's why I suggested a drop in price on spears in VI, but it didn't happen. That suggestion doesn't address the issue of cav vs swords. That's another reason I spend some florins on cav so that they can beat the usual sword units that players bring except for those 100 man Byz inf.

I also agree that the variable unit sizes are tricky to balance. Tosa and I spent a lot of time rebalancing Mongol heavy cav in WE/MI for 45 man unit size. That's a 25% reduction from the original 60 men, but we found you had to increase the combat stat by something more than 25% to compensate for it. I think it's due to the ability to get multiple attacks when you outnumber a unit.

Raising the morale in VI shifts it away from a positional (maneuver) game toward an attrition (fighting) game. The people who played MTW v1.1 at 25k were doing just that. I don't understand the people who are saying the game is too much a power game and then also saying that units rout too easily. You can't have it both ways.

It sounds like some players want a morale system that has a strong effect, but has no range. With a system like that you could move any unit wherever you wanted and it wouldn't rout, but as soon as it was hit from behind or mabye from the flank it would rout instantly. A system like that is even more simplistic than what we have now.

Those people who want to win viking games with primarily ranged fire are not going to like VI. The most kills I've gotten with a standard archer's bow is 55, and the average I get is more like 30 - 40 kills. The combo units are very powerful when upgraded, so I think muslim factions will benefit from the somewhat better archery. With the arbs gone from high era, xbows and archers work pretty nicely when used together.

The battles are ultimately determined by the hth fighting. You have to bring good hth units, and I think getting favorable unit matchups does make a difference. At least it makes a difference in my games. That may be because I bringing an army that matches my opponents hth combat power. My line can fight long enough for me to carry out flanking maneuvers or for my ally to flank if there is an opportunity.

Elms comment on me breaking through the line in that battle I described sounds like some criticism of the tactic. I don't see anything wrong with it. The enemy line was 2 armies wide and stretched unbroken from the edge of the map. There wasn't any other way to win that except break through the line and flank. The amazing thing is that the line held long enough for that to happen. I think it was at about 4 minutes of fighting before the breakthrough occured. The enemy commander was trying to do the same thing, but I was able to hit a weakened v3 chiv maa with my gen. I was playing the Russian faction and had no sword units. The two enemy armies were power armies with lots of v3 chiv maa, v4 mil sgt, some v3 bills and lots of the best cav. I think Elm and I want different things out of the game. I detested those handgunners, and never used them. And that's right Elm, it's because they fall outside the rock, paper, scissors paradigm.

Dion,

Well I can beat all cav but it doesn't help the 95% of players who can't. For me, viking era is unbalanced enough that I don't have any desire to continue playing it. I can see where the Picts could beat the Mercians if they can avoid hth engagement. However, most of the viking factions are just weak subsets of the Mercians. The SP viking campaign seems fine because there are other factors which affect the balance, but it's so complicated that you can't tell anyway.


Kocmoc,

I don't know what we are disagreeing about that you're so upset about. Florin level? Can't I play at the florin level I want? Go ahead and play at 10k, 5k or even 1k. I don't care.

[tgi01]

To begin with I will not use Quotes becouse the post will be too large and the people here dont need an ego boost anyway http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif


1. Outnumber penalty - my main issue with this is that it makes sacrificing units very difficult , but it still can be done as long as one uses the terrain and uses at least 2 units for the protected flanks morale +.

2. I also have the feeling that allied units does not improve morale, making mixed armies less useful than they should be ...

3. Pavs and other heavily armoured missile units are too difficult to kill H2H , their defending is unrealistic anyway ( if someone on a large horse with a large lance is coming at you , and you only got 1 dumb unloaded arbalest , then you drop that damn shield and run like hell, and let your crazy general who told you to hold position do the holding himself.... ) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif


4. Well lately I usually left when I ended up in those Byz / Lancer battles .... I dont mind strong factions but let some variation in and dont pick the same faction more than once on the same side ...( and max 2 in smaller battles maybe ... yeah I know Im repeating myself here )


5. I rank manouvering skills much higher than morale effect skills , seeing the whole battlefield and doing things in several places at the same time is more difficult than to use morale effects, which might come down to unit picking anyway , like the large - morale from loosing badly etc...



TGI http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[Div Hunter]

My only quip is NOONE IS ONLINE http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

Well to be more accurate there were 2 people including me about 15 mins ago http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

Damn you all get VI I say And get online

[Crandaeolon]

*Tries to stuff worms back into the can* http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Lots of different opinions. I gotta agree with CBR that the hand-to-hand unit balance could be better, but still, I don't see that as much of a problem. Just take a look at Elmo's answer, he hasn't noticed it either. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

IMO cavalry should get a combat bonus against short-hafted weapons like swords and axes. Something quite minor, perhaps +1 to attack. That would make cavalry a bit better against missile units and swordsmen, and consequently spears more important.

As I understand it, historically sword- and axe-wielding infantry was quite dominant early on, but eventually made way to polearms and pikemen. (Source (tertiary): http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/SRM/arms1.htm I wonder if this guy is credible at all? Could some history buff comment on it?) The swords still supposedly remained a sizable part of the medieval arsenal.

The game has an odd way of representing the different unit types. The stats reflect not only the different weapons and armour, but also the "training" and social status of the unit. The system isn't consistent, and that causes some problems. I think it's meant that the "Peasant" unit consists of just a peasant levy with rags and farm implements as weapons. Units such as "Spearmen" probably represent a levy that was given additional equipment like spears and shields, maybe some cheap armour. The "Man-at-Arms" units are supposedly trained soldiers in a standing army.

Perhaps the more advanced spear units should have morale and combat stats benefits from training equivalent to the other "professional" units like men-at-arms.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]The other problem with cavalry is that the click-behind charge works too well. I dont know whether it can be disbaled or not, but it would be good. If you attack the enemy cavalry unit with a click on charge, but the enemy general attacks with a click behind charge, you can lose half of your unit on the impact, this will give the unit a huge morale penalty, which in turn will rout it immediately.

And what's this, then? I thought that if you double-click behind an enemy unit, your unit does _not_ get a charge bonus... so what gives? Is it a bug? Or could it be just the impetuous charge effect?

[baz]

does it get the charge bonus or not, im not sure http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[tootee]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 16 2003,16:07)]And what's this, then? I thought that if you double-click behind an enemy unit, your unit does _not_ get a charge bonus... so what gives? Is it a bug? Or could it be just the impetuous charge effect?
It seems that for horses, they still receive charge bonus whenever they run into anything. Why clicking on the enemy is not as effective as having the cav just moving through the enemy is because for the 1st situation the cav will converge and attack at the centre of the enemy, whereas if the cav is running through, esp in single or two rows, you can get horses running beyond the enemy, who then get 'wrapped-around' after the centre engaged, and get to enjoy flank/rear bonus.

Also I wonder why cav has the ability to change from moving to attacking state automatically upon contact with enemy, but foot troops will still be in walking state.

[Crandaeolon]

Elmo, CBR doesn't mean that there are any specific "problem" units, just that the sword vs spear balance is messed up. I agree... somewhat. IMO the different weapon lenghts should be better modeled. Perhaps increasing (even doubling?) rank bonuses could help? Now it just feels that an ordered formation for the spears makes little difference.

And as I said before, cavalry should perhaps get a bonus vs infantry with short weapons, along the lines of +1 or +2 to attack. (This could be implemented by a negative bonus against cavalry, just like CBR has done in MPwars.)

tootee, I've noticed that charging "through" a unit to attack another unit behind it works with infantry too. I never noticed that just doubleclicking behind a unit would work, and knights tend to charge impetuously anyway... perhaps it's just a question of optimal charging distance to get that wrap-around effect?

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 16 2003,14:06)]*Tries to stuff worms back into the can* http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
What Elmo notices is not up to me to judge..from what I can read and understand Elmo is interested in some aspects of the game that doesnt mean much to me, so most likely he will not agree with my view. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif


At equal valour cav works nicely against swords so we are back to the (too many) upgrades that screw the balance.

Spears and to a certain degree axes (The Danish Axe being a well known and feared weapon) was the dominant infantry weapons in the earlier times. Shorter swords and falchions were secondary weapons weapons if they had the money for it.

I have been whining about how unitscosts is calculated for a long time now http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif Missile units being way too expensive because a special modifier (depending on type of missile) is added to the base cost:

longbows 250
shortbows 200
crossbows 135
arbalest 205
cav archer 170

Now since 1.1 that cost is not included when buying upgrades but these upgrades only really gives the unit better h2h ability.

Polearms and spears/pikes are more expensive because they have bonuses versus cav, armour piercing and rank bonuses.

And in the general the cost differences between low and high quality units is too high.

So if we want a battle where we have some good cav and other elite units (plus the expensive missile units) we have to play with a "high" amount of florins. We really dont like the low morale...at least for lower quality troops so we have play with an ever higher amount of florins just to buy upgrades.

Maybe difficult to explain..but look at the numbers then. In 15k game we see foot with a lot more upgrades compared to cav. Even if we played at 5k its difficult to justify the money spent on missile units. I can buy one pav arb unit for the same cost as a chiv sergeant..thats 60 v 100 men who has same morale and armour. Or I could do even better and just buy some cmaa as thats less than the pav cost.

Some months back we tried doing some "valour 3" games. All units had to have V3 only. Hell it was not perfect or anything but spears were at least more important because swords would get killed a lot quicker and all units had a general increase in morale.

Now some people likes to be able to buy many upgrades so they tweak the units and even surprise their enemies.. I prefer it with only a few upgrades available and IMO its the best for balance. But as long as there is something basically wrong with unitcosts it just cant be balanced.

CBR

[CBR]

Yes its swords in general.

We really have 3 types of melee foot:

Swords: The ultimate fighting soldier who is the best in fighting 1v1 against other foot. Just not very good against cav and need the protection from spears and/or polearms.

Polearms: Great at killing cav and second best in 1v1 versus other foot.

Spears/pikes: Great at stopping cav and have rank bonuses that makes it a good unit from the front as long as it can keep enemy at front and keep the formation.

The problem is the swords and especially upgraded swords. Both spears and polearms are more expensive so its cheaper to get killingpower when upgrading swords.

Highly upgraded swords are not that bad against cav..at least a lot better compared to equal valour. And having loads of cav means you can protect the swords.

One of the most silly armies is the sword/cav combo. You have lots of cav so no problems there and with your swords you can kill enemy spears easily.

The more spears you have the more weak your army really is. Thats really the same with polearms although its not as bad as spears.

No question that part of the heated debate about all cav armies was because Lancers was included. They have more power per cost compared to chiv knights and as long as we play with high florins its not a problem to get lots of Lancers without making any compromises with the rest of your army.

But right now you only buy spears for protection against cav and you really only want as few as possible.

From a historical viewpoint (yes I know many dont care about that) that is plain wrong. Spears were a common troop type and really formed the core of your army in the early middle ages. When we go later years we start seing halberds and in end pikes as a dominant weapon. Spears were simply not that weak as they are in MTW and swords is simply too strong.

And as I said earlier its the cost that is the main problem.

CBR

[Paolai]

CBR,
are you talking about MTW or VI?

[Dionysus9]

Yuuki,

Modified Morale Circles:

You raise a good point-- that the morale circle effect is a step effect and not a gradient effect. First thing I'd like to see is a change to a gradient effect. But since we wont get that type of relatively major change out of CA, I think we have to talk about modifying what we already have.

Since it appears to be at least a 180 degree flanking arc, and that two units can flank eachother simultaneously, I think something should be done. How can 2 units flank eachother simultaneously when they arent even facing eachother? It seems that the devs are the ones confusing flanking arcs and morale zones. Yes, you should be worried that an enemy unit is close enough to you that it could hit your flank, but if it is otherwise occupied facing down another unit you shouldn't receive a flanking penalty (only the proximity morale penalty).

So what I'd like to see is a 90 degree flanking arc in front, with an oblong morale circle. Lets say keep the circle 1.8 in front, make the sides .8 and make the back of the oblong .4 or something.

Being directly behind an enemy unit should not cause panic, especially if the enemy unit is otherwise occupied (for example, enemy spears who have to face allied cav in front of them). As it stands now, if I sneak a unit behind those enemy spears I'm going to get hit with a penalty when I am 1.8 tiles behind an enemy unit that has more to worry about than spinning to face me. Of course, under the present system, he is hit with my flanking penalty (and because I am direcly behind him, I am not)...but I think the effect of facing should be magnified with respect to morale zones.

These types of changes would open the map up and make facing more important to boot. They would allow more complex tactical puzzles in the endgame where you do have time to micromanage facing.

Anyway, I dont expect CA to enact any of this, so its mostly just more of my hot air.

Mercians:

I've never seen anyone play Mercia and take more than 4 cav, and I play Viking era whenever I can. In any case, we could easily mod the price of mtd. sgts or even the stats to bring them into line with other factions. Mercians dont have Saxon Huscarles. Their only real shock unit is Milita Sgts, which are ok, but not the best. If you keep Mercian cav to 4 max (which all honorable players do), then there isnt much of a problem--if any. Its not like Viking era is much less balanced than 1.1. I think its a shame to abandon this potentially rich era just because, at first glance, you see something you dont like.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Paolai @ May 16 2003,17:39)]CBR,
are you talking about MTW or VI?
MTW 2.0 but as I only have stats for VI and not played it online I could be mistaken. But I dont see any changes in stats or costs to make me think otherwise. Only the +2 morale...but the effect of that depends on how much money people play with.

I dont have a clue when it comes to Viking era http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

CBR

[Crandaeolon]

Yup CBR, the costs are a problem. Also the unlimited unit availability is one. The haphazard assigning of training- or competence-related stats is still one. All these combine to make balancing a very difficult task.

As I understand it, historically the sword was a much more expensive weapon than the spear. Spears were the weapons of levies rather than men-at-arms; those levies were potentially greater in number than the "professional" or wealthy warriors, but the wealthy and the nobility who could afford swords were often trained from childhood and were thus more proficient on the battlefield. The masses of spearmen probably weren't used because of any remarkable combat effectiveness, but merely because they were _available_. And cheap.

Knights weren't cost-effective at all, one knight did probably require the output of a small community to support him, but it mattered little. Being a knight was a matter of status rather than any conscious selection of a monarch: "Knights are good Let's build more of them" ...not. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Let's consider Chiv Sarges and CMAA. Both units are supposed to be "professional" soldiers.

One Chivalric Sergeant costs 3 florins to recruit and .62 florins to support. He has a spear, a shield and is clad in mail armour.

One CMAA costs 4.17 florins to recruit and .87 florins to support. He has a sword, a shield and wears a transitional mail ("half-plate").

We could assume that professional soldiers bring their own equipment to the battlefield, but there's probably still some disparity in the price. Support is also not a factor in MP; after a few years of service, the costs per man would be considerably different. The morale is odd too... why the huge difference? And why are Chiv Sarges lower morale than Feudal Sarges? And while I'm at it, the entire "Sergeant" class of soldiers sounds a bit weird to my ear...

Gah.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 16 2003,16:11)]And as I said before, cavalry should perhaps get a bonus vs infantry with short weapons, along the lines of +1 or +2 to attack. (This could be implemented by a negative bonus against cavalry, just like CBR has done in MPwars.)
Yes I tried the -1 attack/defense in missile units. They are already not good in melee v foot but I saw missile units as being particular weak against a cav charge. Only real melee infantry gets 0/0 (swords/handaxes) or the usual spear bonuses..and considering a bit for heavy 2 handed axes too.

CBR

[Paolai]

CBR,
The things are different, at least it is my opinion. Play some online VI games, and I am sure that you will think in a different way

[Kocmoc]

stupid me i always used spears in my army

i see 1 big prob, some play jsut a diff style, and a few play other...so it always depens.

some speak about probs wich helps them to improve theyr own gameplay, other speak about the whole game... i dont care about units at all, imo u should win if u use a standart army in a very skilled way. This dont happen right now, i see very often player do huge mistakes but still can win on such a point.

the current VI is nice (not best but nice http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ) its just too much moral and too much florin in all the games. u near never see some nice routs, unit hold forever....

now some will come ...."...but u said the cav was strong and could rout units too fast..." ..... yup i said this and it was true, CBR´s test means nothing use a standart army wich u field in ur most games and than try it if u dont know there is a allcav coming, this would be a real-live test.
so the cav was strong and now its less, well but as we still play with 15k each player, we didnt need the +2 moral.

my suggestion for next patches and games are, no upgrades at all, it just false the real unit stats.
start with valour 2 and allow a + or - valourupgrade thats all, im sure its much more easy to balance such a system as to think about the whole time, howu can balance all this stereoi units with v4 and v3, we never will balance this.

what alaways happens? its the same all the time the units wich are used most get changed
so new units come and it change a bit. u can easy balance a system where no weapon and armour upgrades are allowed and u can just higher or lower 1 valour.

i red posts about "tactics" where player want that theyr mainpart hold so long that he can move his cav behind his enemy lines.... thats a point or not? if this is a reason why some stats get changed i laugh my ass off

if u buy a shock unit, this uit should shock, if u buy a strong cav this unit should do his job as well, thats clear for us all i think.

just my few coins


koc

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]use a standart army wich u field in ur most games and than try it if u dont know there is a allcav coming, this would be a real-live test.

Yeah, that's right. It's one thing to be prepared for the all-cav in a nice box formation which took 5+ minutes to deploy, and quite another to be caught pants down in a normal battle line when there's a steppeful of doom galloping your way. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Some time ago I practiced to make a good box formation on the fly, it was really difficult to get the units just right in a hurry. The box needs to be micromanaged too so that the units don't leave their position or turn around when attacked and such... kinda stressful to do when there's cavalry all around ya... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I am pretty fast at it now, but just selecting all units and doubleclicking behind enemy lines is much easier than defending against it. And that's why people complain.

[Crandaeolon]

I don't like the idea of making morale circles too dependant on unit facing. Just modifying the current system with a gradient effect and removing oddities like threatening a unit's flank even if there's another unit in between should be enough. I'd like to see real numbers of men to have an effect too, modified by troop quality.

[Puzz3D]

Remember MTW v1.0? Swords couldn't beat spears. Cav couldn't beat spears or swords. At 10k I was fielding eight v3 order foot and Italian inf. I don't remember anyone using halberdier units. By the end of Sept, players were fielding practically all spear armies and rushing. SP campaign players were asking for better swords vs spears and better cav vs spears in a couple of long threads using many historical battles as examples. In v1.1, swords were made better vs spears with a +1 attack bonus when fighting them. Cav was made better vs spears by giving a chance of pushing back the spear. Cav was also made better overall by increasing the morale penalty they give a unit when they charge and reducing their fatigue. In MP, the mounted knights also got a 25% cost reduction because everyone was using pumped alan mercs which got a price increase. The cost increase on the spears seemed reasonable as well, but it interacts with the increased cost of valor upgrade. At 15k in v1.1 you can't really bring better than v2 Order Foot while in 10k v1.0 you could afford v3 order foot, and you were well advised to spend the florins on the spear since it was amoung the stronger foot units. The Swiss armored pikemen were also good, and all factions had them. I think we got a better rock, paper, scissors in v1.1, but it's still out of whack. As far as I know, nothing was done in v2.0 which would affect the outcome of swords vs spears, but mounted knights did get a small price increase. I think a rollback of spear prices to v1.0 would have done more by making spears better vs cav and swords. If you let the morale increase do its work, at least the spears will stand and fight longer in v2.0 which is important for a defensive unit.


Elm,

I did miss your following sentence. It's not good trying to post at 2AM. I have seen both AMP and Cheetah use an effective flanking technique in v1.1 which consists of using about 4 inf units to force an opponent's flank while simultaneously attack the front. The inf units are a mix of anti-cav and sword types so that cav can't stop the move. The timing is critical because the flankers have to hit the back of the enemy line before their own line breaks. There might be a chance to rout those flankers with cav when they turn in, but not if the attacker has provided some cav to cover them. You can also make effective flank attacks with multiple cav units. I do hit the flank of emeny armies with single high morale cav, and they do rout after fighting for a short time, but they always rally. I then look at what damage I did vs how many cav I lost and decide if the move was worth it. Sometimes it is and sometimes it's not. Attacking with a lone inf unit is pretty much out of the question even if it's high morale because enemy cav will swoop down, flank and rout it pretty quickly. The cav can then pursue for a while, and you won't have much left even if the unit rallies. I'm still not sure if this is what you're asking to be able to do. That is attack large formations with single units.


Crand,

There is something going on with the click behind, and it looks to me like it's outside the combat cycle. My theory is that there is a combat advantage threshold above which your unit has a high probability of flattening an enemy man without loosing any momentum. Charge, melee and flanking combat parameters might be adding up high enough to exceed this threshold when compared to the enemy unit's defensive value. In a combat cycle, an enemy man always gets his turn to strike even if he was killed in that cycle. For that to happen, the cav has to slow down, even if all the momentum isn't lost, because the animation of the enemy making his strike takes time. It could be that the animation is simply being skipped, but you never see cav killed when flattening men this way. This running down of enemies, usually seen when fast moving cav runs through a unit from the side or rear, doesn't seem to slow down the cav at all, and they are not flagged as "attacking". Since charge bonus is tied to momentum, they could very well be getting the charge bonus or some portion of it, but I don't know. I'd like to think the unit doesn't get it's charge unless you issue the attack order, and then there would be some downside to using the run through if it didn't work. I believe actual attack speed is equivalent to marching very quickly. When you run down a slope, you'll be moving at that top speed, but you see the effect on flat ground as well. Clicking or double clicking on an enemy unit may force a combat cycle upon first contact, and that may be why you never see the kind of flattening of men that you sometimes get with a run through. I think some players have been using this effect for quite a while, but I didn't become aware of it until recently by accident, and by then it was too late to include it in suggestions for adjustments in Viking Invasion. I think it's unlike it would have been changed anyway.

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]I think some players have been using this effect for quite a while, but I didn't become aware of it until recently by accident, and by then it was too late to include it in suggestions for adjustments in Viking Invasion. I think it's unlike it would have been changed anyway.

Yeah, I've seen some vets use it in battle. With infantry, too. Another nasty little trick. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[Alrowan]

well i tihnk 15k is fine, after playing some Viking era games, units routing is held off a little longer, and it ads to the blaance, letting those trrops that usually rout others on impact a chance to dies a little, or even have the tables turned (gallowglasses for example)

15k is still perfect

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ May 16 2003,20:09)]OOOOH I just read the tone of my last post to CBR. Don't take it to be as harsh as I made it sound. ELMO TAKES SOME MORE MEDICATION Ah much better
Lol no worries m8 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Yes I havent tried it online yet. I have tried 25k battles and I guess that gives enough upgrades to make it feel like a VI 15k game. And I did like v3 spears..at least not as weak as in 15k games. So maybe its better in VI

Its just some of the basics in the relations betweeen the units that I still find wrong and hurting the game. I'm just so arrogant to think I dont need to play VI to judge it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif...hm I better take my medication too.

CBR

[Skomatth]

Quote[/b] ]Play it first to find out how the +2 morale added to the base of units also effects their costs. I think you will find it does not have the effect that you may think it does. VI is much better than MTW as far as balancing of units (to my satisfaction)

HUH????

Maybe I miss understand you but the +2 morale is really a lowering of the rout point and the morale doesnt affect the cost at all...

I also find that 15k may be fine for late games and possibly VI but that 15k allows more upgrades than it used to inn 1.1 because effective pavs now cost less, so that money can go back to increasing the melee... I'd have to experiment with other costs but I wouldnt mind a little lower florin level...

Bach- As far as I know (;)) huscarls are weaker at a optimum florin expenditure (ooo big words:eek:) Anyway I think unique units SHOULDNT be ones with superior stats, they should be for special uses, like turk hybrid units. So basically I think everyone or no one should have militia sars. Also, it irks me that armoured spears have such poo morale. From what I've seen so far they can be used very well as defensive units b.c. their stats, but their morale is practically 1/2 that of all other units I'd use.

EDIT; SHOULDNT

[Puzz3D]

Kocmoc,

Thanks for your post. I'm having trouble understanding it, but here is one thing. You say players can make big mistakes and still win. I've never seen that in 1000 MTW battles. Players who make big mistakes against me loose. Sometime I can recover and win when I make a big mistake, but that's because my opponent didn't punish me for my mistake. The chance was there, and he didn't take it. Sometimes I see a mistake and don't punish it, but that's because I have a battle strategy and don't want to deviate from it.

It sounds to me like you're going into battle with less total combat power than your opponent. You can do that and still win up to a point. Beyond that point, you can't overcome the disadvantage because sooner or later you have to engage in hth. Archers can only do so much with their bows even if used perfectly. The game comes back to total combat power if you play at a morale level where units actually stand and fight. We say that low morale games are maneuver games, but what really happens is players just concentrate their units in a tighter formation and protect their flanks with terrain features and map edges, and all the dancing around maneuvers get you nowhere in 1v1. Low morale team games are straight ahead fast doubleteam rush with one cav behind the enemy and you win. Higher morale games are more difficult to win in the sense that it takes longer. You don't cause a complete collapse by killing 2 or 3 enemy units or getting a couple of cav behind the enemy army, but flanking is still important. It just that you will have to defeat more individual units before you win. You can also loosen up your formation, and use units more independently. I don't think low, medium or high morale are better or worse ways to play. They are just different ways to play.

[ElmarkOFear]

..

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 16 2003,18:26)]The masses of spearmen probably weren't used because of any remarkable combat effectiveness, but merely because they were _available_. And cheap.
Spearmen were not bad at all. Yes it depends on training and armour too but a dense shieldwall is not a bad formation. When things turned nasty and close swords were nice as a backup weapon.

Knight cost effective well.. Having a class of men dedicated to war and equipped with the best and very mobile is not bad. A king couldnt expect his peasant levies to stay in the army for months and depending on logistics and wealth of local region you cant have huge armies in one group for too long anyway. In 14th-15th century men at arms were used dismounted a lot too so you had both the best cav and the best foot in just one troop type.

As times changed and Kings had more power and more money we see more professionel standing armies of foot troops.

Yes chiv sergeants should really have more morale..its weird.

And it is a real term from back then..nothing weird in that :-)

http://www.hemyockcastle.co.uk/feudal-ps.htm#s Too lazy to explain more heh

CBR

[Kocmoc]

as its very late alreaedy jsut some short things, if we go and accept the current system (i agree with ur point yuuki)
than we need to change the fatique

units become too fast tired, sometimes i walk over t my enemy move some of my cavs and they are already tired, if i have to go uphill than y units are tired and its over already. so fatique yes, but not that fast.

rout in all directions well thats a point we didnt spoke a long time now, so let me bring it again http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
this is a game not a historical game, so i dont care what was on the real battlefields. actual if u didrout ur enemy u dont can see if ur unit just chase the enemy down or if the unit realy fight. so i suggest a new symbol---> chasesymbol. so u had at least the info that this unit isnt fighting if i order a unit to attack an other unit, most of times my unit get stuck in an other unit and fight not the unit i did order it.

first this is bad as i dont want it
second, this is imo the mainreason why we see so often that units just walk in a direction and cause a massiv moralsircle on many other units.
i just know in stw it did work, we need it back
my idea here is, if someone move his units in that way, they should be dissorganised, if this dissorgaised (open formation) units wouldnt cause moralsircles ........think about.

maybe the all direction rout is nice but the 1 way rout would clear it much more and we would see a better tactical gameplay, so often cavs just walk trougth units and make them rout....

so i come to the next point
Colours 1v1 ok 2v2, depends on the colours, can be ok
3v3 and 4v4 its jsut colour chaos, i nearly never could control more than 70% of my units, as i couldnt check all units...
i suggest clear colours like we had in STW, it was much better.

Flags clearly, we need bigger flags, some colours like black, dont allow u to see the valour, dont tell me thats realistic, u can easy see it with red....


all what i see a many little problems wich open some loopwholes wich we all are using but this makes the gamepay worse, as its not exactly there happen many things on the battlefield, wich we cant explain.


facing if i turn my unit and walk back to build a trap or as i want to move my right side back, than this units dont face the enemy, this unit should get punushed for this.

now i got bed


im sorry for my english, i understand that its sometiems hard to see all my points. jsut ask and i try to explain it better.



PS: my suggestion about the laddersystem with just +1 or -1 valour and no upgrades, with a baseflorin amount. is the only chance we have to balance it on a long time, thats the only way to control it. u still cna play friendly the way u like. but as the most guys want in the top 10 or top100.....they will play this system with this ruls, this would solve the most problems alone.

again, imo 10k with the current +2 moral are fine, ur units still hold a long time, but ur untis dont stay forever if u circled them


koc

[Crandaeolon]

Ah yes CBR, you're right about the Sergeant. I mixed it up with some other term that felt odd... been a while since those history lessons http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif.

I read the following article on army organization and cohesion in medieval Europe to refresh my memory. Longish and not too recent (1993), I still found it decent reading.

http://www.deremilitari.org/showalter.htm

The main online resources page should provide reading for quite some time. I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

http://www.deremilitari.org/resources.htm

Erm, err... unless my memory is acting up again, a "man-at-arms" is then supposed to be a type of soldier who owns land in exchange for military service. (Owns land, which equals income, which equals wealth. Thus a notch above the Sergeant.) Right?

Edit: And I surely didn't mean to say that knights would have been weak on the battlefield Though, some other "weapons systems" like crossbowmen and pike formations did relegate the knight from his position as the all-purpose weapon to being the "tank" of medieval battlefields; something that was most effective when supported and complemented by other weapons systems.

But, now I'm getting just a bit sidetracked. Oops. Sorry. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[CBR]

Men-at-arms is a term that really ended up meaning all the heavy armoured and mounted men. Knights, esquires..even just wealthy men and mercenaries were called men-at-arms. Name was more function than social class.

CBR

[Crandaeolon]

Well, I managed to deduce that as historians use the term almost interchangeably with "knight"... but in the game, the term is used to specifically mean armoured professional infantry with swords, a bit too narrow definition IMO.

Edit: Let's end this before we scare everyone else away? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Puzz3D]

Kocmoc,

I agree with all your points. I would even go further and suggest that really serious games be played with equal valor units. You'd have to try it at v1 and v2 to see which you thought played better. I think v1 might be good. You can give sufficient florins to allow some weapon and armor upgrades, but not too many. You could refine this system to improve or reduce certain unit classes. For instance, you could say spears and pikes are to be used at +1v above the other unit types. A problem here is that 1 valor point makes a big change in a unit's performance, so it might be too much improvement.

Routing in all directions is not a big problem for me because I tend to keep the enemy in front of me, so, if they rout, they run away from me and not through my units. It the routers run through your units you will take losses, and possibly rout which can rout more of your units. I think the morale circle disappears when the units is routing, but it will come back as soon as the unit rallies. That is how it worked in STW, and I think it's the same in MTW. If an enemy unit rallies behind you, it can cause you troubles. It's an important decision whether to chase an enemy unit or not.

If you turn your back on the enemy, you do get the flanking penalty, but it's a relatively small -2 morale. It will stay at -2 even if you turn around and face the enemy. You have to bring a friendly unit near to kick it back up +2 morale.

[Cheetah]

Cranda, very nice link http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Dionysus9]

Koc,

Chaos routing is very important, in my opinion, and I would be very disappointed if we went back to the "ordered" routing of STW. Ordered routing made it very easy to win the game quickly, just turn one flank of the enemy and you win because they all run off in the same direction and all you have to do is follow. Ordered routing is not realistic, it looks wierd, and I think it decreases the amount of tactical play. The only good thing about it was that you play games faster.

This game should not be a slave to realism, but units routing in all directions is an inherent part of battlefield tactics. Many US Civil War battles had troops running every which way, with cavalry chasing them (sometimes too far&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif, and generals trying to make sense of the mess. Thats just war. The fog of war. I love it

What you say about a chasing icon is genius I never thought of that, but it would be very nice to have. It would be great to look at the bottom of my screen and know which units were off chasing routers. I could then call them back to the main line.

Sko,

Yeah armored spears are poo-- i dont use them. I haven't run the #'s on the militia sgts. vs. VikingKarls (with a K, not Huscarles), is a very close match.
Milita Sgt. Cost 150 Charge:4 Melee:2 Def: 3 Morale:0
Viking Karl. Cost 150 Charge:3 Melee:3 Def: 1 Morale:2

Militia Sgt. has armor piercing and Karls dont. Low Defense on the Karls is a problem but made up for with higher morale and higher melee.

Now Mounted Sgts are different problem, but I think Pict cav are close enuf to tango:
Mtd. Sgt. Cost:175 Charge: 8 Melee: 2 Def: 2 Morale:0
Pict. Cav. Cost: 150 Charge:4 Melee:2 Def:0 Morale: 2

If Mtd Sgts. were increased to 200 and Militia Sgt. to 185 or so, I think that would be best balance. But as it is, we are close enuff for me, at 10k at least.

[Crandaeolon]

The Karls have an armour rating of 3, and I think it gives +1 attack to the Militia Sarges ((3-1)/2=1), so in the Sarges vs Karls matchup the numbers would be:

Milita Sgt. Cost 150 Charge:4 Melee:2+1 Def: 3 Morale:0
Viking Karl. Cost 150 Charge:3 Melee:3 Def: 1 Morale:2

The +2 morale advantage for Karls translates to roughly 1 combat point, right Yuuki? When AP and morale are both considered, the Sgts still lead by one. The advantage from the better charge is rather small.

The difference between Mounted sarges and Pict cav is 2 combat points, if we consider a +4 advantage in Charge to be equal to a +2 advantage in morale.

Gah math gah... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Kocmoc]

i mentioned this already in an other post.

there are nice spears out wich kill very good cav. but most of time they expensiv, 100 men and got bad moral. so the most dont buy spears...
its about the price imo, we need spears wich are pretty cheap and kill cav in a shorter time as right now, all spears are too expensiv to be interesting. we need a cheap unit wich is able to kill a expensiv cav in a short time.

we need a cav to counter cav, a cav wich is able to eat any other cav but is not able to win vs h2h units.

koc

[tgi01]

Hey here is this long pointy stick and your job is to catch that guy on that horse with it :

Would it raise your morale ???? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

But seriously strong spears would benefit passive defensive players too much and it would kill the game in the long run ...

TGI

[Magyar Khan]

i like the way units rout to all sides, i have more problems if fully disorganised units cause morale bonusses, perhaps more than organised units just by the fact disorganised (one thin line included) have a bigger range (read influence). but i am not sure on this.

i dont like the colourscheme of the factions. perhaps soem find it more realistic if in full chaos u cant control what u want but its a game which tries to simulate war. nothing more. more clear colourschemes would be nice. cant someone MOD this where w ereplace certain files in teh game so its corrected on each own pc who dl teh mod... anyone?

teh chase symbol would be nice like some more functions we can imagine.

i find hills more effective than i could remember. i lost recently some games in 12-15k after marching teh map routing on impact. i am lobbying for totomishaped maps. just littl;e bumps here and there. we dont have currently such maps.

i have played enuf battles in mtw where i lost while my enemy was doing nothing brilliant except for having more staying power in his army. in mtw flanking horsearchers couldnt always compensate teh amount of less combatpower in teh frontranks.

spears are vulnerable in teh game due to low morale, a bit too much. in stw u KNEW what your spears had to do, in mtw u just HOPE u get them to do what u want them to do.

in the end we are stuck in another discussion but i wonder if it would change a thing.

[Skomatth]

I highly doubt any dev is reading this... prove me wrong guys...

[Magyar Khan]

there is a difference between reading, listening, acting processing

(as it ever could be written in dutch http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif)

[Dionysus9]

Quote[/b] (Crandaeolon @ May 17 2003,06:15)]The Karls have an armour rating of 3, and I think it gives +1 attack to the Militia Sarges ((3-1)/2=1), so in the Sarges vs Karls matchup the numbers would be:

Milita Sgt. Cost 150 Charge:4 Melee:2+1 Def: 3 Morale:0
Viking Karl. Cost 150 Charge:3 Melee:3 Def: 1 Morale:2

The +2 morale advantage for Karls translates to roughly 1 combat point, right Yuuki? When AP and morale are both considered, the Sgts still lead by one. The advantage from the better charge is rather small.

The difference between Mounted sarges and Pict cav is 2 combat points, if we consider a +4 advantage in Charge to be equal to a +2 advantage in morale.

Gah math gah... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
Ok, fair enuf. Vkarls are slightly underpowered compared to MilitSgts.

Try this one on for size:

V0 Joms Vikings (Armor Piercing, Samurai)
Cost:725 Charge:6 Att:5 Def:5 Morale: 8

V3 Militia Sergeants (Armor Piercing)
Cost: 737 Charge:4 Att:5 Def:6 Morale: 6

According to your previous conversions, +2 Morale of Joms roughly equals +1 Att. The Joms have +2 charge as well, which roughly equals +.5 combat points.

So we have v0Joms at combined melee stat of roughly 11.5
and we have v3MilitiaSgt at combined melee stat of: 11

Joms are also a Samurai/Elite unit, which has definite benefits.

So, Joms have the advantage over Militia Sergeants.

There. I did it
Muahha.

Anyone know what stats the Mounted Nobles have? I have a hunch that nobles might stand up rather well to Mtd. Sgt. given the proper upgrades.

It looks like Horsemen have the Medium Cav stat...but I haven't been able to figure out the Nobles.

[longjohn2]

I've posted several times on this thread, so I don't see why anyone should assume that I've stopped reading it. I read pretty much all the threads about game mechanics. I'd also point that neither I, nor any of the other CA people who post or this board, are customer support, and certainly I post here on my own time. So I don't necessarily read things straight away, and if I replied to every post, it'd take my whole evening.
I do take on board what's said though. Some of the posts make good points, others I just disagree with, others make points based on false assumptions about how the game works, and some I plain don't understand. In fact though I think most of you know that there have been quite a few changes made to the game as a result of feedback from these forums.

As for what's been discussed here.
I don't really see any case for changing morale circle sizes, or adding complicated rules about facing that'd just introduce more micromanagement. The only place I can see where the system has problems is where two or more armies fight against one. I haven't thought of a good solution for this yet (given that I don't want MP to diverge from SP too far, and SP appears to work fine and I don't want to fix what isn't broken). I am giving it some thought though.
I also think some of the other problems people complain about would be eased by playing at lower florin levels, and perhaps some of you would be happier with this if the double teaming morale issue could be improved.
As it is, I think Kocmoc's suggestion of only allowing limited valour variation is a good one. (as is the idea of a pursuit icon).

I'm interested that you think running units perform better than charging units. Running units do get the same charge bonus as charging units, and should by and large have the same effect. The idea behind this was to allow a bit more control of where a unit hits, or to allow one unit to hit more than one enemy. I can see that you might get some extra wrapping round effects vs isolated narrower units, but otherwise I would expect the combat to go the same way whether a unit charged or ran in. I'd be interested to hear any other observations any of you might have on this.

Hill bonuses are the same in VI as they were in MTW which are the same as they were in STW.

I think some people worry too much about fatigue. My advice would be to walk unless you need to run, and other than that don't worry about it too much. It's applying to the other guy as well. If you do some tests (in fine weather) and see how far a unit can walk before it drops to quite fresh (which gives it no penalty at all), you might find it's further than you thought.

Anyway I keep up the discussion. I do read it even if I don't always reply, and your feedback will get incorporated into future games.

[Cheetah]

Quote[/b] (longjohn2 @ May 17 2003,15:26)]I'm interested that you think running units perform better than charging units. Running units do get the same charge bonus as charging units, and should by and large have the same effect. The idea behind this was to allow a bit more control of where a unit hits, or to allow one unit to hit more than one enemy. I can see that you might get some extra wrapping round effects vs isolated narrower units, but otherwise I would expect the combat to go the same way whether a unit charged or ran in. I'd be interested to hear any other observations any of you might have on this.

Longjohn2, thank you your reply. I really dont know the reason behind the effectivenes of the click behind charge but it works darn well. Lets say you have a heavy cavalry unit chasing down routed arbalasters. If you click on the arbs then the cavs will try to kill the arbs one-by-one. It works fine, but if you double click behind the arbs then the cav unit will flatten out the arbs whitin a split second. Arbs will die by dozens and not just one-by-one. The problem that it works too well if you charge other units head-on especially if that unit is moving. Well, to some extent it might be reasonable versus infantry, since one expects fast moving cavalry to cause serious damage to moving infantry. However, it works vs other cavalry units as well, even if the other cav unit was ordered to make a "click on" charge. Part of the explanation can be what tootee mentioned, that is, using the click on charge will cause the unit to converge on the centre of the enemy unit. As a result those who converge from the flank of the unit will receive the click behind charge facing sideways, which is of course quite suicidal. So part of the solution could be to eliminate this convergent move from the click on charge.

[theKyl]

Zitat[/b] (tgi01 @ Mai 17 2003,11:27)]Hey here is this long pointy stick and your job is to catch that guy on that horse with it
LOL tgi

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

[CBR]

I have seen some strange things regarding fatigue: swiss halbs fatigue quicker than cmaa and they were marching whole way. It was on a large custom map. I have seen it with desert archers too..more fatigue compared to other units. I'll run some tests to see if I can get it again.

I dont mind fatigue for running and combat but I do feel its too much for marching and sometimes you dont get anything out of resting...a bit of rain and it drops down.

I really love the large maps..but trying to outmaneuver your enemy is just causing a lot of fatigue..and its still just marching.


The thing with cav in thin lines. Although no expert and I havent done extensive tests on it yet as I thought about but:

One of the "secrets" as I understand it and seen it several times is the center of your unit. The man holding the banner. If you spread out in a thin line and hit an enemy unit with just part of your line then you can run the enemy down..as long as your center guy is not involved and his way is clear the rest will move with him.

It works wonders when chasing down routers where there is a lot of space between the routing men. If your center man doesnt hit anything they rest will run down most if not all routers they meet.

But it also works head-on. I have seen enemy cav units simply being wiped out..30+ men gone...units didnt even stop to fight.

Afaik it cant be done against spears from the front but I have seen a line of cav coming in from the flank. Only one men hit the front rank of spears and took out 4-5 men without combat..just riding through them and killing them.

If you do the standard clicking on the enemy unit your center guy will lead the attack and, depending on angle, you will in most cases not see this effect.

CBR

[AMPage]

Here are a few of my thoughts.

In stw you had games played at low money and it was possible if you were good enough, you could rout up to 3armies in a chain rout or 1 by 1. Now the stantard amount people play with has increased and you have different unit sizes. The added money helps those units of course fight longer. Some unit sizes 40 and below are units that already fight near death untill the unit is almost gone . So when you buy one of those units for example a heavy cav, you're buying a unit you know almost for sure won't rout without getting some kills. You hardly see a full unit of heavy cav routing off the field, but in stw and stw/mi any unit of 60size could get fully routed or atleast with 80% of the units still left in it. When you're looking at an army infront of you with lots of 100 unit sized units, you know for sure it's gonna be painful. It's also harder and takes longer to try and flank a wall of 100 unit sized units.

Any of you stw vets remmeber the 16 kensai army mixed in with an ally? It was almost impossible to beat once those 16 kensai took out one flank. And how many kills could you get fighting against a kensai army? Well when no one picked kensai or ninja in stw/mi, the armies were all a total of 960. Now you have cav and inf all different unit sizes in mtw, which makes it even more pointless for showing kills/losses, and dosn't help with the balance of things. I'd rather it show something like kill worth, the value of units killed and lost. The only unit in the standard army i wouldn't mind having as a different unit size is the general. And maybe have an extra 6 slots of special units like arty or the small sized units like berserkers.

I don't mind units routing in different directions, it's just gets to messy though, when it's hard to tell what's what and who's who. In stw and stw/mi you had flags on the back of troops making it easier what's going on, except for the mongols in mi. When i played the mtw demo i knew it was gonna be a pain sometimes knowin what's going on, just like fighting mongol vs mongol. It really isn't that bad, just mostly with heavy cav, the white knights and in the VI era, maybe it's just the colors.

I like kocmoc's idea of it showing if the unit is chasing routers on the unit tabs at the bottom of the screen, that would be nice. Also when a unit is on hold postion and you order an attack on a unit, once it routs that unit, it should go back to it's place and not chase the unit. And the samething when ordering multiple commands for a unit to attack a few units, once one of the unit routs it should move on to the next and not chase, or atleast we should have this as an option.

Units that throw spears defiently should have longer range. Units like the kerns and bombers have to be right on top of the units and the only real way to use them is by having them fire in the h2h fight, without getting any clear shots of before that. You can have them get one shot off, but they'll be getting attacked right after that, unless they have backup. I think they should get off atleast a few rounds before contact, it would make them more useful.

I think there shouldn't be any skirimishing for units, or only a little. A unit that is skirimishing should engage in melee after its been chased a little, unless you odered otherwise. Playing sp i have to chase missile units around the map sometimes when i dont have any cav, thank god for the fast forward. The unit should engage in melee or get auto routed, just like when i run my cav away from units in sp they get auto routed.

[Magyar Khan]

LJ about fatique

the game is played mostly by an attacking and defending side, assuming that teh enemy will move a lot too is a thought that will work in about 50% of the games.

still u avoid the slider idea...

[Skomatth]

cbr I think i can explain what your talking about.

swiss halbreds have a different marching speed than cmaa.

So technically they should have walked further in that time and thus be more tired, however they were in a group and thus marching at same speed and distance but the game didnt take that into effect. could that be it?

ps; go to bed

[CBR]

No they have same speed as cmaa.

I ran a some tests a few hours ago and could see a difference..especially if using a column formation. Desert archers were even worse...think it has to be something with them being unformed and individual men running about while the formation walks.

CBR

[Skomatth]

wierd...

[CBR]

Ok I just increased speed of desertarchers and same effect..no differences. Column and loose order formation is not good.

But I even got 2 of my nubian spears to have more fatigue...they were blocked by archers while marching...so stopped and running all the time I guess.

CBR

[Puzz3D]

LongJohn,

Thanks very much for clarifying that running units in MTW get the charge bonus. I think this is changed from STW where running didn't seem to give the charge. The threshold I'm observing is probably just the difference between having enough momentum to get the charge bonus or not. The Stategy Guide states, "When sufficeint momentum is lost, the charge ends and the soldier looses the Charge bonus". The Strategy Guide also says that every man gets his opportunity to fight back. If so, what happened to the combat cycle animation? If the men are not killed on contact, then you see the pushbacks and combat animations as usual.

As CBR says, I think the high kills on contact that we see with a runthrough does have something to do with the unit commander's movement. The men in the unit try to follow the unit commander, and I think try to maintain their momentum if he is moving unimpeeded at high speed towards a point on the map. In contrast, when you give an attack order the unit commander moves to engage an enemy man. The commander will loose momentum fairly quickly after he engages. The unit has essentially reached it's destination, and there is no incentive for the men to reaccelerate up to top speed, as they would try to do in a run through.

I posted my throughts on fatigue before, and they are that the high rate of fatigue makes playing in bad weather or winter very difficult. The reason is that your units keep routing when they are exhausted. Since the fatigue rate is higher in bad weather, the equilibrium point is lower and you cannot recover to something like "quite tired" no matter how long you rest. Routing also causes fatigue because your men run when they rout so it's just a downward spiral to "totally exhausted". I think everyone plays "fine day" in an attempt to minimize the fatigue. I'd love to play winter games, but right now they are simply not enjoyable.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ May 18 2003,14:29)] I'd love to play winter games, but right now they are simply not enjoyable.
And only reason why IMO winter games are interesting is the blizzards. I really could use more fog in normal climate.. hmm did I say "more" hell lets just have some fog

CBR

[Alrowan]

gah.. 13 people in the lobby.. whats wrong

[Kocmoc]

well guys,

it seems for me that we nearly all agree about the most points thats realy good ...long time that this happend.

now let us work on this points and, as we all agree im pretty sure we can get a very good patch. Again, i promise any help and support with any patches or inofficial patches.
im i know that the most "old clans" will support us in this.

AMP this point is absolut true and just 1 more thing in the "bad-control" direction. units wich are on hold shouldnt chase the enemy if they rout.

units wich are fast get charge. thats absolut bullshit, this is 1 of the most bad aspects in the game. it fit the unskilled players. i still think that a unit gets charge and attackbonus not compared to theyr unitsize thats 1 big prob as well, thatswhy a cav with less mens can easy rout 30 men units.

my idea here is the following. make it depends on the unitsize. or just charge, so make charge bigger, like 12 or 13 but the attack dont get added. units should just charge if u click direct on a unit. this is controlling and will reflect ur skill.

Fatique, i cant agree with LJ at this point, i did tests where i moved my army around till 2 baars and than i fought.
on flat maps it will be ok sometimes but if u have some hills this is just bad.

koc

[CBR]

All combat is individual, only spears and pikes get something for "unitsize" because of rank bonus. And I think that works fine.

Foot get extra negative morale modifiers for losing against cav.

That some units start chasing routers even on hold position..well they go impetuous..it happens. Its a matter of taste I guess. I expect some chaos and randomness in this game..otherwise I would play chess http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

That units get charge bonus when running..well as LJ said it gives you more control where you want to hit. You might call that less skill...but the main problem with it is that weird bug with running down foot/cav even from the front without any combat.

CBR

[AMPage]

Well i like having more control over my units, because that's what helps make the game more enjoyable for those that wanna become good at it. I remmeber playing a game in stw against someone and as i moved my troops to counter his troops, he said it was like a work of art, like chess playing. I love *stratgey* games, even if im crap at them. I love these types of games for *controling* units, armies, or whatever. The only randomness i'll accept is once units are engaged, the victor comes out who has the better match up, or the 50/50 odds when they are the same units 1v1 head on, so it's just the odds based on what % this unit has to kill that unit and how they engaged, that's the randomness i'll accept.

As for fog of war, blizzards, heavy rain falls, etc. I wouldn't mind just having weather coming and going randomly and take out the day picking before you start deployment. Just have it so that it dosn't last the whole game. It comes and goes, but dosn't last like 20 mins or the whole game, or sometimes it says a fine day the whole game.

I hope in R:TW that they take out things like having to chase units in skirimish mode and routers around the map untill they hit the redzone. They should set it up when you chase a unit for a certain amount of time, that it automatically dissappers, acting as tho it escaped. They should take out the redzone and just have it where it just generates more map as you travel out. And to stop people from scattering units all over, that you can only move your units away from your general a certain distance, if you have no general than you have to place a marker which you need to keep your units within distance.

Some say they wanted fog of war where you can only see as far as your units. Well thats alright as long as you have points to capture or work around in, or it's just gonna be to much hide and seek. If you have markers like i said, maybe it could fash on your radar so you know what area to work in, but have the distance from the marker big enough to set up ambushes and stuff.

So in R:TW you could have no attacker/defender. For example if you're going after an enemy castle in sp and fight any battles along the way, the one heading for the castle can just go around the other army. So it's up for the owner of the castle to just move to the castle to defend it, that's if they can make it there in time, since you won't have armies jumping provinces, that they move on the map instead with movement points or w/e.

In multi there could be no attacker/defender. Just have a pointer in the middle of the map which all armies have to stay within a certain distance of it and you can add the fog of war where you can only see what your troops see. To prevent people from camping you could just have timers or locations that you occupy, that give you money to buy more units.

[Crandaeolon]

Time to bump this thread back into the first page... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

Some random concerns from other threads will get added to the list in the first post. I'll most likely miss some, add 'em here if there's something important I've overlooked.

[longjohn2]

Yuuki. I took a look at the running thing, and I found the same problem as you. I.e. if the units hit head on then, whether running or charging they fight about the same (which was the effect I intended ), but if the leader of the running unit isn't engaged, then the engaged guys in the unit go into some sort of overdrive mode and just plough through the opposition. I haven't looked at the code to figure out why yet, but it's definitely some sort of bug. My apologies for this.

[Puzz3D]

Thx LongJohn for checking into that. I'm sorry this didn't come to light sooner for possible fixing in VI v2.0, but it's still important to understand the effect for the benefit of future Total War games. Maybe there is still hope for a patch to VI since the kings all dying at age 56 seems to be a well established bug, and the crashing of MP games when someone drops is occuring. It looks like the player's units start to withdraw if he drops or escapes, but the battle crashes for all within seconds with a "lost connection to the server" message.

[FearofNC]

longjohn...since u claim its a bug then i guess i should say what casues it... at least imho..

when "moving through" the initial charge isnt counted as an attack cycle.. if the defending unit just sits there and gets swiped it doesnt defend on the second cycle like a normal attack. this gives the swiping unit 2 attack cycles to start with and only on the third cycle ( 2nd actuall cycle to the game engine) does the defending unit actualy defend.. in tests (viking)... v3 cmaa in 1 line vs v1 chiv knights in 1 line... straight up it was alsmot an even fight... cav lost 30+ men but eventually routed the cmaa.. using the swipe method.. the cav lost about 7 men and routed the cmaa much quicker. but swiping only works vs non attacking units... if you try and swipe a unit that is attacking you will actualy suffer more casulties and have less of a chance of winning then if you had attacked the unit head on.

[Crandaeolon]

Interesting stuff, hopefully that gets fixed. In the meantime, it's good that not only the select few know about the trick. Gives newbies like me a fighting chance. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I'd imagine that it requires a bit of skill to properly align the swipe maneuver and to judge whether to use it or not based on the status of the unit to be swiped.

Y'know, this entire thingy reminds me of 'skiing' in Tribes. In the original Tribes it was an unintended feature with which players could reach lightning-fast speeds by combining downward slopes and jumping. It took quite a bit of skill to do well, and those who were masters at it could capture the enemy flag practically at will. The unintended feature was adopted by the community and was officially sanctioned (but toned down a bit http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif) in Tribes 2.

The swipe thingy is so random that it probably wouldn't make too much of a difference in MTW, though.

[Magyar Khan]

the effect will be hifghly reduced if thin lines wouldnt possible either.

still we can only start praying it will gte solved but looking deeper into LJ words and eyes i doubt this.

[Swoosh So]

MP is now much better overall. Balance is better. 9 [33.33%] sigh* how easily pleased some peeps are, yes its better but only because it was origonally terrible.

[baz]

longjohn it is a MASSIVE bug, it enables units that have no chance, if the flag holder engages first, to obtain extrememly easy victories http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif cav vs swiss halb even http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
its pretty hard to do on a large scale but it completely ruins the game mechanics when it happens ..

[Magyar Khan]

swooshy thats why polls are dangerous tools as well.

what if the poll-option was

"its better balenced but far from perfect" ?

thats why if people make a poll they should think twice what to put in it. there is a lot of room to manipulate the outcome.

a stupid example

DO u think roman TW will be crap?
1) No, like all other versions of TW it will be perfect
2) Yes


hard to choose isnt it?

[Crandaeolon]

Lol, there was no conscious manipulation from my part. The wording could have been different, but we can assume that the point of comparison is "average" on the overall scale and that "better" means "good".

Most reviewers that rate multiplayer separately have agreed that it's the weakest part of the game along with graphics. The MP part has indeed hit "average" marks in most reviews, and that's what I based my assumption on. (Hardcore MP fanatics have a strong personal bias, of course.) I believe that the devs are interested in getting high reviews for their games, and a significant part of that effort is identifying and correcting the weak parts of their games.

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to ask you Shog vets how you would rate the multiplayers in STW, STW/MI, MTW and MTW/VI on a scale of "bad, poor, average, good, excellent"?

[Magyar Khan]

true cran but than u assume that reviewers of games have the time and talent to notice these ai bugs within teh time they test the game. the "thin line wipe bug" wont be noticed by many many sp players even if they visit these boards like the org.

so to summarize the devs wont really chance it or they already know whats wrong and where. but even then, u need a patch to make it worldwide.

i would be more interested if reviewers of games take an extra subject to their score about patching-history and patching-policy of the releasing compagny.

i think of all games i played the patches were always an improvment. only in the TW series some patches were step backs. i also dislike it when devs say they chanced it cuz they read it on the forums, where players demanded it while its obvious they adressed the easy things that popped up in a few posts. it would be better if devs are able to abbandon their programming-style for a moment and imagine if they are a good player and imagine how the more uncommon bugs influences the gameplay.

i have a friend who still plays the game in sp once in a while. i am sure he would be bored sooner if he had all the knowledge we spread in here.

thinlinewipe bug should be solved too. there is a good reason to believe that tw rome will be delayed with approx 6 months max, and its nothing more than good behaviour to giv us another patch in a 1-2 month time.