Questions Please for you Gurus.

[Razor1952]

I was wondering whether you gurus out there could answer a few questions please?

1.Is it possible to mod how spies work? or is it possible to get 1.1 type spies in Vi?

2.What is the effect of disciplineand how can it be modded?

3.What is the best way to get increased valour on the battlefield for your troops? Is it better to have a close battle ? Is it better if you don't autocalc?

4.What is the best way to conserve your high valour troops so when you retrain them you don't loose the valour rating?

[Brutal DLX]

1. I think not, but I'm not hardcore modder so don't take it for granted.

2. Disciplined troops aren't affected by the death of the general on the battlefield, IIRC. It can be modded to give this trait to other troops, I think, but again, a good modder needs to provide detailed info on that.

3+4. Valour is calculated on a single man basis, the overall valour of a unit is the average valour of each man in that unit. Killing tougher enemy yields more valour, while chasing routers doesn't give much valour, although you can raise your valour if you chase enough of them. Depleted high valour units shouldn't be retrained, but instead combined with another depleted high valour unit of the same kind. That's the best way to keep full size veteran units around. You shouldn't autocalc the difficult battles, or when your elite army is fighting.

[frogbeastegg]

1.I would like to know myself.

2.Discipline is a have it or not stat. It makes your troops easier to control as they are much less likely to chase around not following orders when in the impetuous morale state. They are also not bothered by fleeing non elite or disciplined units so peasants etc. routing don't bother them. You can mod a unit to have the stat or not but I don't know how, I'm not a modder. A qualified modder will probably arrive shortly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

3.The best way to increase valour is to simply kill everything you can. You only gain valour for units killed in combat so executing prisoners doesn't add to valour. Try killing weaker units like peasants with lower valour units as they will find it easy. Try letting the enemy rally several times before chasing them off the field.

Autocalc often spreads damage to units that you don't want damaging, e.g. it includes siege weapon crews in melee combat.

4.Troops NEVER loose valour. When you retrain and the overall valour goes down this is only because the new recruits have lower valour and the units valour is averaged. The old hands still have their old valour, it just isn't reported. So if you have 60 feudal men at arms at valour 6 and retrain them the average valour will go down to 3. In this unit however you will have 60 FMAA with a personal valour of 6 and 20 with a personal valour of 0. (Forgive the maths, the principle is correct, even if the numbers aren't) You loose nothing by retraining, it only looks like it.

How to conserve good troops. Try using them as flankers. Make sure they only fight units they can beat e.g. don't send archers to melee cavalry. This really does depend on the type of unit, it's numbers and the battle situation. Basically don't send them into stupid situations and they should be ok.

Brutal-you beat me to it You posted while I was typing this http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Razor1952]

Thank you for those replies they are very helpful.

So I can surmise this about the discipline thing in mods , I guess it helps those troops which are undisciplined to begin with, but those that already have discipline it would have no effect.

[Brutal DLX]

frog lady http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif Sorry, you type too slowly :P http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
But you explained it much better than I did plus added some info I did not.
Btw, are you playing Medium unit size or did you mod your units? Because 60 men are standard, I think http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif But I played a couple of campaigns with medium unit size, (eg. 133 men spears and 80 Elite, 53 cav) but I found the AI has trouble building better units then because the unit prices went up as well.
Razor1952, as Frog said, it's a have it or not stat, thus you could only improve the undisciplined troops, not the ones that already have that trait.

[frogbeastegg]

Brutal DLX- Don't knock my two fingered typing, its very fast http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif What slows me down is the long periods of spell checking http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

I play with the unit sizes one about the default, the one you mentioned with 133 spearmen, 80 MAA, 53 cavalry etc. I find that the AI build rubbish most of the time anyway so it hasn't made too much of a difference to it's army composition.

Interesting difference of opinion over retraining. I top up if I am in the middle of a campaign but when the fighting is finished I always withdraw by battle army and retrain it to replace losses and gain any extra bonuses from buildings. I prefer to have newbies scattered across several units with veterans to look after them and give them a boost than to have a unit of newbies in the middle of a high valour army.

I think discipline should be moddable. My guess is you add a line of text to the unit stats which marks it as disciplined or elite.

(lol I've been lady frog, frosty, froggy, frogbeast and now frog lady I never thought my name would be so versatile. I can't wait to see what people think of next I'm beginning to look forward to the variations http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif This is most definitely not a complaint if that’s not already obvious)

[Brutal DLX]

Ok, humpty dumpty froggy. heh.
Spell check? That takes 30 secs for me. And it shows.

About the retraining, I also don't like to have val 0 units in my Elite armies, but sometimes it's just more convenient..or let's just say I'm lazy. What I meant is that I always have at least two units of the same type in my army, thus I can combine them if they lost too many men. And then, those armies will get a couple of newly trained units every now and then, complete with the new upgrades and such, and they are used to fill the veterans if they lost maybe only 10%. So, slowly they will get all the new equipment while keeping a higher valour than what you would get retraining them. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
About the modding, I guess it must be changed in the units spreadsheet file, as you said.

[Maelstrom]

Quote[/b] (frogbeastegg @ June 30 2003,03:12)]4.Troops NEVER loose valour. When you retrain and the overall valour goes down this is only because the new recruits have lower valour and the units valour is averaged. The old hands still have their old valour, it just isn't reported. So if you have 60 feudal men at arms at valour 6 and retrain them the average valour will go down to 3. In this unit however you will have 60 FMAA with a personal valour of 6 and 20 with a personal valour of 0. (Forgive the maths, the principle is correct, even if the numbers aren't) You loose nothing by retraining, it only looks like it.
Frogella, until last night I also thought that individuals could never loose valour.

However on the after battle report last night I noticed that one unit of gallowglasses had killed 102 rebels (mostly peasants I think) without losing a single man, and had been credited with -1 valour

I intended to post a query on this today, but this thread seemed a reasonable on to attach it to. - Can anyone out there shed any light on this?

Actually thinking about it I should still have the log...

[frogbeastegg]

frogella Humpty dumpty froggy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Maelstrom - What happened there is quite simple or at least it would be if they hadn't lost any men. If one man had very high valour and died the overall valour of the unit goes down. This is the standard answer to any case where valour is lost in battle. It is also supposed to be the only way in which a units valour will go down on the battle field. The problem with your battle is that no one died. Very strange. Try checking the log file to see if anyone did die in that unit. Maybe there was a mistake on the after battle report?

Did the unit loose the valour outside of that battle? (were they valour 4 instead of 5 on the camp map army screen?)

There have been many topics over the last year which have all concluded that valour is never lost as it is unique to each man. Therefore unit valour only lowers when new soldiers are added or a veteran dies. Nothing has been mentioned that explains your -1 gallowglasses though. I'll be interested in seeing if anyone can say what happened.

[Empress_Zoe]

Perhaps this can be achieved by changing the 'samurai' status to yes in the units file?

And i am talking about MTW http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flirt.gif

[Hoplite]

Quote[/b] (frogbeastegg:June 30 2003 @ 13:28)]
I think discipline should be moddable. My guess is you add a line of text to the unit stats which marks it as disciplined or elite.


Correct. Adding the entry DISCIPLINED to column #57 of CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.txt marks the unit as being disciplined (obviously), thus affecting chances of the unit charging on its own and suffering adverse effects from the generals death.


Quote[/b] (Empress_Zoe:June 30 2003 @ 20:12)]
Perhaps this can be achieved by changing the 'samurai' status to yes in the units file?


Adding SAMURAI( YES ) to column #26 marks the unit as elite, causing it to bravely ignore the negative morale effects associated with seeing large amounts of lesser troops fleeing ignobly from the enemy.

[Razor1952]

One of the better ideas (Grells) for a mod was a building which gave discipline, I now understand what that building does.

Still no-one has ideas about spies and modding?. I presume it may also involve changing how WT work .

[hrvojej]

Adding disciplined to the col#57 indeed gives the unit a discilpined status. However, if you check bonuses in the buildprod file, you will see that military academy gives upgrade discipline bonus. So, yes, some buildings do give discipline, and it's moddable. There has been a discussion about what this discipline actually is, and whether it's the same thing as the disciplined status, and IIRC, the conclusion was that it makes units more responsive to commands, e.g. disengaging, no no follow THIS high-valour router and not those peasants, etc. My understanding is that disciplined status does not confer this particular bonus, but rather that it makes the unit a) take half the morale penalty when seeing non-disciplined units routing (elites count normally), and b) not getting the morale hit upon the death of the general. In other words, and again IIRC, my impression is that discipline given by the military academy and disciplined status are two separate things.

Gallowglasses losing valour without losing men is indeed very strange. Did that appear on the f1 screen, and they haven't lost a single man? If so, it's very weird indeed. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Maelstrom]

Quote[/b] (frogbeastegg @ June 30 2003,07:00)]Maelstrom - What happened there is quite simple or at least it would be if they hadn't lost any men. If one man had very high valour and died the overall valour of the unit goes down. This is the standard answer to any case where valour is lost in battle. It is also supposed to be the only way in which a units valour will go down on the battle field. The problem with your battle is that no one died. Very strange. Try checking the log file to see if anyone did die in that unit. Maybe there was a mistake on the after battle report?

Nothing has been mentioned that explains your -1 gallowglasses though. I'll be interested in seeing if anyone can say what happened.
I have an explanation

I am an idiot. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

I must have misread the screen - the log shows 60 men DEAD, rather than 60 left....

They fought to the last man. If I had been paying attention, that might have been worth watching....

[frogbeastegg]

Well that explains everything, thanks for filling us in http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Arrowmaker]

why do you sometimes get negative valor?

[frogbeastegg]

Negative valour occurs when a high valour man dies. This lowers the valour number for his unit as unit valour is an average of the personnal valour belonging to each man in the unit. The other men in the unit don't loose valour, it just looks like it.

There's more on this near the start of the topic.

[Arrowmaker]

ok got that now - should read more carefully
above someone says dont retrain just combine high valor units - my Q how? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[frogbeastegg]

To combine units just drag and drop one unit on top of the other in the army screen on the camp map. The units must be of the same type. Any units outside of the maximum will be left on their own eg. 30 men at arms + 31 men at arms = 1 complete unit of 60 and one single guy on his own. Simple and effective. Page 29 of the manual has more details if you need them. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

This post is my 100th I hope at least most of my posts have been useful. Only 400 left until custom avatars and titles.

[Arrowmaker]

you know I have played this for over a year, read the manual and completely missed this - thx http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[Lord_PH]

thanx...this is great help

i like it when i have a one (or two or three) high valour group with lots of valour. Just keep him in the back to survey that carnage...