View Full Version : Medmod IV v3.12 Update
The next update of the mod is now posted at my webpage.
So, there I was Tuesday afternoon, making a very long post which answered all the questions, and explained everything else I had done. I must have spent over 90min making it. Well, the last thing I was working on was a description of my computer problems, and I checked my IE\tools\privacy and security settings, and they were indeed screwed up again. I tried hitting the default level button on the Privacy tab, and the setting seemed to get straightened out. So, I tried that on the Security setting, and I get the same ole message that IE had encountered a problem and had to shut down. I had saved my post to the clipboard, so I didn't think it was a big deal. Well, when IE shut down, it somehow erased the clipboard contents, and my post with it.
So, I don't remember what-all I said about everything, but I'll go over the main updates here.
I re-worked the rebel groups in the game to try and get a better quality and greater variety of troops produced.
I gave the Mediterranean ships the ability to be built on the northern part of continental Europe.
I changed the English bodyguard units to Norman Knights in both the Early and Late eras, and Kns of Gascon in the Late era.
I gave Tyrolia to the Swiss in the Late era, and shortened the HRE Homeland to only include those provinces that it starts each era with, meaning for example that Burgundy, Tyrolia and Switzerland are not part of the HRE Homeland in the Late era.
Mounted Crossbows are now unique to the HRE and the Swiss, I believe.
I made Gunsmiths, Foundries, and Siege Engineers unique, like Royal Palaces. This will severely restrict where you can build gunpowder units and artillery pieces. I did not make any new faction restrictions, except giving the Mongols access to Muslim Handgunners, along with the Muslim factions.
Ships no longer require Foundries, and each ship type requires a Shipyard to match the era- 1 for early, 2 for high, and 3 for late. None require a master-level shipyard.
The Serpentine no longer requires a gunsmith, and the Organ Gun only requires a master-level gunsmith.
Naptha Throwers are still available to the Muslims, Mongols and Byz, but not in early anymore, and they now require the unique gunsmith.
As for missile units, all are available by the high era.
The HRE and Russians get generic Archers.
The French and Danes/Swedes get Crossbows.
The Spanish/Ara and Russians get Pavise X-bows in High.
The HRE and Byz get Arbalesters in high.
The Hungarians and Poles get pavise Arbs in high.
I made what I think are the necessary changes to the distribution of ports and trade goods in the Med.
Made lots of other little fixes and tweaks on things brought up in the 3.11 thread, plus the things I happened to run across.
Toronaga, there is no way for us to affect how the AI picks its governors. It seems to give generals stars top priority, which is why I restricted generals stars to poor provinces. Then it ranks its generals by acumen, and gives titles accordingly. It never takes titles away from generals, so if they develop vices the AI is screwed. And I have seen just this occur. This also means that they don't get the benefit of high-acumen generals that come along later, especially if they had bad luck with the acumen of their starting generals.
If you want to restrict yourself, go ahead, but I wouldn't try to force the method on everyone else even if I could do so. And trying to limit the AI, since it never changes governors unless one dies, would be the most awful thing I can imagine to do to the game.
Rabid Monkey, if you are still getting textures errors, you need to copy the textures folder from the Setup\Data section of the CD, and paste it over what you have now. Then apply the Graphics and Texts portion of the mod, in that order, and see if that does the trick.
I'm still feeling awful, so it may be a while before I post again.
Jacque Schtrapp
10-17-2003, 05:01
Thanks Wes, I'll give it a whirl this weekend http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
I'll try it soon http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Hope you get better Wes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
ToranagaSama
10-18-2003, 15:44
Do you mind answering a couple of questions:
Quote[/b] ]I made Gunsmiths, Foundries, and Siege Engineers unique, like Royal Palaces. This will severely restrict where you can build gunpowder units and artillery pieces.
Just wondering since I'm not really knowledgeable on the subjct, what's your thinking upon restricting Siege Engineers?
Quote[/b] ]Ships no longer require Foundries, and each ship type requires a Shipyard to match the era- 1 for early, 2 for high, and 3 for late. None require a master-level shipyard.
Please anyone, I've really a bit confused on Ship requirements.
The second level Shipyard upgrade, 3.11, didn't seem to give you anything. Was/Is it required to be build for anything? Or, is it just a waste to buiild it? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
Anyway, with 3.12, playing Early Period/Sicily, I need the 1st level shipyard (probably have it at outset of game) to build ships. So, as the game progresses, at some point, I'll need to build a second level shipyard, correct?
But, I won't be able to build it, until "time" moves to the High Era, correct? Similarly, for 3rd level?
I don't know. If anyone could break this down for me, I'd mightily appreciate it. Thank you, in advance.
--
Quote[/b] ]Toronaga, there is no way for us to affect how the AI picks its governors. It seems to give generals stars top priority, which is why I restricted generals stars to poor provinces. Then it ranks its generals by acumen, and gives titles accordingly.
Ok, this is the way I restrict myself also, except I use only Knights.
Quote[/b] ]It never takes titles away from generals, so if they develop vices the AI is screwed. And I have seen just this occur. This also means that they don't get the benefit of high-acumen generals that come along later, especially if they had bad luck with the acumen of their starting generals.
Unfortunately, this is as expected. Next week, I think I'll start a thread in the Main Hall, agitating for CA to "adjust" the AI (for Rome) to act more intelligently in this regard. Doing so will help fortify the AI factions. Anyone concur?
Quote[/b] ]If you want to restrict yourself, go ahead, but I wouldn't try to force the method on everyone else even if I could do so.
*I* can't "force" anyone to do anything This is the way I think the game s/b played. Its sensical and logical, though, it may only be for advanced players, as I have always noted in my Main Hall posts re same. As is my nature I will continue to agitate. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I'd ask that YOU give it a go sometime, simply to note how a Campaign develops in light of the restriction of govenors to Knights, only, by the Player.
Quote[/b] ]And trying to limit the AI, since it never changes governors unless one dies, would be the most awful thing I can imagine to do to the game.
I believe I stated similarly.
Thank you for your response.
BTW, I may have missed it, but can you confirm that a fresh install of MTW/Vikings is needed to have the "Patch" work properly with the MedMod?
---
Re: your IE issues, have you posted to the Apothcary? Interesting, need more info, but off the top of my head, you may either have a virus or have you adusted any of the "Advanced" settings? What anti-virus program do you use? Unless, your confident its not a virus, I'd make sure to d/l the latest definition files and do a "system" scan. If you come up clean then great Next, I stop using IE, and start using Mozilla, its free and superior in every possible way. See threads, in the Apothcary regarding Mozilla. Its Open Source based on Netscape. I don't know how much of a programmer you may be, but you might also enjoy tinkering with it as well.
www.mozilla.org
If you need ANY help with your system, please feel free to email. I am fairly computer lit.
Thank you and feel better.
Jacque Schtrapp
10-18-2003, 15:58
Toranaga, buildings are not restricted by era, units are. You can still build the 2nd level shipyard in the early era, but you won't get level 2 ships until high etc.
I've been playing as Italy in High on Expert. I really like the total unit restrictions. I am still seeing large stacks of units, however they have a much more realistic makeup of troops. The only factions to be eliminated by 1255 were the English (by the French) and the Aragonese (by the Almohad and Spanish). The Horde popped up with around 12,000 troops and pushed all the way to Silesia in the west and Rum in the South before being set upon by 9 factions They are now completely defensive. There are a huge number of ships from nearly every Med faction with the exception of the Hungarians, Turks, and Papists none of which have built any. I am curious if ship building for Med factions is enabled throughout the entire Med, because I can build ships in Cyprus but not in Constantinople. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif I will continue my game later today and post my observations probably on Monday. Thanks again Wes, I hope both you and your computer are feeling better soon
PS> For IE probs you can try upgrading to the newest version of IE if you don't have it, or you can do a Windows Repair or simply reinstall over your existing windows install (neither of which will hurt your file system). Both should over-write IE and probably fix the situation. Years ago when I tried to delete IE for some reason and my systen became unstable, I simply reinstalled 98 over the top and it worked fine thereafter. I personally prefer Opera and would even use Mozilla before going back to IE. I'm sure you have your reasons though. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
ToranagaSama
10-18-2003, 16:06
P.S., quality free clipboard manager. Automatically, saves clipboard items.
Clipboard Magic (http://www.cyber-matrix.com/clipmag.html)
Quote[/b] (ToranagaSama @ Oct. 18 2003,09:44)]I'd ask that YOU give it a go sometime, simply to note how a Campaign develops in light of the restriction of govenors to Knights, only, by the Player.
Toranaga,
I've been playing with this hardcore rule (knight/royal units only as gov's) and think it helps the game tremendously. Otherwise, the games become entirely too easy too quickly. Using this rule, and the new MedMods (with some help from the damn Mongols), i've been loosing more campaigns than i've been winning. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Beelzebub
10-20-2003, 03:41
how come aragon and siciliy can't crusade? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
great mod btw
RabidMonkey
10-20-2003, 04:55
Thanks a lot Wes Im going to fix it now.
Hope you feel better soon because your doing some amazing work in this mod. I remember playing your Call to Power Med Mod, I think that was you anyway
Beelzebub
10-20-2003, 16:55
If I wanted to make Aragon and Sicily capable of building crusades, would all I have to do is edit chapter houses to add their faction names to the list of ones that can produce them? or is it more complicated?
Jacque Schtrapp
10-20-2003, 18:16
Ok, here we go
Italians - High - Expert - MM3.12
Having become accustomed to playing on Expert, I always play in such a manner as to increase the longevity of opposing factions. I rarely if ever instigate wars and I try to never eliminate a faction in possible. I spent the first thirty years building up my defensive forces and watching war spread across the continent. As factions rose and were struck down inevitably civil war broke out. I used that strife to seize rebel provinces in Antioch, Egypt, and Tunisia. Around 1250 I broke a Mongol siege in Bulgaria to free my allies the Hungarians. Egypt attacked me followed by the French from Morocco. This led to Sicily attacking me and soon after the Germans also attacked. As if this wasn't enough the Polish then attacked as did the Pope and then the Hungarians. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif My provinces were developed enough economically that I was able to eek out enough money to show a small profit due to my dominance of the seas. So here I am at war with 8 factions. Yippee.
I am definitely getting better matchups in battles. I have actually lost two battles in this game. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif I can't remember the last time I lost a battle to the AI.
Is ship building supposed to be enabled throughout the entire Med? I can build ships in all of my home provinces as well as Crete, but not in Constantinople.
The Poles don't build any archers.
Half of the entire French military (15K+) is made up of crossbows. The other half is feudal foot. Even though I am in 1345 I have yet to see one advanced unit from the French even though they control the Atlantic seaboard from Denmark to Morocco including all of GB.
Inevitably the Byzantines start getting crushed and for some reason their King always moves to Rhodes, loses all of his mainland provinces, and has his navy sunk. He remains impotently trapped until someone (me usually) puts him out of his misery. Would it be a better idea, for the sake of gameplay, to take Rhodes away from the Byzantines since they are the only island controlling faction that always gets trapped there?
The Danes and the Swedes control everything from Poland east down to Trebizond. Then they started to fight, Sweden no controls all of those provinces but the Danes have used their incredible navy to wipe out the Swedes presence in the Atlantic. The Danes and the French each have around ten ships per Atlantic sea province. Both the Swedes and Danes now have ships in the Med http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif
I like the mercenary options and also the Outremer availability in the ME. I think the requirements and costs are high enough to offset the advantage.
Before 1320 I built the first level foundry in Crete. I also captured a first level foundy in Tunisia. After 1320 I am not capable of building any more foundries of any type anywhere. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif Are the Italians supposed to not have artillery?
I thought the Italians lack of serious Heavy Cavalry would be a serious liability, however, I think their superior heavy foot is making up the difference.
The lack of buildable units in non-homeland provinces has led to a drastic increase in the number and usage of strategic units. Assassins and Inquisitors are very active. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif
German Saxon Huscarles are nearly unstoppable in High.
The Polish Vlastela run from inferior units instead of couter-charging and crushing them. I guess their status as lancer/horse archer is over-ridden in favor of the horse archer.
I am having a blast. Previously I would build up trade and eliminate enemies one by one. I am actually having to budget my resources and make true strategic decisions before each turn ends. For some reason none of the 8 factions I have been at war with for the past 100 years will accept a truce. This means I am mostly defensive although I find time to pinch the occasional wel developed province. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Thanks for all of your hardwork Your mod has given MTW a fresh face and renewed my waning interest in the game. Cheers
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
EDIT: Answered my own questions by playing, should have done that first instead of reading the instructions
Something very strange did happen though.
In 1092 I invaded Aragon with 4 Knights of Hidalgo, 2 Spanish Jinetes, 2 Asturian Foot, 4 Spearmen, 1 Archer and 3 Galician Bowmen vs their 2 Knights of Hidalgo, 2 Asturian Foot and 2 Galician Bowmen. They abandoned the province, committing suicide. .matteosartori. showed no rebel provinces so they didn’t try and retreat anywhere, they just gave up.
Anyone ever had that happen before?
Only one slight cosmetic glitch. The info parchment for Woodsmen is covered in black dots. It looks like some outline in the background was not fully erased.
So far so good. The Almohads got huge FAST.
Perec_Dojo
10-21-2003, 23:29
Wes-
I have noticed that the shift key no longer shows the status of trade routes. I must confess that I installed the patch and then your mod immediately after, so perhaps it is the patch that is responsible and not your mod? Just curious...
Perec_Dojo:
Shift? or did you mean 'V' for trade-routes?
Meself, the mod seems to work fine w/2.01 patch, eh?
Any other problems? Perhaps the details of same will evince more responses.
Quokka: All the time. Seems like they just fade into the brush sometimes. Cant offer a clue vis the graphic part of your question, Drivers?
Jacque Schtrapp
10-22-2003, 15:30
1357 - Pope respawned bringing with him 3600 Arqbusiers and Italian Sailors all with 3rd level armor and first level weapon upgrades. One hour and fifteen minute battle consisting of cavalry chasing missile troops to every corner of the map. I hate these kinds of battles, I hope they don't happen very often. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
1359 - Pope respawned again bringing with him 3600 Arqbusiers and Italian Sailors all with 3rd level armor and first level weapon upgrades. An hour this time, cav vs. missiles, at least all of my cav units are +4 valor now. Boring. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
1360 - Surprise Surprise Pope respawned yet again bringing with him 3600 Arqbusiers and Italian Sailors all with 3rd level armor and first level weapon upgrades. Got it down to fifty minutes of running all around the map. Cavalry starting to complain about the competition, general heartily agrees http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif
I have never had the Pope respawn three times in a campaign after I have captured Rome, let alone three times in four years I can't let him have Rome because of a financial crisis and soft interior defenses.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
Beelzebub
10-22-2003, 19:18
Playing a campaign as France, expert difficulty, on high. It's been very good so far.
I like to expand slowly and try to keep factions alive, not just rush aggressively at the beginning (when it's easiest) but let everyone build up some armies before joining the wars (it doesn't really make sense europe has no armies at all when the game starts, but in 10 years mobilizes 10 times the starting soldiers for no reason).
I consider myself a very good player, rarely ever make mistakes and am very good at the game, but this has been a challenging campaign where I've really been challenged.
Even though I have extensive trade routes: all of the western ports, 6 med provinces trading with Toulouse, 3 trading with the holy lands (my mediteranean navy took some heavy losses fighting the sicilian and almohed navy, My caravals and Barques are better ships than their galleys and moslom ones, and I had some good 4 star captains, but they had more shipyards and could crank them out faster). I still only have an income of 1000-2000 florins per year since I need to keep heavy garrisons in all my french provinces just to match the HRE, England and Aragon.
Also keeping my holy land provinces is another huge expense. They aren't nearly as rich as they were in vanilla, and It takes so damn long to build them up so they can produce outremer forces, I've had to hire a lot of mercs just to keep a garrison capable of beating off the egyptians. The sicialians attacked Tripoli with an almost all knight army and 4 star prince leading. They took the province. But my navy cut won and managed to keep them from establishing a link to the home (they tried hard though). They assaulted the keep and took heavy casualties (I upgraded the defences hehe).
Then when I counter attacked, won, and sieged Tripoli, the Egyptians (their allies) jumped in. I held them off at 3:1 odds in Antioch and then finally retook Tripoli after I slaughtered the egyptions 3 times. Now their army is weaker and I can go on the offensive soon. Although I still have no sealink home, and only cyprus can make outremere spearmen so I'll need more mercs (even less income).
The Egyptian forces are pretty well balanced, they are a bit heavy on berbers and desert archers. Definitly not enough Saracen Infantry (I only saw 2 units in their 4 stacks), and they could probably use more non-camel cavalry. They should also produce more Futawas (which are advanced archers that can fight) instead of desert archers. If you could tweak that it would be great.
In the rest of the world: The Italians went on a rampage and took over a large chunk of central and eastern europe, all the way to turkey. Then they got rocked by a civil war, and now they have the HRE, Sicily, Aragon and Hungary gunning for them. Denmark and Sweden took over most of the baltic and denmark took scotland and wales. But now they're at each other's throats. The Golden Horde is tearing up Russia and the remnants of the Byzantine empire (I don't think they even tried to take constantinople back, they just expanded into russia a bit). The Almoheds took Ppain (who now just have Naverre and Acquitane), but then England jumped in and took Castille. The Almos threw everything at it, but the English survived, I assume they'll be expanding there soon. At the beginning they went to war with the HRE instead of France. Took 2-3 provs in the NW HRE.
So far it's been a great campaign. The AI could still use a bit of tweaking with their troop building priorities (like the Egyptians I mentioned), but the game is a huge improvement over vanilla. Thanks a ton Wes
The Woodsman is the only one so far, all the others have looked fine. I have seen about 30-40 units in my first game.
A few other things. The readme says Turcopoles get a +1 bonus in Tripoli but they don't Outremer infantry do. The unit_prod is blank for Turcopoles.
Hashishin are now 75 man units but still have a preferred rows value of 2 is that right? And finally about Syria, it only gives +1 to Assasins now, but the usefulness of Assassins is reduced because all of the provinces are built up. Not many years in and they all have Border Forts that don't respect an Assassins stars. How about something extra for Syria? All of the Muslim factions have at least 50% of their homelands giving bonuses to troops they can't use.
How exactly do ship bonuses work?
The game is much tougher now. My Spanish are barely beating the Almohads, their armies are so big and the Spanish don't have an Early Melee troop so its mass cavalry charges whenever I can get some massed. One battle in Portugal came down to 2 Knights of Hidalgo vs 5 Berber Camels. I won, one was El Cid http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Jacque Schtrapp
10-22-2003, 19:48
I don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, but in my High games the French always defeat the English and them move south against the Almohad. Since this is around the 100 Years War time (better for Late I know) would it be better to actually have the Burgundians in the game and give them control of Burgundy and Flanders? This eliminates two rich French provinces and gives the Burgundians enough income to probably survive. Just a thought.
Quote[/b] ] The sicialians attacked Tripoli with an almost all knight army and 4 star prince leading.
Yeah, I noticed that Sicily is turning into the Denmark of the Med. They sit on Sicily and Malta with tons of former heirs.
Quote[/b] (Quokka @ Oct. 21 2003,06:10)]Something very strange did happen though.
In 1092 I invaded Aragon with 4 Knights of Hidalgo, 2 Spanish Jinetes, 2 Asturian Foot, 4 Spearmen, 1 Archer and 3 Galician Bowmen vs their 2 Knights of Hidalgo, 2 Asturian Foot and 2 Galician Bowmen. They abandoned the province, committing suicide. .matteosartori. showed no rebel provinces so they didn’t try and retreat anywhere, they just gave up.
Anyone ever had that happen before?
Just happend to me while eliminating the Almohads. Guess they didn't want to suffer another humiliating defeat http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Quote[/b] ]The game is much tougher now. My Spanish are barely beating the Almohads, their armies are so big and the Spanish don't have an Early Melee troop so its mass cavalry charges whenever I can get some massed. One battle in Portugal came down to 2 Knights of Hidalgo vs 5 Berber Camels. I won, one was El Cid http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
In my current Spanish campaign Knights of Hidalgo are definitly keytroops for defeating the Almohads Man the Almohad Arab Infantry, whom are quite deadly against other infantry, were slaughtered like mad by the Knights of Hidalgo Knights of Hidalgo seem to be able to take on almost everything the Almohads can through at them. Just outflank a lot and use your mobility http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Ofcourse have some Spanish Jinetes aswell for pursueing the enemy/flanking/mowing down archers, seeing as the Knights of Hidalgo aren't that fast, just very tough
Wizard of Evil
10-22-2003, 21:57
Hello,
Maybe a little off the topic; how can i add berserkers to the regular campaign? I tried all the ways i could think of ,but as i am not a modder all the ways i can think of were just based on comparing the texts of berserkers to any other danish unit, and making the berserkers similar. I would appreciate a detailed help, hoping it to be simple for a real novice http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I am a real fan of medmods ,but i wont write a long aprreciation of how great this mod is, as it is gonna be loss of your time reading the things you already know. Just loads of thanks to Wes, for spending his time for this great mod.
The xls sheet says County Militia gives +2 Morale but the build_prod say +1 Discipline?
The xls sheet says Military Academy gives +1 Valour, +1 Discipline for Catholics and +1 Weapon, +1 Discipline for Muslims but the build_prod says +1 Valour, +1 Discipline for both?
The Master Shipbuilder is unused, why not remove it to stop the AI building it?
Sipahi of the Porte dismount into Galician Bowmen – Janissary Bows, should it be Janissary Archers - Janissary Infantry?
Imperial Menavlatoi can be built throughout the Byzantine Homeland in 1 turn but require an Inn, should it be everywhere or are they Mercenaries and should they take longer?
Germanic Knights – Dark Age Knights are listed as buildable by the Byzantines, Almohad, Egyptians and Turks but they can’t build the Royal Estate required.
Still going great, if you call losing a battle great. The French attacked with 200 Destriders, 600 FMAA and 120 Urban Militia in 1112. They had more but never needed reinforcements so I can't remember what. They ate straight through my Asturian Foot and Galician Bowmen. The new longer range of the Jinetes is amazing, they really kick ass now and the Hidalgos ruined the Destriders but not before the rest or my army routed. The French general was a 4* and my King a 7*, now he's a 6* Good Runner http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif
I had to bring in an 8* El Cid to beat the upstarts. Good Stuff.
Beelzebub
10-24-2003, 13:08
The Turks in high period use too many archers. Their armies were almost all split between archers (Futawas, Turcople and Turkomen archers) and light + medium cavalry (here they had a better mix of armenian heavy, ottoman siphilis, ottomon horse archers and horse archers. Needless to say, as the Byzentines, my mix of light + heavy cavalry, medium + heavy spearmen, and high quality archers/armoured horse archers cut through them like butter, despite being heavily outnumbered. They could use a bit more encouragement to build some spear units, or any kind of fightining Infantry.
The Italians on the other hand, are the opposite. They build a crapload of medium - heavy Infantry. With their huge navy and rich territory they can afford it. They were a very challenging fight as the Byzentines in high (I went to war with them to get constinople back, which was sucessful, but then we fought for about 50 more years). Their navy had my much smaller one on it's heels. I had to dedicate Rhodes and Constinople to shipbuilding just so I could counter them in the black sea, agean sea, and around rhodes (even then, occasionally I'd be cut off from the east for years if I lost some battles). Then I only had 2 provinces that could build troops, Nicae and Greece, and I was forced to heavily recruit mercs which only further hurt the cash situation hehe (very realistic http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ). They took Serbia (from rebels) and made many attempts on Greece. But with their armies being 75% medium + heavy inf, I was able to use my cavalry advantage to swing around and hit their rear before my inferior infantry (a lot of crappy mercs) was routed in most battles. I also used horse archers a lot, I would send 4-5 into serbia and they would kill maybe 40-75 men a turn before being forced to withdraw (every little bit helps). They could also run wild in big battles. That was a very cool war.
Jacque Schtrapp
10-24-2003, 16:53
Started a campaign in High as the French. I am now convinced that the available buidings in Antioch and Tripoli coupled with the high tech necessary to build even the lowliest Outremer unit adds up to being impossible to hold onto either province from the outset of the game. Within twelve turns the Egyptians had built a massive army of Bedouin Camel Warriors and swamped Antioch. The few survivors I had leftover from that battle retreated to Tripoli which I lost ten turns later. Even If I were to abandon one province and try to defend the other, I could beat the Egyptians five times and still lose from attrition as they replenish their forces and keep coming. Cyprus is the lowest tech level of all three French holding in the ME and is many years away from being able to generate troops. Building a shipping route capable of bringing reinforcements in via Toulouse is nigh impossible as inevitably Aragon quickly attacks Toulouse on land and the French navy in the western Med which effectively eliminates the reinforcement option. Perhaps this was designed to represent a struggle in which the French are supposed to lose both provinces and spend many years teching up to reinvade from Cyprus. If so please tell me and I'll retreat to Cyprus straight away with ALL of my troops in order to make invading easier at a later date. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Hi everyone. I'm back from another pretty bad week plus further computer problems, to which I lost another huge post that I had typed up last Saturday. I think I have finally isolated what was causing the IE problems, after re-installing Windows, the upgrade option, last weekend.
My nVidia GeForce4 video card has a TV-out option, which I have been playing around with a little the last couple of months. The last time I was online, last weekend, IE was performing correctly. Well, last night I hooked up the TV to the computer to see how some of my computer vids looked on the tele, and today when I went to go online the IE settings were screwed up. I had a lot of trouble trying to get the card adapted so that it wouldn't put my cursur on one screen and my dialog boxes on another, and stuff like that. I don't know who designs these things.... Anyway, I think this explains why IE always worked fine when I monitored it; it was the video card screwing things up.
I have been having a blast playing as the Poles in a Late game. It is close to 1400, and I have just joined in the war against the Italians, who are trying to take over the world. If I could just assassinate that damned mouse.... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Anyway, I have been very pleased with what I have observed as far as unit distribution by the AI, all factions. The Italians in particular have an outstanding variety of troops, including cavalry and Heavy Infantry. They have a lot of artillery in Asia Minor where I currently face them, due to controlling Constan, Rum and Egypt, I suppose.
Btw, has anyone else noticed the advantages the AI seems to get with artillery? They are bleeping sharpshooters with those things. They were hitting my moving troops half the time, and I mean lone troops like flanking cavalry, and not just ones that happened to be in the neighborhood.
The Italians had ships all over the Med, of course, but very evenly distributed. The factions in the Atlantic distributed their ships in long trade lines as well.
The HRE was at war the whole time with all its neighbors, except me, but held its own for about 50 yrs, until I finally took over its last two provinces, in the British Isles. The French are about where they started. The Muslim nations went out a while ago, though the Turks were doing very well for a while until the Byz, Mongols and Italians ganged up on them. The Byz surprised me with how well they did, until the Italians turned on them as well. I took out the Mongols for the most part, having some incredible battles at the start of the game defending Poland, and then taking Kiev. The Danes and Swedes only did fairly well, which was a little surprising with their advantages in bg units. The English still have Aquitaine and half of the British Isles. The Russians got pushed out to Sweden and a couple of Baltic provinces by the Horde. I went in and strengthened their starting troops some to try and help them in the future. The Huns went to war with the HRE early, and ended up with the eastern half of their empire.
The most note-worthy part of the game, though, has been the integrity of my allies. Early on, I had treaties with both the HRE and Hungarians, and I ended up having to leave my western provinces almost undefended to fight the Horde. Well, neither one ever broke the treaty, even though they could have waltzed into Poland at any time. I mean, I only had a single spear unit posted in Silesia, Volhynia, Moldavia, and sometimes Poland. The only time any of the AIs broke a treaty was the Russians, who sent a weak force into Volhynia once, which I was able to beat because of the troops I had moving through at that time. I got the feeling that the AI didn't really want to invade, but happened to role one of the rare variables that told it to take advantage of a poorly defended province in spite of it being an ally. I feel pretty sure that, HRE notwithstanding, if you never break a treaty the AI will generally respect their end of the bargain, unless they have no where else to expand into.
I have found a few bugs in the files, and decided to change a few things.
I forgot to change the Danish bodyguard units when I downgraded the Huscarle unit type for the last release, in particular the Armoured Huscarles. I invaded Denmark, and hit a unit of those with a unit of Rycerz Swordsmen in front, and a unit of Militia (Billmen) on each flank, and the Huscarles beat all three units http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif I went in and lowered its charge by 2 and its offense and defense by 1 each. That made a big difference when I replayed the battle. BTW, does anyone know what effect snow has on the battle? Other than tiring out units faster. Does falling snow or wind have any effect?
I found a bug in the game with falling snow. It treats snow as rain in that it won't let you aim gunpowder infantry units at anything, but if an enemy comes within range, their guns go off No animation or anything, you just hear the discharge and the enemies fall to the ground.
I forgot that Brigands weren't available until the High era when making out the Polish unit lineup, but I decided it was better to make Trans Archers available to them, in the same provinces as the Brigands. Got an email on this from one of the lurkers.
Also, after playing as the Poles, I think the Czeladz Bowmen are not a good unit for the Poles. I would prefer Szekely in normal situations, and have not built any Bowmen because of this. I am going to bring the Lancers back to their original settings of a Serbian Husar-type unit, and turn the Bowmen into a knight unit. Rycerz have such stiff building requirements that I have just gotten Poland able to build them, and it's close to 1400. I don't mind this in itself, but the Poles don't have another designated heavy cav unit to rely on.
I have also made some changes to the Russian cav units. I made the Dvors into a Gothic Kn-type, and turned the Cossacks into the lighter, faster unit that I think most of us envision them as being. I kept their cav-attack bonus, and described them as being designed to take on the Mongols.
I also got some help from a lurker with my intro vid, which was giving some people problems. He converted it the proper format, and even added a nice little title effect.
The game seems to crop off the back edge of the vid, however, so if you're reading, Ibn, please have the title effect end a half second sooner and send it in.
You have to have help like this on a big project, since it's just about impossible for one person to know everything required, or to catch everything that's amiss in the program.
For this last release, I went through the Early campaign and tried to make sure that all the factions had a good mix of starting buildings, so they would turn out a good mix of units. I think all of the postings have been about High and Late games, so I guess I was pretty successful with that effort. I'll try and go through those campaigns as well and see what I can do, but it gets really hard when you get into the more advanced units, since you want the factions to build an adequate mix of units right off the bat, but you don't want to tech up the provinces so that further province development is not needed to a great extent. This gets really hard if the AI is just not programmed to place an emphasis on infrastructure, as it was in the Call-to-Power games. You also get into economics and giving the AI the funds needed without giving so much money to everyone that budgeting is not a factor. I hope you see how the complexity grows exponentially as you add in all the game factors involved here. Too, we are just now getting the unit building requirements settled on, to know what the various factions require in each era.
For the Levant provinces, early play-testing revealed that whichever Muslim faction controlled them, the Turks or Egyptians, grew so strong that they would roll over the entire region, thus I lowered their land and trade values, much as I did Iberia.
Quokka, those are all little inconsistencies that developed from all the changing over the course of the mod's growth. I need people, like you, to study the mod thoroughly for just these types of things.
I can't remember why I changed the County Militia bonus, but go with the current setting. I have changed the xcel file to match. I thought I had deleted the xcel entry for the Military Academy months ago. It does nothing for any unit that doesn't require an Academy to build, meaning that Janissaries are the only units that receive any benefit from Academies. I put this in the building description, but obviously forgot to update the xcel as well. It's just so hard to remember all the little stuff like this when you are making changes. If I ever do this professionally, I'll make out a checklist for all this type of stuff.
I thought the same thing with the Master Shipbuilder after I released the last update. You don't want to make all the little changes like this, though, until the basic concept has been out a little while and you see how it is going to work, or else you set yourself up for bugs if you have to take things back out. What I decided to do was replace the Castle with a Muster Field, which the AI normally won't build, as the second requirement.
I also changed the Royal Court requirement of the Germanic Kns to a Spearmaker. This might explain why the Muslim capitals started out with Royal Courts in earlier releases, which caused some graphics glitches after I restricted them to Christian factions.
With 3.10, I believe, I changed the personality of the Spanish a little by giving them the light archer unit in place of the heavier MAA. This made them more like their Muslim foes. I also made the Almohads more like their Christian foes with the Arab Infantry to go with the Almohad Urban Militia. I thought it was a nice little twist, and gave you a couple more unique unit lineups. I also found more historical info online about the Spainiards than most factions, I guess due to the historical significance of their wars, and the increased emphasis on the heavy cav for offensive punch accurately reflects history, when most all infantry were regarded as unreliable auxillery troops.
WoE, to enable Berserkers, all you should need to do is replace the rebels with a regular faction, and add the required buildings.
The Woodsman pic, and a couple of others like the Vlastela, were made by YG, and the black dots are a known glitch that he was unable to fix when he had his computer problems hit. YG, I hope you are still able to follow the mod, and that you get back online soon. We miss ya.
The Hashishin rows were another overlooked setting when I made them a regular unit. I changed it from 2 to 4. Same thing with the Porte dismounts. They should be Jan Inf.
I just deleted the region bonus column in the unit stats xcel page for the 3.12 release because it was so out-dated. Whatever you see on the strategic map in the game is correct.
I thought the Assassin bonus in Syria was nice for the historical value, which was also the original CA setting, but if it's useless than there are certainly other units can use it. I'll try and see what's out there.
I'm not sure if ship bonuses do work or not, but the AI tries to build the requirements to get the bonus units in those regions, so I put them in for provinces where I wanted the AI to build ships, like Corsica, I believe.
I am stumped as to how the game decides on rebellion troop mixes. I put a LOT of work into this, and the results have not seemed to match the unit text settings at all. I had two peasant revolts recently, and both were nothing but artillery. I went through the text, and there were over a dozen regular troop types that should have been chosen before any artillery types.
I removed the Crusade ability from Sicily and Aragon because they didn't have a big enough economy to support them. And yes, just add their names to the faction list.
Jacque, when evaluating the unit makeup of a large faction, like the French in your High game, you need to differentiate between their garrison stacks, which are usually infantry and missile units, and their offensive stacks, which will contain their cavalry and attack infantry. If you enable god mode, you should find a couple of those where they are at war and on the offensive.
As far as the Byz, someone here has proposed making Rhodes accessible by land from Nicaea. What do you guys think of this?
I think the main reason for including it as a separate province was its Crusader history, which I wonder about with the exclusion of the Laungedoc territories in France, which you could argue had a greater historical significance. It's too bad it's such a pain to change the provincial borders and such.
Well, I've tried to cover everything here, but with a week's worth of posts, I probably missed some things that you still have questions about. Just paste them in again, and I'll try to catch them next time.
Beelzebub
10-25-2003, 02:19
Jacque: Hire mercs in Tripoli to keep your holy land provinces. I was able to buff up my numbers enough to keep the egyptions at bay until I could build spearmen in cyprus. The problem is it costs an arm and a leg, so you need to avoid getting invaded by both england and some mediterranean seapower at the same time, so you can get some trade routes going. If you're in a huge war in europe, it's probably better to just cut your losses and evacuate to cyprus untill you can afford to retake them.
Gregoshi
10-25-2003, 05:08
marcino posts the following from the Entrance Hall:
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Claymores (english unit) dont have their swords on battle screen - they`re running around with empty hands It`s not a bug but looks strange.
keep on modding Wes, everythig looks good I think - great job You`ve done so far
marcino
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Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ Oct. 24 2003,22:08)]marcino posts the following from the Entrance Hall:
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Claymores (english unit) dont have their swords on battle screen - they`re running around with empty hands It`s not a bug but looks strange.
keep on modding Wes, everythig looks good I think - great job You`ve done so far
marcino
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This is one of those things about modding that you either laugh at or go crazy. The problem was that the unit is mercenarygallowglass, and for the items folder I had added the plural onto the end of gallowglass. The fix will be the next text update, or you can fix it in the items folder, weapon3, if you know where to look.
Was playing as swede... ofcourse... but i noticed that swedes have viking units in all eras... untis called huscarles? now im not trying to be a smartass but the viking era kinda died out when the mediveal started. Nobody in sweden during that time called themselfs huscarls.
Here are som exampels of good untis.
Svean Axeman= A better version of woodsmen, better moral etc
Hirdmen= can be used instead of viking landsmenn or what ever is the royal unit now in early. So Hirdmen can be the royal unit in early and then in high and late you can have Swedish knights.
Swedish Royal Knights= Less armor then the frankish and maybe a bit faster due to the fact that the lack the same armor as franks
And i think the swedish used longbows, but not as good english tho but still a good version of normal archers, call them Swedish Archers or somethin.
The swedes should have untis that are good against infantry but weak against heavy knights like the destriders.
You shouldnt call untis vikings. that era was gone http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Woodsmen are not available in Denmark, but.they are available to All Non-Muslim Factions wether they have eligible homelands or not.
The Danish and French only have Crossbowmen until Late. The Danes and Swedes also only have one mercenary province in their homelands, Livonia, and no others close so even hiring mercenary archers will be difficult. How about making Sweden a Mercenary Province?
Pavisiers and Pavise Sailors only have a Large shield not a Pavise.
Pavisier Pikemen don’t have any shield.
Swiss Armoured Pikemen and Pavisier Pikemen have exactly the same combat stats, except Pavisier Pikemen cost 25 Fl less to build, 13 Fl less upkeep, require only Watch3 instead of Watch4 and supposedly come with a Pavise shield for extra protection making them the baddest infantry there is. The PP description says they lack the ferocity of Swiss units and their training is almost to Swiss standards, so maybe up the Attack and Armour of SAP by 1 and make them Disciplined. Watch 4 is a big step up from Watch3.
The Sicilians are still eligible for Knights Hospitaller but can’t crusade any more. Aragon has access to all Crusader units but can’t crusade, but they can build Outremer units.
Guild level buildings all have a description saying they improve the overall quality of troops and guarantee levels of workmanship and wages. How about making them give a +1 Morale and a small income of 10 Fl? The +1 Morale reflects the troops going into battle knowing they have excellent quality equipment and the small income reflects the wages earned and spent(materials etc) by the Guild in the region. For Master level buildings leave the bonuses as they are but double the income to 20 Fl. A Master craftsmen would surely be making at least this much in commissions from nobles for unique weapons etc. It’s a pity that you can't require combinations of buildings for bonuses, ie Master Swordsmith + Master Armourer = +1 Valour on top of their normal bonuses. Don’t you think if you had a sword that you could split hairs in 4 AND armour that was light but would make Ned Kelly drool you’d fight better in battle.
Having just one or the other isn’t a total package and +1 valour is a large advantage to give. A pity that Master Horse Breeder can't improve speed.
Quote[/b] (Lazul @ Oct. 25 2003,04:59)]Was playing as swede... ofcourse... but i noticed that swedes have viking units in all eras... untis called huscarles? now im not trying to be a smartass but the viking era kinda died out when the mediveal started. Nobody in sweden during that time called themselfs huscarls.
Here are som exampels of good untis.
Svean Axeman= A better version of woodsmen, better moral etc
Hirdmen= can be used instead of viking landsmenn or what ever is the royal unit now in early. So Hirdmen can be the royal unit in early and then in high and late you can have Swedish knights.
Swedish Royal Knights= Less armor then the frankish and maybe a bit faster due to the fact that the lack the same armor as franks
And i think the swedish used longbows, but not as good english tho but still a good version of normal archers, call them Swedish Archers or somethin.
The swedes should have untis that are good against infantry but weak against heavy knights like the destriders.
You shouldnt call untis vikings. that era was gone http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Could you maybe give some more examples of swedish units?
Trying of few things out http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
EDIT: Nevermind, seems I've reached the unit limit, thus this will be futile. I guess.
This time i played as turk... and... WOW, the janissary costs a lot and i mean ALOT
I had the GH above me and i looked at the stats of a mongol inf and they have about the same stat as Janissary Archers, but the only have half the support cost?
And JHI have about 120 or somthin as support... isnt that a bit to much due to the fact that you lowered the stats?
Accualy i think alot of untis have to high support cost
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Beelzebub
10-27-2003, 17:10
"Claymores" don't have any weapon in battle (still swing and kill normally, just a missing graphic).
oops mb some1 already mentioned this http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
The AI still treats Mercenaries as a Tradeable good and builds merchant buildings in provinces even though the goods are worthless. Only Provence, Georgia and Bulgaria don’t already have a tradegood. Maybe give Mercenaries a very small value and call it Tourism, or to stay in character Mead would suddenly become a hot commodity in these places.
Lonely Planet: Medieval Europe on 5Fl a year, Hotspots of the World, Mercenary Special Edition.
Denmark: Mostly Harmless.
Wessex: Bring a towel
Constantinople: Big Sights, Big Fights. Chainmail, don’t leave home without it.
Gnome Editor won’t open build_prod, error in record 3 Field 18 which is the Bowyer tech level field, but I haven’t had any problems because of it.
ToranagaSama
10-28-2003, 05:05
Can someone advise, if, and, how, I can position a ship in the sea region separating Spain from Africa?
I've eliminated the land bridge between Cordoba and Africa, and would like to do the same for the other land bridge the Almo province on the penninsula with Africa (sorry forget the province names).
If I remove the last land bridge the Almo will need a ship to move troop to and from their provinces in Africa and Spain.
The Almo start with two ships. I'd like to move one or add another in this sea region between Africa and Spain.
I scanned the Startpos file, but didn't notice anything identifiable to me that would do this.
Is the appropriate file in another folder or something?
I also removed the land bridge between Flanders and Wessex, fortunately the British start with ships in the Channel.
I don't think the land bridges are appropriate, and wonder how their removal will effect the MedMod. Any thoughts or experiences?
Thanks in advance.
Trebizond starts with an Inn but is not a Mercenary province.
Turcoman Foot Soldiers still have the Slav Javelinmen description.
Woodsmen don’t have shields on the Battle screen.
Expanded Farmland still appears as Forest Clearings in the build summary.
Improved Ploughs still appears as Farmland +60% in the build summary.
Having loads of fun in my Spanish game. The French actually forced me out of 2 provinces 25 years ago and I haven't been able to retake them. They got mad and put together a 4500 man force to attack my 1200 in Anjou and then Brittany. Not nice when they had 840 FMAA and 600 Destriders. I thought I was going to lose Aquitaine as well but the Pope intervened after Brittany so we had to cool it and I reinforced.
The Italians need a little help with unit speeds. Fighting some large battles in Early has shown a weakness in their lineups. For the most part their forces consist of Pavisiers, Italian Light Infantry and Italian Sailors. There are some but not too many Contadina Infantry (more appearing later and replacing Light Inf) and some Spearmen. Pavisiers are Slow, Italian Light Infantry are Normal and Italian Sailors are Fast. This leads to their line staggering with the Italian Sailors racing out ahead of their covering troops. Sailors are armed with crossbows so against my Hidalgos and Jinetes they are easy meat after one, if that, volley. In the hands of a human their unit line up would be deadly, with the Sailors hiding behind the tough Light Inf and with Contadina Inf as support they would be a Knights idea of hell. The slowness of the Pavisiers really hurts them as they are too slow to offer mutual support to each other and not tough enough to take on 2-3 Knight units. The Light Inf are but even though they have the same build requirements the AI favours the Pavisiers.
Galicians rock, maybe a little too hard. Its 1145 in my game and Leon, Castile, Aragon and Granada all have 2 weapon and armour upgrades. This makes V0 Galicians 4 Att/4 Def/5 Arm Hybrids in Early with more upgrades coming soon. They eat anything that gets near them and pincushion anything else.
game: early normal france (bite me, lol, I'm not that good OK?)
Game notes:
1) At game start, I built cav like a sonabitch, then rushed the Eng right off the continent. Think this is where things go wonky( suspect I zapped all the Eng princes or something). So the Eng are on the other side of the channel, I've got naval parity, so I stop looking at them very often, eh?
Start paying all attention to my continental neighbors.
Along about 1115 or so I notice that there aren't any more English. Wtf, and I go back several saves and discover the English King has died w/o issue. Hmmph, says I, and let's take wessex and mercia befor the Danes get to them. So I do that, the Danes take wales, and the Swedes take Ireland.
Northumbria and Scotland have about 1k of rebel troops apiece, so we ALL leave that for later.
(here's the wonky bit)
Comes 1126, the Eng 're-appear' , with 4K of full crusaders Holy shit, methinx. Go in w/god-mode
to view the Eng, and they're going bankrupt at warp 6 Watch & Save for 20 yr.s and they just sat
there going ever deeper into the red. No way can they support all those Crusader troopies.
Ok, lets try this, then. Go back to the 'event', drop almost all of the rebels (amazing what one can do in god-mode), the Eng beam in with 'only' 1.5 K of Crusaders. Mfkr, says I. Sorry buggers cant support this either.
Try several other variables, same sort of thing just different numbers.
Conclusion: This sort of thing may work for the Pope in vanilla, but Engand is now a self supporting prison
camp and daughter factory at the moment, lol
All AI factions on MY borders show an even mix. 'Course I've not been atking any for the last 50 yrs
as politics has been good to me (for a change, lol !http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif so working on the infrastructure has been my major effort.
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Do still notice that EVERYONE likes to beat up the HRE. Some of them even fight for the opportunity,
even if it means loosing other provinces they own.
Used to be that all AI factions would go out of thier way to get to ME. Not sure if this is a bad thing or not, tho I'm sure that playing the HRE requires a better player than myself.
-----------
From everything I read in the forums, your mod is supposed to be for the 'expert' player, but I enjoy it immensely (tho I play VERY conservatively now, in GA, even tho I know I'm not going to 'win', I still get to see what the AI factions are achieving when combined w/god-mode).
I'm looking forward to the next release bigtime, dude Even tho the wife is starting to wonder who I want to be with more, lol Must be the sign of a succesfull game, eh?
L`zard
Everyone, keep tabs on the strength on rebellions and re-appearances. I read in another thread that the all-artillery revolts are an old bug in the game that seems to be making a re-appearance with the patch.
"Trebizond starts with an Inn but is not a Mercenary province.
Turcoman Foot Soldiers still have the Slav Javelinmen description.
Woodsmen don’t have shields on the Battle screen.
Expanded Farmland still appears as Forest Clearings in the build summary.
Improved Ploughs still appears as Farmland +60% in the build summary."
Ok, I deleted the Inn. I had already gone and added goods for Georgia and Provence.
As for the Turcoman Foot, I had figured YG would have done that, but with his apparent disconnection, I wrote up one.
I decided to just remove the shield from the Woodsmen. I had been feeling they were a little too powerful, anyway. I upped their defense and armour by 1 each to halfway compensate for the shield removal.
I fixed the Forest Clearings to use the existing +40% description, and wrote up the Completed statement to read Farmland +40%. I think the old completed messages are fine.
I decided to increase the speed of the Pavisiers and the other slow spearmen to a normal walking speed. I dropped the Sailors to normal speeed as well, so now their line should move out together.
I also decided to replace the Town Watch 4 requirement for Heavy Inf with a Swordsmith 3, and add a Swordsmith to the requirements for Light Infantry. This leaves the Town Watch line for the halbardiers, makes Swordsmiths necessary for all bodyguard units, and gives the Italians a need for a Swordsmith Guild.
I don't know why the AI would prefer Pavisiers to Light Inf, since the Lt Inf have much higher priority values.
I reduced the Armourer's Guild to a Shop for the Pavisier Pikemen, and replaced the Town Watch 3 with a Spearmaker Guild. This makes them available with Castles, which fits with the Italian advantage in spear units, and leaves the Town Watch for the halbardier line of units.
I may change the name of the Pikemen to avoid the confusion with the pavise. I had thought to have the pavise represented by the extra armour of these pikemen. Anyone know of a good name?
Making the Swiss Arm. Pikes disciplined in a good suggestion for making them different from the regular pikemen and all the other varieties.
As for the names of the Danish/Swedish units, this goes back to my decision to leave off from historical accuracy to make a Catholic faction specializing in blade units, much like the Italians in spear and halbard units.
The other stuff, like the large shields for the pavise sailors and the discounts on the Mongol units is intentional. Pavise shields give no melee protection, so I fudged a little, using the pavise designation to represent the superior armour of the Italians.
Yelping Godzilla
10-28-2003, 12:33
Hola all.
I am back from China and should soon have actual computer and internet access (By the end of this weekend?).
Hoping to carry on helping out and possibly, just possibly, starting work on the addon pack again. Have to see if other obligations permit, of course. Looking forward to playing a very different medmod from the one I left a while back :]
Cheers.
Old Bald Guy
10-28-2003, 13:35
MedMod is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Last two campaigns as Rus and Byz, the Egyptians and Italians have ruled the world, respectively. Not sure how they've done it, since I've kicked the tail out of every army they've sent at me. They are, however, killing me by attrition. They've got the size, power and money to starve me out.
The Italians have no offensive units, yet have all of Europe. The Egyptians have conquered all the way to the northern provinces in my Rus campaign, and we all know how difficult it is for any Muslim faction to win battle after battle, offensively.
I have no idea what this means, other than I know what it's like to face ME, without the mod. I have no idea how to win, anymore. Very cool, actually.
OBG
I was thinkin about the whole mongol thingi... if they have such law support costs, then shoudlnt the stats be lowered. Kinda unfare that they have a units that is so uber good.
The mongols should have the numbers, but not the stats.
WesW, do you always post every change you make of your next updates?
Seeing as I've made some minor alterations to the mod myself, I'd like to keep those, but use your other improvements/implementations.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Golden Horde mostly fought with overwhelming numbers right? Hardly got any knowlogde (sp? Totally forgot how to spell this word :/) of the Mongols.
I'm thinking about upping the numbers of the GH units, but lowering their stats to even it out a bit. This way ofcourse there can be far more soldiers spawning, but hopefully I'll be able to make them just equally strong in comparance and not making them even more insanely tough then they already are http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif And when fighting the actual battle, they overwhelm you And not you having put a far larger force on the field due to the 16 max unit limit and them fielding many small units.
Haven't entirely thought of how to change the combat stats yet, but have thought of how and what to increase numberwise of the GH units.
Mongol Heavy Cavalry: upped from 40 to 80.
Mongol Horse Archers: upped from 40 (or was it 60? Can't remember) to 80.
Mongol Warriors: upped from 60 to 80/90 or just keep it at 60. I remain undecided.
Chinese Infantry: upped from 100 to 140-160. Also remain undecided.
Maybe an idea?
Anways I've also seen re-emergences of factions who mostly contain out of one type of unit. For example the Pope re-emerged with mostly Italian Sailors. The Turks re-emerged with almost all Catapults except for a few other units. So the turks didn't last for long http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
I have also changed the Hashashins to a 20 men unit and they have their Stealth ability back. Though I'm wondering why you got rid of the Stealth/"Can hide in open" option?
I have made some alterations to a few other units aswell.
Just one more question:
Does raising the build costs and support costs of the ships make it less likely that the AI will mass on ships?
The Danes seem to get naval supremecy if you don't keep attention to it. Bit hard to get to the Brittish Isles if you're at war with the Danes and they have full stacks of ships in the water and you have none to hardly none. And they also sink every ship you've got, making it very hard to ever eliminate them (many times they go for the Brittish Isles).
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Jeebus_Frist
10-28-2003, 16:31
I've played three campaigns in high so far. In each campaign the English are the first faction to get wiped out, usually be a combination of the French, Danes, and Swedes. Swedes and Danes then proceed to fight off the mongols and take all of eastern Europe. All three muslim factions get wiped out fairly quickly. The Italians are way overpowered IMO, they end up controlling almost the entire med right from the outset. I doubled the support costs for the mongol troops because they were easily rolling over every other faction. They still penetrate deep, but eventually begin to fade. The Pope is extremely aggressive attacking either Sicily or Italy and excommunicating everyone. In my last game only the Pope and the Germans weren't excommed.
The Byz have an almost impossible task in High competing with the Italians for Constantinople, defending Greece from an Italian counter attack, building enough ships to counter the Italians, holding off the Turks, and preparing for the Horde. Their provinces are too under-developed to produce enough units and they are at zero income by the tenth turn or so. They absolutely have to take back Constantinople which means war with the Italians is inevitable, they cannot generate enough ships or soldiers to fight the Italians after making a try for Constantinople, of course at this point the Turks attack either Nicaea or Trebizond with a huge stack of Armenian Cav and Ottoman Inf. A few turns later the Horde arrives, I've noticed that the horde usually moves due west unless I am playing a faction to the south, then it turns its attentions to the south. Mercenaries are out of the question as the handful of troops the Byz already have trained have such a high upkeep that they have eaten up the available treasury. Basically the best you can hope for thirty turns into the game is to be relegated to control of Nicaea and Rhodes. You will lose Greece to the Italians, Trebizond to the Turks, Crimea to the Horde, and one of those three factions will be sitting on the doorstep of Nicaea with several huge stacks waiting to crush your last few troops, in addition to having your entire navy sunk by the Egyptians, the French, or the Italians. It simply seems to me that the Byz are programmed to die in the High era.
ToranagaSama
10-28-2003, 16:33
Did a "new" additional install, along with the patch, and 3.12:
MM Early; Expert; Sicily
.....and on the 5th day, the lord high modder, giveth and he taketh away....
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Wes, I love ya I think.
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Started a campaign and the first surprise, didn't expect any, but the man did say he addressed most of the issues we posted about didn't he?
First thing I notice (the lord high modder giveth) is that the Scilian King is in residence in SICILY My frontal lobe thanks you, Wes, for this correction. I also notice there's an extra ship: 1 Guarding Malta, and surprisingly, 1 in the Adriatic and TWO guarding Sciliy. This is good Especially so, given some surprising behaviour on the part of the Egytians.
The next thing I notice (the lord high modder taketh!http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif, is that Napels has NO tradeable goods. Ahhh A sense of impending doom begins to descend upon me like a shroud. I begin to wonder if this was intentional, and then realize that the Lord High Modder really does listen to his patrons. OMG http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
I'm in deep doodoo right off the bat, so I immediately check my "Knights" for acumen, given I only use Knights as Govenors. To my surprise, for once, I have a Knight with 3 Acumen. Which, along with the office of Lord Chamberlain, will give my a 5 Acumen Knight to place as Govenor of Sicily the ONLY province with tradeable goods.
Question, is there any florins received for the "mercenary" tradeable good?
Wes, the fact that the AI is now better at making money means you've just upped the difficulty, for me, by one exponent. Half of me thanks you IMMENSELY, the other says, YIKES http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif
Sooo, in keeping with the hardcore rule, knights as govenors, I've got to train an additional knight to be govenor of the 3rd province. Summary observation: starting out I've got apprx. 450 florins of income, the starting bank and not much else. I've got support the maintenance of 4 Ships and 3 Knights, in addition to usual Campaign duties. Yikes I've also got one single star knight with 2 Acumen and a rather good King with plus 5 Acumen (I forget exactly) and 4 influence, a little over 40 in age.
My immediate strategic aim is to "bribe" my way into that balkan province with the gold and silver (can never remember name). OH Least I forget, Naples doses not have a port Took me a few minutes to comprehend WHY I couldn't move troops from Naples to Malta.
Basic overall observations: Ships are now even more "vital" to the welfare of Sicily; Malta is even more a "fortress" than ever, with the substraction of Naples' tradeables, Malta is now elevated above it in importance. This has a consequence as described below.
After a few turns, a couple of VERY interesting observations: 1) The Argonese put ships in the water asap, but can't seem to get beyond more than 3, so far Its still early, but for the Argonese to manage to survive and thrive they NEED to have more ships in order to create a trade empire. They are consistently stiffled by a lack of income. Presuming the AI will act accordingly, perhaps they should start with more ships in Early.
2) This is the most interesting development of all The Eygtians (normally not much of a sea power and to their detriment extemely territorally defensive of their seas) of all people have 3 or 4 ships in the water; AND have pushed them out to the Algerian(??) coast (the Almo province nearest Sicily). In my observations this is unprecedented Way to go Wes. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif How'd you do this??? Alter the factions characteristics??? This is good, and will be interesting to see how things develop in the Campaign. Though, they need to either spread their ships out, or build another to complete a trade network chain. They're missing a ship in to connect their THREE ports.
As a result of the Egyptian "ship" progress and due to their aggressive "sea" behaviour in previous campaigns, I'm abit nervous as to the Welfare of Malta with its renewed importance. So, I plan to add a second ship to the defense of Malta. I have no idea what the Eygtians will do with their new found sea power.
I pushed one of the two initial ships guarding Sicily north for trade, so for precautionary reasons I plan to put a second ship to the defense of Sicily. Now, I'm going to be TWO ships behind in trade development in a circumstance where the Sicilian NEED trade more than ever before. Yikes (I feel as if I'm the Danes in Vanilla, cept there isn't any hard-code protecting me (from the HRE) and all my neighors are a heck of lot more dangerous.)
My first strategic aim was to bribe the rebel balkan province with the gold and silver, BUT my emmissary was rejected. So invaison is necessary, but given the above cirumstances, where am I going to get the troops to do so? In addition to the lack of a port in Naples New development, the Byz decided to invade the province, and the Hungarians, simultaneously, responded and now own it. Damn
Its only a little past 1040, my only immediate course is to build and push my ships into the norther Med, wary that I am of the Egytians. New development, the Tolemas (sp?)/ Eyptians have requested "alliance", of course I accepted, whew Now I should be able to get to their rich trade unmolested. I'm also feverously developing my farms.
OH I almost forgot. Don't know how much the Lord High Modder had to do with it, but on my first or possibly second turn there was a Flood and my port is Sicily was DESTROYED. Double Yikes Scilian income dropped from about 750 I believe, to I think 100 or so. LOYALTY dropped below to 86 Time to shuffle my few troops and there is NO port in Naples. Ahhh Obviously, my number one priority was to rebuild that Port, asap. Consequently, my development schedule is even further set back, while the AI keeps on chugging away....
Like I started, its a little past 1040 and I'm already challenged and BEHIND the AI. VERY GOOD I'm seriously wondering if Naples should have, at least, a *single* tradeable good. Sensically and historically, Naples s/b a trade province. Gameplay wise, doing so, may preculde the removal of a good from Sicily. Let's see how things continue to develope.
---
Also, would Wes or someone knowledgeable, be so kind as to review my previous post. I wish to remove all Land Bridges from the game. I believe them to be illogical, and wish to place ships in their stead. (We'll see how the AI handles this.)
I've removed the Wessex/Flanders bridge. In the Medmod, the Brits start with ships in the Channel, so no problem. The Almo, however, need a ship to connect Africa to Spain. They start with ships, BUT seem loathe to remove them from guarding the Algerian coast. Additionally, its too many move for Almo to move a ship from Algeria to the Gibralta Straights(??). So I want to take one of their starting ships or possibly add another in the Straights of Gibralta. How? See previous post.
Hmmm...just realized the Constantinople has a bridge also, or did Wes remove that previously??
TS, loving itttt
Wes;
RE: the Italians
Any idea when the version splitting the Italians into Venitia/Tuscany will become available?
This will certainly be the answer to the 'rampant italians' problem.
No rampant Italians in my game. They only have 6 provinces in my Spanish campaign and thats because I haven't been able to advance in the Med because of the damn Swedes and their Viking Hordes. The Pope and then the Sicilians have been beating up on them and they stupidly tried to attack me a few times, but they are no real threat.
The Swedes and Danes carved up the rebel eastern states quickly, the last rebels died in ~1110 which is pretty impressive. They have gone on to develop them well and both have extensive trade fleets, the Danes all the way to Portugal and the Swedes stopping in the Bay of Biscay usually. I am at war with the Swedes and have only been able to secure my coastlines sporadically, the Swedes have even invaded and taken Navarre. They have Hordes of Viking Krals and battles against those are tough, especially when they send 1700 of them with a few thousand more troops.
The Egyptians and Byzantines are both huge and at war. The Egyptians have all the Turkish lands and the Byzantines have all their starting lands, except Trebizond plus north of the Black Sea they have pushed the Russians back to Ryazan and Volga Bulgaria. They have been incredibly unlucky with storms losing 8 ships so far (1160) or I think they would be pushing the Egyptians back, which is a pleasant surprise. I really like the Byzantine unit line up, I may have to play them next.
The only factions wiped out are the Almohads by me and the Pope by the Sicilians, the English have been restricted to the Islands and the Germans are down to Switzerland and Tyrolia, the Poles whipped them good. The Polish are large but are all central so don't have a trade network, but they have plenty of good units.
Beelzebub
10-28-2003, 22:43
Is there any way to make the pope a bit less of a target? The sicilians and italians seem to be taking him out without any remorse..
Old Bald Guy
10-28-2003, 23:47
That's probably because the Pope is very aggressive, Beez. When playing the Siz or Italians, the Pope will eventually attack one or the other. If he fights back, they excomm you. He gets what he deserves.
Jeebus_Frist
10-29-2003, 04:02
Quote[/b] (Old Bald Guy @ Oct. 28 2003,16:47)]That's probably because the Pope is very aggressive, Beez. When playing the Siz or Italians, the Pope will eventually attack one or the other. If he fights back, they excomm you. He gets what he deserves.
100% agree. Playing the Italians in High on Expert, I left HUGE garrisons in every province the Pope had access to just to avoid the inevitable invasion. As I said, inevitable, because he would bring 300 men to take on my 1000. I squashed him like a bug. Ha came back. Again. And again. And Again. I am now an MTW agnostic. Kill pope every time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Beelzebub
10-29-2003, 07:05
Quote[/b] (Old Bald Guy @ Oct. 28 2003,16:47)]That's probably because the Pope is very aggressive, Beez. When playing the Siz or Italians, the Pope will eventually attack one or the other. If he fights back, they excomm you. He gets what he deserves.
Sure I guess he deserves it..but it pisses me off when I'm playing as a catholic country and can't crusade because he's gone... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
TS, I removed the land bridge between Wessex and Flanders early in the mod's development. To remove the link, just go into the provincial neighbors section of the campaign files, and remove the province from the list that follows each province. Thus, you would remove Cordoba and Granada from Morocco's list, where Morocco is the first province in the code line. Vice versa for Cordoba and Grananda's lines.
For land provinces, the first sea province in their neighbors list is where ships appear when built there, and where their trade link ties in. (This is not where the Port icon is specified, though, and led to the situation where Tunisia's port was placed in a different sea from the one in the relationship list.)
In the make units section, ships placed in a province show up in this same sea, which means that a ship given to Morocco should show up in the Straits of Gibraltar.
I don't have anything to do with acts of nature like floods.
When deciding upon provinces to take goods from, in order to cut down on the trade money in the Med, there were no good choices, so I basically had to limit goods to special provinces like capitals, islands and ones with mercenaries.
The real key to limiting trade income, though, is reducing the number of provinces with ports, so I tried to go through and remove the starting ports from provinces with no trade goods. This will be mainland, non-capital provinces like Naples, maybe Morocco and Tunisia, Toulouse, Valencia, Bulgaria I think, Crimea.
I kept the trade goods in Tripoli and Antioch because of the special circumstances with the forthcoming Crusader Kingdom faction, the current French possession of them, and to make them the key to either Turkish or Egyptian strength, though not an overwhelming key.
The Italians do built up huge empires, but they are prone to civil wars just like any other AI faction, and in a couple of my games this led to the complete dissolution of their faction. In my current game, they have taken over Asia Minor, Africa, the Med and Italy, of course, and had attacked the other remaining factions in an attempt to take over the world. As the Poles, I finally attacked them from Georgia, and have taken about all of Asia Minor, though the Italians have just moved their main strike force in to break a siege in Nicaea, and we are set up for a historical battle. Myself, I love it.
For the next version of the mod, when all the new factions are added, I am going to give the Aragonese Toulouse in high and late, and provence in Late as well. This will make Aragon a Major faction in the Late era, as powerful as any in the game. I am anxious to see how this plays out. I will also give them back their Crusade ability.
I will give Naples to the Venetians in Late to go with Venice, Crete and maybe Rhodes and/or Cyprus. This of course means that the Sicilians will again be out in the Late era, like the vanilla game.
I don't know when that version will be out. Issues for improving the current version keep coming out, so I am actually still modding a good bit. I want to get the game finally nailed down before getting into the next version. And I think we are getting close to that point when the reported problems involve individual units with a couple of factions, and the starting buildings. I think that most factions are surviving quite well, and everyone seems to like all the new units and their abilities.
And for fun, just think of the Medmod AI squaring off against that from the vanilla game. Even with the same starting conditions, I think you would quickly see a rout with the way the AI now performs strategically.
As for the Egyptians, I think I gave them another port, or else moved their port from Egypt to Tripoli. I think all the AIs will make adequate fleets, but they aren't much on building shipyards for some reason, so you have to give them Yards to start with, and preferably in provinces other than their capital, so they don't have to give regular units priority over the ships.
There are a lot of things like this that I do "behind the scenes", that the casual player may not even notice, except that all of a sudden a given problem is solved. Even then, it's common for us to not notice when things act "as they should", and so many times we forget to realize that an annoying problem has gone away.
With my reduction in the high and late Danish/Swedish bg units, those two factions should be reigned in somewhat, and maybe give the English a better chance. I think I had the new English cav bg units in the 3.12 release, and in my game they have quite a few Kns of Gascon, beyond the royal units. I think I forgot to mention that I enabled Wessex to build Norman Kns and Gascon, so this will help them a lot when they get run off the continent.
Jeebus, the Italians will be dramatically weakened in the next version of the mod, due to being split in half, so the Byz should have a better chance. If they still fall every time, we can always give them back Constan to start with. If you are playing as the Byz in High, I think you should be able to take Constan on about the 4th turn or so, when you run out of money. Alliances are real keys, especially making them before you attack. After that it's a matter of playing defense until hopefully the Italians sign a ceasefire.
DnC, all units have priority values which determine the units the AI picks to build, though unit cost often affects which units get built, with cheaper units being completed more often than more expensive ones. This may explain why the Italians end up with more Pavisiers than Light Inf, for example.
I think all rebellions, and probably the Horde's initial appearance, are given a monetary value or a multiple related to the value of the units currently in the province, and rebelling units are created until this value is exceeded.
I have weakened the Horde units in the last couple of mod releases, so you might want to be sure before you alter them further. From my studies, the Horde advantages were in commanders, organization, tactics, weaponry and their skill with the horsebow. Their feigned retreats also caught the implusive knights of western Europe in traps which destroyed them. The Mamluks met them in the deserts of modern-day Iraq, I believe, far from the cold steppes the Horde rose from, didn't fall for the feigned retreat, and beat them with their own horsearchers. The Vietnamese also beat them when the Horde went into the jungles of southeast Asia.
They were a horde, but they didn't win by simply overwhelming their opponents with numbers.
Glad to see you back, YG. I have just been polishing the mod and tackling some technical issues since you have been gone. I don't think you'll have any trouble getting caught up.
And remember, He who lives by the Hardcore may die by the Hardcore.
Old Bald Guy
10-29-2003, 10:29
No one has said anything, but crusades are gone. In the last three or four campaigns--all GA which should reward crusading, I haven't seen a single crusade. While I think they are too pervasive in the vanilla game, there should be some.
Thanks for the reply Wes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Jacque Schtrapp
10-29-2003, 20:40
Quote[/b] ]Jeebus, the Italians will be dramatically weakened in the next version of the mod, due to being split in half, so the Byz should have a better chance. If they still fall every time, we can always give them back Constan to start with. If you are playing as the Byz in High, I think you should be able to take Constan on about the 4th turn or so, when you run out of money. Alliances are real keys, especially making them before you attack. After that it's a matter of playing defense until hopefully the Italians sign a ceasefire.
I restarted my Byz campaign in High on Expert seven times to try different scenarios to see what would happen. The only way I could take Constantinople is to lump all of my troops from Greece, Trebizond, and Nicaea together into a single invasion force. Whether you fight or the Italians withdraw to the fortress, you don't have enough troops to assault the fortress and defeat them. The Italians will take Serbia right away which leaves a full stack of troops bordering Constantinople and an undefended Greece. Blocking their naval access south of Venice is the real key because they will reinforce out there, Unfortunately the Byz have too few ships and not enough time to prevent that. They absolutely MUST retake their former capital or die trying. I am a fairly competent player and I quite simply cannot do it. Splitting the Italians in the next release may just reduce their ability to respond to a Byz attack on the big "C". I started a Byz campaign in early and am doing quite well currently. The Turks are huge and the only thing saving me thus far is the extremely capable Byzantine Lancers (Stratiatoi). I'm having a great time, thanks
Quote[/b] ]And for fun, just think of the Medmod AI squaring off against that from the vanilla game.
heheh, I can see the MedMod AI now "Mmmm... vanilla Tasty" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
hellenes
10-30-2003, 00:22
Just an observation (no insult intended): But IIRC the big 'C' was in hands of the Bellardwin Count of flandres the Venetians had priveleges but didnt hold the city so in a later edition with hopefully Flemish added they should take the ownership of the city and thus make the recapture easier (as it was) for the byz also to make the things harder for the byz and for the flemish the addition of bulgarians and georgians could help (there are of course the armenians in less armenia)....just some thoughts... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif
hellenes
I have gotten several letters with this latest release involving installation problems, so I went back and reviewed the mod setup, and re-read the installation instructions. It's funny how you can look at something repeatedly and not realize that it's totally inadequate/confusing to people not already familiar with the mod. So, I have re-written the installation section, noting that starting with 3.12, the order in which you install the mod components matters.
Installation:
For those of you downloading the mod from my site, it is contained in two self-extraction utilities.
One is the Graphics portion of the mod, and contains permanent mod files that you need to store somewhere, in case you need to re-install the mod at a later date. This Graphics portion must be installed first.
The second utility contains the Texts, or Update, portion of the mod, and it is this part which is updated when new editions of the mod are released. Note that this Text or Update portion must be installed after the Graphics portion.
After downloading a portion, all you need do is save it, click on it, and follow the instructions. And please take the few seconds required to read them, as they may save both of us considerable time later.
For example, if you have installed the game to a directory other than C:\Program Files\Total War, you will need to point the installer to your equivalent of the Total War folder (not the Medieval – Total War folder). The second page of the installer asks you where you want the mod files created. If you let the game install itself to the default directory, then you can simply click the button to proceed with installation, since the installer is already pointed to the default directory.
END
As for Crusades, I saw what I believed are remnants of a couple in my game, though they may have been part of old loyalist rebellions. It's hard to note when they are created without an alert message. I wish the game was set to always alert the human of a Crusade launch, no matter which faction he is playing as.
Unfortunately, I am not sure how to hit any more of a middle ground with them. If I give Chapter Houses at the start of the game, the AI starts making Crusades immediately. If I only give Churches, the AI might never build Houses, or not have enough money for Crusades if it does.
I'll try and start a High game as the Byz, and see what needs to be done with Constan.
I have gotten several letters with this latest release involving installation problems, so I went back and reviewed the mod setup, and re-read the installation instructions. It's funny how you can look at something repeatedly and not realize that it's totally inadequate/confusing to people not already familiar with the mod. So, I have re-written the installation section, noting that starting with 3.12, the order in which you install the mod components matters.
Installation:
For those of you downloading the mod from my site, it is contained in two self-extraction utilities.
One is the Graphics portion of the mod, and contains permanent mod files that you need to store somewhere, in case you need to re-install the mod at a later date. This Graphics portion must be installed first.
The second utility contains the Texts, or Update, portion of the mod, and it is this part which is updated when new editions of the mod are released. Note that this Text or Update portion must be installed after the Graphics portion.
After downloading a portion, all you need do is save it, click on it, and follow the instructions. And please take the few seconds required to read them, as they may save both of us considerable time later.
For example, if you have installed the game to a directory other than C:\Program Files\Total War, you will need to point the installer to your equivalent of the Total War folder (not the Medieval – Total War folder). The second page of the installer asks you where you want the mod files created. If you let the game install itself to the default directory, then you can simply click the button to proceed with installation, since the installer is already pointed to the default directory.
END
As for Crusades, I saw what I believed are remnants of a couple in my game, though they may have been part of old loyalist rebellions. It's hard to note when they are created without an alert message. I wish the game was set to always alert the human of a Crusade launch, no matter which faction he is playing as.
Unfortunately, I am not sure how to hit any more of a middle ground with them. If I give Chapter Houses at the start of the game, the AI starts making Crusades immediately. If I only give Churches, the AI might never build Houses, or not have enough money for Crusades if it does.
I'll try and start a High game as the Byz, and see what needs to be done with Constan.
Old Bald Guy
10-30-2003, 12:18
I understand your dilemma, Wes. Just another broken part of the game, along with terrible diplomacy. Makes you want to beat your head on the monitor. How close this game comes to being the perfect game. I've long ago passed Civ2 in hours of playing. Wouldn't you just love to see this game fixed like it could be? Man, what a game.
You've done a magnificent job, pal. I'm pretty good, but I now get my hat handed to me on a regular basis--thanks for playing our game, pick up your parting gifts at the door. I can't imagine going back to the vanilla game. If I did, it would be a bloodbath. And boooooooooring. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Best wishes,
OBG
Jacque Schtrapp
10-30-2003, 18:38
Quick thought on the Turks in early. I'm playing the Byz and have had five battles with the Turks so far. They have great land provinces with plenty of money and have no problem raising large armies. All five battles have ended up with them attacking Trebizond from Nicaea, Anatolia, Rum, and Armenia with around 6500 troops made up or Turcomans, Desert Archs, Ottoman Inf, Spearmen, and Sipahi. I end up defending with about 2000 troops mostly Psiloi and Vestiritae with som Stratiatoi thrown in. Basic plan Four Vestiritae in a line with eight Psiloi behind them and two Stratiatoi on each side to protect the flank. Their first wave is usually made up of all the Sipahi and an even split between Turcoman and Ottomans. Because of their lack of any infantry other than the Spearmen I can set my archers to destroy the cavalry and use my cavalry to chase their archers from the field. For some reason the Ottoman Infantry acts solely as archers and runs when confronted with melee units. The Turcomans will occasionally engage in hand to hand and cause me problems when they do. The Sipahi are troublesome but too few in number to create a serious issue. Spearmen are Spearmen which means basically useless. If we are going for history then I guess you have to leave the Turks alone, but if we are going for gameplay then I would advise the addition of some type of infantry to the early Turkish forces as plain Spearmen are inept and inadequate. The Egyptians have the arab infantry and some type of spear unit as well as a similar mix of cavalry and archers as the Turks, they cause much more difficulty than the Turks.
I'm also curious whether or not you played around with the Byz royal family. In all my previous campaigns they turn out fabulous heirs with huge command, influence and acumen ratings. I am still getting huge command and influence, but their acumen is usually two at the most and every single one of them is a chinless wonder and/or a drunkard of some type. It is amusing and not too unrealistic for a corrupt empire in its decline.
Beelzebub
10-31-2003, 07:50
uhh, what happens if I installed the 3.12 first (on a clean MTW/MTW:V install) and then the graphics after?
Jacque I think the traits are hereditary. I vaguely remember some CA guy explaining this a while ago. Basically if you have a crappy king, the fruit of his loins have a very good chance of being similarly inept, whereas if the king is skilled, he will raise his sons well.
Also genetic defects like alcoholism, or the results of inbreeding, tend to get passed through the generations.
You don't really need to rely on royalty much anyways.K nights and other elite units commonly have 1-2 star leaders, and you occasionally get some histoical leaders with 3-5 stars. Give them a +1 command province, and a +2 command title and you have a 5-8 star general. Put him through a few battles and he'll prolly pick up either another star, or some +1 attacking/defending traits. So it's nice to have an unlimited supply of 5-8 star princes, but you don't need to rely on royalty for competant leadership.
Jacque Schtrapp
10-31-2003, 17:13
Quote[/b] (Beelzebub @ Oct. 31 2003,00:50)]Jacque I think the traits are hereditary.
I'm quite familiar with how V&V's work, thank you. However, the Byz are my favorite faction and I have never seen them in such a sorry state in over thirty campaigns. Also you may get a string of two or three kings with the chinless wonder and alcoholic vices, but not nine in a row which is what I'm on.
Additional observations about early:
The English have taken over all of France and Germany and have eight full stacks in Bohemia. I control Hungaryand have taken a good look at their troop mix. Out of eight stacks and over seven thousand troops they have one unit of knights and absolutely no other cavalry. They also have one unit of peasants per stack. I am not certain whether they built them or bribed some rebels, but as I have yet to see peasants included in a rebel stack, I have to assume they are building peasants for some reason.
The Turks also popped up with one damaged unit of Muwahid foot around 1203. Again they could have bribed some rebels or Egyptians, or perhaps the building requirements exceeded all of their provinces until that time, but it also could be that they need a nudge in unit priorities. I think that even a simple reliable foot unit like the Muwahid would make the Turks much more competitive in Early.
Poles and Hungarians build huge stacks of woodsmen and vanilla spear. These units are all they seem to have for infantry in Early. They can't really compete with the Byz, Russians, and Italians. Perhaps a +1 valor bonus for woodsmen in Hungary and Poland? Or something to stiffen their morale and discipline? The reason I ask is that they both keep invading Bulgaria across a river and all I have to do is put one unit of spears on hold formation and hold position at the base of the bridge and then string three or four units of archers along the bank and they will eventually run away even if their king is leading them.
Otherwise, Aragon has done well. The Egyptians have control of the every single Med province that does not belong to me (I have only the traditional Byz homelands +Rum and Arnmenia), Spain died quick, The Danes and Swedes are fairly quiet, the Russians were doing well before the Mongols came along, and the Italians got huge and died out because of civil war. There are only nine factions left in 1236. Its going to come down to a massive war between the Byz, Egyptians, English, and perhaps the Mongols. I estimate by 1300 the game will be pretty much over.
Old Templar
10-31-2003, 18:10
This Modd is certainly not for the faint-hearted and like others, I like it.
However, am I missing something here? I find myself building useless buildings in various provinces without being able to build the troops. I would like to build only the buildings that will enable me to build specific troops.
Is there an easy to read table or tech-tree that indicates what can be build and where?
If not - where can I find the information to make such a table?
Wizard of Evil
10-31-2003, 19:13
I don't know if anybody played Spanish/Aragonese, but they seem to have serious advantages in all the eras. First of all their cavalry is pretty cheap. They have maybe the most powerful cavalry in the game for very little support. Hidalgos are i guess the cheapest feudal knights type (55 to support), calatvra is again the cheapest in high with 72 to support. Bu the biggest advantage comes in the late era. Knights of Santiago, being the the most powerfull cavalry with stats of 8 - 5 - 6 - 8 - 8 is very cheap to build (even cheaper than calavatra) and only 75 to support. It is even more powerful than Lancers of French (which is 110 to support as far as i can remember), and the French is supposed to have the best cavalry as far as i understood from the faction descriptions file (maybe it meant their plus 10 men). Lastly, in late era they get Mercian MenatArms, which is a foot knight type, is again very cheap to support (60 flr) and can be built in all homeland provinces without the need of the chapter house. All the other foot knights need a chapter house, and as its unique, those units can be built in only one province for other factions.
Regional advantage is another issue, but i guess nothing can be done for it. There are now two seperate parts to establish trade routes, but both are easily reachable by Spanish/Aragonese. A decent player, controlling all the spain can establish trade routes in both parts. Since it is easier to control Spain than controlling Europe mainland from North to South , Spain gets tremendous advantage in big conflicts. In one of my campaigns as Turks (high), i started to fight against Italians, which was the major power nearly controlling all mediterenean provinces to trade (I had constantinapole to egypt - khazar and all the anatolia) and spain, it was very hard for me to support my armies (It was very challenging and fun) and i began to lose provinces. But in another campaign, in which i was spanish, i again had to fight the italians as the major power controlling nearly all the mediterenean, it was alot more easier for me to support my armies although i only held the Spanish mainland. While i was fighting in mediterenean, i had 3 trading provinces through the north. Although my income was cut by 3/5 it was still enough to reinforce my armies, or at least to compensate my losses. Just a piece of observation that i wanted to share.
I also made a little change for not seeing so many archery units in AI armies. Since i dont know how to add units, i made the FeudalMAA buildable in every province for every christian factions and Arab inf for every muslim factions in every province. I know it isnt historically accurate but by lowering its production and support cost, I started to see AI building lots of them instead of archer type units. Perhaps, by making a little sacrifice from historical accuracy, a few types of low cost medicore cavalry and inf can be added to the game, which will make AI built decent armies.
One more thing after finishing this long and boring post. I lowered the building times to the half of their original and severly reduced the building requirements for every single unit. It makes the game easier for the human player but you wouldnt believe the units you see in AI armies. I wish i knew a way to keep this for the AI but not for the player http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif. It would be very challenging i suppose.
Thanks for your time and attention.
The Spanish do have an advantage with trade, no doubt. They are the only faction that can easily set up trade routes in both sea areas. Its 1200 and I have 450,000 Fl.
They also have 5 of 12 homeland provinces with IRON making their troops extra tough. In 1200 I have Leon and Castile with +3 Weapon, +3 Armour and can build all Early and High units. Navarre, Aragon and Granada are +2,+2. I don't build units anyhwere else. Valencia, Portugal and Toulouse can build all Early units (no upgrades) and any repairs I need done I do there.
The Spanish Knights are very good and the reason I chose the Spanish. Wizard of Evil, the French Knights cost more to upkeep because they have 50 in a unit not 40. The French Lancers are only slightly weaker but they are fast. The Spanish faction description says they get a discount on units because their wars were typically reunification and patriotic wars rather than wars of Expansion. This is why they have lower upkeeps than other factions, but you are right the Lancers are the weakest of the Late Heavy Cav units available to Catholics.
Speaking of seas, the Egyptians in my game have 3 Dhows in the Atlantic Coast. I never understood the reason for this area and it makes even less sense now that the seas are split.
Another thing I hope you change Wes is the Swedes campmap colour. The Spanish, Pope, Egyptians and Horde are all Yellows. Until 1199 when the Swedish king died without an heir I thought the whole map would be yellow soon. I own Spain, France, Milan, Genoa, Tuscany, Wessex and Africa to Tunisia. Egypt owns from Cyrenacia to Khazar, all of Byz, Black Sea and Hungary and is pushing into Poland. The Swedes owned the rest of England, Ireland, Scandinavia all the Baltics, Muscovy, Smolensk, Ryazan and Chernigov. This only left Italy grey as Sicilian, Volga-Bulgaria blue as Russian, Norway white as Danes, Poland, Volyhnia, Silesia,
Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria red as the Polish, whom the Egyptians were invading and beating. With the Horde due in 30 years the 4 major players would have been (barely) different shades of yellow. Of course this won't happen now as the Swedish king died heirless but it wasn't far off.
This brings me to another point. The Rebels are very limited in what they can build. Only Spearmen, Woodsmen and Peasants in Early are available everywhere. Berserkers, Kerns, Spanish Javelinmen and Celtic Warriors are all only available in Early but are limited to specific provinces. I think Handgunners and Arquebusiers will become available in Late but would require the Gunsmith to be in the rebelling province. Rebel forces will be unable to protect themselves after Early and poorly even then. How about assigning some of the generic units such as Archers and Militia units to the Rebels to perk them up a bit.
I have had three major re-emergence rebellions so far. The English got a huge army of Crusader units, all good stuff no artillery. The Byzantines got a good mix of Heavy Cav and Infantry (didn't save them though). They also had several smaller loyalist rebellions on their way down and they were also excellent troops.
The Pope on the other hand got 2400 Italian Sailors and 8 Catapults plus his bodyguard unit.
I wish CA had written some hardcode for the Byzantines to keep Constantinople. In this game they were decidedly unlucky with their ships, all 8 sank in storms, but they died quickly after losing Constantinople. They could have retaken it quickly with the 4000 troops they had in Moldavia but didn't move them because of the large armies in Carpathia and Volhynia. Unfortunately the only troop producer in Moldavia was a Muster Field, the only one in the game until the silly English built one in 1180. The lack of ships to defend their coastlines and disrupt Egyptian trade was very telling and once Constantinople fell Greece and Bulgaria were undefendable and the Byz fell quickly.
Old Templar I have a faction by faction breakdown in spreadsheet form that I will have finished soon, probably tomorrow that I would be happy to post here if its allowed.
For now the v3 XLS sheet Unit Text has the info you want. Column AC list the factions that can build each unit and AD the regions that can build each unit. An easy and very general rule is you can't build anything outside of you factions homeland, so learn what they are. Anything outside of the homeland is basically so much Farmland, except for the Mercenary provinces. This is only a guide though as some units can only be built in some specific provinces within your homeland.
Wizard of Evil
10-31-2003, 22:02
[quote=Quokka,Oct. 31 2003,14:37]
The Spanish faction description says they get a discount on units because their wars were typically reunification and patriotic wars rather than wars of Expansion. This is why they have lower upkeeps than other factions, ...
Yes, you're right, the file says that. But what i was trying to say, with all the advantages you also mention, it gives the Spanish player a big advantage. Though, i ve never seen AI Spanish expand like Italians in 4-5 early campaigns i started. But it is easier to play than other factions, in my opinion.
Wizard of Evil
10-31-2003, 22:28
Siege ruining the battle
High, Spanish; after increasing the unit support costs -for the reasons i mentioned in my previous post - i started the Spanish campaign again. By 1240s Italians are the major power again and attacked Aragonese, took Aragon, attacked Almohads wiped them both in 5 years. I attacked Italians in Aragon, they retreated to their castle, and one year later they attacked my army of 1100 men with 7000+ men. I was going to retreat but when i saw the opening army of the Italians i didnt. They had many good units as reinforcements but 7 of their opening units were siege. I am not the best player around but i managed to win that battle, because i never attacked their siege and they never withdrew them. After their 1st wave was over, which was 9 units to my 16 units their general ran away, retreated, never came back. So they kept coming with 9 units, but not all nine at a time, as you would guess. So the battle was won, but what kind of a general wouldnt withdraw their siege weapons when they are not at range? I dont know if you have ever experienced this kind of situation.
Maybe making the siege able move into range would help, because that way i would have attacked them or when their ammo finished the AI would withdrew them, who knows, but at either case the battle would be lost.
As a result, maybe there is a way to make those siege able to move, or there is a way to make AI not to use them unless they are attacking castles or defending. Is there? or do i want too many things in all my posts http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I have never understood why anyone, including(especially?) the AI, would choose any seige weapons when attacking. Defending can be rationalised but is still stupid, why choose an 8 man Ballista instead of 100 Spears, 60 Swords or 40 Cavalry?
I agree with Spain being one of the easier factions, if you can survive the first 20 turns. The Spanish AI never seems to attack the Almohads early enough and more importantly doesn't kill the Aragonese first to stop the backstab.
Wes are Syria and Moldavia supposed to be part of the Mongol Homelands? The 4 Mongol exclusive units, Warriors, HA, HC and Chinese Infantry can be built throughout their homelands and those two provinces.
Old Templar
11-01-2003, 02:09
Thank you Quokka for the reply - I would like to get a copy of your spreadsheet. If you do not post it here, perhaps you can E-mail it to me.
Playing as the Danes - I am unable to build Archers in Early. This is quite unusual, since Archer were available to most regions in Medieval times. It leaves an interesting play possibility (defence) out of the game in Early.
Thanks again.
Jacque Schtrapp
11-01-2003, 03:27
Just fought a battle as the Turks in High on Expert difficulty against the Mongols. One unit of valor 0 Mongol Horse Archers destroyed 1 unit of valor 2 Pronoiai Allagion and 2 units of valor 0 Turcoman Horse that I brought in to help the PA. 1 unit of 40 horse archers destroying 40 knights and 100 of my horse archers? I'd have to say the MHA are just a bit overpowered.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
Beelzebub
11-01-2003, 17:47
If you guys think Spain is too easy then just don't play it, or limit yourself a bit.. If you want to be a super agrressive player with atlantic and med trade routes, so you're invincible and getting 50k florins a turn, fine, that's your own game, I don't care, but don't come here complaining that spain is no good. In all the games I've played spain rarely beats the almoheds, most of the time they just barely manage to hold a few provs, or declare war on France amd grab a few provinces there (if the HRE, English and everyone else nearby gang them). They hardly tear it up like the italians or egyptions..
There's always going to be easy and hard factions. I think Spain is balanced, maybe even a touch too weak, when the AI is playing them. It's your own responsibility to play in a way that's challenging(fun) when you take a faction. Don't complain if you abuse the mechanics to make it extremely easy for yourself.
Wizard of Evil
11-01-2003, 18:14
Well, Beelzebub, I am not complaining about the nature of this game, I am just trying to help this great mod to be even greater by telling my observations, which are 'my and only my opinions'. I love to play this game, I love to spend long hours in front of the pc playing this game, so i think to myself, as i am not a programmer or modder, i can help modders by telling a lot of ideas in which they may or will take even only one. Spain is great fun to play, and i play it. Sharing ideas is a fun thing to, so i try to share my ideas.
Settle down Beelzebub.
I've only had the mod a short while and Spain is my first campaign. I think you'll see if you read the posts again I am just outlining my observations as the game unfolds. I was just saying that it was easy to get to where I am and playing well is hardly 'an abuse of the mechanics'.
In my game the Italians are a 1 province backwater that would have trouble tearing a wet paper bag, let alone dominate the Med.
Old Templar The Danes can never build Archers. They only have access to Crossbowmen, in all eras, and they require a Bowyers Workshop and can be built in any of your homelands and those of the French as well. In Late they can build Handgunners(Gunsmiths Workshop) and Arquebusiers(Gunsmiths Guild) in any province, except that Gunsmiths are now unique, so unless you capture another gunsmith in only one province. Your best bet for Archer type units is to capture Mercenary provinces and hire them.
I have sent the Excel sheets I have done to Wes so he can give them a once over and make sure that I haven't cocked it up, and can post it once I get the nod and know where to send it.
The mod is great. My compliments Wes. I do have a few suggestions.
1) I've played most of the factions that face the Horde with the Medmod. I'd have to agree that they are overpowered. Quite a bit in my opinion. They often have armies full of Chinese Infantry. Not very Mongol of them. Their horse archers can wipe out most cavalry units in 1v1 melee (including elite medium and heavy cavalry) 1 on 1. Other than the names, they don't seem very 'mongol' with some of the changes.
2) It feels like each faction has 1 of each unit type with the same stats as the types from other factions. Making each faction have an equivalent to each unit type takes away from that faction's uniqueness
Jacque Schtrapp
11-02-2003, 07:23
Observations.
The Turks in the Late era begin the game a minimum of ten years away from being able to build any infantry unit of any type in Rum. All of their other provinces will take much longer.
Is there supposed to be a title associated with building a great mosque as the Egyptians in the High era? If so they aren't getting it.
The Burgundians begin the late era without any heirs. They also cannot build a chapter house which prevents them from building Compagnies d'Ordannance.
Do the Mongols get strategic units? I haven't seen any yet. I wasn't able to build ships as the Mongols from Kiev, Khazar, or Crimea in the Late era either.
The Crusader bonuses in Palestine, Antioch, and Tripoli really hurt the Egyptians by depriving them of troop advantages. At the very least I think the bonus in Syria should be changed from assassins and given to and Egyptian type of unit, perhaps an infantry unit like Nubians or Abyssinians.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
The Mongols can build Spies and Assassins. They use the Muslim ships (Dhow, Baggala, Boom) but the only Black Sea province that can build them is Trebizond They are available from the Med from Anatolia south and around to Valencia. On the Atlantic from Finland south to Brittany including Norway and Sweden but not England.
The Swiss can't build a Chapter House either, so they are in the same position as the Burgundians with Compagnies d'Ordonnance.
Warmaker
11-02-2003, 08:44
Sorry to be behind the times, but I'm getting ready to apply Medmod IV v3 graphics and Medmod IV 3.12. Should I install the new VI 201patch first? Or should I install the mods to plain 'ol MTW/VI? The VI patch came out shortly before the beginning of this thread.
Install the v2.01 patch, then the graphics part of 3.12, then the text part of 3.12, then play.
Warmaker
11-02-2003, 10:10
Hmm. Okay, I did as you said and then tried playing. It goes to the black screen then kicks back to desktop with the following error:
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Runtime Error
Program:...ram Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\Medieval_TW.exe
R6025
-Pure virtual function call
This was a clean install, BTW so no mods other than Medmod. I loaded the game successfully each time after installing MTW, VI, and VI patch. Has anyone here had similar problems?
Some people have had a problem with the intro vid that was included. I didn't but I didn't ever watch it. You can bypass the intro vid by placing a blank text file in the Medieval - Total War folder called skipcredits.
ie just rename a new notepad file skipcredits
The Swedes (Novgorod) have a faction advantage for Rogatina Infantry but can’t build them
The Burgundians have a faction advantage for Mounted Crossbowmen but can’t build them
The Sicilians have a faction advantage for Khazar Royal Cavalry but can’t build them
The Almohad, English, HRE, Hungarians, Polish, Russians and Turkish have ALL of their Heavy Cavalry units at a faction discount.
The Swedes have all the Danish faction bonuses plus, Woodsmen, Bondi and Viking Karls
Warmaker
11-02-2003, 13:59
Funny thing with the intro and my error message is that as long as I don't hit the OK button for the error window I can select MTW on the taskbar and get into the game. I'be been playing that way for several hours already.
As far as the mod goes I love playing as the Byzantines. In most cases I can actually mount an offensive fairly quickly, esp. in vanilla MTW. In MM I can't. It's a good challenge despite having access to some awefully nice Byzantine units which is tempered by so many borders to defend.
Well, I have spent the previous two days playing the game and having a blast. I must have been very close to the 2/3rd's victory, so I decided to leave off and work on the mod. I spent all day and most of last night doing that, along with trying to find research on the Poles. I have read through the posts here, and addressed everything that needed work. I also made a lot of other changes, some mentioned before and some new as well. I still haven't updated the High campaign file with better buildings. I will try and get to that tomorrow and get the update posted. This one will be big, almost assuredly bigger than the last two combined as far as gameplay results.
On a different note, Friday I received my first check, from L'zard, for $20, which is just the right amount. Just wanted you to know I got it, Buddy, and that it is very much appreciated. Now if I can just get a few hundred more.... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
NP, Wes
The mod is worth every penny of it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Hello People...
I have played the game for about two weeks now and completed the Saxons with the VI Campaign and then the English with a MW Campaign, so still very new to the game and still so much to learn...
But having applied both parts of Wes's mod and started a English Campaign again here are a couple of my concerns, which are no doubt related to me rather than the mod itself http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I have added a 'skipcredits ' blank text file and now I don't get a black screen at start up but when selecting an era I get... v 2.01 and MM 3.12...
The Vikings
Early Period
MM Early Period
I had to have a go as the Byzantines. I haven't finished my Spanish game yet but everytime I looked at the Byzantine units I got an urge to play they. They take a bit to get up and running and in that time the Turks pop out more than a few Cav. I really like the way they build Ottoman Sipahi and Turcoman Horse, fighting them is another matter. Ottoman Sipahi are tough and the AI used them well. My first few battles against the Turks were all Pyhrric victories. If the AI had just charged the Turcomans I would have been in real trouble, but it left them on skirmish and they ran instead.
Unfortunately the AI is still not very smart with Kings and heirs. I captured the Sultan and he wasn't ransomed back the same turn that the Egyptians either caught or killed the Prince, so no more Turks and their troops are now rebels. I hate winning wars like that.
In other areas, the Almohads have taken out the Spanish and are putting it to the Aragonese. The French have destroyed the English and the Italians have killed the HRE with a little help from their friends, everyone else.
Horse Archers are not available in Armenia, but Georgia is mentioned twice. Armenia is the only non-desert province in the Turkish homelands to not have them.
The region restrictions for Ships disadvantage the Muslims especially the Almohads. They would have to conquer up as far as Brittany to build any boats in the Atlantic area even though they have Homelands in Spain (Portugal, Leon, Castile). This leaves them open to attack from sea with no way to defend their coasts. How about letting them build Barques as well. They have a faction advantage for Dhows so they should build those where they can but at least they would have a ship to defend in the Atlantic. Barques are available for Early and High, so 2 eras should be long enough to get their act together and push north if they want to build better ships.
Wellington
11-03-2003, 15:58
Quote[/b] (Morgan @ Nov. 03 2003,06:16)]I apologise to Wes and anyone else that thinks that this, my first post, is ...
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
How have you managed to post in the Dungeon if this is your 1st post?
Have the Orgs policies now changed in some way that I'm unaware of? Not that I mind ...
... just curious
Quote[/b] ]How have you managed to post in the Dungeon if this is your 1st post?
Have the Orgs policies now changed in some way that I'm unaware of? Not that I mind ...
Well my Emissaries, Spies and Assassins are pretty tough people you know
But the final bribe nearly crippled me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Morgan
Quote[/b] ]How have you managed to post in the Dungeon if this is your 1st post?
Have the Orgs policies now changed in some way that I'm unaware of? Not that I mind ...
Well my Emissaries, Spies and Assassins are pretty tough people you know
But the final bribe nearly crippled me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Morgan
Jeebus_Frist
11-03-2003, 17:03
Playing the Poles in Late on Expert. I was attacked in Lithuania by the Russians from Livonia. I hate the Russians and their ridiculous Horse Archer, Boyar, and occasional Halberdier armies. Those battles consist of endless archers duels or me exhausting my troops chasing those damned Horse Archers all over the map. But wait What's this? A Russian army consisting of a whole variety of different types of spear, pike, and halberd including Russian "Dvors" cavalry? Very nice, they actually seriously outnumbered me and only stategic placement of my only two units of Rycerz Swordsmen saved me. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I do have concerns about Silesian Spearmen and serious concerns about Polish Militia. The Poles don't produce heirs even half the quality of the Byz. Still, their heirs usually don't have any seriously bad vices. My first major battle of the campaign was against the Mongols and I figured I was in good shape with a 3 command +2 valor heir in charge of a whole mess of Silesian Spearmen (defend well vs. cavalry) and Polish Militia (bonus attacking cavalry). Neither unit descriptor mentions any type of morale deficiency, yet the moment the mongols made contact with my line I was inundated with blinking white flags across my entire front. Within seconds every single one of my spear units routed, My knights performed very well and even my pavise arbalests engaged in H2H with Mongol Heavy Cavalry and held their own. In the end the Rycerz carried the day and I chalked up the routing spears as a natural reaction to the Mongol Hordes. Wrong. Since then I have had both types of spears rout in almost every single battle against all my foes (Turks, Mongols, Russians, and Swedes), including when my six command "brave beyond belief" former heir was leading them. I'm not certain what the problem is, but the Poles are going to be outnumbered in the majority of their battles and they don't really have any offensive infantry and it appears as if their defensive infantry are a bunch of cowards which leaves them relying heavily on knights that take TWO turns to build I suppose I can buy into the Knights of Dobryn and the Rycerz taking two turns to build, but the Czelandz Lancers also? They can't build Polish Retainers any more and the only cavalry they can build in one turn are archer/skirmishers types. I've enjoyed playing the Poles because their position is primed for conflict, but it is really frustrating seeing troops designed as anti-cav fail to fight well against cavalry and watching the inevitable sea of blinking white flags wash across the screen.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif
I've played the Poles a few times using the mod. My spear units have also had a nasty habit of routing shortly after contact with the enemy.
Jeebus_Frist
11-03-2003, 19:41
Quote[/b] (Gaddow @ Nov. 03 2003,11:31)]I've played the Poles a few times using the mod. My spear units have also had a nasty habit of routing shortly after contact with the enemy.
Whew Glad to know it's not just me. I thought I must just suck. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
Silesian Spearmen have the same Morale Bonus of 2 as all other Spearmen in the game. Polish Militia also have a Morale Bonus of 2. Pikemen all have a standard bonus of 3. Don't know why the Poles are having trouble.
In other news...
Saracen Infantry are not available in Armenia
Hashishin are not available in Armenia
Janissary Infantry have Armenia listed twice
How about changing the Valour bonus for Morocco from Desert Archer to Futuwwa. It would be much more useful on a hybrid than a straight archer. It’d also prompt the Almohads to develop Morocco more.
shand994
11-05-2003, 00:33
Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Nov. 03 2003,08:58)]
Quote[/b] (Morgan @ Nov. 03 2003,06:16)]I apologise to Wes and anyone else that thinks that this, my first post, is ...
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
How have you managed to post in the Dungeon if this is your 1st post?
Have the Orgs policies now changed in some way that I'm unaware of? Not that I mind ...
... just curious
New patrons can now post in the dungeon> How about that Welly we finally listened to ya http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif
juststeve
11-05-2003, 03:54
Quote[/b] (WesW @ Nov. 02 2003,15:28)]On a different note, Friday I received my first check, from L'zard, for $20, which is just the right amount. Just wanted you to know I got it, Buddy, and that it is very much appreciated. Now if I can just get a few hundred more.... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Wes, why not get yourself set-up with a PayPal account, so it would be easier to send "donations" in support of your HUGE mod? I never saw any notice of this anywhere, but for as much as I have enjoyed playing, and learned from, your mod, it'd be worth it.
One quick question - can the 3.12 mod be played on MTW:VI version 2 (unpatched VI)? I'm getting tired of my heavy cav getting bogged down with routing light inf/archers.
Played a full campaign (start to total finish, kinda rare for me to actually finish) of Polish/Early/Normal and it was great. I was attacked by the Russians and Swedes in the first 15 years, and the action really never got slow. Even at the end, when I was mopping up (I finished in the High era, after shutting down the Horde), I was attacked by the Pope. Seems like everyone wants a piece of you in MedMod http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Razor1952
11-05-2003, 11:48
Wes, enjoying your mod, playing Swedes early. They seem well-balanced.
Comments are
-I like the stopping of coastal shipping around spanish coast, would like the ability to build caravels in early once the compass is discovered(1167?)
-maybe it would be too massive a change but I would like the ability to build the bonus troop for that province if you capture that province,(eg get Ireland then can build Bonnachts (but only in ireland)).
-Having no the Ai peasants means it not as easy to upgrade the valour of your troops in battle, a good and bad thing, nevertheless one strategy that is strongly discouraged in your mod.
-Without being presumptuous I wonder if I could suggest that peasants get built when farms are present , and the higher level farm gives valour for the poor things. Having tried that it didn't lead to the ai producing masses of peasants but it did make a few.
juststeve
11-05-2003, 15:21
Quote[/b] (Gaddow @ Nov. 03 2003,11:31)]I've played the Poles a few times using the mod. My spear units have also had a nasty habit of routing shortly after contact with the enemy.
Funny you mention that. I finished up a Polish campaign in the High period, and my new + improved Silesian Spearmen had to be "Rally'd" twice during the final castle assault on The Pope. I really hadn't had too much problems with the vanilla spearmen units from the Early period.
ShadesPanther
11-06-2003, 18:52
I know the new ones out but i want to share this problem.
Do you think Italy are just slightly overpowered?
This is late and ive played a few times with the same result each time. They conquer almost everything
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-9/373214/hmmitaly.JPG
Beelzebub
11-06-2003, 19:37
Because they use their navy well, and have access to all med provinces because it's so strong, that they can easily send an surprise expidition to take over any weak province in countries that have no navy (or a small navy that they can quickly destroy without taking enough casualties to break their chain).
Because their empire is usually widespread though, they are prone to civil wars which usually breaks them up. If their naval chain is broken for any length of time, internal trouble follows due to a large number of provinces losing connection with the king, and also the huge loss of income from trading (those huge stacks of heavy infantry aren't cheap).
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