View Full Version : Creative Assembly Carl's BugFixer (V1.1)
Created a new thread as the old one was long and it was a pain linking to the other post in the old thread and I couldn't get the title of the thread to update to show changes to the version number.
To Clarify an often asked point:
Foz's V1.2 Sheild Fix that is used in this BugFixer zeros the sheild and moves half into Defence Skill and half into Armour
Below is the Link to the Download and the README File included in with it.
Version 1.11 (http://www.fileshack.us/v/8259954/1.11.zip.html)
Download Mirriors (all free to my knowlage):
Savefile Mirrior (http://www.savefile.info/download.php?id=30110ECD)
FileFactory (http://www.filefactory.com/file/3a0928/)
README:
CHANGES
Below is a list of the various things done in each version of this fix.
1.00
All animation bugged 2-Handers eithier use the Halberd-Militia, (Bills and DEK/DPK only), or Voulgier, (all others), animation set now. No units have been re-priced so a few units, (mostly Bills and DEK/DPK), are underpriced ATM.
The Pike fix simply removes all Pike units secondery weapons.
The Sheild fix is the same as Foz's, and move the sheild value into the armour, then zeros the sheild.
2-Handed Swords have been found to be weak with their Vanillia stats once the Bugged 2-Handers where fixed, (in relation to the price diffrances between the two), so the Changes listed in the next line have been applied/
2-Handed Swords have been given +4 Attack, increased to 8 Charge Stat, and have been given the AP attribute.
1.01
Dismounted French Noble Knights, (DFNK), have now had the 2-Hander animation Fix applied to them. I missed them the first time round
All 2-Handed Swords have had their extra attack raised from +4 to +6 as DEK/DPK/DFNK where still beating them too hard considering their reletive prices.
JHI have now had the 2-Handed Sword Fix applied to them as they, like 2-handed Swords, they where proving underpowered vs. Animation Fixed 2-Handers of a similar or lower price.
1.02
Sheild Fix updated to the same as that used in the 1.2 version of "THE_FOZ_4's Sheild Fix".
1.10
Animation Bugged 2-Handers have had their animation changed to that of ME_Halberd_Militia as apposed to the old Halberd_Militia animation. This produces more natural looking animations that the origonal fix.
2-Handed Swords have had their animation changed to the ME_Halberd_Militia animation as it looks as good as their defualt animation, and raises their animation speed to the same as the bugged Animation 2-Handers.
2-Handed Swords have had the re-balancing fix applied to them changed to the following, AP attribute added, +10 attack added, Charge Stat increased to 8, they where fopund to still be wanting in terms of opower for price.
All Eastern Halberds, (those Halberds that lack the Spear Wall ability), have also had the 2-Handed Sword Fix listed above applied to them, (with the exception of the AP attribute as they allready had this), as they where found to be underperforming.
All Western Halberd units, (those with the Spear Wall ability), where found to be underperforming for their price in relation to every unit in the game now as they where also balanced against the Bugged 2-Handers/Pikes, (which they are a Hybrid of),
Western Halberds have had their unit size increased to 60, have gained +5 attack, have had the Spear attribute Aapplied to their primiary "pike" weapon, and the Light_Spear attribute applied to their secondery weapon. De to the nature of the "Pike" part of their weapon, and the Light_Spear attribute they suffer no penalties when fighting infantry.
1.11
Furthar Formation tweaking has taken place to improve the defualt formation performance of units, and thus the AI.
An Eastern Halberd unit, (Transylvanian Peasants), was omitted from the 1.1 changes to Eastern Halberds. This error has been corrected.
Cav Charge distances have been tweeked to make formed cav charges easier for the player.
Infantry cav charge distances have ben tweaked to increase AI countercharge response sucsess rates.
The spears of Spear Units have had their Skeleton oCmponsation Factor tweaked to raise cav charge resistance to a level matching that implied in the advisor descriptions.
The changes to Skeleton Componsation factor should also aid them vs. peseants.
INSTALLATION
To install copy the SEGA Folder into C:/Program Files:
If it asks you if you want to Overwrite, click "yes to all". Then Copy the Medievil 2 Total War Mod Shortcut to your desktop and use that to play the game with the fixes in place. No important data is overwritten, it mearly places the contents of the SEGA folder into the existing SEGA folder in Program Files automaticly.
MEDMANAGER INSTALLATION
For the purposes of MedManager, the only file that has been modified is the "export_descr_unit" file.
COMMENTS AND BUG REPORTING
You can Find my online thread relating to this fix at the following web address:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78069
CREDITS
CARL BARRASS (me)
THE_FOZ_4 (For the Sheild Fix)
DOPP (For the Pike Fix)
LUSTED (For charge distance changes)
STLAIND (For help with testing)
AND EVERYONE ELSE AT THE GUILD (For the 2-Hander Fix and Support)
I would much appreciate testing on the Halberd and 2-Handed Swords. I feel happy wth them but my tsting has been limited and i've never played with these units in a campaign before so I can't say how they effect overall army compostion for the armies they are in. Does it unbalance the compostion?
The Mods can lock the old thread if they wish to without complaint from me as I won't be using it for anything important now.
EDIT: V1.11 now up.
baron_Leo
01-22-2007, 21:55
Carl, I can only quote Peter Griffin on this issue "YOU - ARE - GOD!!!" :-) I did not have time to do in-depth testing, but for what I have seen it is perfect.
Thnx, and I doubt it's perfect though. I thought the same with V1.02, but reality has shown sHS and Halberds where really behind the curve. Hell it's taken 3 revisions to get 2HS sorted to full satisfaction without risking auto-calc balance.
p.s. 2 Downloads so far. Where is everyone~;p.
if I have time this evening I'll defniately pull it down and do some testing (sigh, test software at work, test mods at night)
if I have time this evening I'll defniately pull it down and do some testing (sigh, test software at work, test mods at night)
Hell, i've had the game a MONTH and I don't think my total play time exceeds 3 days, the rest has been testing and digging in files fixing bugs the rest of the time.
Pikes are as they where, but I think you'll find flanking/rear attacks if you can pull them off are very effective. Western Halberds do Beat down on 2-Handers a fair bit, but thats because they nullify the charge and get a couple of rounds of free kills in whilst doing so.
I think I might do some poking at it and see if I can find any solutions that I feel are better. I'm just now starting to feel like I've got enough of a feel of mechanics that I won't horribly break things.
Thnx, and I doubt it's perfect though. I thought the same with V1.02, but reality has shown sHS and Halberds where really behind the curve. Hell it's taken 3 revisions to get 2HS sorted to full satisfaction without risking auto-calc balance.
Don't forget that Jerome suggested that autoresolve is using the battlefield mechanics, just on a smaller scale. So it's really not a concern: if you get them working how you want on the battlefield, it should be mirrored very well in autoresolve.
Can you point me to the post where he said this as I don't remeber it, (probabbly just missed it BTW when skimming a post of his).
Thnx for the info though BTW.
Just a thought, but rather than boosting everything to coincide with the animation-fixed 2-handed axe units, another method might be dropping the attack of animation-fixed 2-handed axe units? They most certainly do not need to be 21/13 ap (DEKs), 20/13 ap (VG), etc. Even with the shield fix in place you can take around 6-8 attack points off the DEKs and they still beat DFKs with ease. Even more so if you were also to go through with removing 2 attack points from DFKs to coincide with their mounted form (which I think would be a great idea)!
One upshot of increasing attack across the board is you'll be inadvertantly speeding up combat resolution, in turn leading to quicker routing in battles. Maybe it would be advisable to reduce the attack of others rather than increase attack to balance to the monstrous 21/13 ap DEKs.
Can you point me to the post where he said this as I don't remeber it, (probabbly just missed it BTW when skimming a post of his).
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1392865&postcount=337
I realize that the way he says it there is a little ambiguous, but I inquired further in a PM to him, and he said the autoresolve essentially fights the battle on a very simplified battlefield using reduced unit sizes, and still accounts for the same factors like morale, flanking, etc that you see on the battlefield.
Thanks for that Foz. I read that but missed the implication the first time.
@Jambo: I'll try a few tests, but TBH i'm not hopeful. Like I say, I like the way Dismounted Chivalric's, Dismounted Christian Guard, Dismounted Conquistidors get beat, but inflict about 25-30% losses. If I was to decrease the attack of DEK I'm worried it's going to push those losses into the 50-70% range which is not really how I feel 2-Handers of that quality should be performing. I'll try out Bill Militia as they are similar in most respects to what re-balanced DEK might look like. If things look ok their i'll try nerfed stats and you might see that in the next release.
Your point about fast fights is well made. but I figured that was part of the point of 2-Handers anyway, they where a lot faster than pikemen at killing things. Fights still last a while in my expiriance. Just not as long perhaps as they shopuld. I'm also planning a full balance mod that is seperate to my bugfixer that rebalances costs and messes with other units a bit (in broad strokes only), that might aliviate any lasting issues.
Personally based on what I saw with DGK last night I would prefer that the special dismounted S+S units be a decent fight, but I'm not sure that I have the backup for that.
That really depends on what you consider a decent fight Stlaind...
For me it's top level S&S getting beat by top level 2-Handers, but not without the 2-handers suffering moderate losses, (less that 50%, better than 10%).
Some people, (is this you?), would prefer to see S&S manage heavy losses or even a win, but thats subjective and i'm wary of letting that happen due to the advantages of missile resistance and cav resistance the S&S get over 2-Handers, (they arn't minor ones eithier DFK can almost beat their mounted Countrparts if they stay still when reciving a cav charge and they have nearly double the missile defence normally).
Some Good News, some Bad News, and some Intresting News:
The Good News:
I agree, S&S units get hit a bit hard ATM. DEK went through Noble Swordsmen just a touch too quick, (about 10-15 seconds at 3 times speed, i'd prefer about 15-20 really), and didn't quite suffer the 25% losses I wanted to see. It seems the switch in animation has added a small amount of power to 2-handers. DGK, and JHI are actually better than DEK now and would be even worse.
The Bad:
A drop in atack of just 8 points for DEK resulted in losses whilst beating Noble Swordsmen jumping from a too low 20% to a too high, (IMO), 60%. I also can't lowe S&S defence as that messes up their advantages over 2-Handers.
Overall expect to see me tinkering in the days to come in preperation of my re-balance mod. I'm limiting this to major bugfixing only, (The kind of re-balance needed by unbugged 2-handers/Halberds fall into this, but adjusting S&S balance after this point dosen't really).
The Intresting: Tests have shows that DFK appear to be rather worse than their stats sugest, doing much worse than Noble Swordsmen. I'm now going to run a direct Noble Swordsmen vs. DFK test and see what happens.
Carl:
WRT halberdiers, have you considered going into the modeldb file, and creating a new soldier type which uses the halberdiers' primary animation, but another animation for the secondary weapon (Since the game treats the two as totally different weapons)?
I didn't know that was possible Musashi...
Thanks for the Info, i'll give it a try and see what happens, you never know...
Also, i've run a test of DFK vs. Noble Swordsmen. The DFK got beat. If I controlled them I lost with the enemy being down to less than 10 men, and if I controlled the Noble Swordsmen, the DFK where lost with less than 40% losses to the Noble Sowordsmen.
It appears Moral efects fighting abailitie (explains why high Valour missile units are better at range BTW, and imples that NHA are better than the stats claim...).
Just a thought, but rather than boosting everything to coincide with the animation-fixed 2-handed axe units, another method might be dropping the attack of animation-fixed 2-handed axe units? They most certainly do not need to be 21/13 ap (DEKs), 20/13 ap (VG), etc. Even with the shield fix in place you can take around 6-8 attack points off the DEKs and they still beat DFKs with ease. Even more so if you were also to go through with removing 2 attack points from DFKs to coincide with their mounted form (which I think would be a great idea)!
One upshot of increasing attack across the board is you'll be inadvertantly speeding up combat resolution, in turn leading to quicker routing in battles. Maybe it would be advisable to reduce the attack of others rather than increase attack to balance to the monstrous 21/13 ap DEKs.
You're suggesting DEK with stats 14/6/13 ap will beat 13/3/21 DFK with ease? I highly doubt this. The def stats of the DFK were 7/8/6 IIRC which become 10/11/0 with the half-n-half fix. That means they have 16 defense after AP is applied to their armor. So the matchups appear to be the DEK 14 attack against DFK 16 frontal defense, and the DFK 13 attack against the DEK 13 frontal defense. The charge should give the DEK an early advantage, but DFK should have an edge in the general melee. I simply can't imagine that the DEKs post results that I would consider anywhere in the realm of "ease" during this fight, even granted that they may have a faster attack animation. I'd anticipate them taking about 75% losses, and it seems reasonable that they may even lose the fight some of the time. In any case I'll look at it later, but I'll be surprised if the DFKs don't hold up far better than you claim.
On a different note, you can't really balance the 2H units down to the level of the non-broken 2HS or JHI and DGK type units. The reason is that the the good S&S units have 21+ defense now, and typically about 15 once AP is applied. As we all expect the heavy units to beat S&S units, an attack value reasonably above 15 will be required to make this happen, as the S&S units typically have attack values that match the defense values of the 2H units.
Also, I don't think boosting the attacks of the various underpowered units actually makes combat take any less time than it did in vanilla for the most part. Most of the vanilla units we're comparing the heavies to like DFK for instance had shields that screwed them out of a net 12 defense points (being 6 point shields). With that in mind, you have to assume that combat would take about the same amount of time with those units, then, if you upped the units that were not broken by 12 attack. Carl has given most of these units +10 attack and AP, which I would say is a little on the overboard side (but should not make combat substantially faster except against non-shield units): AP against most heavy units now counts for 4-6, so I recommend a boost of 6-8 and AP, or a straight 12 point attack boost with no AP. I prefer AP and 6-8 attack more, as it keeps things a little more reasonable against lower level units b/c AP does less to them.
I'd anticipate them taking about 75% losses, and it seems reasonable that they may even lose the fight some of the time. In any case I'll look at it later, but I'll be surprised if the DFKs don't hold up far better than you claim.
Thats what I found Foz.
Carl has given most of these units +10 attack and AP, which I would say is a little on the overboard side (but should not make combat substantially faster except against non-shield units):
The reason for +10 attack and 8 charge is mostly to do with JHI/Zwei Handers/Forlorn Hope/Highland Nobles/DGK vs. DEK/DPK/DNK.
Really the DEK/DPK/DNK should lose vs. all but the Highland Nobles, and suffer MAD against tthe Highland Nobles, (+100 Florin cost diffrances for everyone but Highland nobles over DEK). This pretty much requires a Higher attack (since after AP the defence values are about the same for all units, and animations are now the same). +8 would have actually left JHI 1 behind and the rest only just ahead. 8 Charge stat also helps out as it ensure the really expensive units (DGK/JHI) are doing their job. In general thats what happens in my expiriance, allthough it depends somewhat on who you control.
It is maybe just a TOUCH OTT and if testing proves that i'll try em with +8 instead of +10. But with the price diffrance between DEK and the others, (even considering DEK are underpriced), I figure that it's best if the DEK get beaten in with some decisivness. Plus I wanted a Fix I could apply across the board, (that way it has equal effects across the board, nd is less subjective than individual balancing and re-pricing).
p.s. Just explaining the reasoning behind the decision.
As an aside. Try Venetian Heavy Infantry. they beat all but DGK and are far more Cav/Missile resistant than 2-handers. Their probably the best overall unit in the game now and they only have the sheild fix on them...
Otherwise, Foz raises some good points, the question is weather vanillia was too quick now...
1 more point to raise ATM: I don't think it's safe to assume that cost in the campaign game should equal performance necessarily. It's possible for instance that DEKs checking in at a low price is in order to make up for the fact that England lacks any good early infantry options, where most European factions are given access to armored sergeants, mounted sergeants, and/or others. Similarly one could suggest that DGK are so pricey due to the fact that the HRE has so many units available at an early point in the game. So for my part at least, I am not inclined to say that units should beat other ones simply because they cost more, as I'm fairly certain that other faction-related factors besides unit stats are coming into play in their pricing.
Good Point Foz, but the diffrance in cost between DEK and DGK was big enough for me to fel that DGK should be winning, Plus Portugual and France get effectivlly the same unit and have much better cav as well as ok missile units. Plus of course, the HRE has much worse missile power than Portugual/England. Overall I'd say these factions, (france especially), have as good an overall lineup as HRE and thus don't really deserve to have such cheap units beating DGK/JHI. Of course thats a subjective judgment, but so where the general claims they where underpowered.
I tend to take the line that in general, (not allways), two units fulfilling a similar purppose should win/lose on whos the higher cost. genreally lack of acess to somthing and unique units tend to make this work in the campaign, allthough MP testing would be prefrable. Of course thats a subjective judgment, but so where the general claims they where underpowered. I.e. what units factions have/do not have will deal with balancing more than cost diffrances between unit of the same/similar capability.
You DO make a good point Foz, thats why I want testing and feedback. is one faction suddenly much easier than it should be. If it is thats extra info for rebalancing. However that belongs in the balance mod. As I say, to keep this as non-subjective as possibnile i'm trying to make across the board changes to all units identiclly.
That really depends on what you consider a decent fight Stlaind...
For me it's top level S&S getting beat by top level 2-Handers, but not without the 2-handers suffering moderate losses, (less that 50%, better than 10%).
Some people, (is this you?), would prefer to see S&S manage heavy losses or even a win, but thats subjective and i'm wary of letting that happen due to the advantages of missile resistance and cav resistance the S&S get over 2-Handers, (they arn't minor ones eithier DFK can almost beat their mounted Countrparts if they stay still when reciving a cav charge and they have nearly double the missile defence normally).
I would say that a kill ratio lower than 2:1 would be what I had in mind, but like I said, I'm not sure I have a really solid reason for saying that (I suppose I'd prefer M2TW to compare more to a meat grinder when units are compared individually across "tiers" perhaps, I really do prefer the long fights).
But I'll do some testing of what you've got and see what I can come up with.
Can you post a list of all units that you've increased the attack power of in this fix, Carl? How much you did it by would be helpful too in each case. I'd like to play with the numbers, but it's going to be difficult to make sure I've found them all with just generalizations like "2-handed sword" instead of actual unit names that you've changed. If there's some easy thing to search for in the file for each type you modified then you can just let me know what that is in each unit type's case, but if not then a full list would be most helpful.
Also, did you actually wade through the file by hand to make all these changes? If so, props, it probably took a while.
hmmm, just did a bunch of one off tests..... seems like the changes didn't end up with the absolutely frightening routs of S+S that I had feared, except in 3 DGK : 4 DCK, which is fair, at those levels you'd normally be seeing other types in the fight for sure
Wow... people weren't kidding when they said how bad 2HS unit animations were. From what I can see, it's all in the charge. I pumped the DGK +12 attack from vanilla (no AP) and put them against DEK (demo animations)... and the DEK annihilated them pretty handily. The DEK inflicted some 30% or 40% kills just on the charge. When I set the DGK to use DEK animations via the soldier line, though, then THEY instead accomplished massive kills on the charge and went about 2:1 against the DEK. Even with their own animations the DGK appeared to be beating the DEKs in general melee, it's just that they could not cover the large deficit that the charge had caused. So I tried it another way... with both units having DGK animations, and sure enough the DGK with stats 26/6/14 (no AP) went 2:1 against the DEK with standard stats and AP.
So... is there anything we can do about the DEK charge animations? Or anything we can do to make the charge animations of 2HS units more effective? Either one is likely to bring the units back into some reasonable balance w/ respect to each other. I'm just not experienced enough with that sort of editing in this game to know exactly what's required to make a unit use part of another's animation set...
That's the point I was trying to get across earlier - that the DEK's "fixed" animations make them into killing machines, particularly when compared to the default slow 2HS animation.
Edit: I've since realised this wasn't what the_foz_04 was asking regards animations so you can ignore the following speel -
"Changing a unit's animation is really easy. Each unit has a "soldier" line, e.g. for Highland Nobles:
soldier Highland_Nobles, 48, 0, 1.2
Simply change Highland_Noble to some other unit to use the other unit's animation, e.g.:
soldier ME_Halberd_Militia, 48, 0, 1.2
This is quite a good example since Carl's claimed that the ME_Halberd_Militia animation is very similar to the 2HS but yet faster and therefore possibly more in line with the DEKs. One potentially we could use."
One probably shouldn't just compare by cost and type, since there's also where they come in the tech tree to consider and this is possibly even more important for balance. For instance, Scotland gets access to Highland_Nobles comparatively early.
In addition there's also upkeep. Most notable is that DEKs more than make up for their lowish cost by then costing 225 in upkeep; a value that's substantially more than many other 2H equivalent.
As I said before, instead of pumping up the 2HS attacks to crazy levels, one could also consider lowering the ubiquitous DFK's attack by 2, say, bringing it into line with its mounted version. The DFKs are a relatively early unit, which for whatever reason CA has decided to make comparatively indifferent to the later S&S (e.g. DCKs and Noble/Armoured Swordsmen) that are supposed to replace it. Only 1 armour point separates these units.
JeromeGrasdyke
01-23-2007, 11:07
I realize that the way he says it there is a little ambiguous, but I inquired further in a PM to him, and he said the autoresolve essentially fights the battle on a very simplified battlefield using reduced unit sizes, and still accounts for the same factors like morale, flanking, etc that you see on the battlefield.
The autoresolve goes to considerable lengths to try and properly mimic the battle - it's actually a fairly sophisticated model, even taking into account major battlefield features like rivers, town walls, siege equipment and so on, as well as unit frontage, flanking, fatigue, statistically correct kill chances, charges, ammunition amounts and so on. But in this context I would have to add that it's unlikely that the Med2 autoresolve takes account of the effect of the animation set on battle outcome. Certainly the Rome one did not, which was appropriate at the time as the animation influence was largely eliminated from actual fought battles through the use of time-to-next-attack penalties.
The autoresolve goes to considerable lengths to try and properly mimic the battle - it's actually a fairly sophisticated model, even taking into account major battlefield features like rivers, town walls, siege equipment and so on, as well as unit frontage, flanking, fatigue, statistically correct kill chances, charges, ammunition amounts and so on. But in this context I would have to add that it's unlikely that the Med2 autoresolve takes account of the effect of the animation set on battle outcome. Certainly the Rome one did not, which was appropriate at the time as the animation influence was largely eliminated from actual fought battles through the use of time-to-next-attack penalties.
Thank you for confirming something I have suspected for a long time. I was working on increasing the sink rate of naval autoresolve in RTW, and figured out that auto-resolve was actually playing out (more or less) an entire battle in fast-foward with AI control on both sides.
On a side note, it seems that the AI likes to charge generals into the thick of it ASAP, which is why so many generals get scarface and winning first when I auto-resolve.
@Carl, a belated 'good work' on the latest incarnation of your fix - having everything in one place makes things much easier
@Jerome/dopp - good point - that explains how generals pick up so many of those traits. It'd be interesting to see how much you could influence the development of your own generals through judicious use of autoresolves
@Foz:
The list of units first:
2HS and Eastern Halberds:
These get an 8 Charge Stat, +10 Attack, and AP.
Highland Nobles
Zwei Hander
Forlorn Hope
DGK
JHI
Halberd Militia (The eastern one, Turks, amongst others, get this type)
Eagle Warriors, (These had a non-working animation too, but I gave them the fix as most Aztec animations are very OTT, with a less OTT animation you could see these guys under-performing a LOT, plus it makes the New world even harder:smash:).
Western Halberds:
These Get +5 attack, and the Spear attribute added to their primary weapon. The Light_Spear attribute is added to the secondary weapon.
Halberd Militia (The western one, HRE, amongst others, get this type)
Voluge Militia
Volugiers
Sword Staff Militia
Swiss Guard
Obudshaers
Hope that helps Foz.
Also, did you actually wade through the file by hand to make all these changes? If so, props, it probably took a while.
Yeah, but I used your down-loadable 1.2 shield fix EDU files for the shield fix, their weren't many units to edit after that TBH. Now I've got the changes in my head I could probably re-create the file from scratch in 15 mins. Try editing DOW RGD's by hand, you can end up doing a LOT more in those...
Wow... people weren't kidding when they said how bad 2HS unit animations were. From what I can see, it's all in the charge. I pumped the DGK +12 attack from vanilla (no AP) and put them against DEK (demo animations)... and the DEK annihilated them pretty handily. The DEK inflicted some 30% or 40% kills just on the charge. When I set the DGK to use DEK animations via the soldier line, though, then THEY instead accomplished massive kills on the charge and went about 2:1 against the DEK. Even with their own animations the DGK appeared to be beating the DEKs in general melee, it's just that they could not cover the large deficit that the charge had caused. So I tried it another way... with both units having DGK animations, and sure enough the DGK with stats 26/6/14 (no AP) went 2:1 against the DEK with standard stats and AP.
Yeah, the Charge animations of the Halberd units I Nicked are very fast so they tend to get the first blow it. It's actually 25% that die on the charge, (their 4 ranks deep and the entire front rank gets it:(), but by the time it registers, general melee has been going a few seconds and a few more have dropped dead. The trouble is with the front rank dead the DGK don't get a blow in before the charge bonus has worn off. and are now outnumbered. It's a quick trip to a loss for the DGK then. That partly why I gave them 8 Charge stat. A High charge stat seems to speed up the Charge animation, so in combination with their high Attack, AP and new animations, it means they always get the first blow in and get very decisive victories, (at this level of attack, +3 attack doesn't seem to matter as much as you'd expect).
So... is there anything we can do about the DEK charge animations? Or anything we can do to make the charge animations of 2HS units more effective? Either one is likely to bring the units back into some reasonable balance w/ respect to each other. I'm just not experienced enough with that sort of editing in this game to know exactly what's required to make a unit use part of another's animation set...
Not that I know of, their isn't an animation editor available for this game so it's something we can't really do~:(.
One probably shouldn't just compare by cost and type, since there's also where they come in the tech tree to consider and this is possibly even more important for balance. For instance, Scotland gets access to Highland_Nobles comparatively early.
In addition there's also upkeep. Most notable is that DEKs more than make up for their lowish cost by then costing 225 in upkeep; a value that's substantially more than many other 2HS equivalent.
The thing is, I'm trying to give CA and idea of what works, and what effects specific changes have, but that means I have to worry about things like Custom battles, (and MP), where tech levels are highly simplified and Upkeep/Recruitment Pool Size/Replenish Rate are simply not applicable.
On the flip side you do raise a VERY good point in that right now DEK have a Very High Upkeep, that naturally means that they do need to be good for their price. And in general I would say they are, they get draws against Zwei Handlers, just barely beat Highland Nobles and are bettered by JHI and DGK, (ohh and VHI, but they ain't a 2-Hander). It's not likes theirs a lot of units will beat them, and in all honesty they still tend to kill most of the DGK/JHI, (i.e. it's MAD~;p), they're still the 4th best non-pike unit in the game, and of the units that beat them, one is effectively a high defense 2-Hander in many ways, another is only available in custom, and the third is JHI, who where the top dogs in vanilla so it's not that bad really. In fact if you where fighting anything but another 2-Hander you probably wouldn't notice a significant difference, 2-Handers fights are one of the bloodiest battle around with even low end 2-handers inflicting heavy losses on much higher level 2-Handers. Thats what High Attack, AP attacks vs. Low Defense Skill Low Defense Values does.
Your Point on Highland Nobles is an even better one though. My only real counterargument is that the Scots other infantry is remarkably good, both for it's type and for it's tech era, plus they don't actually beat DEK and are somewhat worse against other units. In effect they get access to a top of the range 2-Hander a tier or two earlier than anyone else, but it isn't quite the best 2-hander around, (it's a mater of their defense defense TBH, even 2.5 less defense matters at this level because the values are so low).
The auto-resolve goes to considerable lengths to try and properly mimic the battle - it's actually a fairly sophisticated model, even taking into account major battlefield features like rivers, town walls, siege equipment and so on, as well as unit frontage, flanking, fatigue, statistically correct kill chances, charges, ammunition amounts and so on. But in this context I would have to add that it's unlikely that the Med2 autoresolve takes account of the effect of the animation set on battle outcome. Certainly the Rome one did not, which was appropriate at the time as the animation influence was largely eliminated from actual fought battles through the use of time-to-next-attack penalties.
Thanks for that:D. I presume we can infer from that statement that Animations ARE having a effect on combat results above and beyond what calculations show?
As I said before, instead of pumping up the 2HS attacks to crazy levels, one could also consider lowering the ubiquitous DFK's attack by 2, say, bringing it into line with its mounted version. The DFK's are a relatively early unit, which for whatever reason CA has decided to make comparatively indifferent to the later S&S (e.g. DCKs and Noble/Armored Swordsmen) that are supposed to replace it. Only 1 Armour point separates these units.
The problem here is that DFK AREN'T my biggest worry. It's Noble Swordsmen/Dismounted Chivalric Knights/Dismounted Christian Guard. Like I pointed out in a post further up. DFK are actually a lot worse in comparison to the later S&S units that their stats difference suggests. If you lower the Attack of 2-Handers by even a Little it will hurt the 2-Handers, particularly the units below the level of DEK/Highland Nobles. already struggle vs. top end S&S units. If I make them any weaker they'll get beat silly.
Also as noted, any changes I make have to be across the board, so i could lower DFK attack, but if I was to do that I'd want to do the same to every S&S unit which is pointless IMHO. The entire idea here really is to reduce the arbitrary nature of these changes by making them global changes to re-balance unit classes rather than individual units.
@Carl, a belated 'good work' on the latest incarnation of your fix - having everything in one place makes things much easier
Thanks, and Your Welcome~:). Glad to be able to help.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Despite saying I'm concerned with the Custom (and MP), balance further up. Don't mistake that for me not caring about SP. Mearly that this is simply a BugFixer designed to fix the known bugs then bring the unbugged 2-Handed units into line with their performance when the enemy was bugged, (within reason of course). However, making it balanced in Custom makes feedback on this BugFixer a lot more useful for CA as it doesn't need total re-balancing for custom, (I hope:smash:). Hopefully that means they can use bits of it to help them out. Even if it helps give them ideas it's a good thing. I'm effectively aiming for something CA could directly implement in the 1.2 patch if they wanted to, (not that they would), without it messing up game modes other than SP. So yes I DO care about SP, it's just I want to try and cut down some of CA's workload for them, that, (hopefully), means we get a better 1.2 patch, and thats to everyones benefit.@Foz:
The list of units first:
2HS and Eastern Halberds:
These get an 8 Charge Stat, +10 Attack, and AP.
Highland Nobles
Zwei Hander
Forlorn Hope
DGK
JHI
Halberd Militia (The eastern one, Turks, amongst others, get this type)
Eagle Warriors, (These had a non-working animation too, but I gave them the fix as most Aztec animations are very OTT, with a less OTT animation you could see these guys under-performing a LOT, plus it makes the New world even harder:smash:).
Western Halberds:
These Get +5 attack, and the Spear attribute added to their primary weapon. The Light_Spear attribute is added to the secondary weapon.
Halberd Militia (The western one, HRE, amongst others, get this type)
Voluge Militia
Volugiers
Sword Staff Militia
Swiss Guard
Obudshaers
Hope that helps Foz.
Also, did you actually wade through the file by hand to make all these changes? If so, props, it probably took a while.
Yeah, but I used your downloadable 1.2 shield fix EDU files for the shield fix, their weren't many units to edit after that TBH. Now I've got the changes in my head I could probably re-create the file from scratch in 15 mins. Try editing DOW RGD's by hand, you can end up doing a LOT more in those...
Wow... people weren't kidding when they said how bad 2HS unit animations were. From what I can see, it's all in the charge. I pumped the DGK +12 attack from vanilla (no AP) and put them against DEK (demo animations)... and the DEK annihilated them pretty handily. The DEK inflicted some 30% or 40% kills just on the charge. When I set the DGK to use DEK animations via the soldier line, though, then THEY instead accomplished massive kills on the charge and went about 2:1 against the DEK. Even with their own animations the DGK appeared to be beating the DEKs in general melee, it's just that they could not cover the large deficit that the charge had caused. So I tried it another way... with both units having DGK animations, and sure enough the DGK with stats 26/6/14 (no AP) went 2:1 against the DEK with standard stats and AP.
Yeah, the Charge animations of the Halberd units I Nicked are very fast so they tend to get the first blow it. It's actually 25% that die on the charge, (their 4 ranks deep and the entire front rank gets it:(), but by the time it registers, general melee has been going a few seconds and a few more have dropped dead. The trouble is with the front rank dead the DGK don't get a blow in before the charge bonus has worn off. and are now outnumbered. It's a quick trip to a loss for the DGK then. That partly why I gave them 8 Charge stat. A High charge stat seems to speed up the Charge animation, so in combination with their high Attack, AP and new animations, it means they always get the first blow in and get very decisive victories, (at this level of attack, +3 attack doesn't seem to matter as much as you'd expect).
So... is there anything we can do about the DEK charge animations? Or anything we can do to make the charge animations of 2HS units more effective? Either one is likely to bring the units back into some reasonable balance w/ respect to each other. I'm just not experienced enough with that sort of editing in this game to know exactly what's required to make a unit use part of another's animation set...
Not that I know of, their isn't an animation editor available for this game so it's something we can't really do~:(.
One probably shouldn't just compare by cost and type, since there's also where they come in the tech tree to consider and this is possibly even more important for balance. For instance, Scotland gets access to Highland_Nobles comparatively early.
In addition there's also upkeep. Most notable is that DEKs more than make up for their lowish cost by then costing 225 in upkeep; a value that's substantially more than many other 2HS equivalent.
The thing is, I'm trying to give CA and idea of what works, and what effects specific changes have, but that means I have to worry about things like Custom battles, (and MP), where tech levels are highly simplified and Upkeep/Recruitment Pool Size/Replenish Rate are simply not applicable.
On the flip side you do raise a VERY good point in that right now DEK have a Very High Upkeep, that naturally means that they do need to be good for their price. And in general I would say they are, they get draws against Zwei Handlers, just barely beat Highland Nobles and are bettered by JHI and DGK, (ohh and VHI, but they ain't a 2-Hander). It's not likes theirs a lot of units will beat them, and in all honesty they still tend to kill most of the DGK/JHI, (i.e. it's MAD~;p), they're still the 4th best non-pike unit in the game, and of the units that beat them, one is effectively a high defense 2-Hander in many ways, another is only available in custom, and the third is JHI, who where the top dogs in vanilla so it's not that bad really. In fact if you where fighting anything but another 2-Hander you probably wouldn't notice a significant difference, 2-Handers fights are one of the bloodiest battle around with even low end 2-handers inflicting heavy losses on much higher level 2-Handers. Thats what High Attack, AP attacks vs. Low Defense Skill Low Defense Values does.
Your Point on Highland Nobles is an even better one though. My only real counterargument is that the Scots other infantry is remarkably good, both for it's type and for it's tech era, plus they don't actually beat DEK and are somewhat worse against other units. In effect they get access to a top of the range 2-Hander a tier or two earlier than anyone else, but it isn't quite the best 2-hander around, (it's a mater of their defense defense TBH, even 2.5 less defense matters at this level because the values are so low).
The auto-resolve goes to considerable lengths to try and properly mimic the battle - it's actually a fairly sophisticated model, even taking into account major battlefield features like rivers, town walls, siege equipment and so on, as well as unit frontage, flanking, fatigue, statistically correct kill chances, charges, ammunition amounts and so on. But in this context I would have to add that it's unlikely that the Med2 auto-resolve takes account of the effect of the animation set on battle outcome. Certainly the Rome one did not, which was appropriate at the time as the animation influence was largely eliminated from actual fought battles through the use of time-to-next-attack penalties.
Thanks for that:D. I presume we can infer from that statement that Animations ARE having a effect on combat results above and beyond what calculations show?
As I said before, instead of pumping up the 2HS attacks to crazy levels, one could also consider lowering the ubiquitous DFK's attack by 2, say, bringing it into line with its mounted version. The DFK's are a relatively early unit, which for whatever reason CA has decided to make comparatively indifferent to the later S&S (e.g. DCKs and Noble/Armored Swordsmen) that are supposed to replace it. Only 1 Armour point separates these units.
The problem here is that DFK AREN'T my biggest worry. It's Noble Swordsmen/Dismounted Chivalric Knights/Dismounted Christian Guard. Like I pointed out in a post further up. DFK are actually a lot worse in comparison to the later S&S units that their stats difference suggests. If you lower the Attack of 2-Handers by even a Little it will hurt the 2-Handers, particularly the units below the level of DEK/Highland Nobles. already struggle vs. top end S&S units. If I make them any weaker they'll get beat silly.
Also as noted, any changes I make have to be across the board, so i could lower DFK attack, but if I was to do that I'd want to do the same to every S&S unit which is pointless IMHO. The entire idea here really is to reduce the arbitrary nature of these changes by making them global changes to re-balance unit classes rather than individual units.
@Carl, a belated 'good work' on the latest incarnation of your fix - having everything in one place makes things much easier
Thanks, and Your Welcome~:). Glad to be able to help.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Despite saying I'm concerned with the Custom (and MP), balance further up. Don't mistake that for me not caring about SP. Mearly that this is simply a BugFixer designed to fix the known bugs then bring the unbugged 2-Handed units into line with their performance when the enemy was bugged, (within reason of course). However, making it balanced in Custom makes feedback on this BugFixer a lot more useful for CA as it doesn't need total re-balancing for custom, (I hope:smash:). Hopefully that means they can use bits of it to help them out. Even if it helps give them ideas it's a good thing. I'm effectively aiming for something CA could directly implement in the 1.2 patch if they wanted to, (not that they would), without it messing up game modes other than SP. So yes I DO care about SP, it's just I want to try and cut down some of CA's workload for them, that, (hopefully), means we get a better 1.2 patch, and thats to everyones benefit.
However, if you want I can try the SHS with only+8 attack, +6 deffintlly wasn't enough IMHO...
Erm, do you really need to increase their attack by +10? 24 AP attack plus 8 or more charge makes them 'foot cavalry'. They sort of become glass cannons, with rather average defense and a really high attack to overcome the ridiculous defense of swordsmen. I'm not sure that was the original intention for them. Perhaps it's the swordsmen that are unbalancing everything.
@Dopp: Depends, they, (JHI/DGK/FH/ZH/HN), have lower or equal defence to DEK and thus need a higher atack to compete, the 8 Charge is more to ensure they get the benefit of the charge by getting the first blow in. DEK are unushually well armoured for a 2-Hander BTW.
As to Swordsmen being out. The problem we can't lower their armour or (once fixed), sheild defence without tottally screwing over missile balance in the game. so the best we can do is lower defence skil, and if we do that we've got to massivvly lower the atack of 2-Handers to keep them balanced, and even then we've got balance problems vs. Pikes/Western Halberds who then need adjustment too. The balance as things stand is good. we can lower 2-Hander attack, but we start having to nerf everyone then if we do that.
As I said in the last thread, all unit in this game have strong points and weak point. The strong point of 2-Handers is their abillity to destroy at a roughly 3:1/4:1 ratio any S&S unit they come across. Their weaknesses are their vulnrability to missiles and to Cav.
S&S units are nearly the polar opposite, (as their stats suggest), in that they are somewhat cav resistant, (you need 8 charge stat cav to beat them), very missile resistant, still do a good job against any non-pike/2-Hander infantry and are genrally somewhat cheaper and easier to get than the powerhouse 2-Handers. Pikes are diffrent again, being VERY vulnrable to missiles, and Flank/Rear attacks as well as low on speed and turn rate. but come with the advantage of being allmost impossible to attack head on. It's a delicte balance between all the units that ensures no one type dominates above all others in all situations.
p.s. not having a go, but things feel about right balance wise ATM to me, and i'm loathe to mess with them. Foot Knights is a partial description of 2-Handers at the moment as it is, if you where to start lowering their attack and the defence of S&S units theirs a danger it could make things worse not better.
I've been considering classifying S+S infantry into a couple of types, as they don't all quite seem to serve the same purpose.
Most fall into a class of "Line infantry". I'd tend to think of them as really being the tougher of the two, capable of holding for a long time as well as taking charges.
The rest, most notably Venetian heavies and I think Imperial knights, having AP (and in the the case of VHI a lower defense than other S+S IIRC) seem to be Assault infantry. These seem just a tad more intended for wining battles of attrition or scaling walls perhaps.
On a side note, when checking things last night I did notice that VHI really take an almost instant loss when hit by a formed charge from high end cav.
Edit: I do think this mod is headed in the right direction. While I wish for longer fights, I sense that the would be more set in the animations than in the stats. And since we can't touch the animatoins just yet.........
I'd agree Stlaind on the 2 tpes. I Actually consider the AP S&S infantry to be more of a High Defence 2-Hander, As thats what they perform like. They might have a sheild, but they don't real;ly work like sheild units on the battlefeild TBH.
Edit: I do think this mod is headed in the right direction. While I wish for longer fights, I sense that the would be more set in the animations than in the stats. And since we can't touch the animatoins just yet.........
Thanks, i'm going to get to work on my re-balance mod I think. That will use my BugFixer as the base, but will furthar include rebalancing. However it's so far beyond simple bugfixing in scope that I don't want to try calling it a BugFixer. The BugFixer is for those who just want a mod that ONLY fixes all the bugs. The Re-Balance fixes the Bugs and adjusts extra details throught the game.
I'd agree Stlaind on the 2 tpes. I Actually consider the AP S&S infantry to be more of a High Defence 2-Hander, As thats what they perform like. They might have a sheild, but they don't real;ly work like sheild units on the battlefeild TBH.
Thanks, i'm going to get to work on my re-balance mod I think. That will use my BugFixer as the base, but will furthar include rebalancing. However it's so far beyond simple bugfixing in scope that I don't want to try calling it a BugFixer. The BugFixer is for those who just want a mod that ONLY fixes all the bugs. The Re-Balance fixes the Bugs and adjusts extra details throught the game.
sounds good - alot of people like to modify the more subjective elements themselves
Thanks, i'm going to get to work on my re-balance mod I think. That will use my BugFixer as the base, but will furthar include rebalancing. However it's so far beyond simple bugfixing in scope that I don't want to try calling it a BugFixer. The BugFixer is for those who just want a mod that ONLY fixes all the bugs. The Re-Balance fixes the Bugs and adjusts extra details throught the game.
Just how extensive of rebalance are you talking really? Units mainly or alterations to cities/castles?
Units only ATM, Mostly S&S, Spears, a few tweaks to individual factions units here and there, and some messing with a few of the composite archer units are what i'm looking at. Mostly defence skill increases to widen the gap between composite archers and normal ones a bit, and to increase the general resistance of spears/cav overall, (paticuarly spears, so now you can use them as cheap pinning fodder as well as anti-cav).
I won't say any more as i've yet to test half my ideas so I may unbalance things and have to drop some stuff.
sounds good - alot of people like to modify the more subjective elements themselves
Thats more or less the point, some people prefer to touch those up themselves, and others prefer to not touch the subjective elements, the BugFixer gives them that.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way Carl, I appreciate your effort to balance the game AND commit to making a proper mod for everyone to d/l. I just don't think 2handers should be gimped in the armor department and outrageously stacked in the attack department (until they actually exceed top-end heavy cavalry in raw stats) just to accomodate sword and board units, which in my opinion, have no place in the Late Period and have rather high stats in relation to everything else. In the original MTW the 2handers had solid armor and high AP attack, making them the successors to the earlier sword and board units, rather than being some sort of suicide attack squad.
@Dopp i don't take it wrong, and understand your point.
Your of the opinion that 2-handers should effectivlly replace all other infantry bar Pkes.
I'm of the opinion, (based on a lot of factors, not least of whuich is the way a fair few S&S are not avalibile in era restricted Custom/MP until the same time as many of the best 2-Handers), that S&S and Spears are supposed to be used in combined arms tactics along with 2-Handers rather than being outright replaced.
The fact that we have differing opinions DOES NOT make eithier of us right regardless of what evidance may indicate CA intended. It's opinions and feelings only. Your fully entitled to disagree with me, and whilst I may try to argue and explain my postion to you, I would never say i think your outright WRONG and should NOT have your own opinion.
If you belive that S&S should be tottally replaced, and I can't convince you otherwise, I don't have a problem with that, I may not agree, but i'm not some god who is right when he says he is, I just choose to amicablly disagree.
I definitely don't think S&S should be replaced by 2-handers. After all look how late Armoured Swordsmen and Noble Swordsmen appear in the tech tree. I just view them as the basic and common troop type. As someone said above, the line infantry.
The strong point of 2-Handers is their abillity to destroy at a roughly 3:1/4:1 ratio any S&S unit they come across. Their weaknesses are their vulnrability to missiles and to Cav.
I don't agree with this. Defeat them yes, but not destroy them by 4:1 ratios. After all, if they're doing this to good S&S troops, just imagine what they're going to do to the other infantry unit types, e.g. spears....
I definitely don't think S&S should be replaced by 2-handers. After all look how late Armoured Swordsmen and Noble Swordsmen appear in the tech tree. I just view them as the basic and common troop type. As someone said above, the line infantry.
I don't agree with this. Defeat them yes, but not destroy them by 4:1 ratios. After all, if they're doing this to good S&S troops, just imagine what they're going to do to the other infantry unit types, e.g. spears....
The problem is not that line infantry die at a 3:1/4:1 ratio. I think rather the issue is that they do so too fast.
if it happens slower, then you have plenty of time to flank with cav (remember, balance in M2TW should inspire combined arms solutions)
I definitely don't think S&S should be replaced by 2-handers. After all look how late Armoured Swordsmen and Noble Swordsmen appear in the tech tree. I just view them as the basic and common troop type. As someone said above, the line infantry.
Thats been my main argument all along TBH. Their are a hell of a lot of S&S infanry marked "late" in custom battles, thats a pretty good indication to me that CA intended them to be useful. Their are also more than a few Late in the actually SP tech tree too.
I don't agree with this. Defeat them yes, but not destroy them by 4:1 ratios. After all, if they're doing this to good S&S troops, just imagine what they're going to do to the other infantry unit types, e.g. spears....
The problem with this is that Pikes allready beat the 2-Handers and Spears are so weak that 2-Handers being able to beat them harder than S&S units won't really effect the ratios overmuch. Town Militia, (who are the same stats as Spear Militia but don't get the Spear related melee penalties, (and are thus the earliest S&S unit)), allready beat Spear Militia 2:1. Most S&S manage 5:1/8:1 thats so overkill it dosen't really matter that 2-Handers do better. Spears where simply never intended to fight anything besides cav effectivlly.
The problem is not that line infantry die at a 3:1/4:1 ratio. I think rather the issue is that they do so too fast.
if it happens slower, then you have plenty of time to flank with cav (remember, balance in M2TW should inspire combined arms solutions)
I pretty much agree here, S&S infantry are anvils on which you catch the 2-Handers, you then crush them with flank charges. Even other S&S infantry will do here as their are hidden extras to Flank/Rear attacks, and other benefits seemingly related to how eager a unit is and how outnumbered it is.
Thats somthig the re-balance mod i'm working on aims to improve upon by making S&S better anvils, and giving Spears Anvil ability too, (making them useful when NOT faced with cav).
I hope you don't take this the wrong way Carl, I appreciate your effort to balance the game AND commit to making a proper mod for everyone to d/l. I just don't think 2handers should be gimped in the armor department and outrageously stacked in the attack department (until they actually exceed top-end heavy cavalry in raw stats) just to accomodate sword and board units, which in my opinion, have no place in the Late Period and have rather high stats in relation to everything else. In the original MTW the 2handers had solid armor and high AP attack, making them the successors to the earlier sword and board units, rather than being some sort of suicide attack squad.
For the most part, 2HS units are not gimped in the armor department. That is of course unless by "gimped" you mean "suffering the obvious disadvantage of not bearing a shield for defense." It should be pointed out that no one has done a thing to mess with the defense values of those units at all, and DGK even in vanilla for instance are wearing the maximum available armor in the game. So unless you intend to suggest that 2handers should be able to wear some sort of armor that is not even available to anything else in the game, their strength over S&B units must be derived from their offensive ability in combat.
That being said, I think I'm joining the group of people that feel the attack stats are too OTT for a lot of these units. 2-handers, while powerful, should not be a freight train of doom that can gobble up endless numbers of infantry units regardless of what they are, and live to fight another day. Having an infantry unit post 3:1 or 4:1 kill numbers against a well-armored opponent is not RPS, it's just broken. A 4:1 ratio essentially says a guy with a 2-handed weapon is 4 times more effective at melee than a S&B man is, which we all know is horrid BS. This is especially the case since not only do they tear apart S&B like that, but also pretty much everything in general melee. I mean, we're not talking about hot knives and butter here. As every unit in the game stands on ground and can therefore be engaged in melee, this is just way too much power for one unit to have. I would expect them to take about 50% losses in defeating a decent S&B unit, and at least in the case of DEK type units I would guess that a 2-4 point decrease in attack might be in order to accomplish that. I'd try 3 first, as that is between the normal stats that produce 3 or 4:1 and the -6 attack stat that produced about 4:3, so one might reasonably expect a 4:2 = 2:1 result from using the midway attack value. This adjustment doesn't put them in danger of not doing their job as has been suggested... but rather in danger of not absolutely stomping all over everything, which it seems most people would rather they didn't do anyway.
@Foz: I tend to consider the 3:1 to be the best point, 4:1 is a worst case scenario. However, thats just my prefrance point 30-35% losses is ideal, 25% is the lower minimum)
Also it's worth remebering that Noble Highland Archers can actually beat DEK if the DEK don't run across the feild, (as they don't when AI controlled), and would probably cuase very heavy losses, (in the region of 4:5/3:5), before dying. Granted, NHA are good in melee, but they have one of the worst missile attacks in the game. 2 units of peasent archers could probably outshoot them TBH.
Fuedal Knights can also wipe out 70%+ of DEK with a single formed Charge. if they Withdraw and re-charge they could take the whole unit out with less than 50% losses.
Pikes also rip them to peices as well if they can't get into a Flank.
Thus in general they have plenty of good counters that nearly everyone has acess to at least one of.
On the flip side I agree they are just a touch OTT, but some intresting results with spearmen imply it might be down to Skeleton Componsation factor, (raising spearmen Skeleton factor from 0.6 to the 1 the comments imply it should be makes them rather more resistant to cav and much better general melee fighters, it explains why spears perform so much worse in my BugFixer than they did previouslly in a custom thing I did), I'm going to do some tests with altered Skeleton Componsation factors. If it works how i think it will it should provide the necessery minor tone down.
I also have a feeling that DGK will lose to an equal cost in DFK if surrounded, but don't quote me on that.
Thats what i'd expect to happen, I've seen big masses, (about 10-15 unit), of spear militia beat 4 units of DEK before when the melee became DEK surrounded by Spear Militia. Once outnumbered it's common for unit to suffer a stunning hit which means their attack rate drops drasticlly. The 4:1 kill rates only happen in 1 vs. 1 situations. It drops off as they become outnumbered.
I'm off it try the equalisd Skeleton Comp Factors, if it seems ok to me would Stalind, Foz, or Jambo be willing do do a short closed Beta to look for obvious IMBA?
I'll toss my hat in,but it'll probably be at least 7 hours before I can put much of a look at it.
You're messing with skeleton compensation factors now? What do they do? I sure hope you know, because I sure don't. Even if you do know what it does, I don't see why it's preferable to simply removing a few attack points.
@Stiland, thats fine.
@Foz: I'm messing with them because the file says that it should be set to 1 (somthing peasents, spears and 2-handers arn't), and because changing it in the past seemed to eliminate a lot of issues, (besides 2-Handers, including Peasents), in one throw. Of course, in file comments arn't allways correct but...
For what it's worth I think it acts as a multiplier to eithier attack speed or to kill probabilities, so spearmen at 0.6 where well down, whilst 2-Handers at 1.3 or 1.33 where well up.
I just ran the tests with the skeleton Comp factors set to 1 for all units.
The test was between DEK and Noble Swordsmen. in the first 5 I controlled the DEK, in the Second 5 I controlled the Noble Swordsmen. In the third test set (one result, the last one), i controlled 1 DEK vs. 2 Noble Swordsmen. Same weather for all tests fortunatly:D.
44/8 Win
42/6 DEK Win
45/4 DEK Win
44/7 DEK Win
46/7 DEK Win
221/32 Totals for first set (7:1 kill ratio!)
41/19 DEK Win
47/20 DEK Win
47/31 DEK Win
47/28 DEK Win
47/30 DEK Win
229/128 Totals for second set (14:8 kill ratio)
450/160 Totals for both sets (45:16 kill ratio)
81/40 DEK Loss
Overall it's clear that DEK are nearly unaffected by who controls them in tems of the kills they cuase, but who controls the Noble Swordsmen matter a lot. it's probably because the AI dosen't charge with them, they try to stop the last second to brace and run into the DEK rather than charging in. When I control they charge lovely and get some kills in, (their charge attack animation is actually even faster than that of the DEK belive it or not).
I'd expect the totals for both tests to be close to the real value in human vs. human tests TBH, their the kill ratio is slightly worse than 3:1, (3:1 would be 45:15 for those who find fractions hard).
I made and eror when writing that. PM me when your able to do the tests, overall i'm liking the effects as one of the issues my BugFixer still had IMHO was that Spear Militia where nearly usless against anything, (including Mailed Knights and Border Horse:(). They don't beat Maild knights with a skeleton Comp Factor of 1 instead of 0.6, but they do do somthing more than simply get overun, and they actually perform in line with other spear units, (for price), now, who could previouslly deal with cav.
I think a slightly higher mass on troops expected to be able to take a cav charge helps too
It does, but honestly, I wouldn't want spear Militia to beat anything better than Mailed Knights. I'd prefer if they did better against the Mailed Knights, but I wouldn't want them beating Fuedals without upgrades. But thats getting overly subjective. My point was mearly that changing everyones skeleton Comp factor to 1 seems to deal with Spear Militia uslessnes and 2-Hander OTT'nes all at once.
It just needs more testing, thats the trouble.
By the way it's really useful if stats are always quoted with the tests so people who aren't using the wee mod can compare. Anyway, I did a few this eve (finally a chance!):
DEKs vs HNs
DEKs 15/6/13 ap
HNs 16/6/9 ap
DEKs romped it each time, easily.
An interesting one I did was DGKs vs HNs with the HNs using the ME_Halberd_Militia animation:
DGKs 18/6/14 ap
HNs 16/6/9 ap (I accidentally forgot the extra +2 to attack)
Anyway the AI controlled HNs won! So, there may be some element of truth in the ME_Halberd_Militia animation being better than the standard 2HS... more testing needed.
I also tried vanilla Voulgiers vs the same HNs and the Vs were fairly hopeless and lost both encounters convincingly - one where I ordered them to attack and one where I left them stationary. Interestingly they did much better stationary.
It's still fairly clear from these that the DEK animation is amazing and there's no need for them to have anywhere near their 21/6/13 vanilla stats when using their fixed animation. Of course that's IMHO.
ohh, the stats where the ones from my bug fixer so they would be, (in order of attack, charge and then defence):
DEK: 21/6/13/ap
Noble Swordsmen: 13/3/22/no
As noted who controlled the Swordsmen mattered a lot as they only charge properly when the player controls them.
If i'm right about how Skeleton Comp Factor works, lowering the attack of DEK to 16 will reproduce the results. (So you should be getting similar results Jambo, if thats how you like them, then I largely agree with you, because they are a touch too good ATM, and only slightly weak with the fix, (i worry how they'll do vs. Dismounted Christian Guard TBH)).
FOUND THE PROBELM:
Whilst Skeleton Comp factor changes seem to cure it under normal conditions, I just did a few tests under 1.1 of my BugFixer, trying to see what would happen if i could get the swordsmen to charge right. The results are suprising. If you just single click on the swordsman, the DEK walk into range then charge. This tme the Noble Swordsmen also charge right and when that happens the Swordsmen inflict substantial losses on the DEK before going down. Not as high as with modifed Skeleton Comp values, but still quite good.
The Issue Then: Swordsman don't have enough room in which to charge properly if the enemy enters their charge range at a run.
Result: They get mullered as Foz noticed, taking over 40% losses on the charge, (the entire front rank in effect), before even getting a blow in. A single follow up volley of DEK attacks cuts them below half strength, and now effectivlly outnumbered 2:1, they get beat sensless.
I'm ging to try fiddling with the charge distances to see if I can't get them to charge better.
I've found that reduced charge values work quite well. In my LTc mod i use:
Heavy cav - 25
Light cav/missile cav - 30
Infantry - 15
Pikemen 10
Thanks Lusted, i'll try those see what happens.
Some tests with me carefully controlling the swordsmen to ensure a proper charge from both sides alongside missile units has convinced me that DEK and co are ok at their current stats if they don't get a free round of charge kills in.
(Hell Longbowmen can beat DEK even if the DEK charge at them, (I controlled the DEK). So a 3:1 kill rate against S&S isn't that OTT when composite infantry units can actually manage 1:1 against DEK.)
I just need to get those damm swords working now...
p.s. I was actually gonna try and get in touch with you if I had no luck myself~;p, so thanks for pre-empting me.
I tried lower charge distances and whilst it worked sometimes, I felt that the AI had more problems executing a successful charge with the lower distances. So I returned charge distances to vanilla. Maybe increasing them might help?
One also has to remember that in a normal battle the AI wouldn't tend to match up Noble Swordsmen against DEKs. Therefore, given the imbalanced match up between 21/6/13 DEKs and NS in a 1v1, the AI's maybe unsure about the match up and as a result hesitates with the charge. Lower the stats of the DEKs and then see if the AI still doesn't charge... when the AI thinks it can win it normally charges.
@Jambo: Your results match mine, the times when the AI dosen't charge home it tend to turn a flank to the charging DEK (OUCH).
Results below:
I did 2 test groups, the tests where conduted with the following stats:
DEK: 21/6/13/ap
Noble Swordsmen (NS): 13/3/22/no
The Skeleton Comp factors are the same as the 1.1 BugFixers, (I.E. 1.33 for the DEK and1.0 for the NS).
The first set of results, (kills on each side when the NS routed, DEK/NS format):
45/17
46/16
43/27
43/9
42/2
41/9
47/14
44/4
44/12
44/14
As you can seee the NS charge home around 50% of the time now, and when they do, they do apriciable damage to the DEK before dying.
To furthar reinforce the point I did a series of tests where I Single-Right cliked (if the DEK arn't running when they enter charge range, the NS charge properly every time for some unfathomable reason).
Results, (same format as before):
32/16
46/21
36/13
44/28
42/7
27/12
32/16
47/21
28/16
43/19
As you can see a kill ratio of between 3:1 and 2:1 tends to be common and the DEK have the advantage of human control which allways gives a buff. Overall I feel happy with those figures TBH. I don't know about Jambo/Foz though...
Also, how do you guys find that Eastern Halberd Militia/Woodsmen/Croat Axemen/Viking Axemen/All Bill Units/e.t.c. are performing, these are significantly weaker that the top of the range DEK/DNK/DPK/DGK/HN/ZH/FH units. Are they suffering from cronic IMBA too:smash:?
Overall I can say I like the lower charge distances to date and am going to experiment a bit more. They'll probably stay to a degree as people have been asking for easier cav charges. Likewise, I like the performance f spears vs. cav wioth altered Skeleton values. Mostly because they can just about beat cav of a similar era to themselves, meaning they are actually a good counter for the cav units they are supposed to counter. Before I found they tended to get rolled over.
So thats probably going to make the next release along with a few more defualt formation changes.
Based on the figures and your intuition, how do you guys think that will go...
p.s. If you want a Beta copy of the 1.11 version Jumbo, i'd be willing to send it to you, same goes for Foz.
I respect your two's opinions a fair bit and it was your concern that made me do extensive tests and notice just how bad DEK where beating NS. Before that random observations didn't show the scope of it TBH.
I too find the same thing with the charging... however even single-clicking the DEK and watching to be absolutely certain the other guys charge correctly does not fix it. Note that I'm not doing this test with Carl's mod file, but the issues seem to be identical (that being some sort of charge issue it seems). When I'm the DEK even when I single-click charge, I always win the charge portion of the fight, and often by a lot (the computer has been having what look like successful charges instead of the stop short variety). When I'm the other guys (French DFK is what I'm using this time), the DEK take TONS more losses and the charge comes out about even (again watching to make sure the DEK do not do the stop short charge which I've also seen them do a few times). I'm talking about 3:1 results when I play as DEK, but 3:2 at best for the DEK when I'm the DFK, and often it becomes MAD or very nearly (like 5 DEK left). The DFK have even WON some with me piloting them. I tried it on all different difficulties... and the only thing I'm left with is that there appears to be validity to the idea I've seen tossed around that the human player has an edge in combat against the computer. I can't tell if it's because the computer consistently does something to botch its charges (that I just can't see) or not... Could just be numbers advantage for that, but something weird is up, and I figured I'd bring it to everyone's attention and maybe get some thoughts.
Thats what i'm finding too foz. Are the DFK suffering about 50% more dead on initial contact than the DEK, (who go down to about 42-46 left).
I should like to point out that DEK have a higher Charge stat than DFK and a haigher base attack and about the same defence, (after AP effects), so to do as well as they do, the DFK are doing well. In other words the DFK are charging home fine, considering the stats diffrance they're doing better than i'd honestly expect.
As to weather a 3:1 kil ratio is balanced? Thats subjective, but i'd point out that Pikes vs. anything from the front, Cav vs. 2-Handers/Missiles, Missiles vs. 2-Handers, S&S vs. Spear/missiles, e.t.c manage equal or better than 3:1 in most cases. (Remeber that DEK/DNK/DPK/DGK have about double the missile resistance of most 2-Hander units, so they do better, just as Hashashim and Dismounted Christian Guard do for S&S vs. 2-Handers.)
Theirs defintly some kind of player bouns, i think it's a case of any ties that happen get judged in favour of the player. With the amount of stufff thats happening that could easillly have big knock on effects.
Carl: I'm gonna pass on that beta for the moment, and in fact might be largely under the radar for a day or two. Tomorrow looks to be a busy one, and I have a campaign game itch that I've got to scratch on top of that if at all possible. Who knows though, I may be inspired to check in anyway.
Concerning balance: 3:1 should be okay for DEKs to perform under human control. More than anything I'm just concerned that typical S&S units are not worthless against DEK or 2-handers when the human has the S&S unit, as there's a lot of them and it would suck to have those 2H units making them total garbage. As that 3:1 becomes something like 2:3 when you've got the S&S unit under human control, I'd call that very close to the 1:2 I wanted from having S&S units take on DEKs. To get the DEKs to actually go 2:1 over human-controlled S&S units would probably require a few more attack points, but that would make DEKs even more OTT when under human control themselves, which is clearly not something we want to have happen. So the choices would be:
1. Decrease DEK attack to make them less OTT under human control. This would improve S&S under human control enough against DEK that they'd probably MAD or even win.
2. Bump DEK attack to get S&S to only kill half the DEK unit when S&S under human control, and make DEK more OTT when human controls them.
3. Leave it alone, which leaves human-controlled S&S to kill some extra DEK, but keeps DEK more reasonable when in human hands.
I vote 3, as testing seems to indicate any less attack power for the DEKs would make S&S units (under human control) able to best them, which is not what we want at all. Likewise increasing their stats would make them slaughter everything on the field entirely too well and too quickly. Seems to me like the current stats represent the best compromise.
On a side note, I've been testing with demo animations instead of replaced soldier lines... and seem to be getting largely identical results to what people using replaced soldier lines are getting. Interesting. I'm guessing that while the animations appear rather fast, the attack timing is in fact being controlled by something else, so it's likely the animation isn't as much of a factor as people seemed to think.
Carl: I'm gonna pass on that beta for the moment, and in fact might be largely under the radar for a day or two. Tomorrow looks to be a busy one, and I have a campaign game itch that I've got to scratch on top of that if at all possible. Who knows though, I may be inspired to check in anyway.
Concerning balance: 3:1 should be okay for DEKs to perform under human control. More than anything I'm just concerned that typical S&S units are not worthless against DEK or 2-handers when the human has the S&S unit, as there's a lot of them and it would suck to have those 2H units making them total garbage. As that 3:1 becomes something like 2:3 when you've got the S&S unit under human control, I'd call that very close to the 1:2 I wanted from having S&S units take on DEKs. To get the DEKs to actually go 2:1 over human-controlled S&S units would probably require a few more attack points, but that would make DEKs even more OTT when under human control themselves, which is clearly not something we want to have happen. So the choices would be:
1. Decrease DEK attack to make them less OTT under human control. This would improve S&S under human control enough against DEK that they'd probably MAD or even win.
2. Bump DEK attack to get S&S to only kill half the DEK unit when S&S under human control, and make DEK more OTT when human controls them.
3. Leave it alone, which leaves human-controlled S&S to kill some extra DEK, but keeps DEK more reasonable when in human hands.
I vote 3, as testing seems to indicate any less attack power for the DEKs would make S&S units (under human control) able to best them, which is not what we want at all. Likewise increasing their stats would make them slaughter everything on the field entirely too well and too quickly. Seems to me like the current stats represent the best compromise.
Thats more or less what I think, drop them anymore and we have potentiol issues, raise them anymore and we get issues too, I'd also be worried about the effects on the weaker 2-Handers as well, it could really underpower them if they got an attack cut. If we can sort the charge bug it's going to be easy as pie to get everything working after that I think. It looks to me like they would actually sit somwhere just below 2:1 kill rates if humans controlled both sides.
No worries with the Beta Foz, I know what you mean, I was up while 3 this morning doing a Papal states one, (VERY fun IMHO).
On a side note, I've been testing with demo animations instead of replaced soldier lines... and seem to be getting largely identical results to what people using replaced soldier lines are getting. Interesting. I'm guessing that while the animations appear rather fast, the attack timing is in fact being controlled by something else, so it's likely the animation isn't as much of a factor as people seemed to think.
I havn't sen the Demo Animations TBH, but I would say that when looking at the 2HS units vs. fixed units when the 2HS had the old animations, I noticed attacks where about as frequent, what was happenning though was that the fixed animations where playing out faster, so if they started to swing at the same time, the fixed units would beat the others to hitting the other side, with obvious results.
May just be me but it defintly seemed like the ME_Halber_Animation played out faster than the DGK animation, but both attacked exactly as often.
It's strange, I too have found differences in results when controlling a unit and then attacking that unit in 1 v 1 battles. It does appear the human has an advantage and it does seem linked to the charge. I guess this is probably just an aside of 1 v 1 and that the AI might act more appropriately in proper encounters? Nevertheless, while short charge distances seem to work better for cavalry, I'm not convinced they're better for infantry.
Anyway, no doubt I'll continue testing, but I am actually trying to find my own happy medium. Where possible, my rebalancing has tended towards adjusting stats to slow combat resolution rather than instigating global boosts. So far I've done the following:
*Added foz's shield fix.
*Added dopp's pike fix.
*Added zxiang's animation fix for 2-h axes and then proportionally reduced these units' inflated attack values (DEKs around the 14/6/13 mark (-7), billmen around 11/6/3 (-4)). This animation set is like the JHI in power.
*Added ap and +3 to attack for 2-h swords.
*I increased low morale units' morale to lessen mass AI routing. Units with 5 morale now have 7, units with 3 now have 5 and units with 1 now have 3. High morale units (i.e. higher than 5) remain unchanged.
*General bodyguard units only have 1 hp instead of 2.
Things I'm seriously considering:
*Subtract 2 from all pikemen attack values. These guys are excellent for their price with the pike fix and rather than boosting others I'd prefer to lessen their attack to give other units more time to manoeuvre.
*Maybe increase all halberd (including JHI) attack values by 2 to give them more similar attack values to pikes and bring them more in line with others.
*If S&S are proving to tough overall then I am considering lowering their attack from 13 to 11 rather than boosting others any further.
*I'm considering the idea of giving the ME_Halberd_Militia animation to all 2HS if it proves to be a better (quicker) animation, since it will make them easier to balance against the 2-h axes.
*If this fails I am considering lowering DEKs, DPKs, DNKs defence values from 5 to 3, since these guys are just monsters whatever I seem to do!
*Tweaking skeleton compensation to deal with any other imbalances.
Regards
Carl, what animation are you using for 2-h axe units if you're not using the pre-gold demo's, i.e. zxiang's fix? That might explain the differences we're seeing since the demo's animations make DEKs into JHI type units. I guess that's why JHI had comparatively low vanilla syats.
I'm changing the sopilder line to: ME_Halberd_Militia
It's very similar to the JHI one though, might even be the same TBH.
I chosse to use Global boost largly becuase lowering 2-Handers would have meant doing the same to S&S unit, Spears, and Pikes. Then Missile woukld have needed re-balancing as they will be OTT against the now weakend defence of S&S units and Spears and 2-Handers. Then I have to start messing with cav to keep them balanced.
My advice would be to wait till i've finished my bug fixer and then try using it with attack values lowered by about 3 pointas for everyone and see how that goes, it should slow melee kill rates down without buggering anything else up. I might even do this in the re-balance version.
It is the same animation as the janissary_heavy_infantry from what i've seen in the battle_models.modelsdb file.
Thanks Lusted. I can't tell what line in their control the weapons even WITH Musashi's tutoriol, (plus it's not really possiblle to include it in a mod due to how it has to be installed).
@Jambo: There does seem to be a problem with 1v1 on custom battle map. Defensive units like pikes that would normally stay still in campaign battles will advance in custom even if totally outnumbered. Even archers and crossbows like to advance closer. The AI also seems better at pulling off charges in campaign.
Empirate
01-25-2007, 00:28
Help!
Maybe I'm stupid, but I can't figure out how to install this fix. I don't have a folder "Program Files". I'm in Germany, so I do have a folder "Programme", which should be the one in question, but there is no SEGA folder in there! Can somebody please give me a step-by-step? Where can I find the export_descr_units.txt in my M2 folder? Is it sufficient to just replace the vanilla one with Carl's?
@Empirate:
Find your M2TW folder. then go into my SEGA folder and in their you'll find an M2TW Folder, paste the contents of my M2TW folder into your M2TW folder. That should get it working.
I need an auto-installer, but I don't know how to make one TBH.
rosscoliosis
01-25-2007, 02:16
I'm finding that 1 vs 1, both un-upgraded, on completely flat land, peasants still beat levy spearmen, though it is a bit closer than it was before your patch. I thought the uberness of peasants was something regarded as a "bug" before? ~:confused:
What if someone called peasants "Squires with pitchforks", would they be ok then?
all joking aside it's some I'd consider on the list, but there's bigger fish.
I'm finding that 1 vs 1, both un-upgraded, on completely flat land, peasants still beat levy spearmen, though it is a bit closer than it was before your patch. I thought the uberness of peasants was something regarded as a "bug" before? ~:confused:
Spear units take minuses against any sort of infantry, so perhaps this is as intended. At the very least the peasants will generally not beat up on units that are up a tier from them. Try this on for size:
English Peasants vs. HRE Armored Sergeants. I control peasants.
Vanilla game:
P Kills/AS Kills
60/65
The peasants nearly won the day, against a unit whose stats are way above theirs.
Game with shield fix:
P Kills/ AS Kills
20/49
The peasants give up much sooner, as they are not causing MAD to AS and clearly disadvantaged.
So yeah... I don't mind if they beat crappy spears, as spears are supposed to be disadvantaged by an undisclosed amount against them, but the fix makes them not able to grind down considerably better units, which I think is the real point.
I thought the spear penalty was dropped from RTW, is it still in effect?
Will this mod work if I run m2tw off of steam? As long as I click on the mod shortcut I should be ok?
Will this mod work if I run m2tw off of steam? As long as I click on the mod shortcut I should be ok?
Yeah you should be fine as long as you use the Mod Shortcut, I can't think of any reason it shouldn't work, but I don't know exactly what steam is so don't quote me, (what's steam BTW?).
I'm finding that 1 vs 1, both un-upgraded, on completely flat land, peasants still beat levy spearmen, though it is a bit closer than it was before your patch. I thought the uberness of peasants was something regarded as a "bug" before?
See Foz's reply, it is somthing that needs looking at TBH, but it's not an outright bug so once I get the BugFixer done to satisfaction i'll start on that.
Good news guys, Stlaind was able to do a bit of testuing and belives V1.11 is ok for realease so expect that in an hour or two once i've made and tested the formation changes.
V1.11 now up.
It's in the first post along with the updated README.
Link to the first post here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1397429&postcount=1)
Enjoy.
Carl.
Link just failed for me. Will try again later. Ta!
Fileshack's just gone down Moah. I'll try and mirror it somwhere, (suggestions welcome).
I've mirriored it at Savefile for the moment.
To download, click the link then enter the number (near the bottom of the page), and click Submit. Then wait about 30 seconds for it to begin downloading.
Added a FileFactory Mirrior too.
Something to note is that I didn't really have time to do a proper pass across all units changed, so there may be some oddities that I didn't catch.
One thing to note is that some units might get balanced up or down in cost some too once we have a feel for what looks right balance wise.
Something to note is that I didn't really have time to do a proper pass across all units changed, so there may be some oddities that I didn't catch.
Thanks for that, I'm just fairly sure you wouldn't have missed any big ones, thats all. If their are issues leftover they might be small ones.
One thing to note is that some units might get balanced up or down in cost some too once we have a feel for what looks right balance wise.
Whilst this will happen in time, I hope to save the price changes for the re-balance version as it's not really bufixing anymore then. This is just finding obvious non-working stuff, fixing it and then altering the few working bits into line with the debugged stuff, (since the working stuff is UP with debugging complete).
I'll create a seperate thread for the re-balance now so me and stirland and others can comment on more subjective stuff their without derailing the bugfixer.
Overall, what do people make of the Spears, thats my biggest concern, is the Skeletion Comp Factor change too big?
I'm just saying the WAAA DEK/DNK/DPK/VHI are too good cries might be without real solution till then.
I felt like they held better, my only real test was (IIRC)Spear militia VS bill militia, which they lost, but it was basically MAD. Bills killed a ton, only reason the bills lost was loss of general.
I thought the spear penalty was dropped from RTW, is it still in effect?
The file says it is still in effect:
; stat_pri_attr
; primary weapon attributes any or all of
; ap = armour piercing. Only counts half of target's armour
; bp = body piercing. Missile can pass through men and hit those behind
; spear = Used for long spears. Gives bonuses fighting cavalry, and penalties against infantry
; long_pike = Use very long pikes. Phalanx capable units only
; short_pike = Use shorter than normal spears.
; prec = Missile weapon is only thrown/ fired just before charging into combat
; thrown = The missile type if thrown rather than fired
; launching = attack may throw target men into the air
; area = attack affects an area, not just one man
; spear & light_spear = The unit when braced has various protecting mechanisms versus cavalry charges from the front
; spear_bonus_x = attack bonus against cavalry. x = 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12
Whether it's actually correct or not, though, I do not know.
I'm just saying the WAAA DEK/DNK/DPK/VHI are too good cries might be without real solution till then.
Possiblly, but I don't think people understand just how vulnrable to missile the 2-Handers are.
I ran a seris of tests last night with a mixture of Crossbows, Gunpowder, Bow, Longbow, and other unit based missile weapons against 2-Hander, (4 highland Nobles, and 4 Galloglaich vs. 8 assorted missile units under my command). Ran all kinds of combinations. The 2-Handers raerly managed, (melee and missile losses added togeter here), better than 1:1 kill rates and went as bad as 3:2 EVEN when WINNING. It went down to between 3:1 and 4:1 when they lost.
NOTE: in the above kill rates the Missile units are listed first, so at worst when losing they lost 4 for every 1 the killed.
Considering even peasent Archers where managing 1:1 kill rates thats pretty big vulnrabilities TBH. I didn't do a cav test but i'll do a DGK vs. Fuedal Knights shortly, then go on my campaign and come back and put the results up about 8.
On the other hand I think we will have detractors till we eithier get charges fixed or re-price slightly.
I felt like they held better, my only real test was (IIRC)Spear militia VS bill militia, which they lost, but it was basically MAD. Bills killed a ton, only reason the bills lost was loss of general.
I've noticed Bill Militia are weak morale and tend to break as soon as they lose a general.
As soon as anybody gets cav resistance data could you please put it up.
All right. Got some thoughts to share.
First I did some Fudeal Knight tests vs. DGK. The Fuedals where winning with 2:1/3:1 kill rates in their favour, even mailed knights could manage MAD with cycle charging. DGK/DEK/DNK/DPK are the only 2-handers with that kind of defence TBH. SO 2-Handers are proving very vulnrable to enemy cav charges.
Second, the more I play around with Western Halberds, the more concerned I become. The Danish and Papal States ones are effectivlly their main late infantry unit, whilst France, HRE and the other similar nations with this type of unit get it as eithier the last or second to last infantry in their barracks tech tree. hats worrying me even more as it's implying more and more that they are meant to be a big part of late armies. the problem is they are tottally outperformed by Pikes and struggle against S&S infantry. Overall i'm becoming more convinced that Halberds are NOT just a stepping stone between Spears and Pikes and i'm getting worried as they don't really live up to their late era status ATM.
This echoes a lot of what I wsa thinking at first, however, cost wise those do pretty well.
Armor and animation quality go a long ways with halberds it seems.
I'm now a bit confused as to which thread I should be posting in.. lol. Anyway, regarding halberds, what I've done so far is give them a universal +3 to their attack whilst at the same time a -2 to the attack of all pikes. I won't have the fortune of being able to test the changes until tomorrow but suffice to say I agree with the premise that halberds are meant to be good late units. You don't get the Danish ones until quite late in the tech tree.
The rebalance is intended to grow to include more than just fixing issues created by the bug fixes I think
Stlaind hit the nail on the head. Re-balancing units that have been made UP by Bug Fixing falls in this thread. Stuff that fall outside bugfixing or re-balancing units that are UP by bug-fixing falls into the other thread.
Overall i'm becoming more convinced that Halberds are NOT just a stepping stone between Spears and Pikes and i'm getting worried as they don't really live up to their late era status ATM.
The Militia ones are, but the elite ones need to be competitive at least with the 2handers/sword and boards.
The Militia ones are, but the elite ones need to be competitive at least with the 2handers/sword and boards.
The problem is Dopp that furthar play with various factions has made me realise that of those that get Halberds, only France and HRE get Halberds AND Pikes, even at militia level. France gets at least 1 of every unit class, HRE also gets an above average number of unit classes too, and thus I don't think eithier is a fair test case.
In every other amry bar france and HRE the Halberds are a direct REPLACMENT for Pikes, even at the Militia level. They get Halberds INSTEAD of pikes. That worrying me as Halberds are slower than Pikes, yet tottally unable to even challange them. It's that damm bugged switchover code again. If they actually poked with their weapons when they wern't in melee range, (as appossed to all hacking because one or two can hack as they do now). I havn't tried a test in vanillia yet but i'd expect them to beat bugged pikes sensless, and considering the price disparity in most cases this makes plenty of sense really.
p.s. What do people think ov V1.11 then?
Bongaroo
01-26-2007, 17:00
Thanks for putting this together. I was only able to play an hour last night after installing the BugFixer. I started a new campaign as Scotland, so I haven't had time to see any effects but after reading through the readme, it looks like I will be very happy for a while.
Revenant
01-26-2007, 17:10
Carl: Did you consider to remove spearwall formation from all halberds and raise their stats accordingly? This will make a sort of cheap weak AP assault infantry from them, similar to billmen.
They're not supposed to be assault infantry. Halberds were a higher tech development of pikes, they're defensive infantry with a bite.
Carl: Did you consider to remove spear wall formation from all halberds and raise their stats accordingly? This will make a sort of cheap weak AP assault infantry from them, similar to billmen.
It's a possibility, but as noted a couple of posts ago by me, a number of factions use Halberds as a replacement for pikes. They really need the Cav defense, and without spear wall they are going to struggle to provide it IMHO. This is a particular issue for the Danes.
Also, HRE, France, and Denmark already get 2-handers, I also believe the same is true of the eastern factions that get them, (Although I haven't played those yet so I'm not sure TBH).
The problem is that turning them into AP Pikes risks making them IMBA, yes they cost about double he price of a comparable Pike unit, and are slower. However, they are much more missile resistant in general than most Pikes and the high level Halberds are cheaper on upkeep than the High level Pikes, (although this isn't an issue for custom Battles it is something that has to be remembered as the campaign is the most common form of SP play, for reference low level Halberds are similar or more expensive than the low level pikes on upkeep).
In other words we have an issue in which we can't really make them 2-Handers, but if we turn them into AP pikemen we risk unbalancing them. It's a double edged sword.
Thanks for putting this together. I was only able to play an hour last night after installing the BugFixer. I started a new campaign as Scotland, so I haven't had time to see any effects but after reading through the readme, it looks like I will be very happy for a while.
Thanks for the opinion.
What about making them 60 man units like pikes? As well as giving them a little attack hike, this is the best solution I've found so far.
And/or increase their skeleton compensation factor to 1.33?
Revenant
01-26-2007, 21:04
They're not supposed to be assault infantry. Halberds were a higher tech development of pikes, they're defensive infantry with a bite.
I do not they were higher tech developement of pikes - they were used earlier than pikes (if we take only middle ages) and pikes lasted much longer, various polearms remained only as ceremonial weapons in later times.
I agree they were more versatile than pikes, though. You can cut, slash, drag and stab with them...
But maybe the best solution will be to leave them as weaker type of "pikes" with AP ability and the faction without pikes will be just more vulnerable to cavalry.
@Jambo: they've got +5 attack and 60 men in V1.11 but they still get beat solidly by pikes and S&S infantry and suffer much higher losses vs. 2-Handers and Cav than Pikes do, although they still win.
But maybe the best solution will be to leave them as weaker type of "pikes" with AP ability and the faction without pikes will be just more vulnerable to cavalry.
This just won't work reverent, with how OTT cav are in M2TW if your weak vs. cav you can't fight a battle on the battlefield at all. Simply put a quarter stack of late Heavy Cav can slaughter a Full stack of Infantry if used correctly. The only infantry melee counters are Spear walls and lots of armored sarges in Schiltrom. Not everyone gets those. Some get Halberds instead and thats the issue here. Denmark, and probably some of the Eastern European factions, (who also get Western Style Halberds), just won't have any effective late tech tree cav counter so even small cav forces will simply roll right over their infantry armies.
The most important balance consideration in this game ATM is that every faction has an effective late era counter cav unit. If they don't, heavy cav simply dominate the battlefield and those without good heavy cav are UP.
I'm not trying to knock you down reverent, just saying that you can't have a balanced game whilst one faction is weak vs. cav.
@Jambo: they've got +5 attack and 60 men in V1.11 but they still get beat solidly by pikes and S&S infantry and suffer much higher losses vs. 2-Handers and Cav than Pikes do, although they still win.
Yeah you're right. Tests I've just performed also confirmed that even with 60 men and +3 attack, they're still fairly useless and indeed woeful against highland pikemen.
So options:
1. Remove their phalanx ability and make them more like ME_Halberd_Militia and JHI.
2. Remove their secondary attack and then lower their primary stats to prevent them being like uber pikemen?
Any other avenues?
I do not they were higher tech developement of pikes - they were used earlier than pikes (if we take only middle ages) and pikes lasted much longer, various polearms remained only as ceremonial weapons in later times.
I agree they were more versatile than pikes, though. You can cut, slash, drag and stab with them...
But maybe the best solution will be to leave them as weaker type of "pikes" with AP ability and the faction without pikes will be just more vulnerable to cavalry.
Pikes are one of the oldest weapons in existence, going back to the Greek hoplites. The halberd is much more complicated and difficult to produce, but it is basically a pike, only better. It can be used to push as a spear, but it's vastly better at bringing down cavalry (Or anyone else) who breaks into your formation.
In all seriousness, the halberd should be the strongest defensive infantry in the game, even nastier than pikemen from the front.
The reason they died out is twofold: Again, halberds are more complicated and MUCH more expensive to produce than pikes. You need a swordsmith, basically, and that's a specialized skill. Spearheads on the other hand, any country bumpkin blacksmith who shoes horses can make. Naturally, the swordsmith charges a bit more than your typical blacksmith (And by "a bit", I mean a whole freaking lot).
Also, halberds are for defeating armored opponents. With the downfall of the truly armored knight, there ceased to be a need for them. Against unarmored or very lightly armored enemies, pikes are just as good (Or very nearly at any rate) so there was no point in spending all that money on expensive halberds when a big long pointy stick would do just as well.
@Jambo: I'd say option 2 as most of the armies with this type of alberd, (HRE/France/Papal States aside), tend to need the cav defence abilities of a pike more than they need another 2-hander. However, some (Papal states and HRE), would benefit from a 2-hander, (on reflection a 2-Hander half the price of Zwei-Handers and with no upkeeep would be valubale to them), france just plain has too many units, and the Papal States would benefit far more from a 2-Hander than a Pike unit as Papal Guard are quite good enough to see off even the best cav.
p.s. sorry if i seem a bit short ATM, i'm only actually nipping in for 10 minutes at a time between play sessions on M2TW, i've played more Sp campaign time over the last 3 days than I have to date since I got the game~;p.
Random Question. How's Bazantyinium faring under my BugFixer, their infantry lineup was all Sheild equipped and Vargarian Guard also had bugged animations, so their infantry lineup has recived a BIG boost from these bugfixes. I'm intrested in how they compare...
Carl, I think Option 2 is the only way. So far, I can get good results with the unit in 1v1, but in the hands of the AI it's still a bit disasterous. The AI just seems to continue to walk the unit even when in melee. Maybe that's just what happens in 1v1 though...
Interestingly, I find that on huge unit sizes (Which is naturally my balance target), with their unit sizes upped to 60 halberdiers are devastating. They beat pikemen that are better quality even (Halb Militia can take on Highland Pikemen, and occasionally even Scottish Heavy Pike Militia).
In every other amry bar france and HRE the Halberds are a direct REPLACMENT for Pikes, even at the Militia level. They get Halberds INSTEAD of pikes. That worrying me as Halberds are slower than Pikes, yet tottally unable to even challange them. It's that damm bugged switchover code again. If they actually poked with their weapons when they wern't in melee range, (as appossed to all hacking because one or two can hack as they do now). I havn't tried a test in vanillia yet but i'd expect them to beat bugged pikes sensless, and considering the price disparity in most cases this makes plenty of sense really.
Halberd Militia are recruited from Militia Drill Square (level 4). Pike Militia are recruited from the Militia Barracks (level 5). How can a lower level unit be a replacement for one that is higher level? Granted, many elite halberds should probably beat militia-level pikes, but I think it would be challenging to expect them to beat elite pikemen head-to-head. Otherwise, they become too powerful, since they don't need to maintain formation to be effective and are free to maneuver.
The fundamental problem is that with the 'fix', pikemen become untouchable from the front (literally, because the enemy is unable to close with them in the first place), but without the fix, pikemen are rubbish (because they ALWAYS allow the enemy to close with them). They are the unbalancing element atm, not the halberds themselves. How do the halberds fare against other units? It's no good balancing them against such an extreme case as pikes only to mess them up against everything else.
History part: Feel free to correct me, but I don't think halberds replaced pikes; it was the other way around. The Tercio initially contained halberdiers, but later reduced the number significantly in favor of more pikes. The Swiss switched from halberds to pikes, if I recall correctly. Certainly by the 17th century, pikes had replaced most of the other weapons for infantry melee fighting.
Pikes had the advantage over halberds in terms of reach (and pikes kept increasing in length in order to maintain that advantage over enemy pikes). Halberds were primarily useful at close quarters. A pike is generally unsuitable as a weapon outside of formation fighting. Halberds were used when/if the push of pike became too close, but they needed to be part of a pike formation themselves in order to beat pikes. They were supplementary, not primary weapons. To implement what you seem to be proposing; that pure halberd formations essentially become the nemesis of pikes, is probably taking things a little too far.
Halberd Militia are recruited from Militia Drill Square (level 4). Pike Militia are recruited from the Militia Barracks (level 5). How can a lower level unit be a replacement for one that is higher level?
Because (to my knowledge), NO ONE but HRE gets that. For everyone else it's either Halberds OR PIKES, NOT BOTH. (p.s. caps are for emphasis). HRE and France are the only armies that get pikes AND halberds. Everyone else gets one or the other. I haven't checked Poland and Hungary yet, but I know that for Papal States and Denmark that Halberds are their last tier unit. I suspect that Halberd Militia are the same place for Poland and Hungary although I'd have to check.
The fundamental problem is that with the 'fix', pikemen become untouchable from the front (literally, because the enemy is unable to close with them in the first place), but without the fix, pikemen are rubbish (because they ALWAYS allow the enemy to close with them). They are the unbalancing element ATM, not the halberds themselves.
Not really Dopp. If they fixed the switchover code so that only those who where in melee range pulled swords you'd get the exact same situation as now. Right now if someone gets into melee range all the nearby pikes turn toward's him and away from the front, yet the unit remains impenetrable from the front. If those that turn their pikes toward's him pulled swords out at this point as they should, (whilst the rest of the unit keep their pikes), then the only real change would be those that got through would do more damage before dying. They aren't performing much different to how they should Dopp.
Interestingly, I find that on huge unit sizes (Which is naturally my balance target), with their unit sizes upped to 60 halberdiers are devastating. They beat pikemen that are better quality even (Halberd Militia can take on Highland Pikemen, and occasionally even Scottish Heavy Pike Militia).
2 Problems here.
1. your doing 1v1, that means that means theirs no other unit protecting the flanks of the pikes. try 4v4 so that some pikes can only be engaged head on.
2. Your using default formations, in reality fixed pikes/spears have formations that are far too deep. My Pikes now deploy 4 ranks deep which means that you can't make the Halberd's formation any thinner, (if you try for wider, the center just disintegrates vs. anything and you get worse results, I checked). Thus under my BugFixer you won't see them getting in the flanks for you. I tried even on Huge and it didn't happen. Try controlling the Pikes and widening the formation till your only 4 ranks deep and try that against comp Halberds, or edit your EDU ranks numbers for Pikes.
Because (to my knowledge), NO ONE but HRE gets that. For everyone else it's either Halberds OR PIKES, NOT BOTH. (p.s. caps are for emphasis). HRE and France are the only armies that get pikes AND halberds. Everyone else gets one or the other. I haven't checked Poland and Hungary yet, but I know that for Papal States and Denmark that Halberds are their last tier unit. I suspect that Halberd Militia are the same place for Poland and Hungary although I'd have to check.
The fact remains that most (if not all) halberd units are one tier lower than even basic Pike Militia on the building tree, which means a) 12000 less population required to build them, b) 9600 less florins to build them, and c) 5 less turns to build them. Per city. That's got to count for something. And elite French pikemen are even higher on the tech tree, requiring 12000 more florins for an Army Barracks and 6 more turns. It's just like if Musketeers cost 27000 more florins to build per city than other missile troops (which they do), they had better be the best missile troops.
If they fixed the switchover code so that only those who where in melee range pulled swords you'd get the exact same situation as now. Right now if someone gets into melee range all the nearby pikes turn toward's him and away from the front, yet the unit remains impenetrable from the front. If those that turn their pikes toward's him pulled swords out at this point as they should, (whilst the rest of the unit keep their pikes), then the only real change would be those that got through would do more damage before dying. They aren't performing much different to how they should Dopp.
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here. Pikemen that draw swords in vanilla lose their advantage of reach and will fight as swordsmen until the combat is concluded. Taking away their swords fixes the problem where they abandon their pikes almost instantly after contact, but this gives them a huge reach advantage all the time, even when their formation has been penetrated and they should be at a disadvantage. That's why I said the 'fixed' pikes are still a little imbalanced to use.
To be honest, I'm not sure how you would make halberds competitive with pikes using the tools we have at our disposal, unless you either buff their stats sky-high (especially their defense) or turn them into pikemen as well by removing their secondary 'weapon', leaving them free to poke (no hacking). Their tactic of taking the charge and then switching over to normal melee puts them at a disadvantage, because they are neither as well armed or as well protected as the elite swordsmen that are the only units currently able to survive a head-on confrontation with pikemen.
The fact remains that most (if not all) halberd units are one tier lower than even basic Pike Militia on the building tree, which means a) 12000 less population required to build them, b) 9600 less florins to build them, and c) 5 less turns to build them. Per city. That's got to count for something. And elite French pikemen are even higher on the tech tree, requiring 12000 more florins for an Army Barracks and 6 more turns. It's just like if Musketeers cost 27000 more florins to build per city than other missile troops (which they do), they had better be the best missile troops.
The problem with that is that it isn't true of Denmark, It isn't true of Poland, it isn't true of the Papal States it isn't true of Hungary. All rely on Halberd equipped unit to provide either their last tier city or castle troops, (I'll hold my hand up and admit I got Papal States wrong, they do have Pike Militia when I double checked). That leaves no doubt in my mind they where meant to be powerful effective troops. In addition, since they occupy a late tech tree position in Poland and Hungary's Tech Tree, (and are much more expensive than Pike Militia), I'm of the opinion that Halberd Militia SHOULD be competitive with last tier melee units from other factions, (within the constraints that Hungary and Poland aren't totally infantry focused, and should have weaker infantry than those factions which are).
Lastly, not everyone sees these as unimportant SP additions. In that enviroment, the only availability difference between Halberds and Pikes is Cost, the Halberds Cost more. Thus all things considered they sure as hell had better be outperforming Pike Militia. Upkeep, Recruitment Pools Size and Replenish Rte and Position in the Tech tree in SP are methods to create differentiation between factions with similar unit rosters in the Campaign, they ARE NOT the primary means of balance for me, (although i do consider them to a degree when balancing as they are still important). They are more a secondary means to help balance out the complexities of campaign play and other campaign specific factors. The primary means of balance however is base Price, Faction Play style, and Custom Battle tech level, (which is simply a broader version of the SP tech levels). They are the bits that matter to me as I know they will be balanced in Custom, and experience playing other games tells me that a balanced custom mode almost always equals balanced campaigns too. The only Campaign specif thing I constantly worry about is Auto-Calc as thats such a big thing and effects battle odds too.
On the flip side, I don't believe that Halberds should beat Pikes head on, I'll go into that in more detail in a moment though.
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here. Pikemen that draw swords in vanilla lose their advantage of reach and will fight as swordsmen until the combat is concluded. Taking away their swords fixes the problem where they abandon their pikes almost instantly after contact, but this gives them a huge reach advantage all the time, even when their formation has been penetrated and they should be at a disadvantage.
My point is Dopp that their formation is penetrated when they are unfixed BECAUSE they switch to swords, not IN SPITE of it.
What Do I mean in more detail:
1. What Happens without the Pike Fix: The Swords Charge in, most actually get slowed down by the Pikes. A few swords get through the pikes and make it to melee however. The whole Pike unit then switches to swords and those slowed down are now free to speed up and the pikes get hit en-mass at melee range, resulting in the formation being compromised totally.
2. What Happens with the Pike Fix: The swords hit, most get slowed down, a few make it to melee. Those Pikes engaged in melee now put all their attacks against hose engaging them in melee as do the ranks behind them that arn';t in range of those who where slowed down. Those pikes who are not engaged in melee and who are in range will continue to attack those slowed down and force them out before they make it to melee. The few swords that have made melee then get ripped to pieces and the whole formation now focuses on the other swords who are now held at bay.
3. What Should Happen if the Switchover Code was Working Right: The swords hit, most get slowed down, a few make it to melee. Those Pikes engaged in melee now switch to swords and put all their attacks against those engaging them in melee. The ranks behind them that aren't in range of those who where slowed down attack them with their Pikes too. Those pikes who are not engaged in melee and who are in range will continue to attack those slowed down and force them out before they make it to melee. The few swords that have made melee then get ripped to pieces and the whole formation now focuses on the other swords who are now held at bay.
The difference between 2 and 3? Those swords that do make melee range will do more damage as the Sword attacks are worse than the Pikes by some margin, but they will still have 2 ranks of Pikes prodding them plus 2 or 3 swordsmen pikes attacking them. If they fix the Switchover code the Pikes will still be nearly impossible to compromise on a large scale, but will suffer more losses from small scale compromising of the formation.
To be honest, I'm not sure how you would make halberds competitive with pikes using the tools we have at our disposal, unless you either buff their stats sky-high (especially their defense) or turn them into pikemen as well by removing their secondary 'weapon', leaving them free to poke (no hacking). Their tactic of taking the charge and then switching over to normal melee puts them at a disadvantage, because they are neither as well armed or as well protected as the elite swordsmen that are the only units currently able to survive a head-on confrontation with pikemen.
I've actually been trying to make them work as a kind of 2-Hander/Spear cross ATM with some success. Basically they have Spear Wall formation removed along with their secondary weapon and the Long_Pike Attribute for the Primary Weapon. They keep the Spear Attribute for their Primary Weapon.
As i said, Limited Success however, so I'll give you the news in 3 Portions, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly:laugh4:.
THE UGLY
Like all Spear units, they need a good basic defense to be able to survive Late era Cav charges, I was thus forced, (to make Halberd Militia useful), to raise their total defense by some 14 points. 10 Armour, 4 Defense Skill
THE GOOD
Removing the Phalanx and Long_Pike Abilities has greatly increased their speed making them much more maneuverable and thus useful on both attack and defense.
The Spear attribute seems to keep their kill rate under control by and large, and thus they ain't Uber, (more in a moment on specifics).
Their Missile resistance is raised, whilst a bit Uber in some cases, (see "THE BAD" in a moment), it's generally a Little less than what working Shields would have but a bit better than what most 2-handers have. A bit of a mix really.
More specific on kills, generally they will beat S&S with a 3:2 or 1:1 kill rate, and the same for Late Cav. They tend to be beaten by 2-handers, with the 2-Handers managing a 3:2/2:1 kill rate against them. Spears I haven't tested, but I'd expect a general massacre s with all other infantry.
In other words they don't tend to beat any non-Cav unit decisively, but they don't tend to get beaten decisively either. Even when they lose they take most of the enemy with them and when they win they lose most of the unit. However they are good all rounders. In effect you don't really expect them to beat anything as well as another unit in your army would, but they won't get beaten by anything as bad as some units i your army would. (i.e. 2-Handers might beat S&S better than Halberds would, but the halberds will do better when faced with missile or cav).
THE BAD
Auto-Calc doesn't take account of animations and they rely somewhat on having worse animations than proper 2-handers to keep the balance between them and proper 2-Handers.
Their missile defense is just a touch too good. They are currently closer to S&S than 2-Handers.
They are a bit too good vs. pikes because they have such a long weapon and such good defense. As a result they are pretty much the only unit that can strike at a Pikeman without having 5 or so attacks directed at him every round of attacks. Voulgiers for example get beaten by Noble Pikes by a 3:2 kill ratio in the Pikes favor, considering the quality of Scottish infantry and the tech levels, (big enough to mater to me here), this IS too low a kill rate, it should be more 2:1/3:1 IMHO.
The REALLY BAD news, Swiss Guard and Obaushear's are to good ATM, I'll deal with each separately:
Swiss Guard aren't too OTT, but they are a bit. 17 Armour is far too good a missile defense and their total of 26 defense all round is so good that all non-AP units struggle to hurt them. They tend to get 1:1 kill rates against 2-Handers and 3:1/4:1 against S&S, they are also impossible for pikes to deal with. Their only real balancing point is that they are Papal States only and that the Papal States don't get many other good melee units (Halberd Militia, Pike Militia and DFK are their best ones besides Swiss Guard). If they where the only problem I'd let them slide as 2 units of any S&S/2-Hander/Pike will beat 1 unit of Swiss Guard.
Obaushear's are the real issue, with an even higher total defense of 31 and an Armour value of 23 they are just are TOO good. No non-AP missile unit could touch them, (thats daft, my HA dislike or not, it's too much), and even some AP units will struggle. Don't get me wrong, with the Danish Infantry typically being poorly defended vs. missile fire, having a Halberdier that is above average wouldn't bother me, but when they are virtually immune it's just not fair. They make Swiss Guard look daft as they can beat any Pike or S&S unit with less than 5 dead. Although strangely DGK can still beat them so it's defiantly Armour related. Cav also don't do much worse for some reason. Whilst I could have accepted Swiss Guard, these are simply too much.
Despite all that doom and gloom I'm generally happy with Halberds, they feel unique from both Pikes and 2-Handers and are worth their money, it's just the high end ones that are proving OTT and much of this problem is stemming from how poor the defense skill of Halberd Militia is at Vanilla settings. We have to raise it s much to make it competitive that it's pushing even Volouge Militia to the limits of balanced and Voulougiers/Swordstaff militia to the limit.
The real problem with balancing Halberds is that they (in vanilla), suffer from the switchover bug, the Animation bug and are fairly underpowered in vanilla for their price on top of everything else. So where not only having to kill the effects of 2 bugs, but where also having to do CA's job and actually balance them properly in the first place.
I'm going to experiment and see if can't fin the point at which Obaushear's become OK balance wise and then see how that effects the rest of the Halberds in compression.
Until something better comes up, I've just settled for removing their secondary weapons, e.g. for Voulgier:
soldier Voulgier, 48, 0, 1.2
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_withdraw
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, phalanx, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 7, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, axe, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr ap, long_pike, spear_bonus_6
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, melee_simple, blunt, none, 25, 1
I'm following Carl's idea with intrigue though and if a good balance can be had with it, without disrupting autoresolve, I might consider using it. I've never been very fond of the slow moving phalanxes anyway.
Uh... yeah. You added 14 friggin defense points, and 10 were ARMOR? Talk about ludicrous. At the very least you have to make them skill points so you don't kill their bad resistance to missile weapons and the usefulness of rear attacks against them. Personally I don't like any solution that will make them have more defense of any sort, because it's not how the unit is supposed to operate. If that means spearwall is the only viable way to make them good against cavalry, then I say don't remove that either. If people insist on running troops into spearwalled halberds head on, they deserve to be slaughtered. I'm still not sure I understand exactly why you're having so many issues making them useful, but I don't think defense is the way to go. Maybe removing the secondary attack would be best and balancing them from there... because the unit should definitely still get shredded if engaged on multiple fronts, and defense of any sort will largely prevent that.
I think i've figured out part of why Obaushear's are so good, I tried knocking 6 armour and 4 defence skill of them and they where STILL beating Noble Swordsmen 4:1, yet they now had 1 less defence than Voulgiers and only 2 better attack and 1 better charge, and the Vopul;giers where managing MUCH worse kill rates, likewise, expiriance with swiss guard leads me to belive that those few points of attack shouldn't make THAT much diffrance (they have an even higher attack yet where performing closer to Voulgiers than the Obaushear's are). I've yet to try a Swiss Guard vs. Obaushear's test, but I think Obaushear's have a better animation somehow which helps explain why they feel so good no matter how I nerf them.
At the very least you have to make them skill points so you don't kill their bad resistance to missile weapons and the usefulness of rear attacks against them.
The point is i'm changing them from a slow moving vulnrable to missile unit into a fast moving unit with no real vulnrabilities, but no real strengths eithier, (other than cav resistance).
It's also 10 armour and 4 defence skil for a TOTAL of 14 defence.
If that means spearwall is the only viable way to make them good against cavalry, then I say don't remove that either.
The problem is if you give them that they HAVE to be able to beat Pikes sensless as they're going to be so expensive by comparision and so much slower that they can't afford to not do that, their speed really impacts their missile defence.
I'm still not sure I understand exactly why you're having so many issues making them useful, but I don't think defense is the way to go. Maybe removing the secondary attack would be best and balancing them from there... because the unit should definitely still get shredded if engaged on multiple fronts, and defense of any sort will largely prevent that.
As I say, it's down to the fact that without turning them into Uber death machines against everything, their isn't ANY way to make them useful for their price. And as I say my defence related change is MEANT to make them largly immunne to most counters, also remeber that units engaged in the flanks or rear suffer extra penalties on top of the normal ones for engaged head on, so flank and rear attacks will still kill a lot more Foz.
Genrally Voulgiers work fine under this system and wit a minor tweak would be perfectly balanced INMHO. it's only Swiss Guard and Obaushear's that are IMBA foz, everyone else is OK if at the limit vs. missiles.
p.s. by UBER death machines I mean 20:1/30:1 kill rates.
I've found the issue and it gives me an easy way of fixing the problem regarding adding lost of defence to the Halberds.
The Obudshaer's are classed as Hardy, removing that from their description TREBLES enemy kill rates against them, so in theroy if I make all Halberds Hardy or Very_Hardy they should need less defence skill to be cav resistant and that will kill the missile defence issue. Since they cost so much and are so late in the tech tree it's not like it would be tottally unbalancing to have them running around fresh for so long IMHO.
To allow moders to try out my Halberds in their current state, here's the Voulgier Entry:
type Voulgier
dictionary Voulgier ; Voulgier
category infantry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy
banner faction main_infantry
banner holy crusade
soldier Voulgier, 60, 0, 1.2
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_withdraw
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 12, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, axe, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr spear, ap, spear_bonus_4
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, melee_simple, blunt, none, 25, 1
;stat_sec_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 13, 7, 0, metal
;stat_armour_ex 5, 7, 8, 0, 3, 0, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 4
stat_ground 1, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 5, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 10
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 510, 150, 75, 55, 510, 4, 120
armour_ug_levels 2, 3, 4
armour_ug_models Voulgier, Voulgier_ug1, Voulgier_ug2
ownership france
era 2 france
;unit_info 7, 0, 8
EDIT: scratch that, Hardy/Very Hardy only seems to work in situations where the chance of a kill is low to start with, I guess it's a fixed reduction of -1% or -2% from the chances and dosen't have much of an effect when the defence of a unit is low. Back to the drawing Board.
p.s. to help people understand how they are working ATM. Halberds are now roughly the equivelent of Papal Guard with S&S level melee/anti-missile capabilities on top., their numbers being the only reason they beat S&S units. They get beat up pretty much as S&S with 60 men would by 2-Handers, and do about right v. spears. It's only pikes they seem out of sync with. (and missile for Swiss Guard/Obudshaer's ).
I've done more testing stil and have found a decent balance for the late teir Halberds, but reconciling the late and early teir Halberds is going to be hard.
In the end the degree of changes necessery to get Halberds working in this diffrent form is so great that it falls outside the realms of a BugFixer, thus I think i'm just going to furthar play with the basic ones from the 1.11 ug Fixer til i'm happy with them in their Spear Wall form and use the alternate Halberd Idea for my Rebalance Mod where I can make changes to individual units more easily.
All furthar discussion on this should therfore move their.
Note: Please ignore any comments I make that are not applicable to the bug fixer, and/or comment on them in the thread about Carl's rebalance mod. Sorry!
The point is i'm changing them from a slow moving vulnrable to missile unit into a fast moving unit with no real vulnrabilities, but no real strengths eithier, (other than cav resistance).
No unit in the game fits this description currently, and it should stay that way. Units without any vulnerabilities are inherently IMBA.
It's also 10 armour and 4 defence skil for a TOTAL of 14 defence.
That's exactly what I said. "14 friggin defense points, and 10 (of them) were armor."
The problem is if you give them that (spear wall) they HAVE to be able to beat Pikes sensless as they're going to be so expensive by comparision and so much slower that they can't afford to not do that, their speed really impacts their missile defence.
They don't have to be anything. You are already modifying costs, so basing stats and performance on unit costs at the expense of throwing game balance out the door is absolutely silly. If they don't do enough to justify their cost, making them cheaper is the least broken thing to do. I'd like them to be effective too, but giving them buttloads of defense just doesn't make sense. Also why are they going to be slower? Pikes have the same general abilities, so just set them to be as fast as the pikes. It's not like carrying a halberd makes you inherently run slower in the game code.
I find myself most attracted to making them more or less like pikes (i.e. removing secondary attack as Jambo suggested) as it's most in line with how they apparently are intended to function. If they don't beat pikes, who cares? Just don't throw them up against enemy pikes. You have plenty of other ways to deal with those enemy pikes, and we've already suggested that melee ground troops in general are not supposed to take on pikes frontally. Their ability to kill cavalry and other ground troops should be our real concern, as that is the role that these factions will be left largely without, failing their halberds being able to accomplish it.
I've just sent a PM to you regarding most of this, but i'll re-anwser some of this. Give me a moment to edit it in.
No unit in the game fits this description currently, and it should stay that way. Units without any vulnerabilities are inherently IMBA.
IMHO the IMBA bit ONLY applies if it also has some unbeatable strongpoint. The reality is they DON'T have any strong points, for their cost theyir performance vs. anything in the game is infirious to somthing. Pikes are far better cav killiers, 2-handers are better S&S killiers, cav/missile are better 2-Hander Killiers. Their strong point and weak point is that nothing in the game is a counter for them, but nothing is paticuarly weak against them, (barring cav which was a necessity for the Danes/Hugarians/Poles).
They don't actually replace any other unit, (bar spears), as well used S&S + 2-Handers + cav + missiles can easilly outperform them on cost grounds. What they give you is a general purpose unit you can use to reinforce your lines at any point with assurity that they won't fail to do about as much damage as they take. However their price should keep people from spamming them with any luck, preventing them becoming an instant-win button similar to PSM in DoW:WA.
That's exactly what I said. "14 friggin defense points, and 10 (of them) were armor."
Sorry, the way you put it i thought you thought i'd added 14 defence skil and 10 armour, sorry.
They don't have to be anything. You are already modifying costs, so basing stats and performance on unit costs at the expense of throwing game balance out the door is absolutely silly.
For the re-balance mod I am, but not for the ug Fixer. i think I can re-balance them as AP Spearmen for the Re-Balance version, but I can't for the Bugfixer.
If they don't do enough to justify their cost, making them cheaper is the least broken thing to do. I'd like them to be effective too, but giving them buttloads of defense just doesn't make sense. Also why are they going to be slower?
Because all halberd unit ARE slower moving, (than pikes) in spear wall for some reason. Fortunatlly giving them the Pikemen Soilder Line seems to fix this. So ignore that. My main point with the as AP Pikemen was regards the BugFixer. I'm not willing to start modifying costs, but that means Swiss Guard and Obudshaer's should really be beating Noble Pikemen, which is getting plain silly IMHO. (Sure the Noble Pikemen would match them for cost to performance ratio, but it's still daft if you ask me, as it means that in campaign the player can produce nearly unbeatable single stack armies).
Pikes have the same general abilities, so just set them to be as fast as the pikes. It's not like carrying a halberd makes you inherently run slower in the game code.
If you can tell me what part of the code apart from the Soilder line controls speed i'd be grateful TBH.
I find myself most attracted to making them more or less like pikes (i.e. removing secondary attack as Jambo suggested) as it's most in line with how they apparently are intended to function. If they don't beat pikes, who cares? Just don't throw them up against enemy pikes.
Not really possibble foz, even if they have the same speed, they still can't avoid the pikes. When 2 armies with spearwalls meet their are 2 things that determine the outcome in general.
1. who has the better/more Spear Wall units.
2. who has the better flank guards.
The danes have pretty good flank guards, but the Papal States and Poland/Hungary don't making it totally ineffective. Thus if they are worse than similar price Pikes their's going to be a problem as it is going to be impossibile for them to beat an enemy force feilding a similar value's worth of Pikes.
My biggest objection to them being AP pikes is that it's quite bland, they where clearly intended to perform as AP pikes with better melee abilities once the enemy got past the pike points. This is somthing rather unique in reality as it would have made them even more flank resistant and scarilly good head to head. It just hasn't worked out that way. The AP Spearmen idea was an attempt to produce a unit with a tottally diffrent feel in general melee to AP Pikes and ordinary 2-Handers.
I thought it was agreed that pikes have unnaturally low recruitment costs to begin with (around the cost of peasants), so the idea that halberds have to beat them simply because they cost more goes out the window. You should just bump the costs of pikemen up to match their abilities, rather than attempt mathematical gymnastics trying to make performance match cost.
The cheaper cost of pikes is offset by a MUCH greater investment to build them in the first place, plus they have an upkeep cost competitive with most other units. It's only the recruitment cost that is anomalous, so I suggest you try and balance that rather than unit stats.
I have no problem with halberds being competitive with pikes, but to make them beat pikes senseless? That's more than a little counter-intuitive. You say it's not fair for Poland and Hungary etc to have their last-tier infantry so weak, but what about all the other factions that have to scrape to get pikes, only to see them defeated by a lower-tier unit with superhuman stats? They are both infantry equipped with long weapons, there's no call for one type to be very hardy, have more armor than DGK and higher defense skill than virtually any other spear-equipped unit in the game, plus having an AP attack comparable to 2handed swordsmen.
The radical changes required to make any unit even survive against fixed pikes from the front just confirms my view that pikes are really unsuitable as a unit type to be balanced against in the first place, always assuming that they are not meant to be the ultimate heavy infantry (with significant drawbacks such as speed and facing to limit their effectiveness). Jacking up a lower-tier, hybrid unit specifically to mash them, just to benefit two factions whose advantage isn't even in infantry to begin with, may be a little too much.
Realistically though, halberds should be pikes +1.
My personal opinion is that they should be at or above pikemen tier.
My preference is entirely the opposite. Pikes are halberds +1 (as a formation, not as a weapon).
I completely disagree... Halberds are equally effective as a spearwall, with the added benefit of being able to hook men and get them on the ground.
There's nothing pikemen can do that halberdiers can't.
Pikes have reach, which seems to have been valued more than the added utility of halberds. In that sense, they were just lengthened halberds, to the point where the blade part was dropped altogether. Historically, pikes just kept getting longer to beat the other fellows and push them back. That doesn't sound like they were too concerned about unwieldy at close quarters.
Well sure, why would they be concerned with being unwieldy at close quarters? The whole POINT is to keep the other guys far enough away that it never becomes close quarters. If you can poke the heck out of some poor bastard 18 feet away from you, then the ability to swing your weapon at a man standing closer than that is irrelevant. Besides, if a few men do get closer, there are rows of pikes right behind you that are then in range.
I'm not sure which (if any) I think should be better though, but I'm beginning not to care. Maybe they should be about the same since they're both weapons with longer than normal reach and pointy things on the end to hurt people with.
@Carl: Hah. I just assumed we somehow could control the speed of the units. Upon further examination, I too cannot find it. I did try changing their weight classification from heavy to light, which seemed to have no discernable effect. What a silly thing to leave out of the unit specifications file! I'm guessing it must be tied to the animations since you said they seem to move like pikes when you change them to using pike animations. I'm thinking the game may actually move the unit across the map at a speed relative to its footfall frequency (i.e. length of its walking animation). If it is tied to the animations, then obviously nothing short of using different ones will make a bit of difference in the unit's speed.
Btw, all this debate about pikes and halberds has me nearly convinced that neither should be better than the other: they should both be made into pony-riding monkeys who fling poop. And laugh at you. Can't forget that. Surely monkeys did that already in medieval times. They would of course need totally uber stats...
@Dopp: Erm, many halbs were just as long as the longest pikes.
If the concern is that Halberds have no real strengths (i.e. there's always a unit that can do it better) but no real weaknesses (i.e they're not as vulnerable to flank and missile as pike, Cav as 2H, 2H as S&S. pile as cav)doesn't that make them unique and useful?
They're your perfect all rounder? Take Halberds as "utility troops" and bulk up the army with the specialists. They may not be as good against armies a, b and C as specially crafted stacks built to fight them but they can fight either A or B or C and still win. Whereas your specialist stacks can slaughter A, but lose to B and C. Or Slaughter B but lost to A and C etc.
So you use Halberds as your base Garrison troops because they'll help against anything, then use your recruitment to add in the unit required for that situation.
That seems to give them a "unique niche" without making them too weak or too uber.
No?
thought it was agreed that pikes have unnaturally low recruitment costs to begin with (around the cost of peasants), so the idea that halberds have to beat them simply because they cost more goes out the window. You should just bump the costs of pikemen up to match their abilities, rather than attempt mathematical gymnastics trying to make performance match cost.
AND
Realistically though, halberds should be pikes +1.
My personal opinion is that they should be at or above pikemen tier.
AND
My preference is entirely the opposite. Pikes are halberds +1 (as a formation, not as a weapon).
AND
Pikes have reach, which seems to have been valued more than the added utility of halberds. In that sense, they were just lengthened halberds, to the point where the blade part was dropped altogether. Historically, pikes just kept getting longer to beat the other fellows and push them back. That doesn't sound like they were too concerned about unwieldy at close quarters.
AND
Well sure, why would they be concerned with being unwieldy at close quarters? The whole POINT is to keep the other guys far enough away that it never becomes close quarters. If you can poke the heck out of some poor bastard 18 feet away from you, then the ability to swing your weapon at a man standing closer than that is irrelevant. Besides, if a few men do get closer, there are rows of pikes right behind you that are then in range.
I agree with Foz and Dopp on history. However thats ISN'T how CA have represented them in game. In game they've extended Halberds to the point where they are much longer than they really where. Thus in game they are meant to function as AP armored Pikes until engaged in general melee, at which point they switch over to a 2-Handed Axe attack.
They have 3 things on pikemen of a similar era generally:
1. Better Armour (Late Scot's Pikes aside).
2. Better Attack.
3. AP weaponry.
To me it's quite clear that CA intended them to be Pikemen with none of the Pikemen's normal weaknesses, (as the 2-Handed attack would eliminate their general melee weakness (and thus Flank/Rear weaknesses)).
Thus whilst I agree pikes are too cheap ATM, I also believe the price difference between Halberds and Pikes as it stands is Representative of where they should be relative to each other.
The radical changes required to make any unit even survive against fixed pikes from the front just confirms my view that pikes are really unsuitable as a unit type to be balanced against in the first place, always assuming that they are not meant to be the ultimate heavy infantry (with significant drawbacks such as speed and facing to limit their effectiveness). Jacking up a lower-tier, hybrid unit specifically to mash them, just to benefit two factions whose advantage isn't even in infantry to begin with, may be a little too much.
I'm actually Jacking them up for 2 reasons.
1. Everyone needs a Late tier counter late tier heavy Cav infantry unit. Without that no other infantry is useful as late Cav can just sweep it all aside. Thus Poland and Hungary need Halberd Militia to be good against Cav, yet their price indicates they should still be competitive with Pike Militia, the problem is that both units are very under-priced.
2. Papal States and Denmark are both very infantry reliant. Papal States are totally reliant on Halberds, Pike Militia, and DFK for their general Melee Infantry. Likewise, Denmark is reliant on Halberds for it's last tier infantry. Both really need those powerful halberds, (unlike Poland and Hungary).
I have no problem with halberds being competitive with pikes, but to make them beat pikes senseless? That's more than a little counter-intuitive. You say it's not fair for Poland and Hungary etc to have their last-tier infantry so weak, but what about all the other factions that have to scrape to get pikes, only to see them defeated by a lower-tier unit with superhuman stats?
First I'd note that Halberd Militia WON'T beat pro pikes, I don't even think they'll beat Pike Militia as the Pike problems are related to the Defense and Halberd Militia are at least 7 points lower than EVERY OTHER HALBERD in the game and at least 2 points lower on attack. This difference raises to 11 Points of defense and 7 points of attack compared to papal Guard, and 16 points of defense and 4 points of attack compared to Obudshaer's. Noble Swordsmen will still beat Halberd Militia with a 2:1 kill rate, even with the Halberds having +10 Armour and +4 defense skill.
Second, even as uber AP pikemen you won't see Halberd Militia beating top level Pikes, they will beat the lower end stuff but thats it.
They are both infantry equipped with long weapons, there's no call for one type to be very hardy, have more armor than DGK and higher defense skill than virtually any other spear-equipped unit in the game, plus having an AP attack comparable to 2-Handed swordsmen.
Well the Version with the improved defense stats only has a minor reach advantage now as they only fight in 1 Rank, they also don't have an AP attack anywhere near that of a 2-Hander, (once you take the penalty applied by the Spear attribute into account), and lastly their defense is only 15 points. The problem is that the changes necessary to raise Halberd Militia to a competitive level without using the "turn them into Pikemen fix" totally IMBA the rest of the Halberds. I can get round that in my re-balance mod with individual unit changes, but in my BugFixer I'm trying to limit myself to Class wide changes with no price alterations. That just doesn't work well with Halberds because of the disparity in power between the top and bottom ends of the scale.
@Carl: Hah. I just assumed we somehow could control the speed of the units. Upon further examination, I too cannot find it. I did try changing their weight classification from heavy to light, which seemed to have no discernible effect. What a silly thing to leave out of the unit specifications file! I'm guessing it must be tied to the animations since you said they seem to move like pikes when you change them to using pike animations. I'm thinking the game may actually move the unit across the map at a speed relative to its footfall frequency (i.e. length of its walking animation). If it is tied to the animations, then obviously nothing short of using different ones will make a bit of difference in the unit's speed.
No worries Foz, I thought I couldn't find it, but I thought I'd ask. It is rather daft i agree~:(.
I'm not sure which (if any) I think should be better though, but I'm beginning not to care. Maybe they should be about the same since they're both weapons with longer than normal reach and pointy things on the end to hurt people with.
Join the Club Foz~:mecry:. It's quite clear to me that halberds where meant to be better than pikemen in game, (despite how stupid that is historically), however doing so is seriously crazy IMHO, (although it's what I'm going to try in V1.12 of my BugFixer, I'll take it from their then), as it makes them totally unbeatable front on by anything, and seriously difficult from the sides.
That's why I decided to try something different. Unfortunately, they might work as AP Spears, but it's nearly impossible to get them all balanced properly.
That If the concern is that Halberds have no real strengths (i.e. there's always a unit that can do it better) but no real weaknesses (i.e they're not as vulnerable to flank and missile as pike, Cav as 2H, 2H as S&S. pile as Cav)doesn't that make them unique and useful?
They're your perfect all rounder? Take Halberds as "utility troops" and bulk up the army with the specialists. They may not be as good against armies a, b and C as specially crafted stacks built to fight them but they can fight either A or B or C and still win. Whereas your specialist stacks can slaughter A, but lose to B and C. Or Slaughter B but lost to A and C etc.
So you use Halberds as your base Garrison troops because they'll help against anything, then use your recruitment to add in the unit required for that situation.
That seems to give them a "unique niche" without making them too weak or too uber.
No?
Thats what i was aiming for but with the added point of them being too expensive to mass, and thus impossibbile to use as total replacments for the specelists. Jack-of-All trades, but Master-of-None.
Anyway, lets move this discussion over to the re-balance thread as thats where this belongs now, (unless you have some other BugFixer suggestions of course).
Revenant
01-28-2007, 12:18
@Dopp: Erm, many halbs were just as long as the longest pikes.
Sorry, but you simply do not have truth. Halberds were 2m+ , while pikes easily 4m+. You cannot control such long weapon and do other attack moves than stab. And it will be wery difficult to fight with 4m+ long polearm with massive blade on it´s end, because of balance.
As I and Dopp wrote, halberds were used before pikes (I wrote in medieval times, I know pikes were used in ancient times, of course) and halberds ceased to be used while pikes survived to 17. century. The argument that pikes are easier to use for not-so-well trained people is true, but the same applies with halberds. At the end, it was all about reach. So pikes are better in formation because of theirs length. And because they survived much longer than halberds, we simply have truth they were more useful.
I think halberd (or any other polearm) is of course better in individual combat than pike, because of broader scale of combat maneuvers you can do with it, but here we talk about unit vs. unit combat and here the pike prevail.
xxx
Now one more thing:
I read your post somewhere about no fencing style with sword uses it´s blade for blocking. It is nonsence. All european fencing schools have this basic defence move in their repertoire. Italian, French, Spanish, Germans, they all used their blade to block. This moves are illustrated and described in a lot of works from medieval fencing masters.
I do not have much experience with oriental fighting styles other than Serrada Escrima, but even there is the plain basic block with the blade.
It was not used much when the S+S fighting style was dominant because in medieval dark ages the steel was not so high quality and there was danger of broking the blade and shield was much better in blocking. And sword was valuable possesion. But personally, I think that in moment of truth when it is matter of life or death, everybody can use and used basic block when there is no other option because of situation.
xxx
Why I wrote It? Because I think you sometimes post such things that are wrong and misleading. This is not forum about historical fighting, but about computer game, of course, so the post above is probably spam:shame:
Do not take it personally please (I know how far can such discussion on net lead and I do not want flame war of any sort). If you do not agree with me, then, please, check some books and wrote your opinion afterwards. I did it. And If you are interested in such discussion, we can create topic about it somewhere else.
I do not mean this all as insult.
Rev
Revenant
01-28-2007, 12:20
Carl: sorry for spam, back to the game :laugh4:
Don't worry, i don't mind, i've bumped the Re-Balance discussion and moved the Halberd Issue over their.
if anyone has any idea on how to create balanced working Halberds through just across the board changes to Halberds as a whole then post them here, but honestly I think some individual rebalancing of Halberds will be necessery to get them to work ATM, as anything but AP pikes.
Well Carl, I don't want to come across sounding so negative about all your proposed changes, since you're the one doing all the work in the first place. I do, however, want to clarify that my comment about the surprisingly cheap costs of pikemen is a gameplay observation, rather than a historical one. I also pointed out that pikemen are not as cheap as they appear to be anyway, once you factor in infrastructure costs and upkeep. I don't think the inference that CA intended halberds to be super AP pikemen necessarily follows. In fact, it seems to be a rather puzzling inference to me. The price argument doesn't seem like a good starting point to work from if the prices themselves are suspect.
@Dopp: The price is the final nail in the coffin. not the basis. the basis of the argument is that their primary weapon is an AP pike, and thet their ssecondery weapon is a basic 2-hander weapon. Unlike Pikes they won't really care is somthing does compromise their formation, but they have the advantages of AP and better secondery weapon over pikes (to mention nothing of armour). Their isn't any way they COULD be worse than pikes if they had comparable animations, (which they have to have for Auto-Calc to work), and the same switchover code.
Assumming the same switchover code and the same power animations even Voulgiers should beat Avetours. They have slightly worse attack, but also have AP, same armour, and thus as long as the Pikes keep poking, so will the halberds. With their AP and similar atacks the alberds will win. Add on the fact that if some of the Halbediers make melee they will tottally outperform the Pikemen in general melee it should be a close but definte victory for the Halberds. Same with Pike Militia and Halberds. same defence and attack and animations power, but one has AP and better general melee abilities, it's no real contest as to who will win. The price simply seals it for me. Plus as I say i think ALL spear wall units are too cheap, so if i raised Pike prices i'd also raise Halberd Prices by the same amount.
Well Carl, I don't want to come across sounding so negative about all your proposed changes, since you're the one doing all the work in the first place. I do, however, want to clarify that my comment about the surprisingly cheap costs of pikemen is a gameplay observation, rather than a historical one.
No you don't sound negetive, TBH it's a good observation, but I belive it's an observation thats true of all Spear Wal units equally.
It's also worth noting that I wasn't very clear about a lot of things last night, mainly because was littrially doing a round of tests, then coming out of the game, editing my EDU file, posting some basic data on whats happening and then going back to testing so many of my statments may seem contradictory, thats because i'm constantly changing the paramaters, somtimes i'm not very clear on this I think. It makes me look a bit mad jumping here their and everywher.
When testing the Halberds I actually tried +4 armour, tehn +6 armour, then +6 armour and +4 defence skill then +10 armour and +4 defence skill. But you got its and peices of the results from each and not the full story on each.
I actually appreciate your comments by and large, no matter how negetive as you can help keep me in check.
Whilst the anwser to this really belongs in the re-balance thread, how much do you think pikes are too cheap by, how much should be added to their price in your opinion? +25%, +50%, +100% or somthing else...
I'm thinking +75% to their price but i'd like extra opinions TBH.
@
I'm thinking +75% to their price but i'd like extra opinions TBH.
Noooooooooooo!!!! :sweatdrop:
You'll ruin my 150 florin (yes, 150 florin) Scottish Pike Militia third tier barracks Soviet Army infantry steamroller!!!!
hang on...+75%... Uber heavy infantry tanks (as long as you guard flanks and slaughter enemy archers) for 275 fl....Hmmm. I could live with that.
Knights. Pah! Expensive shiny battlefield ornaments to my army of can openers....... :laugh4:
(Not even mentioning the Armoured Heavy Pike Militia...)
@Dopp: The price is the final nail in the coffin. not the basis. the basis of the argument is that their primary weapon is an AP pike, and thet their ssecondery weapon is a basic 2-hander weapon. Unlike Pikes they won't really care is somthing does compromise their formation, but they have the advantages of AP and better secondery weapon over pikes (to mention nothing of armour). Their isn't any way they COULD be worse than pikes if they had comparable animations, (which they have to have for Auto-Calc to work), and the same switchover code.
Yup, I agree with all that. It seems to me that we are approaching this from different viewpoints, so it's time for a long explanatory post again:
Both halberds and pikes take the charge at spearpoint and then switch over to melee. Halberds are obviously a whole lot better at melee. But this is where the similarity ends.
I felt that halberds were working as intended animation-wise because they are actually using the same weapon; the switch code just marks the point where they wade in hacking. Pikemen, on the other hand, become swordsmen too easily, which I felt was a mistake, because the sword is only a secondary weapon for them when things get pretty bad (ie the formation is broken). In other words, halberds are MEANT to switch to melee, whereas pikes should not switch unless they get into serious trouble. The animation set and weaponswitch code should NOT be the same for both.
I concluded that since halberds were meant to switch over like that as a matter of course, and since halberds are generally less vulnerable in melee than pikes, and since halberds were lower-ranked than pikes on the build tree, that they represented a hybrid unit that was more flexible than pikes, but less powerful from the front. Trying to make them otherwise seemed unrealistic from both a historical, and a modding perspective.
I thus proposed getting rid of the swords so that the pikemen hold formation better, but left the halberds as they are animation-wise. This allowed the pikes to use their greater reach to keep troops with shorter weapons at bay, which included halberds. This felt more true to history, and kept in with halberds being consistently lower-ranked on the tech tree than pikes.
The cost of pikes caused me some pause, but I realized that they were the only troop line that was undercosted like that, yet they were also the melee infantry line with the highest tech requirements (huge city + militia barracks or military academy), and their upkeep cost is comparable to that of most halberds (and higher for elites). Therefore, Militia Pikes should be increased in price, rather than be rebalanced around their pathetic cost.
Edit: The halberds as depicted in the game are much shorter than the pikes, so I felt that pikes should have reach advantage over them.
In other words, halberds are MEANT to switch to melee, whereas pikes should not switch unless they get into serious trouble. The animation set and weaponswitch code should NOT be the same for both.
That helps explain things nicely. I would like to ask something though:
Do you honestly think it's sensible for Halberds to stop poking when they are not close enough to the enemy to hack at them?
Because unless you have the switch to Hacking as soon as the enemy stops counting as charging, the nature of Pikes will mean that the Halberds will keep poking, (because they will be kept far enough away by the Pikes that they never enter melee range). Thus the only way your actually going to get pikes to beat halberds is to artificially gimp them by preventing them from poking like a pike except when charged, (so they are Cav resistant). The seems a bit dumb from a common sense point of view.
The real problem is that halberds should never have got Spear Wall or such long reach in the first place. Historically they where (as i understand it), a cross between a medium Spear, a Quarterstaff, an Axe, a Hammer, and most had Spear Points on both ends, plus some had hooks for dragging people off horses. Halberd weren't even as long as long spears in reality as far as I'm aware. Their real advantage was their ability to combined many different weapon into one giving the wielder a multitude of attack options that no melee fighter could equal.
Overall, I agree from a history point of view that Halberds are already illogically in game, but without illogical gimping them in game I can't see how they are going to NOT be able to beat pikes.
Whats needed is a total redesign of how they work IMHO. Spear Wall simply isn't an appropriate thing for them.
My final concern with Pikes beating Spear wall Halberds is that even with their better flanking resistance, you can't put them on the edges of your formation, as a result your going to be forced into a head on confrontation with Pikes anyway, add tot hat their slower speed and it's a serious issue for me as it's going to leave those armies with access to them totally dependent on bating the enemy Pikes Flank Guards if they want to win the fight.
Last but not least, I'm not really treating Upkeep as such a big balance consideration (for my re-balance mod). Let me explain:
Here's my concerns and views on Noble Pikemen vs. Obudshaer's, Voulgeirs, and Swiss Guard.
vs. Voulgeirs: They are the same tech point, (Late), both cost about the same. The Noble Pikemen are part of an army with poor Cav and Missile support, but very good infantry support. The Voulgeirs are part of an army with lots of Cav missile and infantry support and even have other Pikes Backing them up.
Overall the Voulgeirs should lose, but not by a landslide, about 4:3/3:2 kill rates in the Noble Pikemens favor.
Swiss Guard vs. Noble Pikemen:
The swiss guard cost more than half again as much, are the same tech era, and are part of an army with worse swords, no 2-handers, no AP S&S units and their missile are about the same, (better shooting, but slower reload and no fire arrows plus much worse melee). Overall I'd honestly be worried if the Swiss Guard didn't administer a 3:2/2:1 win against the Noble Pikes, the sheer cost difference and Papal States army weaknesses really hurt them.
Noble Pikemen vs. Obudshaer's:
Again the Obudshaer's are a half again as expensive as the Pikes and are part of an army with similar missile. they get better S&S units and about as good 2-handers, but pay for it in having very poor missile defense on these units. they do have semi-decent Cav back-up though too. Overall I'd still expect a win for the Obudshaer's, but not a big one, 4:3/3:2 would be about right, with a longer fight to give the flankers more time to get into position.
Thus the problem thats worrying me is that unless we intend to increase all pikes costs significantly they really shouldn't be able to beat the best halberds on that kind of comparison.
Worse still, the nature of a working Push of pike is that unless the pikes formation is badly compromised they tend to beat their foes with few losses. So unless the Halberds can actually get past all those pike points, they don't really have much of a chance of doing any good. And if they do get back the nature of a disrupted pike formation will probably mean they get annihilated with few losses to the enemy. I'm worried where going to end up with situations where units are beating units they shouldn't just to keep other units in check. If Halberds weren't limited to engaging pikes head on (due to their speed), this wouldn't be an issue TBH.
I have to go out now so I'll finish off and tidy up the spell when I get back.
I agree with Foz and Dopp on history. However thats ISN'T how CA have represented them in game. In game they've extended Halberds to the point where they are much longer than they really where. Thus in game they are meant to function as AP armored Pikes until engaged in general melee, at which point they switch over to a 2-Handed Axe attack.
Like Dopp, I fail to see how you infer that CA have represented halberds as superior to pikes. The fact that people are crying foul that they are not effective enough does not mean that CA intended them to be more effective, nor does their higher cost than pikes - it could as easily be intended to balance factions, to influence the army composition of factions that have halberds instead of pikes, or to represent the actual cost of the crap they require to be kitted out for battle! (more on that in a moment) They DO perform less effectively than pikes, and therefore I think it is an err in judgment to suggest that CA intended them to do anything except underperform pikes - that is to say, short of proving a bug, you can't really suggest that CA intended units to perform in any way other than they actually do. I suggest that the 3 things you point out below are intended to compensate for their otherwise (due to animations likely?) compromised situation regarding pikes:
They have 3 things on pikemen of a similar era generally:
1. Better Armour (Late Scot's Pikes aside).
2. Better Attack.
3. AP weaponry.
To me it's quite clear that CA intended them to be Pikemen with none of the Pikemen's normal weaknesses, (as the 2-Handed attack would eliminate their general melee weakness (and thus Flank/Rear weaknesses)).
Thus whilst I agree pikes are too cheap ATM, I also believe the price difference between Halberds and Pikes as it stands is Representative of where they should be relative to each other.
Again judging from how they actually perform, I think they are intended not to have the Pikemen's normal weaknesses, but also not to perform as effectively from the front as pikes (without jacking them up). I think it's more than adequate compensation for halberds to maintain a lot of the pike advantage from the front and then strip away the pikes major weaknesses (like getting cut to ribbons by missile fire).
As for prices, aren't the pike prices historically correct? (relative to other unit costs, I mean) I seem to recall discussion somewhere that halberds are in fact expensive to make, as they require the expertise of a swordsmith, where the pike has a simple end that even an apprentice blacksmith in some backwater town could easily make. Carl already pointed out that halberds wear a lot more armor too, so it seems entirely justified that men fitted with good armor and high quality weapons should cost a LOT more than men wearing very light armor (most pike units wear none at all) and carrying simple weapons.
I felt that halberds were working as intended animation-wise because they are actually using the same weapon; the switch code just marks the point where they wade in hacking. Pikemen, on the other hand, become swordsmen too easily, which I felt was a mistake, because the sword is only a secondary weapon for them when things get pretty bad (ie the formation is broken). In other words, halberds are MEANT to switch to melee, whereas pikes should not switch unless they get into serious trouble. The animation set and weaponswitch code should NOT be the same for both.
I concluded that since halberds were meant to switch over like that as a matter of course, and since halberds are generally less vulnerable in melee than pikes, and since halberds were lower-ranked than pikes on the build tree, that they represented a hybrid unit that was more flexible than pikes, but less powerful from the front. Trying to make them otherwise seemed unrealistic from both a historical, and a modding perspective.
Exactly my feelings as well. CA represents them as more rounded pikemen who give up some of their frontal advantage in exchange for removing their various weaknesses.
The cost of pikes caused me some pause, but I realized that they were the only troop line that was undercosted like that, yet they were also the melee infantry line with the highest tech requirements (huge city + militia barracks or military academy), and their upkeep cost is comparable to that of most halberds (and higher for elites). Therefore, Militia Pikes should be increased in price, rather than be rebalanced around their pathetic cost.
I actually don't think anything should be done about their costs. As I just mentioned above, the field equipment of a pike unit is absolutely cheap to produce, being mostly just the cost of a pike per man as they typically don't wear any armor. Recruitment costs are FAR outweighed by upkeep costs anyway, and so their low cost in no way makes them broken... Especially since a few missile units will easily decimate them before they are near enough to do anything. It's not like they're some kind of unbeatable unit - they die to missiles and to attacks from anywhere that isn't the front.
Anwser to Foz here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78249)
Hopefully the discussion will now move their where I think it belongs TBH.
a question about launching this mod/fix.
The shortcut launches a DOS command:
medieval2.exe --io.file_first
If i simply alter the original game shortcut to look like the DOS command:-
from
TARGET:
"E:\Medieval II Total War\medieval2.exe"
to
TARGET
"E:\Medieval II Total War\medieval2.exe --io.file_first"
would the fix still work?
I'm not sure TBH, i'm just following the readme that comes with the Unpacker with regards to getting it working.
You'd have to try it and see i'm afraid.
Allthough if it does work i'd be grateful to hear it.
It should work, however you won't be able to play vanilla without changing it back. Letting it continue with the batch file would probably be better from that standpoint.
I can't check right at the moment (about to head to work) but perhaps there might be a way to make pikes viable with out the meatgrinder "fix"?
Undertandably their secondary animations are, uhhhh, welll, basically really poor. What would happen if you gave them halberd anims and reinstituted a secondary weapon (perhaps of a spear variety assuming those get the melee handicaps from RTW)? At the very least you would probably not get the "Wanna be swordsmen" effect I think, as Halberds do seem to do a pretty fair amount of poking anyways IIRC.
I think the problem is that certain "Fixes" out there have made things worse from a balance perspectice really. Taking a unit that was cost balanced down (and perhaps anim balanced as well), hacking out a significant portion of it's code, and taking the resulting abomination as a "fix" smacks of munchkinism to me.
Short answer: it can't be done. Giving pikes a secondary weapon line other than zero enables the sword, regardless of the characteristics assigned to it.
'Fixed' pikes are an abomination. I've acknowledged that many times. But unfixed pikes are, well, lame, which is worse in my book. As I have stated before, the primary aim of the 'fix' was to get the pikes to, well, actually use their pikes. Balancing and all that were purely secondary concerns. Munchkinism? Who cares? Don't like it, don't use it.
Short answer: it can't be done. Giving pikes a secondary weapon line other than zero enables the sword, regardless of the characteristics assigned to it.
You missed the point Dopp. He said to give the pikes other animations via the soldier line (like maybe halberd animations b/c they do a good amount of poking) and THEN set the secondary weapon back to something. If they have halberd animations, they should theoretically display a sword on the character, but use it exactly like the halberds use a halberd (if they have that animation). I'm not sure if the weapon displayed on the unit will in fact matter at all, and it may look quite weird for them to move swords about as if they were halberds, but it SHOULD remove the completely ineffective sword animation which I thought was the real problem. It also may affect their weapon switching, and make them switch like halberds do (which would be totally awesome). At the least it's worth someone giving it a shot (won't be me until 5, I'm at work).
I'd be intrested in the results, but as noted elsewhere I think pikes should poke if able to and should activlly avoid getting so close they pulll swords, as well as switching to swords on an individual rather than unit wide basis. That kind of big change would still need re-balancing though.
The real issue is that pikes don't really perform in a sensibile way ATM. They where and should be the equivelent of Phalanx's from Rome. These where powerful formations, but not unbetable and very vulnrable to flank attacks. the M2TW Pikes are very diffrent having a more dispersed formation and switching to swords far more easilly.
I wonder though. Would tightining their formation help at all. i think i'm going to experiment you know.
Nah, I understand what he means, but I hate to see them waving swords around so much. Even if you set their pike attack to 1 and gave them an ultra-fast 30 sword attack with armor-piercing and body-piercing properties, I'd still confiscate their swords until CA teaches them to use their pikes more. The best Medieval 2 Total War experience for me was seeing a line of Tercio pikemen, perfectly placed, push back a massed charge of Dismounted Norman Knights just outside Milan. Imagine the disappointment when immediately afterwards the entire line whipped out swords and started dying. Nobody will EVER convince me that this is the way it should be. I will bend both space and time to my will (ie mod the game files) before I allow such lame nonsense to exist in my campaign.
Even if you set their pike attack to 1 and gave them an ultra-fast 30 sword attack with armor-piercing and body-piercing properties, I'd still confiscate their swords until CA teaches them to use their pikes more.
:laugh4:
I agree they should use their pikes more than they do, it's really siliy in vanillia, littrially every 5 seconds they draw swords and when they do you've got to flick them into guard mode, flick spear wall off, then flick spear wall back on and then take them out of guard mode. Doing that every 5 seconds to make them work is silly AND it prevents you from doing ANYTHING else whatsoever with your non-pike units.
SubHelten
01-30-2007, 17:33
can this be right.. dismounted conquistadores vs venetian heavy inf. we both charged each other, DC i got 28 kills include there general and the broke and ran.. 1 sec fighting and i won.!?!? next try we both charged each other.. on the charge DC got around 22-26 kills and killed the general after around 4-6 sec and the ran again.. i tryed to just stand still and let VHI charge.. well DC lost 60 out of 61 and killed 40 VHI lost 34 out iof 61 and killed 60.. dunno why it says enemys killed 40 but 34 lost but thats not the point.. it is just that can this be the meaning? seems unbalanced to me..
I'll take a quick look as that second result sounds odd.
(For what it's worth a charge will ushually result in the front ranks of both units being wiped out, thats about 25-33% of the unit, thats a big Morale shock, add a dead general and you'll probably get a rout from one side no matter what, it's one of those annoying things I can't do much about TBH as Morale is allready pretty high to begin with).
Just ran a test and even at 3 times speed they where fighting for a good 10 seconds before eithier side brok and ran and losses where 43VHI to 39DC with the DC winning and beuing under my control, we charged each other.
Bear in mind though that VHI are AP and thus perform much better than their stats suggest. I'm not getting such short combat times though.
Is anyone else getting them?
1v1 tests should always be done playing as both sides, since I regularly find that whichever unit I use has an advantage for some inexplicable reason.
True enough Jambo, but he was controlling the DC in all the tests from what i can tell, so i was just checking their wasn't a specific issue between those two units in that test configuration.
Intresting news, i'm testing some changes that i belive will deal with the issues regarding Parabolic Fire when o walls and help with formation keeping.
Whatch this space~;p.
The Wall thing didn't work out, but the formation keeping seems to have helped somewhat, not perfect, but defintlly better.
I'll be adding it to the next release anyway.
For Modders out their what i'd done is gone into the Descr_Pathfinding file and changed it from
version_info
{
31
}
; This section defines all of the configuration parameters for the pathfinder
multires_pathfinder
{
; Configuration parameters for the scheduler
scheduler_configuration
{
; low load config
load low
{
max_paths 10 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 2000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; medium load config
load medium
{
max_paths 20 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 4000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; high load config
load high
{
max_paths 300 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 8000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; low priority config
priority low
{
budget 0.20 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 10000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 2000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; medium priority config
priority medium
{
budget 0.30 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 30000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 3000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; high priority config
priority high
{
budget 0.50 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 40000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 4000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; real time priority config
priority real_time
{
budget 1.0 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 50000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 5000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; quick test priority config
priority quick_test
{
budget 1.0 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 300 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 20 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
}
; Zone configuration
zone_configuration
{
maximum_slope 45 ; limit is 45 degrees
}
; Heuristic configuration
heuristic_configuration
{
invalid_zone_cost 2.0 ; invalid areas have double cost
}
; Movement configuration
movement_configuration
{
formation_hold_distance 20.0 ; formations update 20m after the last point }
silhouette_configuration
{
silhouette_ratio 0.75 ; Silhouette points are 75% of unit width
enabled no
}
; Defines what content types may be grouped together
content_groupings
{
free free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
obstructed obstructed steep_terrain
tall_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
average_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
short_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
large_rocks free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
small_rocks free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
water water
swamp swamp
platform platform
bridge_platform free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
steep_terrain obstructed steep_terrain
ford free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
}
; defines the priorities (ie. which content is more important than the other)
precedence_mask
{
; content type lower priority types
free all
obstructed free water swamp tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks platform
water free obstructed swamp tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks platform
swamp free obstructed
tall_vegetation free swamp average_vegetation short_vegetation small_rocks water
average_vegetation free swamp short_vegetation small_rocks water
short_vegetation free swamp
large_rocks free swamp short_vegetation small_rocks water
small_rocks free swamp
platform free
bridge_platform all
steep_terrain free average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks
ford free
}
; Determines what parameters are checked for this content when filling in the zones
checking_level
{ ; slope, content or all
free all
obstructed all
water content
swamp all
tall_vegetation all
average_vegetation all
short_vegetation all
large_rocks all
small_rocks all
platform content
bridge_platform content
steep_terrain content
ford content
}
; Configures the per unit behaviour of the pathfinding
unit_type_configuration
{
default
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree ; 1.5 for 40 degrees
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
infantry
{
min_slope 30 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 45 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.01 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
cavalry
{
min_slope 30 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 45 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.01 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
elephant
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.0
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.0
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
siege
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 25 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
ladder
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
ram
{
min_slope 10 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 25 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 6 ;
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
tower
{
min_slope 10 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 15 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 8 ;
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
}
}
To this:
version_info
{
31
}
; This section defines all of the configuration parameters for the pathfinder
multires_pathfinder
{
; Configuration parameters for the scheduler
scheduler_configuration
{
; low load config
load low
{
max_paths 10 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 2000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; medium load config
load medium
{
max_paths 20 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 4000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; high load config
load high
{
max_paths 300 ; maximum paths till shifting to the next loading
total_nodes 8000 ; total nodes allocated across all paths
}
; low priority config
priority low
{
budget 0.20 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 10000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 2000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; medium priority config
priority medium
{
budget 0.30 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 30000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 3000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; high priority config
priority high
{
budget 0.50 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 40000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 4000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; real time priority config
priority real_time
{
budget 1.0 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 50000 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 5000 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
; quick test priority config
priority quick_test
{
budget 1.0 ; percentage of budget for these paths
max_nodes 300 ; maximum nodes per path
max_zone_nodes 20 ; maximum zone nodes per path
}
}
; Zone configuration
zone_configuration
{
maximum_slope 45 ; limit is 45 degrees
}
; Heuristic configuration
heuristic_configuration
{
invalid_zone_cost 2.0 ; invalid areas have double cost
}
; Movement configuration
movement_configuration
{
formation_hold_distance 0.2 ; formations update 20m after the last point }
silhouette_configuration
{
silhouette_ratio 0.75 ; Silhouette points are 75% of unit width
enabled no
}
; Defines what content types may be grouped together
content_groupings
{
free free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
obstructed obstructed steep_terrain
tall_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
average_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
short_vegetation free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
large_rocks free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
small_rocks free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
water water
swamp swamp
platform platform
bridge_platform free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
steep_terrain obstructed steep_terrain
ford free forest scrub tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks bridge_platform
}
; defines the priorities (ie. which content is more important than the other)
precedence_mask
{
; content type lower priority types
free all
obstructed free water swamp tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks platform
water free obstructed swamp tall_vegetation average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks platform
swamp free obstructed
tall_vegetation free swamp average_vegetation short_vegetation small_rocks water
average_vegetation free swamp short_vegetation small_rocks water
short_vegetation free swamp
large_rocks free swamp short_vegetation small_rocks water
small_rocks free swamp
platform free
bridge_platform all
steep_terrain free average_vegetation short_vegetation large_rocks small_rocks
ford free
}
; Determines what parameters are checked for this content when filling in the zones
checking_level
{ ; slope, content or all
free all
obstructed all
water content
swamp all
tall_vegetation all
average_vegetation all
short_vegetation all
large_rocks all
small_rocks all
platform content
bridge_platform content
steep_terrain content
ford content
}
; Configures the per unit behaviour of the pathfinding
unit_type_configuration
{
default
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree ; 1.5 for 40 degrees
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
infantry
{
min_slope 30 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 45 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.01 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
cavalry
{
min_slope 30 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 45 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.01 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
elephant
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.0
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.0
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
siege
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 25 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
ladder
{
min_slope 15 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 40 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 0 ; minimum width = 0m
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
ram
{
min_slope 10 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 25 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 6 ;
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
tower
{
min_slope 10 ; minimum slope before penalty applies
max_slope 15 ; maximum slope the unit can handle
penalty 1.02 ; penalty per degree
min_width 8 ;
content_costs
{
free 1.0
obstructed inf
water 1.0
swamp 1.0
tall_vegetation 1.2
average_vegetation 1.0
short_vegetation 1.0
large_rocks 1.2
small_rocks 1.0
platform 1.0
bridge_platform 1.0
steep_terrain inf
ford 1.0
}
}
}
}
So what you're saying is this change forces units to update their formation every 0.2 m they travel?
Does this affect performance?
Not for me, and i run an Athalon 3200XP, not the best processor avalibile.
And yeah thats seems to be what it does, by makeing it update nearly every step they rearange their formation when it becomes broken up much more quickly.
I'm not sure if it's helping with chasing routers, but units ceartinlly don't tend to break up so much when executing simple turns.
The effects arn't MASSIVE, but it does seem to help a bit.
Carl has requested that this thread be locked so that further discussion will be in a new thread he has opened.
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