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The Medieval mod IV v1.83 is now posted, along with the original CA excel file used in creating the units text. (see my last post in the 1.7 thread for an explanation of the CA file)
The mod now uses the ClickTeam installer, which also automatically produces an uninstall program. Note that you will no longer get the questions regarding the overwriting of files, as they are copied for the uninstall file before the mod is installed.
I'll give it a try this weekend when I get back to school where my game is.
Also WesW, you might want to change the link in your signature - it says it is to the 1.71 mod.
Wes, I thought I'd post some thoughts after playtesting the 1.7b mod here. There are some good reviews and some bad.
The Good:
1. Rebelling troop mixes are now great The troops are very tough indeed with a hig proportion of crusader knights, chiv sergeants, pavise arbalesters, teutonic sergeants and the like. If only the AI factions produced armies like this the game would be hell on wheels
2. AI shipbuilding and maintaining shipping lanes now works o.k., providing the basis for some serious trading empires. The English were the dominant faction in my campaign (as the Sicilians - I played passively). They built a chain of ships from the North Sea all the way to the Black Sea.
3. The Horde are now much stronger. They pushed west and eliminated the Hungarians, who had controlled most of eastern Asia to Hungary.
There are still some problems however:
Observations on the early to high era:
1. The factions are building like busy little beavers (which is shown by the number of monarchs with the “magnificent builder” V & V). However, the usual province swapping has degraded most of their provinces. I am now able to produce Chivalric knights, halbrediers and chivalric spearmen with high morale and pavise arbalesters, while they have only got spearmen, feudal men-at-arms, militia sergeants, etc. because they lack the necessary high tech buildings.
2. One problem I see is that the AI still is not building the advanced merchant buildings. Nowhere (except Constantinople) do I see anything more than a trading post or merchant by 1300. I think adding 500 to the AI build probability in column 11 (AI building combos) would help here to increase AI income: e.g.: "{PORT(150),SHIPYARD(75)},{PORT(150),SHIPYARD(75), TRADING_POST(500)}, {PORT(150),SHIPYARD(75), MERCHANT(500)}. . . etc. This would encourage the AI to build the merchant, if it already had the trading post and to build the merchant guild, if it already had the merchant, etc. Since it couldn’t build these structures until the necessary castles were completed I don’t think it would be a big change, but it might help. (A side note, there are any number of castles on the map, but few citadels, and only Constantinople had a fortress - it degraded to Citadel when it was captured by the Egyptians). A stronger modification of the AI preferences would be to link castle development also in this way, but as Wes pointed out earlier, this might have unintended consequences. Frankly, however, the AI might perform better, not worse, if it concentrated on buildings rather than unit construction (especially in the early game). Armies would be smaller, but higher tech. In addition, buildings don’t have maintenance costs. This might be more fun for the player, but it might also make the AI vulnerable to “rush” tactics by the player (and the problem of AI province “desertification” might make this a less useful strategy). This deserves further discussion.
I don’t think these changes would screw up the AI.
3. The Horde is now stronger, but still not strong enough. In my campaign they only eliminated the Hungarians, then stopped. I decided to intervene and attack Greece (Horde) just to stir them up. They were becomming the "peaceful horde", having alliances with 6 factions. Now they only attack me. I think that the maintenance costs for the horde units need to be lowered again (I know you lowered it but it's still a bit too high). They should come in waves (as they did historically). If you beat back one wave, they should send another, and so on until you conquer their territories or they eliminate you. They still seem to reach an equilibrium point where their maintenance costs balance their army size, and since they are not trading, they don't have the income for further expansion. At this point they stagnate and become more peaceful. (Perhaps they all take up gardening?) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/joker.gif Naturally, as their empire expands, it becomes more diffuse and they have fewer units in each province. This leads to massive rebellions almost every year that eat away at their initial strength. This happened repeatedly in their battles with the Hungarians. It was a much weaker horde that finally eliminated them, and they then just settled down and didn't do much for the next 25 years. We should also take away any emissaries they may have, so they don't make so many alliances (we can't stop them from accepting alliances from other factions, but they don't have to send an emmisary to Wessex to make an alliance with the English). The Horde during this early period were out-and-out imperialists. Their ambassadors called on all other nations to submit to their rule. They didn't play very well with others.
I can also make an historically based argument that their maintenance costs actually were close to zero anyway.
Ibn Al-Athir's 1221 description of the Mongols states as follows: "Moreover they need no commissariat, nor the conveyance of supplies, for they have with them sheep, cows, horses, and the like quadrupeds, the flesh of which they eat, [needing] naught else. As for their beasts which they ride, these dig into the earth with their hoofs and eat the roots of plants, knowing naught of barley. And so, when they alight anywhere, they have need of nothing from without."
See this link for more: http://classes.yale.edu/99-00/hist32...s/IbnAlAth.htm
4. Making the archers stronger. You have modded projectile stats for 1.8, so I'll withhold comment until I see how it works out. I modded the file to increase lethality and accurracy, but not range. My results seemed to be quite good. Archers & arbalesters now make significant kills, but don't dominate the battlefield either. (I based my modifications on results DOC sent me some time ago, which he also playtested). More on this later.
Perhaps the biggest remaining problem is still lack of high tech buildings for the AI factions. By 1280 in my early campaign there were still no fortresses, except mine. The English were the dominant faction, controlling most of the coastal map and they built a number of citadels (the only faction to have any - except for Constantinople which the Egyptians reduced from a fortress), but the English never bothered to build the spearmaker's guild in Mercia or the boyer's guild in Wales. They built only a few longbowmen and NOT ONE BILLMAN. Most of their armies werwe still spearmen and militia sergeants (a few peseants and a few civ. sergeants). They have a decent number of crossbowmen and arbalesters (both kinds). In fact they may produce a bit too many missile troops.
The other factions are worse, but this may be because they are hard pressed and nearer their support limit. Something must be done to improve this. I would still suggest linking the column 11 building combos to add to the probability of each castle once the previous one is built.
Also, is there a way to get the AI to re-build the port in a province if it's destroyed? The English have been sitting in Flanders for 75 years, but they never rebuilt the port in their best trading province after it was destroyed in their initial invasion (they have a merchant there but no port) The factions build the initial port o.k., so I'm not sure why they don't rebuild it.
Well, after making the post here, I realized that I had listed most all of the changes in this version, listed or not. There is a lot to list, but most all of the significant stuff is to starting conditions, and I think those will be universally approved. Also approved will be the return towards the original stats for a number of units, especially the Muslim ones. There are a number of tweaks you need to take note of, but they are really just that- tweaks, along with some shuffling of a couple Muslim and Byzant cav units.
I think maybe the biggest thing some of you will find is the comments and so-forth that I made in the CA file. I spent Monday and Tuesday studying that file and making those notes, along with it prompting me to make some tweaks to the units. I think those tweaks bring the units back closer to their original values, so you probably won't notice them.
In the projectile chart I added to the readme, the numbers in parentheses are the original values, so if that is the only number present, then that stat has not been changed in the mod.
In that category, I moved the range of the bolt units back to their original values, so you may find that it makes a difference. I have been playing some more of the historical campaigns this week, and I really like the ranges where they are now. It seems to me like this is where they should have always been.
One change I made at the last minute was the increase in longbow ammo. Given the now major price difference between longbows and most other arrow and bolt units, I think the extra ammo is warranted.
I also decreased the minimum angle that missile units can shoot at from -20 to -30, so hopefully you won't have what I had seen in the past, with missile units at the top of steep hills not being able to shoot at the targets below them.
I lowered ship priorities from the 1.7 version, especially for the later models, so hopefully the AIs won't go overboard with their navies.
I made mounted crossbowmen available in all eras again. Moving the pavise versions back one era also suits me better, and is one thing many of the MP'ers have suggested.
All crusading factions have a Chapter House given to them in all ages now, though the ones for the Germans, Italians and French move once between eras to their historical provinces (Cyprus, Rhodes, and Prussia). I also moved them out of the capital provinces for all eras, since the AIs seemed to still be quite willing to tie up their capitals for a decade, and this should also make more players willing to build crusades, especially since the seven crusader varieties start 50% over-strength, and those special 7 have been added to the catholic peasant uprising class, which the game uses to fill out the crusade after choosing its fill from the crusade list.
I also reduced the price of the crusader units from 25% to 20% of their normal value, though their upkeep is the same as regular units. I my last campaign with the reduced costs, I found a lot of crusader units in the regular AI forces, either from successful or disbanded crusades, so their upkeep needed to be normal to make things fair.
I gave most ships a speed of two, to try and fix what I believe is a broken naval combat resolution system, at least on Expert level. The level one ships all have a speed of 3, I believe, so they should still have most of their elusive ability.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, I set cavalry speeds back to normal, or almost back- I lowered run speeds just a little. I have noticed that it is much easier to tell when I unit starts to charge now.
The Muslim cav units should be much closer to the original than they were before. The ghulam cav are no longer the equivalent of Feudal Knights, and the Armenian Cav are back to their role as medium cav available only to the Turks.
I restricted Ghulams to the Almohads, which gives each muslim faction, along with the Byzants, its own unique medium cav unit. I also spent a long time arranging it so that these four factions all have four regular cav units, plus their royal guards.
I divided them in the chart according to the castle level necessary to build them, Fort through Citadel. I made each unit fairly different from both the others in its class, and from the other units in its faction, while keeping the costs within each class about the same for everyone. I am really pleased with how they look now, both compared to each other and to the Catholic units. They are good buys for the money, and they reflect their culture better than before.
Two things about the Byzant units- I made Pronoai Allinon signifcantly stronger, and since Mercs appear much less often, I made the Alan Cav a regular unit restricted to the Byzants. This gives the Byzants a progression of Horse Archers, Alan, Byz Cav and the PA, with Kats to boot.
Also keep in mind that Lith Cav are now light-medium mounted archers.
I ripped the unit changes I made for the beta, which had units going up 2pts in ability per era. I reduced spears to the same 1pt progression as other units, which I hope will have essentially the same effect I was looking for initially.
The militia units are stronger now, but harder to get. I think you will like the change after playing with it some- I know I do. Remember that the first 3 Town Watch buildings require a higher castle than before. Obviously the links have been changed so that spearmakers, etc. don't need them.
I eliminated the 50% shield penalty that was present at the higher levels. This never did really make sense to me, and it made balancing significantly harder.
I have also cut castle garrison capabilities in half. I don't know how, or if, this will effect siege duration, probably not if I had to bet. It will keep the AIs from losing so many of their troops in short sieges, though.
Also, when looking at stats between units, keep in mind the region and/or faction bonus that will usually be present for a number of units. (I re-inserted the region bonuses for Highlanders and Gallowglasses.) This is one of the hardest things I had to remember when it came to the Swiss units, for example.
Also, making the Swiss Halbs and Pikes available in the two Papacy provinces, and giving them a valour bonus their too, will make decisions even harder should you find yourself excommunicated in the late era.
The Eastern European provinces are now much better equipped than before, when they were practically barren even in the late era. This, coupled with the Horde's advantages in unit cost and requirements, should make the Mongols a truely continental-wide threat, as evidenced by one of the reports in the beta thread.
The Papacy has been strengthened both in starting units and in land value; Aragon now has tradeable resources; Flanders has better merchants and more ships than before, but is now rebellious and belongs to the re-emergent Burgundians in the late era.
Also, keep in mind that the Sea of Marmara and the Ionian Sea have been "absorbed" into the Aegean and Ariatic Seas. It looks funny since their boundaries are the same on the map, but this will really help the Byzants and Italians.
And finally, keep in mind that Nicaea and Constan no longer share a land border, and that the border between Constan and Trebizond may be a bridge, which could have a big influence on the Turks and maybe on passing Crusades.
Overall, this is definitely the most exciting, balanced and competitive version of the mod yet, and I can't wait to get into it myself.
Sounds like some good changes.
Just some minor things.
Re: Mercenaries.
I think maybe a lot of the mercenary changes could go back to the original. I believe people play the MedMod to play a harder game against the AI, and thus usually avoid using cheesy tactics anyway. I think you should bring the mercenary availability back to what it was, because as it is now I almost never ever see them. I know the mercs are subject to cheesy merc rush tactics but I think the players who want a challenge won't do this.
Also, if you don't bring back up their availability, i still think faction "unique units" should be available. Number one - it is historical. Troops that desert in large numbers or are disbanded could still go out and look for work regardless of who hired them. Hell, El Cid and his Catholic knights served as a mercenary for the Moors for awhile.
Number 2: It just adds flavor to the game. It's cool seeing some strange "specialist" units added to your forces. Adds "FLAVA"
And about Siege units.
I think maybe the "wooden" siege units should be buildable in one turn. Really, a catapult is a pretty simple machine and for no reason should it take long to train. From what I understand those units were never hauled around anywhere, but merely built on site. I think maybe all non-gunpowder siege units should be one turn. the AI seems to build a lot of siege units so if anything this will free up time for them to build other units.
Speaking of AI building siege units, I think the ballista should be eliminated from the game. It is practically useless, and the AI ALWAYS wastes up unit slots with it since the game automatically puts siege weapons in the "first 16" of the battle.
Its scary being attacked by 5000 enemies but upon seeing their army its pitiful noticing that half of their units are stupid ballistas. They have no real purpose and I don't know of ANY human player that builds them.
And as for siege units not being mercs historically, the huge siege cannon that the Turks used to bust Constantinople was run and built by Christian mercs.
Also, ships: Maybe lower their support costs instead of making the AI build less of them? The player never really worries about support on his ships since he always has a trade empire - they are only a drain on the AI.
Also, Eastern terrain: Maybe a few resources, like salt or silver or copper or whatever to boost them.
Mongols - Maybe bring support costs to ZERO? A thought
Peasants: peasant armies are still very predominant. Maybe boost the peasants attack or charge a bit. I really can't fathom them being as helpless as they are in game. I think no matter what you are if you get swarmed by enough men with spears they WILL hurt you. As it is they often rush into units of spearmen and lose 50 guys for every one they kill.
> cut castle garrison capabilities
Make sure any single unit will always fit inside a castle. Remember cavaly counts as double unit size. And be careful with the using changing the unit size in options too. The game will crash if an army decide to reteat or lost a battle and forced into the castle and non of its units actually fit inside.
Yeah they better all be able to hold at least 200 men then, even the forts.
I really don't think changing the garrison size really helps much because the smaller garrison size will make the men starve even faster. If 100 guys make it into the castle but it only holds 200 instead of 800 then the men will starve to death all the quicker. Plus plenty of battles happen where the enemy has nowhere to retreat so they just end up being captured.
The computer tends to sally out of castles anyway.
I think maybe a good solution is to somehow make all units count as two spaces? That way, not that many guys fit in there but they still only eat so much food,you know?
Like in game terms I believe 100 knights starve at the same rate as 100 peasants, but the knights take up twice as much room. If there was some way to make it so every unit took up 2 spaces like horses (and horses take 4?) then there will be less men in the castle but it wont starve so fast.
Either way, I'd bring Forts up to at least 200 for those who play with Huge units.
Anyone experiencing CTD?
I can't get past year 1112. CTD four times in a row. Crashed twice before that, forget the years.
Played 4 campaigns with this Mod -
1. Danes/Early: Crashed in 1104, replay of "Autosave" crashed at the same time.
2. Polish/Early: Crashed at around 1115, the same with "Autorsave" replay.
3. Danes/Early after reinstalling MTW, v1.1, and Mod 1.81: Crashed at around 1110.
4. Danes/Early: Crashed at 1200, several replays with Autosave crashed when hitting "New Year".
Otherwise a very dynamic and well-balanced game.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/mecry.gif
UPDATE ALERT:
I have posted a 1.82 update zip at my webpage. Place the two files in the "Medieval - Total War" folder, where they will over-write the existing files.
If you have the 1.81 version, this tiny update is all you need.
If you have not gotten the 1.81 version, then simply get the 1.82 exe and install it into your "Total War" folder.
Given ECS's post, and thank you ECS, if an over-strength Feudal or Chivalric Sgts unit tries to fit into a Fort, the game will CTD. When I read this last night, I thought that this would be a rare occurance. Obviously I was wrong. At least I hope I was wrong, and there is nothing else causing the crashes.
I was going to post a small update anyway before reading about the crashes, so this update contains several more things other than the increase in Fort capacity.
1)I discovered that I had accidentally made the Byzants unable to get Princesses.
I think the Muslims have a big advantage being able to spit out all sons every couple of years, but that's not how the Christian factions are designed to play. I read an account of the Battle of Manzikert where the Turkish victor demanded a Byzant princess to wed to one of his sons as a concession item, but I guess CA had their reasons for this setup.
2)I raised the merc appearance factor from 15 to 20 (the original was 40).
This is as far as I am willing to go with that. It is just too tempting for me to buy them up when I am in a bind, and if the mod does its job we *should* be in a bind often.
All you have to do is look up the Inn section in the building file and change the 20 present towards the end of the section to 40.
3)I took emissaries and princesses away from the Mongols, to keep them from being so diplomatic, as was suggested.
I had added them mainly for the human player, and had not counted on the Mongols being about as friendly as everyone else when given the chance.
4)I cut ship support between 33% and 50%. This was a good suggestion, HB. I hope it does the trick with the lowered priorities.
5)I scanned the building file and saw that the Mongol personality put almost no priority on any structure- building, farmland, whatever- so I went through and gave them what they should have for the structures they use.
I had raised the land value of most of their territory for the 1.81 version, so maybe this will help both their income and their happiness levels. All this together with the 1.81 changes adds up to a lot of help for the Mongols, so I want to wait until a number of people have reported before doing anything more for them.
6)I added some building priority links for a number of buildings, both troop producers and economic structures like ports, shipyards and merchants. I spent quite a while today studying the CA spreadsheet and going over the building text file too, and I just don't think there is anything else I can do, given the way the priority structure is built, though this last round of changes may do the trick,as I explain below.
Note: castle with a small "c" refers to all the structures from Forts to Fortresses, while Castle with a big "C" refers to the single building. You may now resume your reading... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ns/biggrin.gif
The priority structure *should* encourage the AIs to specialize their provinces, and encourage them to go deeper into the tech chart, though I did find what I feel could be the breakdown in the castle development progression. The spreadsheet didn't go further than 5 upgrades out, which meant that Castles (level 7) and up were simply given the same priority as Keeps. Since the priorities for all the add-on structures kept increasing all the way through, this meant that the AIs would theoretically stop to construct *all* available add-ons once they got to either the Keep or Castle level. Given the way the AIs swap provinces, you can see where this could cripple AI troop development.
I know I had looked at this issue before, but it may have been months ago, when I had not yet figured out how to increase the AI cash flow, and thus getting up to, much less past, the Castle level was beyond the means of the typical faction even if the priorities had been set up correctly.
I don't know for sure that this will do the trick, but I think it will get the AIs to producing more level 3 structures and add-ons.
In the units text, there is a column for putting an increased priority on certain buildings, given that the unit has a region bonus, but it is unused, which makes me wary of it, plus most all units have a region bonus, so if you were to start trying to address problems like the English not building Billmen, you are in for hours of tedius work, which may not make much difference given how everything is connected.
If someone wants to delve into this, be my guest, and I will add it to the mod if I think it is set up correctly, but it's not worth it to me personally.
HB, the solutions you suggest for garrison size can't be done, and too I think you miss the point for making the reduction. If a castle has a small amount of trooped being sieged, this yes they will starve faster, but I am not worried about the small stuff. My aim is to stop the AIs from losing 500 of their best troops in a two-year siege of a Castle. This is how the most powerful AIs get gutted in my games, and it's very bad for gameplay, imo.
I wouldn't mind shortening the build time for Siege Engines even further, but in *my* games the AIs rarely build any of them, and I alwys use the auto-resolve in sieges since the manual battles are so riduculusly hard, imo. To my this category of troops is a non-factor unless you just *like* losing thousands of troop assaulting a castle.
Also, I have only played a couple of campaigns since making the changes to try and get rid of peasants, but as far as I can tell, I have mostly succeeded. If you are seeing lots of peasants, I can only guess that it's because provinces have changed hands so much that they are completely barren, and we have to wait for the VI to come out before anything more can be done that. All I can do is get them to build; I can't change their strategic behavior.
So, I hope this clears up the crashes. I played a quick test game with the increased Fort capacity up until the 1140's and had none. I also included what I hope are the solutions and tweaks to the rest of the things brought up so far. I would not have gotten back into the building text if not for your reports and suggestions, so keep up the good work.
Sounds good WesW, I'll give it a go when I finish my v1.6 campain. I think I speak for quite a lot of people when I say that I consider auto-resolving castle sieges to be a very "cheesy" tactic, and the discrepency between auto-resolve and normal battle outcomes is praticaly a bug.
(I do quite *like* lossing thousands of troops againsts a castle, it's a real challange to losse as few as possible and makes you only assult castles if you realy need to rather than staving them out (this is historical)), and sige engines are realy required unless you just want to attrition low quality serfs aginst the gates (which is kinda fun in a sick and twisted way http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/dizzy.gif )
Yeah castle siege assaults are SUPPOSED to be ridiculously difficult to do with small casualties. Thats the whole reason that most of the time in real life the attackers wouldn't rush the gates. Autoresolving the sieges is definitely a cheese tactic because I think the autoresolve doesn't really take into account the arrow towers or something, which cause the majority of losses.
Now I just had a really weird idea....
But for example if you BOOOOSTED the garrison size of castles by a LOT, then a lot of troops will go retreat into them but it will take a LONG time for them all to starve - the AI almost always sallies out at you so they'll lose their men in a real fight instead of a starve. Just a thought.... Because the castle garrisons even are somewhat unrealistically small. These "castles" are all essentially supposed to be the capital city of the province, and I figure they could hold a lot more troops than they do in game.
Although Mod v1.82 was installed, the game crashes still occur.
Playing the Polish/Early: After about 10 or 15 years into the game while still in economical buildup, the game crashes without any obvious reasons. Nobody attacked or was attacked. No castle problems.
Could it be the new install software you are using?
Has somebody else this problem?
UPDATE ALERT:
Same install rules apply as for the last update: If you already have the full version of either 1.81 or 1.82, all you need is the update zip, which again is unzipped in the Medieval - Total War folder.
I have found not one, but two more bugs in the mod. One was confined to the Late era campaign, where the Mongols were given a princess and an emissary to start the game. The second one is what has been causing the crashes all along. It turns out that when you are setting the neighbor info in the startpos texts, you have to list *all* the land neighbors before listing the seas. When we saw the need for a bridge between Constan and either Nicaea or Trebizond, I at first chose Nicaea, but then later changed my mind after HB suggested Trebizond, which was indeed the better choice for all eras. In changing things back and forth I got Trebizond out of place in Constan's list.
The crash occurs when an invasion from Constan to Trebizond takes place, which explains the apparently random occurance of the crashes.
Anyway, since I had started a late game, I saw that I had not added ports to any of the provinces along northern Europe, so I went ahead and corrected this as well.
HB, if you want to try out your *weird* thought for yourself, it's very easy- just change the castle capacity numbers in the buildings text. You'll recognize them when you see them.
As for auto-resolving sieges, this only comes up when there is a small garrison which won't starve for a long time. Large garrisons don't live long as we all know, so you just let them die. If it's cheese, then I am a little cheesy (which can be quite tasty for any women out there who would care to be a mod groupy) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/wink.gif . I didn't use the auto-resolve the first couple of months I played MTW, but after a while the assaults got repetitious, so I just started using the auto to get on with the game.
Fixing the castle auto-resolve and reducing the lethality of castle defenses were two of the things in my list that I asked about in the request thread I started last week, but I never got an answer to them. As it stands right now, both are way out of balance, though at opposite extremes.
I don't think the castle defenses are too lethal really.
In an assault the attacker should suffer. Historically, every troop in the castle and a whole lot of the civilians would be up on those walls with some type of missile weapon, even be it rocks. As the game stands you can't even put guys up on the walls so there has to be some way to stop the attackers. Even if you have archers, they have to fire OVER the walls, heavily reducing their range, plus the whole ammo thing. I figure archers in a castle would have an almost limitless supply of arrows since there's probably a bunch of guys sitting there making them as the battle goes on.
For Rome Total War the men will be able to be placed on the walls, but I hope they handle siege weapons the way Lords of the Realm 2 did it. In that game, when you sieged a castle you build the siege weapons at the site, and depending on how many men you had and how many siege weapons you wanted was how quick it happened. I really think "low level" siege weapons like catapults and such should be able to be "inherent" in a large army because they'd be able to produce them very quickly. Cannons had to be built in a town and brought over, but the dinky little siege engines could be built by a gang of peasants with a hammer and saw.
Anyway, I guess I'm talking out my ass. When I get to school I'm gonna try out the Huge Garrison thing and see how it works. My only fear is that the AI will never assault the castles at all and will just sit there outside sieging them.
Just of few thoughts on castles sieges and the like. I have been doing a little experimenting on my own with garrison size and revolt ratings.
1. I set the revolt rating to either a 2 or 3 for all provinces.
2. I gave castles a negative happiness rating in the building file.
3. I increased the holding capacity of castles by a factor of 2.
4. I gave churches and mosques a +60 for their happiness rating.
5. Churches and mosques are free, take one turn to build, and are given a 500 for their build priority for their appropriate factions.
What this does is greatly increases the chance of a loyalist revolt in the first two turns after a province is taken. If a Christian or Orthodox faction takes a province form a Muslim, the mosque is always destroyed and they can’t build a church until the castle is also taken.
Example of how it supposed to work: Constantinople would have a revolt rating of 3 and have happiness modifier of -60 for having a citadel. Turks attack with less than a 1000 men and the Byzantines retreat back into the castle. Guaranteed loyalist revolt until the Turks leave or they assault the castle. Once the Turks leave the Byzantines should have a fairly good chance of rebuilding the church within the first few turns, hopefully before they suffer a peasant revolt.
Example of what really happens: The Byzantines push back the Turkish incursions, only to have the Italians launch a Crusade against Constantinople. When the Crusade arrives, the Byzantines abandon the province and castle without a fight. The Italians take the province and the Orthodox church is spared leaving the Byzantines little or no chance of reclaiming it with a loyalist revolt. Somewhat historically accurate but not necessarily what one wants for balanced game play.
The aim of these changes was to somehow slow down the aggressive nations by making it a little more costly for them to take on their smaller neighbors. If there would be an imbalance of power, then maybe the weaker nation would rise up against the aggressor and restore a balance of power.
I finished a speed campaign yesterday using these parameters with some mixed results. Let me put it this way, Aragon and Hungary were the two most powerful nations after about 200 years.
Note on AI assaults: The AI seems to need to have at least one seige weapon in the assaulting force. It doesn't even need to be a workable unit but they will not assault the castle no matter how big their force and how small the castle is or how small the force is that is in it. I had a 1 feudal foot knight hold a fort for about a dozen years against over a thousand Turks and they never once attacked even though there casualties would have been minimal. Something to keep in mind if you want to see more assaults.
JoBeare
Wes,
Did you neglect to change the mod's version from 1.81 to 1.82/1.83 on the start/version screen; or am I having problems installing?
The version number has remained 1.81 on my screen for both 1.82 and 1.83.
Correct, TS, I did not update the mod's version number on the Main Menu. I didn't think about it, actually, but I was trying to make the mod small and simple, so I may not have done it had I thought of it.
With the zip, you should receive the questions regarding the over-writing of files, and this will let you know if you did it correctly.
Thanks for the report, Jo. I can only remember one time where the AI assaulted one of my castles, and it was a level 1 Fort with only a few Urban Militia inside. And the AI did have a Catapult, I now remember. I don't think I have adjusted the priority for siege engines, but I never seem to notice AI armies that have them, unless they were given at the start of the campaign.
One thing you may want to consider, Jo, is that your method will not help solve the problem of desertification, in my opinion. Remember that it is simple occupation of the countryside that destroys buildings, so the loyalist uprising will add another round of destruction if the occupiers (sp?) retreat. What will then happen is that the invaded will likely become the invaders with their new troops, which will start the whole process over in the invader's province. The net effect will be ever-larger armies, and accompanying support costs, with no decline in province swapping. I would love to be proven wrong, but this is what I see when I try and envision the AI logic routines working.
Btw, I have started a new campaign as the Byzants in the late era, and I spent today fighting three huge battles against the Turks. This proved to me that the AI will still counter-attack when it has forces under siege, even at the reduced settings. It also proved to me the ineffectiveness of Muslim offensive capabilities (the casualty results were about 5 to 1, app 3100 Turks killed and/or captured to my 600 killed).
I also just got a message, around 1340, that the Mongols now had the largest annual income. This simply stunned me. They have been building forces on my Bulgarian border, to the point where they have 2 full stacks in Wallacia and Moldavia each, and I know they are about to attack my one full stack there. I am fully extended in Asia Minor, and loaded with merc troops (does anyone know if the Byzants have some type of faction advantage in attracting them?), to the point where I am several thousand in the red due to a Turk ship which slipped into the Aegean for a couple of turns.
Btw, I continue to see examples that the naval comabt system is broken. I have had three instances where Dhows have attacked and sank War Galleys, and no matter how many times I reloaded, the results never changed. I tried attacking them first, waiting and defending, and even running away to another sea, and nothing had any effect.
Not only is the system broken, but the AI knows it- why else would it always attack when it should have no legitimate chance of success? The only times I have had success is when I attack with a faster ship (Dromon). It appears, and this observation goes back months, that speed determines who attacks first, and whomever attacks first always wins, unless the defender has multiple ships and a statistical superiority. And in this instance, the results were normally 2 to 1 in favor of the faster ship.
Wes,
I have a little different economic system but the AI still seems to tech up all right. In the test I ran this weekend, after about 200 years there were a 20 citadels on the map after starting with only 1. Unfortunately Aragon had 12 of them. There were no fortresses, but I think that was more from my eliminating the shortcut from citadel to fortress, forcing the AI to build a barbicon and gun towers before being able to build a fortress.
As for the ships, I changed my defence rating on the ships by a factor of five. So a barque would be a 5 and a caravel would be 15. They still get sunk, but maybe not quite as often. I does seem close to impossible for a lone barque to attack and sink a caravel but a couple barques can usually sink the caravel but will probably lose one of the barques in the process.
I have to get to work. Will write more later.
JoBeare
"The priority structure *should* encourage the AIs to specialize their provinces, and encourage them to go deeper into the tech chart, though I did find what I feel could be the breakdown in the castle development progression. The spreadsheet didn't go further than 5 upgrades out, which meant that Castles (level 7) and up were simply given the same priority as Keeps. Since the priorities for all the add-on structures kept increasing all the way through, this meant that the AIs would theoretically stop to construct *all* available add-ons once they got to either the Keep or Castle level. Given the way the AIs swap provinces, you can see where this could cripple AI troop development.
I know I had looked at this issue before, but it may have been months ago, when I had not yet figured out how to increase the AI cash flow, and thus getting up to, much less past, the Castle level was beyond the means of the typical faction even if the priorities had been set up correctly.
I don't know for sure that this will do the trick, but I think it will get the AIs to producing more level 3 structures and add-ons."
Forgive me for being rather dim Wes, but I'm not following your point. I presume you are referring to build_prod.txt column 18 Tech Level Integer? What does this do?
Obviously, if the AI is building "all" the available structures before proceeding to the next level it will never reach fortress. Any human player specializes his provinces, one to build advanced cavalry, another to build advanced spearmen and so on. Sometimes, with your most developed provinces, like the capital, there are structures to do both, but no province has everything, it would take soo long to build, you'd never get it done.
As for fooling with column 14, Dojo Advantage in unit_prod11.txt in order to get the AI to build specialized units (like Billmen) preferrentially, I've avoided it because I assumed that it might not be coded for in the game engine (i.e. it might not be used anymore since it's blank). Do you think differently? I thought it might screw things up to mess with it. It's not even clear to me how to make the entries since there are no examples.
BTW: Having played out more of the campaign into the late era, I would say that trade is working very well now. Good job Wes http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/wave.gif
I have 420,000 fl. in the bank and > 30,000 florins annual income, but I constantly see announcements that the English have the greatest income FIRST time I've ever seen an AI outcompete me for trade. (Of course, the English are the dominant faction in my campaign and control almost all the coastal provinces, except the ones I control, but they have hordes of ships everywhere and enormous trade income, so it's working).
I'll have to have a look at how your new values for shipping work out. I hope the changes aren't too much, except for reducing the maintenance costs, since it seems to be working very well in v.7.1b. The factions are producing large numbers of ships. Of course, the English swept the seas of their enemies, but can you blame them? If this were real life both my faction and the English would think very carefully before going to war with each other since it would be a real sea massacre, with no clearcut winner.
Crusades now work as intended. I haven't seen too many of them and the ones I do see seem to reach their targets with a fair degree of success. They're not exceptionally strong, but they manage to do o.k. Another aspect of the game that now works properly in MHO. More kudos here, Wes.
One suggestion: I modded the game so that wargalleys (the Sicilian high end ship) has deep sea capability, so that that faction has at least one ship that can go into the deep ocean. I haven't checked the other factions yet, but every faction should have at least one such ship for playbalance, but I didn't change the build time so that it still takes 3 years. Thus, the English have many more deep sea vessels than I can produce, but it seems appropriate.
Well, after a breif hiatus to try out Master of Orion 3 ( I have alot to say on that but....) I am back in the MTW/ Med mod saddle. Looking forward to trying this version out.
Garrison size.
After playing and fighting battle after battle vs the AI I decided one of the greatest weaknesses is they often have numeric advantages but the player has quality. IE the player has 1 main stack of 16 or so Elite units vs 2 or 3 stacks of AI units. After the first "wave" of the AI is defeated then it is a slaughter. It is when running down waves of easily routed and leaderless AI units that the player can really push home each personally controlled win.
How to reduce this?
Recently I began to make the units default huge. This makes it MUCH harder for the player to maintain single elite stacks and makes what used to be 2 stacks and therefore 2 "waves" of AI troops into one. Also when a unit of the AI routes off the feild it is replaced by a solid unit of double size. It makes for a nice increase in the AI capabilities.
Double size units are a bit harder to use but that is all part of what we are looking for right? The AI by the way has no trouble using double size units just as well as it does the default size.
Anyway to my point. I cannot play with Huge units because 200 man units cannot fit in the damn fort. Please make 200 the default for forts or put it back the way it was asap. On that note how do I adjust this myself? I cannot play atm really. I have never made any mods myself do to a fear of ruining everything. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/smile.gif
Oh and do not even get me started on auto resolve a castle assault. I consider it a bug/exploit. Auto resolve an assault then personally launch it and compare casualties. How is the difference not a bug?
Edit- Ok gonna try to reset it...the last numbers in the list of castle right? Well here goes nothing. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/wacko.gif
Edit 2 - I did it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif Woot go Me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/wink.gif
I played Mod IV v1.83 for several days now - the changes in comparison to earlier versions are dramatic. My games were well balanced, although the Turks and Egyptians seem weaker (England could conquer most of their territories and eliminate them) in 40% of my games.
Things that maybe troublesome:
1. AI is building huge amount of troops - primarily stacks with one or two unit types, such as archers and some peasants. Playing as the Danes; the Germans had 5 stacks of units (archer and peasants; spearmen and peasant etc.) sitting next to Danmark while being beaten further south by the French. For someone who likes long and large battles this is a bonanza but in the end boring than the last units do not really fight, they just turn and run.
2. AI is building huge amounts of ships. Playing the Sicilians - I could not find my own ships in the Strait of Gibralta and around Sicily; each area was solid packed with ships. Eliminating enemy ships takes for ever without adding anything to the game.
3. The new changes to the Ionian Sea do not permit to move ships (produced in Venice) to other areas.
4. As the Sicilians, I was unable to build deep-sea ships which is historically incorrect; if the CA puts this in, I love to discuss this with them.
This sounds like complaining, but it is not. I like the other changes made to the game and appreciate the time and effort that went into improving the game. I hope, you will take it as what it is, just a comment.
Tyrac - I agree about making units larger improving the challenge from the AI. You might also try "large" rather than "huge" as then things will only take 1 turn to build.
Wes - have you considered raising the costs - especially support costs - of units across the board? This happens automatically when you increase the unit size option, but may be worth considering more generally (and possibly as a substitute for using the unit size slider, as I agree with Tyrac that the large units become rather unwieldy).
Making units more expensive would be one way to try to alleivate the 16 unit stacking constraint leading to the reinforcement issues that Tyrac notes.
It would also reduce the problem of wars of attrition that Old Templar mentioned. (I agree with Old Templar that vast battles can get rather wearing in long MTW campaigns.)
Just a thought. I am pondering making unit support costs proportional to purchase costs, a much better measure of unit effectiveness. If I anchor the support costs for low grade troops to their current values, that may effectively increase the price of armies. As the player tends to get the higher tech stuff, it will also tend to hit him disproportionately.
Thanks for the info on ship values, Jo. I have raised them by a factor of 10, and I am going to experiment with raising the number of men on a ship from 1 to 10. Something needs to be done, since I have not seen any improvement in naval combat even with setting all speeds to 2.Quote:
Originally Posted by [b
Tyrac, glad to hear about your experiments with default sizes. As you said, though, the real issue is quality rather than quantity, and your system really only tries to cover up this AI short-coming.
I have often thought about doubling unit size just to get more realism into the battles, to make the armies cover the landscape more as they would in real life, and to slow the game down some, since it takes more time for larger units to manouver (sp?). However, this may tax slower systems too much.
I want to see how my further modifications to the building priorities work, which I go into below.
As for the reduced garrison sizes, this is another issue that I had not thought of. One thing *you* need to also think of is that over-strength units will still not fit into Forts of the original size. I would set them to 310.
I really like the reduced sizes personally, and I don't plan on changing them to account for the possiblity of players who like doubled unit sizes. As you discovered, the values are very easy to change on your own.
One tip for anyone who wants to try modding- set your text editor to show tab spaces. This helps alot with avoiding errors.
Templar, nice to hear from you as always. Are you sure those stacks were built units, and not from peasant revolts? I have seen some strange troop mixes in revolts since I altered their settings to include more Crusade units. Since hordes of anything else are better than peasants, I may not change anything.
I have not noticed the AIs building more units in general than before, and peasants are almost rare in High and Late era games. I would like to hear from some others on this topic.
As for the Muslim units, their weakness compared to the Christians was why I initially strengthened them early in the mod's development. Looking through the building priorities earlier tonight, I noticed that their priorities for Bowyers, which are essential to Muslim development, were set lower than for many Christian factions. I significantly increased them for the first two levels.
Wes - have you considered raising the costs - especially support costs - of units across the board? This happens automatically when you increase the unit size option, but may be worth considering more generally (and possibly as a substitute for using the unit size slider, as I agree with Tyrac that the large units become rather unwieldy).
Making units more expensive would be one way to try to alleivate the 16 unit stacking constraint leading to the reinforcement issues that Tyrac notes.
It would also reduce the problem of wars of attrition that Old Templar mentioned. (I agree with Old Templar that vast battles can get rather wearing in long MTW campaigns.)
Just a thought. I am pondering making unit support costs proportional to purchase costs, a much better measure of unit effectiveness. If I anchor the support costs for low grade troops to their current values, that may effectively increase the price of armies. As the player tends to get the higher tech stuff, it will also tend to hit him disproportionately.
So now I am getting reports of the AI having too *much* money? Talk about being a victim of your own success. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/dizzy.gif
I don't know about support costs. What I would do is raise the priority of buildings, and see if this prompted the AIs to build even more, since most still don't seem to go all out if I interpret the reports here correctly. It's general stuff like this where I wish more casual readers would chime in on. They wouldn't have to give recommendations or anything, just list a few things like the number of AI units that they can tell are definitely different in the mod. Observations are one area where quantity is often better than quality, though a general idea of things like overall AI unit quality would also be very beneficial.
I get an idea that games are becoming much more varied, depending upon which era you start in, and how long you play. This is a good thing overall, but it can be bad for making adjustments if you don't hear from enough sources to adequately represent the entire game.
Btw, I have always linked support cost directly to production cost.
Forgive me for being rather dim Wes, but I'm not following your point. I presume you are referring to build_prod.txt column 18 Tech Level Integer? What does this do?
Ok, you are forgiven. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...icons/wink.gif
I was referring to column 10, which contains the priorities for each personality type.
I started to answer this post last night, and it prompted me to go back and study the setup some more, and I realized that I still had not grasped all of it.
Basically, the setup gave approximately equal priority to all buildings of the same level, and relied upon the links you mentioned before to tip the scales in deciding what to build. The problem with the setup was that, while the base priorities were given for each personality type for each level, the links were not specified for each personality, but only by level. Thus, I believe that there is a tendency for certain combos to be favored by *all* personalities. I suspect that the slight differences in the base priorities were supposed to prevent this, but based upon my experiences with similar setups in the Call-to-Power games, these slight differences may not be enough.
There was also a problem with some of the bases being simply too low, the ones for Bowyers for the Muslims being one I found tonight.
I have made some significant changes both to base values and links in the past, and I made some more tonight. I hope that these last ones will do the trick, as these relationships are really at the edge of my ability to keep straight (especially with my chronic pain problems), and I doubt I will find much more with further study. There is a huge risk of unintended consequences in fooling with these, and I have gone as far out on the limb with some of them as I care to go.
One other thing I learned tonight was that I had set the priorities for Castles and Citadels a little too high in the public release version. I also saw that the CA settings seemed to hurt the chances of swordsmith development, so I tried to fix that.
As for fooling with column 14, Dojo Advantage in unit_prod11.txt in order to get the AI to build specialized units (like Billmen) preferrentially, I've avoided it because I assumed that it might not be coded for in the game engine (i.e. it might not be used anymore since it's blank). Do you think differently? I thought it might screw things up to mess with it. It's not even clear to me how to make the entries since there are no examples.
I have also avoided fooling with it for the same reasons.
I'll have to have a look at how your new values for shipping work out. I hope the changes aren't too much, except for reducing the maintenance costs, since it seems to be working very well in v.7.1b. The factions are producing large numbers of ships. Of course, the English swept the seas of their enemies, but can you blame them? If this were real life both my faction and the English would think very carefully before going to war with each other since it would be a real sea massacre, with no clearcut winner.
This is one area where the right priorities have turned out to be very hard to find, and probably explains why CA shipped the game out with them too low. From reports, the AI either seem to build too many or too few ships, depending upon the course of the individual game and perhaps upon the taste of the player.
Also keep in mind that reducing the priority of ships, as I did in the 1.8 version, shifts resources into land units, which may account for some of Templar's report. This is what I have meant in the past about everything being connected, and how it would not be wise to try and use only parts of the mod.
In Call-to-Power II, one thing I could never solve to everyone's satisfaction was making the AI aggressive but not fool-hardy. People often complained about the AIs not putting up much of a fight, so believe me that having too many AI units is one of the better problems to have, as long as they are at least *trying* to develop their infrastructure.
If we can wait until VI comes out, I feel that we will see a huge increase in AI potential simply from structures not being destroyed until the castle is taken. I think they are also introducing land-based trade routes, which will be another big influence on the game.
One suggestion: I modded the game so that wargalleys (the Sicilian high end ship) has deep sea capability, so that that faction has at least one ship that can go into the deep ocean. I haven't checked the other factions yet, but every faction should have at least one such ship for playbalance, but I didn't change the build time so that it still takes 3 years. Thus, the English have many more deep sea vessels than I can produce, but it seems appropriate.
This is a good point, Cugel, and I have altered the War and Gun Galleys so that they can go into level 2 seas, which gives them full coverage of the Mediterranean.
Well I made forts 310. Well to be exact I made the first 3 of the 15 numbers 310, The rest are all increased some as well (400+). Not sure why but I am still getting CTD after a few turns. Should I make it still higher? Has anyone else tried to play with higher then default unit settings with med mod?
Been noticing a few other strange things. Playing as Turks and Saphi of the porte that appeared as Prince units were at size 40 yet I am fighting Byzantine Hiers and Kings units of Kata that are 80 (and 80 unit of kata under a 7 star King is just a Brutal killing machine) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/frown.gif I thought they were just merging units but I cannot merge my Saphi.
I had a loyalist army form up in a recently lost province and all the units in it were Huge, brigands size 120, archers size 120, but there were 2 units of saphi that were both just 40. I cannot combine the Saphi units into 80's either. Wasted a precious free day trying to make it work so far. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/smile.gif I wonder if other units that have had their size changed are also effected this way. Hmmmm. I will go look at that now......
Well I did some checking in a series of starts to look at each King type unit. Kata and Boyars were at size 81 Saphi of the Porte are at 41 and Royals and Gulam are all at 21. Also Gulam and Royals are listed in the training window as size 20 while all other units are listed as being built at "huge/double" size. Why is that?
I do not know if this is why it is crashing or if it is still something to do with Fort garrison size. 310 should have made all possible units fit in forts...and the crashes are starting before any possible crusaders could be trying to fit in anything. Could it be huge rebel units of some kind?
Rather dissapointing to be unable to play with unit sizes above the default. Any idea what I need to do? Now that I have played with double size units I really do not want to go back to the "line up on map edge and rout reinforcments" lame stuff. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/smile.gif Anyone have any ideas on what I can do?
Edit 1- ahhh HA 21) is this unit scalable yes/no.
I really need to post a bit slower I guess. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/smile.gif
Actually instead of playing on Huge units you can go into the crusader.txt file and just double the size of every unit and play on Default.
In my game Royal Knights and stuff are 40 instead of 20, etc.
I also more than doubled the size of Woodsmen because I think they should have been a 100 man unit in the first place.
Oh yeah about the castle sieges. In Viking Invasion the attackers will take attrition losses when just sitting there sieiging the castle, so the issue wont be nearly as bad then.
I have been modding it by actually going in the text file and changing it. Which is really hard to read. So to try to do things better I downloaded the Gnome editor. Why can't the gnome editor read the med mod files? Is there a way I can work around this? Just changing things right in the text file is a really good way to mess it all up.
I do not own Excel just the excel viewer thing.
What am I doing wrong?
edit- ok I think I fixed it. Not gonna post again today. Getting embarrasing. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/joker.gif Please ignore me.
Tyrac, if you have set castle sizes to at least 310, you should not be getting any more crashes. At least no one is reporting any, and I have not had any.
It is possible to get over-strength units early, since they are part of the peasant revolt list now.
I got a letter the other day from someone who had not gotten the updates, so make sure you get the 1.83 zip at my website.
I have been trying to play as the Byzants in the late era, and you really have to know your stuff diplomatically, what with the juiced up Horde, who is also putting a couple of ships in the Black Sea, waiting to join the Turks and/or almost anyone else in a given game in ganging up on you.
I have also noticed that almost everyone ends up at war with the HRE very early, and the Germans also tend to get excommunicated, too.
Just a couple of suggestions if you guys want to climb out of the dark (early) age once in a while. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ons/tongue.gif