Secret of the Jannissary Heavy Infantry.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

I disagree with that, Musashi. The costs are tied to the stats and give a pretty good indicator of how units should be, strength-wise. Special faction-defining units like Varangians are less expensive compared to normal units with the same strength but the Gothic knights and JHI are also faction-defining units for their respective factions.

If you look at the stats, JHI are overpowered. However, if you look at the cost and the fact that they are a faction-defining unit for the Turks, they are perfectly fine. The Varangian Guard has clearly overpowered stats compared to its cost. The cost shows that CA didn't really intend them to be as powerful as the later, more expensive units. While I think stats should be pretty accurate, the costs right now are a better baseline on how the units should be stacked against each other.

Varangians should own every unit early on. However, they should be eventually outclassed by the later units. While Varangians have better stats compared to dismounted gothic knights, I don't think they should be more powerful than the dismounted gothic knights. Reducing their stats will make them closer to what is intended by CA and what is historically accurate than increasing their cost compared to the dismounted gothic knights.

That said, I think CA should add attack speed and dps to the stats. I've played enough games to know that dps is a better indicator of damage. That's one of the biggest reasons that the stats seem wrong. Another reason is the defense. Shield, armor and defense skill all have different properties but the defense just lumps them all in.

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Going to have to disagree with the idea that Varangians should be outclassed by Gothics... VG should be the strongest shock infantry in the game, going by their stats, and by the fact that they're Byzantium's most powerful unit, and Byzantium is the oldest, wealthiest state. Assuming that Byzantium survives into the later periods in an intact (Or even expanded) state, they would certainly have put the Varangians in advanced plate, and you'd be looking at platemailed two handed axemen, which should easily trump the Gothic Knights who are platemailed two handed swordsmen.

But that's only if you ignore the cost differences. It's all very well talking about how units should be, but in the end it all comes down to balancing them, and making sure thier stats and costs are balanced.

Which is why I'm increasing their costs. I'd rather do that than nerf their effectiveness, and anyway this is only for singleplayer so the balancing isn't critical.

Also, to settle the DEK vs. Noble Swordsmen debate once and for all... I gave DEKs the SAME animation as the Noble Swordsmen, and labbed them.

DEKs win, average men remaining at rout: 70.

So, in a TOTALLY even fight, where only their stats matter, the DEKs CRUSH the Noble Swordsmen.

In other words Attack > Defense, which should have been obvious to anyone.

There is something more going on in the animations then any one of us can claim to understand. You cant give DEK the NS animation and call it a fair fight. It the beginning of the file is says that the soldier stat is actually linked to another file that has not yet been released.... I dont think we can really start to understand whats happening until we see whats in that file.

Here is the description of the line of code that we are moding:

; soldier Name of the soldier model to use (from descr_models_battle.txt)
; followed by the number of ordinary soldiers in the unit
; followed by the number of extras (pigs dogs, elephants, chariots artillery pieces etc attached to the unit)
; followed by the collision mass of the men. 1.0 is normal. [Only applies to infantry]

Here is what the unmoded line of code looks like:

soldier Dismounted_English_Knights, 48, 0, 1.2

In the descr_models_battle.txt file under Janissary_Heavy_Inf my lie the real "Secret of the Jannissary Heavy Infantry"... I cant find this file. Has it been released yet?

missed this in first post of the DATA files released?

BTW before you ask 'Where's the descr_model_battle.txt file?' - I tell you now - there is no dmb file used in the game.

I donat understand you dude. Yes there is.

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Originally Posted by JeffBag

To redmark,

I am pretty sure voulgiers have attack anims. Were you using the voulgiers or was the comp using them? Sometimes too, the AI just makes all the voulgiers into space cadets and they all stand there, voulges pointed up, and getting chopped to pieces.

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Maybe; it was the AI, as I was controlling the horse to walk into the Voulgier, to avoid a strong charge routing them immediately. Regardless, I do think other units are affected; just not been noticed because no-one would normally put them against cavalry anyway. I'll wait for the patch and see what's happening then.

@Scrap : I don't think that file has any clue in it. My guess would be it's just a list telling the game which 3D models , which 2D sprites and which texture files to use with that particular kind of soldiers.

(as an aside, for some reason, I always read this thread thinking of Me-262's :book: :laugh4:. JHI : Secret Weapon of the Turkwaffe !)

No you are wrong. Changing the the soldier name stat is causing major things to happen. This is all hidden inside that file. Please guys if you are not testing these things yourself, or are new to the conversation, try to understand what we are talking about first. I mean that in the most friendly way possible :P...

I should of did the quote thingy
here is a part of it

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Originally Posted by Epistolary Richard

Caliban from CA Oz has sent me the following data files to release:
BTW before you ask 'Where's the descr_model_battle.txt file?' - I tell you now - there is no dmb file used in the game.

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Now if there is no DMB it has to be somewhere
Where is it is what needs to be asked

Look, if you give the DEKs the Noble Swordsmen soldier, they use the SAME EXACT animation. Attacks are linked to animations in this game, so yes, it does make it an EVEN FIGHT.

What this tells us is simply that high attack and armor piercing weapons with low defense is better than low attack with a high defense.

Attack factor is therefore more important (By a lot) than defense stat in figuring out which unit would win.

But anyone who pays any attention to things would know that without having to lab it. I just did it because some people seem to be unusually thick here.

(If you need even better proof, take any given unit, copy the whole entry for it, rename it to make a new unit with the same animation and model and everything. Now give one 10 attack and 20 defense, and the other 20 attack and 10 defense. I guarantee you that the high attack/low defense unit will win by a landslide)

Ok now I understand what you were saying. Im not sure if I understand "no DMB file in the game" Maybe this file will never be unpacked.

Something feels awfully wrong about changing the soldier name variable. I think we need to be looking the appropriate lines of code in the newly dubbed "mystery file"...

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Originally Posted by Musashi

Look, if you give the DEKs the Noble Swordsmen soldier, they use the SAME EXACT animation. Attacks are linked to animations in this game, so yes, it does make it an EVEN FIGHT.

What this tells us is simply that high attack and armor piercing weapons with low defense is better than low attack with a high defense.

Attack factor is therefore more important (By a lot) than defense stat in figuring out which unit would win.

But anyone who pays any attention to things would know that without having to lab it. I just did it because some people seem to be unusually thick here.

(If you need even better proof, take any given unit, copy the whole entry for it, rename it to make a new unit with the same animation and model and everything. Now give one 10 attack and 20 defense, and the other 20 attack and 10 defense. I guarantee you that the high attack/low defense unit will win by a landslide)

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No Musashi, it might not be an even fight. The lines of code are the same for each unit I agree, but how do you know that the variables in the hidden lines of code are not multiplying by the units stats in which case yeah the code is the same but produce vastly different results. That’s just one example. We all keep calling it the “animation” but the animation is only ONE of the things effected by the mods we are making. Like I said you cant claim to know whats going on until you see the mystery file.

Because it's pure common sense... All that the DMB file did in past games was to tell the game which model and texture files to use.

In this game there is no DMB file (According to someone who should know)

What we do know is that ALL the combat stats for a unit have ALWAYS been in export_descr_unit.txt. There is NO reason to suspect this has changed.

But if you don't believe me, do the second test I suggested. If you create an IDENTICAL unit with slightly different stats, it's OBVIOUS that only the stats will determine which unit wins.

If you disagree with THAT you're just being deliberately stupid.

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Originally Posted by Musashi

Because it's pure common sense... All that the DMB file did in past games was to tell the game which model and texture files to use.

In this game there is no DMB file (According to someone who should know)

What we do know is that ALL the combat stats for a unit have ALWAYS been in export_descr_unit.txt. There is NO reason to suspect this has changed.

But if you don't believe me, do the second test I suggested. If you create an IDENTICAL unit with slightly different stats, it's OBVIOUS that only the stats will determine which unit wins.

If you disagree with THAT you're just being deliberately stupid.

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Indirectly calling me stupid with an if statement is lame. By changing ONLY the soldier name, which is what we have been talking about the whole time, is causing units ability to fight to change dramatically.

; soldier Name of the soldier model to use (from ; soldier Name of the soldier model to use (from descr_models_battle.txt))

It clearly states that the variable we have been changing (soldier name) is described in descr_models_battle.txt file! If this file is only graphical, why is it effecting the units ability to fight!?

You are taking this too personally dude. You don’t understand it, but don’t feel bad because nobody does at this point.

There's no disagreeing there from me, but I do believe CA gave these units such stats keeping in mind that they would use such and such animations.

Unit balance is twofold this time, unlike it ALWAYS WAS : now it's stats + anims, instead of just stats, with the stats tailored to the anims and fine-tuned with them, not abstractly.

Like Lusted said, JHI have awful stats and cost a mint, that is because their animation is über. Varangians have godly stats and relatively low cost because they use poor animations. Wether the Varangians or DEKs deserved to be a better unit or not is an entirely different matter.

What I am saying is : don't go by stats alone to determine what a given unit should be able to do or not do. It's a wrong outlook on things. Like Lusted said, unit price is a better indication of what the different head-on matchups will result in. DEKs cost less than DFKs don't they ?

By the way I have a BA in computer science and I am a professional .net programmer. My understanding of code and how it works is quite strong. The stupid crack is mealy showing your frustrations.

That's fine. I know lots of people with programming degrees who don't understand anything. Don't worry, you're not alone.

Again, the file is just graphical, and that comment (Like many of the comments in the file) is old and outdated. If you were to pay some attention you'd realize that many of those comments are from previous games.

What you're not understanding is that the way this game works, the skeleton determines the animations, and the animations determine the attack rate of the unit. The strength of those attacks is purely determined by the stats in the export_descr_unit.txt file.

You can keep on claiming we don't know that until you're blue in the face, and you're right, we can never be 100% sure that there isn't some little bit of code somewhere that does something we don't understand. But you can (And probably will) say that after we get access to the unpacker and you see the model allocation system, because we can never know 100% about anything unless we have access to the engine code itself, which we're never going to have.

What we can do, is test things and make obvious conclusions, like any scientist approaching an unknown thing.

And what those experiments are telling us right now is what I just told you: The stats are all in the export_descr_unit.txt file, and all that changing the "soldier" line does is set the skeleton and animation set of the unit.

Deal with it.

Grow up man. Any reasonable person can see you are frustrated and do not understand a thing i have said.

@Musahi: Now i have never so much as touched modding in a TW game before. BUT i have done som work on another game (DoW if you must know), and i've got a good grasp of basic logic.#

According to this line:

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What you're not understanding is that the way this game works, the skeleton determines the animations, and the animations determine the attack rate of the unit. The strength of those attacks is purely determined by the stats in the export_descr_unit.txt file.

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That only the stats matter and that the apperance, (and by definition animation), don't. Based on what modifying the Animations is doing to the kill rates it OBVIOUS somthing else is having an effect. Weather this is somthing deep in the engine or in some mystery file dosen't matter. It's there and it matters and we really need access to it to see how it works.

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Originally Posted by Carl

@Musahi: Now i have never so much as touched modding in a TW game before. BUT i have done som work on another game (DoW if you must know), and i've got a good grasp of basic logic.#

According to this line:



That only the stats matter and that the apperance, (and by definition animation), don't. Based on what modifying the Animations is doing to the kill rates it OBVIOUS somthing else is having an effect. Weather this is somthing deep in the engine or in some mystery file dosen't matter. It's there and it matters and we really need access to it to see how it works.

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Originally Posted by Musashi

That's fine. I know lots of people with programming degrees who don't understand anything. Don't worry, you're not alone.

Again, the file is just graphical, and that comment (Like many of the comments in the file) is old and outdated. If you were to pay some attention you'd realize that many of those comments are from previous games.

What you're not understanding is that the way this game works, the skeleton determines the animations, and the animations determine the attack rate of the unit. The strength of those attacks is purely determined by the stats in the export_descr_unit.txt file.

You can keep on claiming we don't know that until you're blue in the face, and you're right, we can never be 100% sure that there isn't some little bit of code somewhere that does something we don't understand. But you can (And probably will) say that after we get access to the unpacker and you see the model allocation system, because we can never know 100% about anything unless we have access to the engine code itself, which we're never going to have.

What we can do, is test things and make obvious conclusions, like any scientist approaching an unknown thing.

And what those experiments are telling us right now is what I just told you: The stats are all in the export_descr_unit.txt file, and all that changing the "soldier" line does is set the skeleton and animation set of the unit.

Deal with it.

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Exactly.

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Originally Posted by ScrapTower

It clearly states that the variable we have been changing (soldier name) is described in descr_models_battle.txt file! If this file is only graphical, why is it effecting the units ability to fight!?

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Perhaps it has more to do with the death/defence animation or simmilar? This is just a shot in the dark as i havent tinkerd with MTW moding myself.

But all that aside, from this thead and information we have all established that the actual unit attack animation is far more important then the unit stats, since some units can do instant KO's even if there stats are relitivly low on paper (halberders come to mind). So my question is, are we looking haveing to possibly have extreams in unit stats in order for units to be effective or perhaps have"defenitive role"? I mean as it is now, dismounted knights have values that are way higher then spear milita (rightfully so) but the fact that there is such a huge gap in values but not being the RTW legion chohort type kill all unit is makeing me wonder what values could be possibly left other then unitstats, animations and some other detials that govern a fatial hit to a non-fatial hit ( i dont recall the name but its dicuessed on this thread also) ? Perhaps someone can explain this to me, since im still not entirely clear on how exactly a crossbow bolt can land a "hit" on a unarmored unit, and not down it, or how 2h axe units are not as effective against sheild/spear units when historically and pratically speaking, an axe is designed to split armor and wooden shieilds. Also has anyone been able to use this new peice of reliased info to figure out the guard formation and loose vrs tight formation in terms of why loose seems to be more aproprate for some units increasing (or at least not diminishing) there melee effectiveness?


Again im not one to mod myself like many people who read these forums, but im still amiss as to what is actually going on with all of this. Any new theroys?

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Originally Posted by TheFluff

Also has anyone been able to use this new peice of reliased info to figure out the guard formation and loose vrs tight formation in terms of why loose seems to be more aproprate for some units increasing (or at least not diminishing) there melee effectiveness?

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CA said that they placed heavy penalties on clustered and "blobbed" up units as it deminishes the units ability fight. Perhaps the reason some units fight better in loose formation is a side-effect of this implementation.

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Originally Posted by Musashi

Also, to settle the DEK vs. Noble Swordsmen debate once and for all... I gave DEKs the SAME animation as the Noble Swordsmen, and labbed them.

DEKs win, average men remaining at rout: 70.

So, in a TOTALLY even fight, where only their stats matter, the DEKs CRUSH the Noble Swordsmen.

In other words Attack > Defense, which should have been obvious to anyone.

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You're too concerned with the stats on the stat screen. I've played World of Warcraft and many other games, both RPG and strategy. DPS is generally more important than pure damage. The attack you see on the stat screen, to me, seems like how powerful a single attack is from the unit. So, units wielding these big, huge 2H weapons would have a more powerful attack, all else being equal. However, you can't convince me that somebody wielding a small dagger would have the same number of attacks per second than somebody wielding a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE axe.

Maybe CA erred in showing just attack on the stat screen instead of the equivalent "dps". However, I'm sure the difference in animations exist for a reason and that they were calculated in the costs for the unit and the overall balancing. What you're trying to do here is basically make somebody swing their HUGE, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG 2H halberd with the same speed somebody else swings their lighter weapon. If there's any bug or oversight on CA's part, it's not showing the attack speed to players. The stats and animations are fine, except for the cavalry thing.

That huge axe should be no slower than a huge two handed sword.

PS: Halberd using troops actually attack very fast. People were complaining about me giving the DEKs the halberd animation because it's "too fast" for their taste. Go actually watch the Varangians fight and then come back here and say they're fine.

PPS: If you want to see what the DMB file would be sorting out, you might want to look at descr_skeleton.txt

It's fairly obvious that the "Soldier" entry is a label in a file which simply points the game engine at the skeleton to use... The skeletons obviously define the animation set... If you look through descr_skeleton this is obvious.

Actually, two-handed weapons might be swung faster than one-handed weapons since you are using two hands on them, giving them leverage and twice the normal amount of force used to control weapons.

The thing is, both sides are almost starting a flame war over a tiny modification that is purely done according to taste, and for a single player game, for himself. Everybody, lets cool for a moment please?

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It clearly states that the variable we have been changing (soldier name) is described in descr_models_battle.txt file! If this file is only graphical, why is it effecting the units ability to fight!?

You are taking this too personally dude. You don’t understand it, but don’t feel bad because nobody does at this point.

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There's no difference between killing a unit and the graphic in this round of M2TW. This has been mentioned 1000's of times by CA trying to sell this game "the units now have combination attacks and kill moves". It would seem, and the evidence backs this up that the graphic file has in it a list of kill moves, pary's and combinations. This would be why some units like halberds have such high killrates, they have a fast kill movements. We will have to wait to be sure, but considering CA's adiment pre release raves I'm betting the graphics and unit kill rates are inexurably linked and that there isnt a seperate file that is effecting this.

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So, units wielding these big, huge 2H weapons would have a more powerful attack, all else being equal. However, you can't convince me that somebody wielding a small dagger would have the same number of attacks per second than somebody wielding a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE axe.

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No, simply wrong here. The Danish axe was one of the fastest weapons developed during the dark ages. It would be used in a constant swinging figure 8 motion. It was only slow when it was stopped. Granted there's very little that's actually going to stop the danish axe, it's going to go through most armor and body's and it's shaped so it will merely glance off and not stop. It's sad that the norse and rus axemen don't have a special formation as they actually used.

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Originally Posted by BigTex

There's no difference between killing a unit and the graphic in this round of M2TW. This has been mentioned 1000's of times by CA trying to sell this game "the units now have combination attacks and kill moves". It would seem, and the evidence backs this up that the graphic file has in it a list of kill moves, pary's and combinations. This would be why some units like halberds have such high killrates, they have a fast kill movements.

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I agree, there seems to be an attack speed or something now.

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Originally Posted by BigTex

We will have to wait to be sure, but considering CA's adiment pre release raves I'm betting the graphics and unit kill rates are inexurably linked and that there isnt a seperate file that is effecting this.

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I dunno. I think there is something is in that missing text file. Im thinking we will be able to mod attack speed in that file or somthing similar. Even if there is nothing in that file, we all agree that there is somthing in the soldier name variable that is dramatically effecting the units ability to fight. We need to find out why.