STW mod

Yuuki and I have been working on finishing Barocca's STW mod so it would come as close to original STW as possible. But we have done a few corrections to improve the balance (yes even old STW wasnt perfect heh)

Of course the mod cant get precisely like the good old days as valor upgrades cost more. But the basics with a nice rock-scissor-paper system is there.

The mod also contains the MI units so the question is if we should make a original STW era AND a MI era. One big difference between STW and MI are the cav speeds and muskets (but that also depends what MI version we are talking about)

So right now we basically have STW but with the MI units included and slightly better muskets. As MTW is different we can never have something precisely like old STW/MI but we can get close.

All the old STW maps are in the process of being converted and we still need to look at a few units so its not finished yet.


CBR

Let me know when its finished I played the old beta version last year and it was pretty good so I have high hopes it will be good, you can mail me CBR m8 or leave a note at the Takiyama site if you need me for any testing games.

Just please make sure spears kill cav a major thing missing from MTW that did happen in Shogun.

I hope the community trys it out be nice to play some games whilst we waiting to see if CA bother to try and sort out Rome.

MizuSp00n :charge:

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Originally Posted by CBR

The mod also contains the MI units so the question is if we should make a original STW era AND a MI era. One big difference between STW and MI are the cav speeds and muskets (but that also depends what MI version we are talking about)
CBR

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No need to ask such a question when the answer is obvious ~:). The fact that MTW allows multiple eras is begging the finalisation of such a mod. You could even use multiple versions of the MI stats, if there is a disagreement about them ~;)

I was under the impression that the Mongol units have not been included because the Mod was never finished??
As far as I am aware they still have yet to be completed so I would question the worth of adding 'MI', afterall it only introduced Japanese fantasy units besides.
Unless the Mongol units are finished and added I honestly don't see the point, considering the popularity of Mods with the community and, of course, when the majority are playing RTW now anyway. Sad but true

.....Orda

It was necessary to change the projectiles.txt file to get STWmod guns and Community mod xbows properly adjusted. MTW only supports one projectiles.txt file at a time, so it breaks compatibility with MTW/VI. However, we will include a projectile file swapper so players can go back an forth between the mod and regular MTW/VI. Swapping projectiles.txt requires that you restart the game.

Another advantage of changing the projectiles.txt is the removal of upgrade discounts on ranged units which are specified in that file. This means you won't see ranged units being pumped up into high quality melee units. You also won't see cheap units like yari ashigaru getting pumped up into super units because the valor upgrade is more expensive in MTW, and the weapon and armor upgrades are properly calculated using the current value of the unit rather than being computed from the base cost as was done in WE/MI. The samurai archers do retain the modest melee capability they had in original STW which is just a result of going back and using original STW combat stats for everything. All the movement speeds are the original STW speeds with the exception of cavalry archers which are slightly faster, and now equal speed of the yari cavalry.

You can't sell off valor because all units are purchased at valor 0, and the 20% tax on more than 4 of the same unit is still there. We have no control over those features. All unit costs are 2x the original STW costs, but we moved naginata (425) and yari cavalry (475) to the closest multiple of 100. We are experimenting with the warrior monk at 10% higher cost than in original STW, and several units such as naginata and yari cavalry have +2 morale enhancements. Right now playing at 10k or11k morale feels ok with no valor upgrades. Units will rout when used poorly and fight well when used properly. You don't have super units like v3 cmaa with 14 combat points clobbering your spears. This could open the door to modest weapon and armor upgrades since you don't have to spend the money on valor just to raise morale. We want to make final determination of tweaks such as these morale changes by battle testing with anyone who wants to try it.

The spears do work, and they work very well. Yari samurai have 2 defensive combat points, but they +8 attack points when fighting cav. The best cav is heavy cav with 8 combat points (2 attack and 6 defense). So, the yari sams have a +2 attack point (40%) advantage against the best cav. Naginata cav with 6 points and yari cav with 5 points will get chewed ver fast by yari sams. There is also the yari ashigaru which although weaker and lower morale is faster than yari sam, and quite dangerous to cav.

Seeing as the arquebusiers were not popular in STW we opted to depart from original STW by not including that unit. Instead, the Portuguese teppo in STWmod has the same characteristics as the musket in original STW. The Japanese teppo, which was a better made teppo, is 50% better. This unit would not be included in the STW era, but would be in the STW/MI era along with the ninja, kensai and naganata cav units, possibly slightly faster cav and possibly archers with additional ammo if players wanted an era that offered somewhat more dynamic gameplay. The Japanese teppo as currently configured is half as strong as the musket in WE/MI v1.02, and very vulnerable to cav charge. It can even be successfully charged by a yari samurai when in 3 ranks. The yari sam will loose about 15 men crossing no-man's land.

sounds very good.

However, i always thought that the musket unit in STW was the one huge unbalanced unit in the game, which made MP very boring, so i'm a bit concerned that you're modelling it on the MI musket unit that was more powerful than in the original STW - if anything a less effective unit of musket than in STW would be better (and more realistic IMO).

The STW mod musket is not as powerful as the MI 1.02 musket, not even close heh. Both the kills per salvo as well as less ammo means it needs a lot of support. Archers will kill them too.

Although I have only played a bit MI 1.02 I definitely thought muskets were too powerful. They will be a more important element in an army compared to old STW but still just a support element. They are nice in helping to stop a bad rush but wont survive long if not supported.


CBR

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Originally Posted by KyodaiSteeleye

sounds very good.However, i always thought that the musket unit in STW was the one huge unbalanced unit in the game, which made MP very boring, so i'm a bit concerned that you're modelling it on the MI musket unit that was more powerful than in the original STW - if anything a less effective unit of musket than in STW would be better (and more realistic IMO).

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We are not modelling the teppo on the musket in MI. It's modelled on the musket in original STW. The musket in original STW in 3 rank rotating fire gets 1 kill per volley on a yari samurai at max range, and that's what the Portuguese teppo in STWmod gets. The Japanese teppo gets 1.5 kills per volley. A WE/MI v102 musket gets 3 kills per volley on the same target. So, all the guns in STWmod are weaker than WE/MI. Some people call WE/MI STW, but it's not the same. When I say original STW, I'm referring to STW v1.12 which was released in Jun 2000 and patched to v1.12 in Oct 2000. WE/MI came out in Aug 2001, and the v1.02 patch for it was released in Nov 2001.

Wow! Sounds Great ~D

To me STW was the best era, and MTW the best engine, so I couldn’t be happier that the development of this mod is continuing. Personally I find it more interesting than anything that may happen with RTW now or in the future.

I am thinking that this mod could very well attract a class of more serious players. And hoping that those dedicated warriors will form a multiplayer community all it’s own. We’ll see!

Some questions (some more serious than others ~:) ).

1. I think I read somewhere that due to the difference in the way that the two games handled colors, that the units have some sort of speckling problem. Is that true (or am I thinking of some other mod), and if so, what would be needed to fix that?

2. I miss the sound and smoke of the guns we had before. Somehow to me they got lost in MTW. I could always tell when the range units engaged and see where the activity as, even if I was doing something far from that action. I miss that. Any hope of getting it back?

3. I read on the other forum that Elmo was working on a multiplayer campaign for this mod. Was wondering if there was any news on how that was going?

Thanks guys for all that you’re doing. I will certainly do all that I can to help.

Off to post the link to this thread on my Clan forum :charge:

Well Tomi, I think alot of us would agree that STW was prolly the best in the series by far. To answer your questions:

1.There isnt any speckling, at least to my knowledge, however some colours can be shared by both teams(I just played a 1v1 with Yuuki and both our armies were red, however Im sure that wouldnt be a hard to fix, prolly get CB to fix that sometime soon*sounds whip*)

2.As far as sound and smoke from musk, the STWmod has both, you just need to make sure the pyrotechniques setting is turned on in MTW/VI options and whoahla bye bye lame MTW arqs/pav; hello to the cav killen good ol boys!

3.Dunno, about the campaign, but im sure Elmo will let peeps know if he has the time to put something like that together again.

With that said, the STWmod is pretty cool(the stats are as close as your gonna get to the original), I have been enjoying it. Im also in the midst of retexturing all the old maps from Shogun to MTW, so not only will you be able to play the next closest thing to STW but also rumble on those ol' stompin grounds. Thas right, 4v4 UPROAR! Also big props to Barocca for putting the meat of this mod together, well done m8 ~:) .

Plus it gives all of us something to do until a patch is put together for Rome.
Cheers
Kryp ~D

BTW , that is original ShogunTW stats(1.12), NOT MI stats(1.02). The plan is too release that in another mod.

Ok, step by step from the beginning.

I have STW_Mod_BETA5_20nov (71.936KB file) downloaded from:

http://www.3ddownloads.com/strategy-...ETA5_20nov.zip

Is this version the latest to date?

I am to add this to MTW patched to v1.1, with VI added and patched to v2.01, right?

As there is no readme, are there any special instructions for installation, or just extract to:

C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War?

Thanks in advance ~;)

That does not include the changed files we have made but yes that is the latest of Barocca's STW mod. We have only updated the deadpage coords file as well as unit and projectile file.

Just unzip the file into a temporary folder first. Open your MTW folder (VI 2.01) and then copy the the contents of the STW mod folder into the MTW folder. You can see it contains many of the same folders as in the MTW folder. If it asks to overwrite folders your doing it right ~:)


CBR

Looks like we are getting something positive out of this mod at last.

So, are we going to have a mod that will allow us to play...
stw/vi..mtw/vi..community mod.. all in one bundle?

Would be nice :duel:

I believe that this is something the community would support.

Jochi

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Originally Posted by Tomi says

Some questions (some more serious than others ~:) ).

1. I think I read somewhere that due to the difference in the way that the two games handled colors, that the units have some sort of speckling problem. Is that true (or am I thinking of some other mod), and if so, what would be needed to fix that?

2. I miss the sound and smoke of the guns we had before. Somehow to me they got lost in MTW. I could always tell when the range units engaged and see where the activity as, even if I was doing something far from that action. I miss that. Any hope of getting it back?

3. I read on the other forum that Elmo was working on a multiplayer campaign for this mod. Was wondering if there was any news on how that was going?

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1. Barocca did a previous graphic mod for we/mi that had some speckling on the yari samurai sashimono, but that's fixed in the STWmod. The only speckling I've seen in STWmod is on the white head veil that the teppo wear under their jingasa helmet, but it's barely noticable. A very nice touch that barocca included was the waving in the breeze effect on the samurai archer sashimono. The purpose of the sashimono provide the ability to distinguish at a glance allied armies from rival contingents, and it servers that purpose extremely well in the game. Samurai Heraldry

2. The sound, smoke and flash from guns in STWmod is very well done, but the smoke doesn't hang in the air and drift away in the direction of the wind as it did in original STW. Up close the guns crack when they fire and boom when they are far away. You can see the smoke from a distance, but it fades quickly. I'm not sure if that can be changed.

3. Elmark is proceeding to make the map of Japan on a website. His campaign only requires one player per clan, but players could team up with trusted friends and play one clan. He is going to allow players to use STWmod to fight the battles if all the players in the battle agree. Otherwise, the battles will be resolved by AI vs AI on his computer.


Jochi,

Right now we contemplate an STW era and a Community mod era in one package. To play MTW/VI you will have to swap out the projectiles.txt file and restart the game. It would be possible to include two STW eras: one with original STW v1.12 units, and one with WE/MI units and perhaps slightly more dynamic gameplay. I'm not sure about that though because it might be confusing, and the two eras would be competing for players.

I've gotten it, it has a nice feel to it, its familiar.....rather than trying to make it as much like STW as you can, take the best MTW has in the way of game improvements and add them to what we know will work from STW....unit size for infantry should be bigger ect (unit size and stats are not the source of imbalance, but rather the cost of the unit in relation to its stats), also as RTW multi is a flop I wont be playing it, hopefully people will want to do STW mod in multi?

Aregato Mizus

I'll d/l this mod soon and give it a try (very busy with life ATM or it would already be loaded).

:bow:

ichi

i'm delighted development of this mod is continueing. good work. :charge:

Tomi,

There is quite a lot of speckling on the warrior monk. If you use -ian and zoom the camera in, it's very apparent. From a distance, it's not noticable. Also, if you watch the archer animation closely, I think it's out of sync with when the arrows are loosed. After we get the STWmod stat released, I'll look into correcting these graphic issues, and send the corrections to barocca if I'm sucessful. Maybe we can get the STW music and battle sounds into STWmod.


Lahll,

The unit sizes in STWmod are 60 men except for three special units: hatamoto, ninja and kensai. The combat stats of the units are either exactly the same as original STW or very close to it. This seems to be working out ok, and a 2v2 on Buzen the other night played very much like battles I had there in original STW. The same attacking strategy that worked in the original STW worked in STWmod, and Buzen is not that easy to attack. Maybe the spear units could be slightly larger since cavalry seems slightly more effective in STWmod than it was in original STW. The cost structure is 2x original STW with some adjustment downward on ranged units because you cannot sell off valor in STWmod as was commonly done with honor on ranged units in original STW. The average cost of all the units, not including the three specilized units, is 690 florins. We find playing at 11,000 florins is working well, 11,000/16 = 687.

I think we are getting close to releasing this STWmod stat which will just overlay the stat in STWmod beta 5. Based on more widespread player feedback we can make further adjustments on it if necessary. This stat is designed to recapture original STW gameplay as much as possible. There is another STWmod stat which utilizes varying unit sizes and more special unit types which could be offered as a separate era. I had thought about making two eras representing STW and WE/MI, but offering two eras that are quite similar doesn't seem like a good idea. So, it will be one STW era, and anyone wanting to play an original STW type game can just not use the WE/MI unit types.

This mod sounds good. Is it finished and if so, how can I get it? I'm going through multiplayer withdrawl thanks to this crap Rome Multiplayer. I would certainly enjoy giving another multiplayer a try. I never played STW online but I loved the campaign.

yukki,... hummm why not the best of stw and mtw, instead of stw remade (which we could all just reinstall and play still), I also posted somewhere that guns were pitiful (1 to 4 killls that archers got) dont work in rain and have no combat skills...while i think they were too powerful in old stw, they would be a useless unit in multi. A good r/p/s would have them better than archers (but you better bring archers also in case it rains). Also am I correct the range of them is greatly reduced? makes it easier for rushes? Agree? Also cav archers speed to too fast, the current run speed means they dont need to be protected (they can escape yari cav easy), so who would take yari cav? Just take cav archers.

A lot of vets say STW v1.12 had the best and most balanced gameplay of all the official Total War game stats, and I think that's true. There is no online server for STW that's up 24/7, and not everyone who owns STW v1.12 can run it on their new computers. Barocca made this nice graphic STWmod for MTW, and all that's needed is the STW stat to bring back that gameplay. There seems to be an endless go around on what constitutes the best gameplay, and some excellent mods for MTW never got used much. So, this isn't an attempt to make something that's better than the original gameplay. If it stays close to the original, I think more people are likely to use it. The army purchase in STWmod is quite different than STW v1.12 because you buy units at valor 0, the valor upgrade is a lot more expensive and there is a 20% tax on purchasing more than 4 of a unit type.

MTW does bring some benefits. There are no battlefield upgrades in MTW, so no super units near the end of the battle. Valor upgrades are expensive, so cheap units can't become more powerful than elite units for less cost. Routing away from the threat which is a feature that many players asked for in STW, although, some players don't like this feature. Another requested feature, the possibility to pull cav units out of melee, although this is hard to do with 60 man cav units. Guns which for some reason don't have the extreme back killing they had in STW. No red zoning. No Benny Hill routing of ranged units if they still have ammo. Better method for calculating the outnumbered morale penalty. Dropped player's units withdraw after finishing their last orders. Money cheat check. No deployment cheat. Can take the same clan more than once. Can't accidentally attack your ally. Replays with full unit info on mouse over.

Varying unit sizes doesn't necessarily provide a benefit to gameplay. What's important is that the unit performs well when used properly and doesn't perform well when used improperly, and that proper use is readily understandable after a few battles. A test in original STW v1.12 custom battle shows H2 no-dachi (300 koku) beating H2 yari samurai (200 koku) in 45 seconds killing 51 YS and loosing 27 ND. In STWmod, the same tests shows V0 no-dachi (600 florins) beating V0 yari samurai (400 florins) in 45 seconds killing 49 YS and loosing 30 ND. If the yari samurai were given more than 60 men, it would alter the ND vs YS relationship. There would be a ripple effect through the stat if changes were made to the no-dachi to compensate, and the gameplay and balance would move away from STW v1.12.

It's true that guns don't fire in rain, and there is enough rain periodically in MTW to stop them from firing. We could make them fire in the rain, but that was a consideration in original STW and muskets still got used. The rain in MTW doesn't last for the entire battle the way it could in STW, so it's not as much of a risk to buy them in STWmod. If most players want them firing in the rain, we'll change them so they will, but I'd like to wait until after players try the stat for a while. The the guns in STWmod are doing well enough to justify their cost, and the Japanese teppo can hold it's own vs archers and is cheaper. The guns in STWmod are not exactly like the guns in STW v1.12. The Portuguese teppo is exactly like the muysket of STW v1.12, but the Japanese teppo is 50% better than the STW v1.12 musket. There is no unit in STWmod equivalent to the arqubusier of STW v1.12. The arq was rarely used in STW multiplayer.

Right now there are two speed classes of cavalry: heavy cav (HC and NC) at 20 run / 22 charge and light cav (YC and CA) at 24 run / 26 charge. It's true that in original STW v1.12 CA was in the slower speed class, but it was most often used with honor sold off to cheapen it's price. It would be faithful to original STW to drop the speed of CA to the slower class so that it can't escape from YC. I'm inclined to do that, but I thought there were complaints that CA should not be as slow as HC because they were light cav. We could drop the price of CA to reflect the honor sell off and drop the speed.

I'll post the latest STWmod stat soon so players who are interested can try it with their STWmod beta 5 download. We just have to run some battle tests with the special units: hatamoto, ninja and kensai which are untested at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

I was under the impression that the Mongol units have not been included because the Mod was never finished?? As far as I am aware they still have yet to be completed so I would question the worth of adding 'MI', afterall it only introduced Japanese fantasy units besides.

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That's true there are no Mongol Era units in STWmod. The new Sengoku Period units introduced in WE/MI v1.0 were not well balanced. We have tried to make the naginata cav fit in with the STW v1.12 cav units so that it serves a useful purpose without unbalancing the game. The ninja and kensai are there along with a new hatamoto unit, but as it stands they are all expensive. Without the battlefield upgrades, small units don't gain the boost they would have gotten in WE/MI, and are thus less effective. Even if we drop the price a bit, it's going to be difficult to use these units in such a way that makes them cost effective. I think their use will remain highly specialized. Players could also make a rule not to use the WE/MI units if they only want original STW units in the game.

Thanks for this, really looking forward to play - However I have the italian version of VI on an english version of MTW - is this a problem??

BTW, I think the Naginata Cavalry was the missing piece in STW cavalry, which use was quite limited. However, NC were overpowering: both YC and HC beat them but in real terms against infantry and guns the NC was the natural choice. There wasn't a real difference between NC killing a no-dachi and a HC killing one, in fact probably the NC would kill it faster although the HC would lose a few men less.

How did you balance it out?

Upgrades were too cheap in STW/MI and AFAIK 8k-10k was the standard in MI and that allowed lots of upgrades to be bought.

In this mod lesser units can no longer be upgraded to make them better compared to more expensive units. And you dont have enough money to just buy the most expensive units. NC are cheaper than HC but not as good.


CBR

Yuuki / CBR,
Is there a latest build thats available for testing (where is this "STWmod beta 5")? I know a few other peeps (Wolves ~D :charge: )that wanna give this a go.

Space

ps ah just saw that link above.

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Originally Posted by Tera

Thanks for this, really looking forward to play - However I have the italian version of VI on an english version of MTW - is this a problem??

BTW, I think the Naginata Cavalry was the missing piece in STW cavalry, which use was quite limited. However, NC were overpowering: both YC and HC beat them but in real terms against infantry and guns the NC was the natural choice. There wasn't a real difference between NC killing a no-dachi and a HC killing one, in fact probably the NC would kill it faster although the HC would lose a few men less.

How did you balance it out?

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I don't think barocca's STWmod writes over any language files.

HC (1200 florins, 2/6 att/def) beat WM (1100, 5/2) in STWmod. YC (1000, 2/3 + 4/0 anti-cav = 6/3) beat HC. NC (900, 4/2) loose to HC, YC, WM and YS (400, 0/2 + 4/4 anti-cav = 4/6). ND (600, 5/-2) will loose to HC, NC and YC. NI (800, 0/6) will loose to HC and NC, but will beat YC. So, the YC fits inbetween the ND and NI while the NC fits inbetween the NI and WM. We can use the cav charge to fine tune things. As it stands right now, the NC may be doing a bit too good vs the WM. We could take some off the NC charge to place it more equally between the NI and WM. Alternatively, we could increase the NC cost to 1000. That would leave room to increase the cost of NI to 900 as it might be too good at 800 considering that the WM is 1100 rather than 1000. I was also thinking of moving the NC from 4/2 to 3/3 since it has more armor than a YC so you would think that armor would help its defensive capability. However, it's a faster infantry killer at 4/2 so that distinguishes it more from the HC. It would still be a faster killer at 3/3, but only 20% faster than HC.

Into all of this we have to place the CA (900, 1/2). Right now it's set at 2/1, equal in speed to YC and has 1 more charge than it had in STW v1.12. The charge is still pretty weak even with that extra point. I think it does have to go back to 1/2 (att/def), but equal speed to YC is interesting because it makes CA more of a threat to YC which has no counter other than YA and YS. It's also lightly armored, so I don't know why it would be as slow as HC, but that's how it was in STW v1.12. There is a speed inbetween HC and YC where CA could be placed which is another possibility. HC and NC are 20/22 (run/charge) speed, and YC is 24/26. The only difference here from STW v1.12 is that charge is +2 run. I never understood why cav run speed and charge speed were the same in STW v1.12. Placing the CA at 22/24 (run/charge) would make it about 10% slower than a YC, and give YC a chance of catching CA if they gave chase. For comparison, chiv knights are 20/22 and alan merc 24/26 in MTW.


Spacecadet,

Don't base your final opinion on STWmod on the stat that comes with the beta 5. The no-dachi run speed is too high, the nag cav is rather weak and cav charge values are much higher and cav melee stats reduced from what they were in STW v1.12. The guns are not right either.

Thanks for the replies Yuuki, very helpful, some questions:

1. From what I gathered, the japanese teppo in STWmod will be 50% more powerful than the original musket in STW1.12, yet still very much inferior to the musket in MI 1.02. Isn't that more or less the power of the musket in MI 1.03? I wish to see them in action.

2. Archers. In STW1.12, archers were weaker than in MI 1.02, at least in practice. One of the good things in MI 1.02 was that archers could really be used effectively together with guns, and they complimented each other. Archers had a better range,higher rate of fire and could do massive damage to low-armour units (like WM and ND). Guns were morale shooters and although having a slower rate of fire did massive damage to practically any unit. Cavalry-Archers as shooters were also very powerful in MI 1.02, which increased their value. CA-heavy armies were a rarity in STW1.12 but became almost a standard in MI 1.02. They were immensely useful.How are archers implimented in STWmod?

3. I'm worried about the No-Dachi. In STW 1.12, there was place for the ND in most armies along with WM because there was no NC, HC was less useful than in MI and YC didn't beat them and/or wasn't as good "allround" as ND. In STWmod, you're saying that HC, NC and YC will all beat no-dachi. Where is the place for the no-dachi then? Warrior Monks are a much better choice as shock-infantry and in STW1.12 high-valoured ND still weren't as strong as WM - unlike in MI 1.02 where everyone took high-honoured no-dachi instead of WM.

If I want to beat HC, I take YC or YS.
If I want to beat WM, I take HC.
If I want to beat NI, I take WM.
If I want to beat NC, I take HC, YC, WM and YS.

The NI is at least a tank-unit with high defense, the no-dachi has low armour and low defense. Where is its place?

4. In MI 1.02, at least from my tests, HC still beat YC and lost only to YS while still being the most expensive unit. Since WM were poor in 1.02, the HC needed this power to still be useful. In STWmod, the YC beats HC. This is a good thing as long as HC is still useful, so make sure that only the HC can beat WM, and that NC doesn't offer a better solution most times. The NC is an offensive cav-type, which should beat most infantry types excluding spears and warrior monks. In any case, NC should have higher morale and higher attack, so it's still extremely useful in most cases. STW depended MUCH, MUCH more on shock than MTW. I wish to see if in practice NC is still the better option by a large margin...or not.

Thx

Tera

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

There is a speed inbetween HC and YC where CA could be placed which is another possibility.

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I havent had much chance to tinker with the STWmod yet, but I think that may be the solution. Lahll has a good point that if cav archers are too fast, they can not be countered. I dont think YA and YS are a counter to them, because they can get right up close to YA and shoot them to death--at least till they run out of ammo.

I am somewhat torn between having cav archers that can be caught and cav archers that cant. On one hand, from a realism perspective, the whole idea of cav archers is to NOT get caught. Thus, when a general is training cav archers he will want to arm them very lightly and give them fast horses; not necessarily strong or brave horses, but fast ones.

Then again, this same general knows that at times he will have to face cav archers, so he will want to have some very fast light cav that can catch them. And he will also want some very fast cav for other uses on the battlefield (breaking up ranged units that stray too far from their spears, etc.)

The question is, as a Sengoku general-- would you give your fastest horses to the cav archers, or to the light cavalry (YC)?

I think the answer is fairly clear--First, I think you will not "waste" your fastest horses on a unit that is likely to stand around and get shot at for at least part of the battle. Cav archers may have to stand and trade shots with other cav archers, or foot archers, and I wouldn't want to risk my fastest cav in that role.

The fastest cav deserves to die at full speed, galloping headlong to doom or glory-- meeting its fate either at the impact of a charge or driving forward into a hail of bullets. High quality cavalry that dies standing around like a pin cushion or running away (skirmishing) is wasted.

So, I think, if I had a pool of available mounts and I was in charge of deciding which horses my units would receive as mounts, I would give fast low quality (low strength, skittish, etc., but fast) cavalry to my cav archers, I would give the very fastest cav, medium in quality, to my light cavalrymen, and I would give my slowest, strongest, bravest mounts to the heavy cavalry corps.

That maximizes the battlefield value that you are getting out of each steed and ensures that each unit has what it needs to do its job. The cav archers can easily outrun the heavy cav, but they need protection from light cav.

I think it would make for a fine balance.

Dion,

I did make that change to cav archers. So it's now HC and NC at 20 run, CA at 22 and YC at 24. NC has the highest morale (8), HC is next(6), YC is next (4) and CA is lowest (2). The CA has 0.4 accuracy and the SA 0.6 just as they did in STW v1.12. There is a slight possibility that all the cav should be 2 points less in morale. I'm going to wait for feedback from players on that.

So, the YC can catch the CA, but it's not going to do so as quickly as it could in STW v1.12. CA will be an annoyance to NC since it's faster than NC. The cav prices are now HC (1200), NC (900), YC (900) and CA (800). We are trying to keep costs in multiples of 100 so that's why YC isn't 950 and CA 850. The monk is moved back to 1000 (2x the original 500).


Tera,

I always thought of the no-dachi as the flanking inf unit. It was often given an honor upgrade in STW v1.12 and used in a more frontal fashion. We made it a little less expensive in STWmod. At 500 you can give it a valor upgrade which will make it a 5 combat point unit for 850. The monk is a 7 combat point unit costing 1000. I don't think this makes STWmod a NC/WM/ND rush game. Without an upgrade it's only got a net 3 combat points compared to the 2 combat points of the YS for 400. If it's a problem we'll put the ND back to 600, but right now it doesn't look like it will get used if it costs 600.

The Japanese teppo in STWmod is weaker than the musket in MI v1.03. We're talking no more than 1.5 kills per 20 gun volley on YS at max range. The reload is the same as muskets in STW v1.12, i.e. 21 seconds (7 seconds for 3 rank revolving fire). The Portuguese teppo comes in at 9 kills for 10 volleys on YS, and that is exactly the same as muskets in STW v1.12. Neither gun type fires in the rain. Right now guns have ammo = 20. That's 7 minutes of firing to use it all. Guns had ammo = 40 in STW v1.12. I don't know if players want that much ammo. Archers have 36 arrows. In MTW, dead men take their ammo with them. In STW v1.12, ammo was 28, but it was redistributed from the dead to the men still alive in the unit. So in a shoot out where you are taking losses, the 36 arrows in STWmod could easliy be less total arrows fired than in STW v1.12. This is going to affect guns in the same way, and maybe the 20 ammo is a little light. However, it does give another tactical consideration if there is the possibility of running out of ammo during the battle.

Archers and teppo have the same range in STWmod. Archers and muskets had the same range in STW v1.12 as far as I can tell. We never actually saw the projectile stat for STW v1.12, but we did for WE/MI and they were the same range (5000 = 2.5 tiles = 100 meters). Arquebusiers did have less range (4000), but they are not modelled in STWmod.

If NC is too strong at 900 we may have to raise the price to 1000 or possibly drop the charge to 6. Right now NC have the biggest impact with 8 + 4 = 12 charge. That's better than HC with 6 + 2 = 8 and YC with 8 + 2 = 10. YC vs HC, NC or CA will have 8 + 2 + 4 = 14 charge.

The STWmod is set for 10k. If someone takes a rush army of 4 each NC/WM/ND that will cost 9600 leaving 400 to spare. A counter army to that could be 4 each YS/HC/SA for 8400 leaving 1600 which could buy 2 CA or 2 NI or 4 guns or 3 guns and 1 WM or 2 guns and 2 ND etc.