Multiplayer balance adjustments

LongJohn,

Can any adjustments for multiplayer playbalance make it into the first patch? Some suggestions could be made at this time, but they are preliminary. They are:

1) reduce the rate of fatigue substantially (50%?) since everone's units are becoming exhausted long before the end of a battle under even the best weather conditions which means it takes a long time to finish a battle since you can no longer run.

2) increase the speed of cav at least 10% and possibly even more (20%?) as long as it doesn't become too fast to handle.

3) Not sure about this, but possibly raise the overall morale a bit (+2?) since we are now purchasing units at valor 0 instead of valor 2.

Also, can the game be changed to load modified stats when you enter battle as was done in WE/MI? In MTW, a restart of the game is necessary to load a different stat but the pregame check is being done on the external stat file. To test this Tosa and I used a modified stat online. He restarted and I didn't. Although the pregame check allowed me to join his game, I went out of sync once in battle because my game did not actually load the modified stat. We verified using the F1 screen that Tosa had the modified stat loaded and I did not. We repeated the test twice.

I'm not at all adverse to making minor changes, but you haven't made much of a case.

1) As far as I can see fatigue generally works fine. I assume the exhaustion you talk about occurs in 8 player battles with lots of dicking around. If not please describe the conditions and tactics.
If you're battles are dragging a bit, my best suggestion would be to use a time limit. This is much more viable now, because the defender no longer wins automatically in mp. See the readme for details.

2) How would this improve the game, except for those who like to run around and frustrate their opponents.

3) If I change the morale, then that'd mess up all the unit costs as low morale units would no longer be so brittle.

4) Loading the stats isn't my departmnet. I'll enquire about this, but I suspect this won't be deemed a good use of time.

one other request i have, along with the less fatigue and slightly higher morale, is to make the game speed slider so it can go slower. yup. i want to turn the game speed down.

currently, it's a bit difficult to keep track of and click for 16 units, plus any re-inforcements one has to handle. with men being scattered more in games now, what with chasing the routing men all over and the slightly confusing color arrangement, it gets quite difficult to keep track of and manage one's entire army at the current game speed.

dont get me wrong, i love the way the men rout now, but it does cause more confusion when chasing and units can get spread out quite a ways.

this could also possibly help in multiplayer games where slower modems and connections would have a better chance at a level playing field, since, ostensibly, the same amount of action would be occuring in a longer period of time, thus making lag less of a factor. for multi games, simply make the game speed whatever the host sets his at and unless everyone agrees to it, it cant be changed, even by the host once the game starts.

in the real world, if i'm a general, i've given my men battlefield orders. i dont have to follow them around or click where they shld go or set up way points for them, i simply say, 'circle around the enemy from over there and attack his flank'.

along with an overall reduction in speed, could we also add in a 'slo-mo' feature for replays? pause works fine, but a slow motion feature would allow for better analysis during the replay.

personally, i'd like to see the game speed slider go as far left of 'normal' as it does right, but even a 50% reduction would be great!

and one last point here, a slower speed would also help clans, or anyone, train new people. i remember first playing shogun and going 'holy sh*t, this is too fast. how do you guys keep track of all this stuff?'. frankly, i still do ;) a slower game speed would allow folks to ease into things a bit better.

i suppose i could edit all the unit stats to a 50% reduction in speed, but that just fixes it to one point for one person and you've still got to convince others to use those stats. a slider setting, preferably that could even be done from the host's set up screen in multi, would be optimum, along with the one in the game, of course.

thanks for being here and listening.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

LongJohn,

Thanks for the response.

1) I am thinking of 3v3 battles, and if you are in one of the wing positions and succeed in defeating the army in front of you, your units will be exhausted after chaising off the routed enemy units. This means a long period of waiting before you can hope to effectively help an ally on the other wing. One thing I tried only once which didn't work well was not chasing my routed enemy and instead forming up to move across to the other flank. It didn't work well because my emeny rallied many units and kept attacking me from behind.

Another situation is in a 3v3 where, due to the terrain, a flank attack by two armies is best. This happened in a 3v3 in Poitiers with myself at left, GilJaysmith at center and RTKPaul at right and all three defender on the plateau on a fine day. To avoid a trebuchet on the defender's left we decided on a right side attack even though it's steeper there. GilJaysmith wanted to stay at center and RTKPaul and I were experienced attackers, so I moved from the left flank to the right of GilJaysmith while RTKPaul went to deep right. Paul attacked, I attacked and Gil attacked in an echelon type of attack and we took the plateau. Now I'm sure both Paul and I were fatigued by the long marches, but we were careful to walk and not run until the final attack up the hill. We took the position, but I think two defenders were relatively inexperienced which contributed to the success. Now are tactics like that really viable against relatively equal opponents or does the fatigue rate work against you so much that it makes the direct assault the better choice?

I think playing with a time limit could be counterproductive because the attacker may have to hurry to beat the clock and thus incur more fatigue. Possibly a small reduction in fatigue rate would have a noticable effect without upsetting the gameplay in other respects.

2) I can see that, in general, the cav walk speed is less than the infantry run speed, and it did cross my mind that this might be an intentional gameplay decision to allow infantry a chance to catch exhusted cav. Speeding up cav would shift the playbalance away from infantry and towards cav, and it could easily become a cav dominated game. If Magyar with an all cav army defeated GilJaysmith, it suggests that cav is already strong, and I don't believe we want all cav armies dominating the game. I haven't gotten that impression from my games where infantry seems to rule the battlefield and most cav seems rather expensive, but it's still very early to tell. One new factor over STW/WE/MI is that cav can more effectively disengage and this enhances the cav's effectiveness, although, the cav units do have less men. Due to the rate of fatigue, you do have to conserve cav's energy and not go running all over the map.

3) Since morale is included in the cost calculation then it can't be changed without a complete rebalance. Bad idea. This is easily adjusted by playing at higher florins, and it's possible that some may like playing low morale games as they did in original STW.

Hi Krae,

Remember, you cannot just slow down the unit foot speed and have the same tactics because fighting speed and reload times are not also slowed. You really need that host speed option to do it correctly.

I'm still not convinced about fatigue. If your opponent has fought so hard that all your units are exhausted, and you couldn't keep a single one in reserve, then it seems reasonable that he's bought some time for the rest of his team.
Anyway you can recover from exhausted to very tired quite quickly, and can even recover whilst walking. Very tired units introduced into the enemy's rear are still very effective. Also he has no idea about whether they're exhausted, or daisy fresh.

Generally, I think you're worrying too much about the effects of fatigue. The fatigue from walking accross the map is quite small compared to that incurred while fighting. Remember that the fatigue shown for the unit is the average. When it's fighting you've got a bunch of guys at the back not getting that much fatigue, and the guys in the front line getting tired very quickly. Theoretically the defender who's sat still all the time has an edge, but it's less than you think.
As for whether to go round a hill and attack up the gentle side, or attack up the steeper front face. Well there has to be a choice. If there was zero cost associated with going round the side, then it'd be a no brainer.
Personally I don't worry much about fatigue when I play. I walk unless there's a good reason to run, and that's about it.

I'm not keen on increasing the run speed of horses, but I haven't really thought that much about walk speed. It's slow because horese walk slowly, but if I have time I'll look and see if it could made faster while still being in keeping with the animation.

I'm inclined to agree with you that maybe some of the knights are a little expensive. But there hasn't been much feedback about unit balancing issues, so I haven't changed anything so far. One thing I will say is that playing with heavily upgraded units will make cavalry less effective, as it reduces the importance of the morale impact they have on infantry.

what I think is interesting is the game speed slider. I do believe that the game has been sped up a tad from STW, and that STW could probably have had a slightly slower speed setting for my particular stately taste http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif. At the games present speed, it can be very frantic when moving into combat, and I for one have problems co-ordingating my men unit-for-unit on the battlefield - I think this will come with extra game-hours, but I also can't help thinking that the game speed is actually a little high anyway. Even a 5% - 10% drop in standard speed would be welcomed (I would ask for an option for the multiplayer host to chose his game speed before he begins a game etc, but that is something to ask for later I think, when other more important things have been done...)

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"Situation excellente. J'attaque!"

[This message has been edited by Whitey (edited 09-10-2002).]

LongJohn,

Ok. Played a few 3v3's tonight with the concept that the battlefield is a huge place and I shouldn't be able to get from one side to the other quickly. In other words, I can see my ally loosing on the other side, but I can't get to him in time to help without exhausting my units. That approach did keep my units above exhausted. I confined my activities to a relatively small portion of the battlefield after which I regrouped and walked toward the center where another encounter could take place. This kept my units at either quite tired or very tired under dry conditions. It's important to remember that very tired units are suffering not only a combat penalty, but also a morale penalty, and the morale will be rather fragile on most of your very tired units. So, you can operate adequately if you take it slow which was my original point. Big battles are going to take quite a long time to play out.

Concerning cav speed: the strat guide gives 0.28 as the conversion factor for game speed to meters per second. The example given is infantry walk speed of 6 converts to 3.72 miles per hour. The fastest cav is run speed 24. That's 4 times faster or 14.88 miles per hour. Realistically, wouldn't light cav be around twice that fast or at least somewhat faster? Most of the armored cav in the game run at speed 20 which is 12.4 miles per hour. It does seem that the way cav is modelled in the game is on the slow side. This also means that heavy cav doesn't get very far before fatigue sets in. Most players are going to gallop their cav when the fighting starts, and I already stopped using heavy cav because they fatigue so fast.


[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 09-11-2002).]

for my Khan fatique-rate also is a bit too much. even realisticly spoken. some marching , a charge a small combatround some pursuiing and your unit (cav or not) is exhausted. esp horses tire to fast down.

although agreed that the way its handled now will make u think twice to do some running tactics.

time limit is out of the question cuz that only put some stress into teh game which 99% of the players not want to add.

Hi all,

I'm not so sure about the fatigue issue.... IF i play on a desert map, everything fatigue's real quick and i don't think recovery is fast either!? I agree with that, fighting on sand is very very tiring.

When playing on other maps i make sure i don't run everwhere. Quite often when i rout my opponent in MP and SP i will nOT chase after them the first time. The chances of getting disorganised and very tired units is far too great a risk if for any reason your enemy rallies. PLus, if your playing 2v2 or more and an ally needs any help there's no point in chasing one of the enemy forces around the map!?

Like longjohn says, if you have a period of walking or even standing then your units will actually recover relatively fast. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif Why not use the time when your enemy is routing to rest, gain some energy, reform your position and assess the situation, at least for the first time they rout?

In terms of the price of cavalry, however, i totally agree that they are far too expensive. Especially considering the multitude of very good anti-cav units that we now have....
billmen
halberdiers
spearmen
pikemen
chivalric foot knights
order foot knights
urban militia
feudal sergeants
chivalric sergeants
nubian spearmen
saracen infantry
muwahid infantry
italian light infantry
the swiss units
etc

So, i would concur in a reduction in price to compensate. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

I also think cavalry, in general, could be a little faster. The heavy cavalry are almost as slow as running infantry! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

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=MizuDoc Otomo=

Konnichiwa,

Did I read that right Yuuki? Don't help your teammate on the other side of the field?

Longjohn:

I increased cavspeed with 30%, I wouldn't advocate that as it will be too fast for most players, but the animation for such cav is better than the one with the current speed (I can't help to think that some animations even show cripple horses). Any increase between 10 and 20% for all horse and camel speeds should be fine. A slight speed increase like this would also 'fix' the fatigue for cavalry a bit, as fatigue is based on traveltime and not speed (didn't doublecheck this in MTW, but it does work like that in STW).

There certainly are balance issues with cavalry. Yuuki wasted my V0 gothic knights with V4 Alan Mercs. Conditions: iron board, frontal attack, nice day, western europe. The Gothics are much more expensive. This bothered me at first, but I started to make the analogy of STW JHC vs YC.

A study of stats, using the official excel files used by CA shows this:

First of all: lances and heavy lances provide no attack vs cav bonus, the YC from STW that worked so well disappeared. This already troubled my mind.

V4 Alan merc cav 886 florins:
3 + 4*1=7 melee
1 + 4*1=5 defence
6 charge
4 + 4*2= 12 morale
3 armor

V0 Gothic Knight 975 florins
4 melee
7 defence
4 charge
8 morale (!?!)
9 armor
armor piercer

The Alan mercs didn't beat the Gothics because their lance gave them a cav killing bonus, but because they are 1 combatpoint stronger. They'll likely do better vs any other unit than the GK too. They lack the armor pierce, but everything else is a pro: cheaper, more morale, faster (the most important property of cav), less armor (don't fatigue that fast, armor does protect vs missiles but the slow speed makes that they are for a longer time in the LOF), more charge.

I made a change in the Tables sheet of the excel file: changed 2 melee for the light lance to 1 melee, and 0 attack bonus vs cav into 1. Each valour upgrade not only gives +1 melee +1 defence +2 morale, but also +1 attack vs cav (it's good that the special skill is upgraded). The cost for the unit decreased from 175 to 150. Thus it gets more for less money! This doesn't feel right.

I also tried 1 melee and 1 def vs cav. The price now increased from 175 to 200 koku. This does feel right, not that I want to make an expensive unit.

I'ld suggest to enhance the Rock Paper Scissors by making the lance more of an anticav weapon. 0 melee and 2 cavattack and maintain the 175 florins (either by adjusting the formula to calculate the weapon cost or the modifier for the unitprice-Unit Def column Z).

The V4 alan merc would have only 1 combatpoint less than the V0 GK, and would even hurt it harder by having 2 + 4 specific anticav points. It's still not enough. The merc should be more brittle than an elite knight, not having more morale.

There are about 10 later knights (one of those is the GK)and 17 good-tribal (Alan mercs). I didn't check the other later knights, so these might need a fix as well anyway, but it seems economic to change the later knight (changing 2 units a bit to get a better RPS also seems beter than making 1 extreme). Change morale from 8 to some 12 (change the cost calculation in Tables from F78/3 to F78/4.5).

Fixes that won't require cost adjustions.

Of all cavalry, the slow cav is really slow. Slow cav 12, cav 20, fast cav 24. The heavy cavalry fatigues because of the armor and also fatigues because it takes him longer to reach his point B. Makes sense, but it's a bit too punitive. Make slow cav 9 walk, 16 run, 20 charge.

This still wouldn't make a GK I would use, but it would at least justify it's usage in some cases.



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

I'm a little wary of increase in cav speed. Yes they are a little slow, but increasing their speed would increase the overal speed of the game and I wouldnt want this game to go all MI (where gamespeed ruined the game IMO).

Yes the fatigue level definately needs reducing although I take on board the idea of reserves... something to try...

Overall though (and I aint being patronising) but congrats on a truly awesome game longjohn2 and co.! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

EDIT: good point about lancers Tosa.

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Clan Kenchikuka

[This message has been edited by NinjaKilla (edited 09-11-2002).]

Konnichiwa,

I'ld, again just my opinion, say that other things are more urgent to be fixed than unitbalance, since unitbalance is something users can do themselves. Fixing bugs and/or adding minor features (such as a fatigue slider) are things we can not do ourselves.



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

Like i said earlier the main heavy cavalry knights are just too expensive. With Royal Knights you also only get 20, they're a total waste of money!!

Improving the speed of the slow (heavy) cavalry and camels might be also needed, but i'd leave the other cav as they are for the time being, until more is known. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

TosaInu,

As I recall, I still had 20 Alan Merc cav left and your Gothic Knight was almost completely destroyed and routed. As LongJohn points out, the low morale of the cheap units is dropping out as a disadvantage if there are enough florins avaliable to pump those units to a morale level of 8 or more, and the low moral was one of the reasons they were cheaper in the first place. Units with low morale but decent combat emerge as superior to their more expensive counterparts. The trend in MTW is to play at 10K florins/player so you can get the morale back up to where it was at 5K koku in STW, but this does allow considerable pumping of the cheaper units. Try finding something that can beat a V4 Byzantine Infantry or V4 Almohad Urban Malitia unit for the same cost. Possibly a solution is to remove morale from the base unit cost calculation which would lower the cost of the knights. However, I'm not sure how big a contribution morale is to cost and it might shift things too much in favor of the knights. In any case, the situation in MTW is much better than in WE/MI due to the valor 4 limit and the cumulative nature of the cost of upgrades. Right now I'm thinking that 10k florins is too high as a standard for battles, and I'm going to start playing at 7.5K florins to see how that works.

What I mean by not helping your ally is that you are not helping by arriving exhausted only to rout and lower you ally's morale. An exhausted unit could help by it's presence without fighting, but it's quite likely to run away when it gets near the enemy.



[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 09-11-2002).]

Konnichiwa,

I agree that 10k allows too much upgrading, however the morale at 5k is quite brittle.

I'ld also say that H5 units didn't cause problems in STW (except for guns, but that is a different story). MTW only has max V4 and that's already causing problems equivalent to all H7 units in STW. I haven't examined all units (even not played all of the german faction) but it looks like some unitproperties are a bit overpriced -> some units get overpriced.

The idea of limiting the number of upgradelevels was to prevent 'superashis'.
I do not say that this game has superashis, I did say that the Alan merc cav made Gothic knights obsolete because it does almost everything a GK can do (mostly even better) at a lower price and it's much faster too.

If I recall right, CA said that some units were out of place and asked for our views. I gave mine and proposed a 'fix'.

-Alan merc less (0) raw melee and more (2) cav attack.
-Slightly increase their Valour 0 cost: 200 florins would make them 1013 at Valour 4.
-Gothic knights more morale while maintaining their cost.
-Slow cav faster.

This small changes will result in an Alan that can kill GK even easier, but would make the GK better than the Alan in other areas.
(This is not how I would change these units: I'ld make Alan -1Attack -1Def 5Cavattack 250 florins, GK 16 morale.......... but these are small adjustions that seem to fit in the official stat).


I agree Doc, let's speed up the slow cav first, and wait and examine the others a bit more first. After all, their speed is close to STW WE/MI ones. Decreasing the fatiguerate is a must though.

Yuuki, what's the use of a teamgame?


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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

I havent had a problem witht the fatigue rate so far, my units fight long and hard. After awhile in combat, they do get uneasy and if almost at the breaking point I will pull that unit back to rest. Very rarely have I lost simply because my units were wore out.

I don't think speeding up cav is good idea either. The slower cav units are that way for a reason, i.e. more heavily armoured. It would be very inaccurate for Royal Knights, or Knights Templar to run as fast as Feudal Knights, or Sergeants.

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http://ufp1.netfirms.com/images/centsig.jpg

[This message has been edited by Centurion VII (edited 09-11-2002).]

Centurion VII,

Well I wouldn't speed up just a few types. You'd have to do a uniform increase to all the cav.

TosaInu,

The Alan Merc is probably cost appropriate if you play at 5K florins. That way the morale is low enough to limit how aggressivly it can be used. The same thing happens to Byzantine infantry. I tried that unit at 5K florins the first week of release and it consistently ran away. Then I encounted it at V4 in a 10K florin battle, and I couldn't even scratch them with my H3 English billmen. It was the most one sided thing I've seen yet in MTW.

Team games play out differently in MTW than in STW. You've got to stay quite close to any ally you want to cooperate with. You also need a period of rest before subsequent phases of the battle. A lot of defenders become frustrated when an attacker stops to rest his troops. I've also had allies who I'm supposed to attack with attack to soon because they expected my to arrive sooner, but i'm just walking. Even though I see that they went in too soon, I can't start running and be very effective when I get there. I also know that, if my troops are fatigued from fighting and running and pause and I wait long enough, my army will come to the same fatigue equilibrium point as the defender who has just been standing the whole time. So, there is a lot on incentive to wait, and it can take quite a while to get back to quite tired which is where most recovering units top out.

Lots of discussion here. Apologies if my reply misses bits of it.

TosaInu
Ok lets talk about GK vs Alans first. Frankly I think your example shows a well balanced system. The Alans are about 10% cheaper, but get a slight edge in the combat (the numbers left at the end are irrelevent, as once the balance tips the fight gets very one sided ). They are also faster. On the other hand, they have almost no armour, whilst the GK are the most heavily armoured unit in the game. The also have a very useful bonus against heavily armoured troops, that is factored into their cost, but counts for nothing against lightly armoured Alans. Given there are around 14000 individual pairings you could make, having any particular comparison costed correctly to within 10% seems as good as you could reaaonably expect to achieve.
I also have no problem with the morale disparity either. Alans are supposed to be the best light cavalry you can get, and a valour 4 unit represents a unit of battle hardened veterens. The valour 0 knights on the other hand are green as grass, first time in battle. Anyway, both units have excellent morale, and at this level it really only affects how long the unit will stand around getting slaughtered.
OTOH Alan Cavalry do seem to be a popular choice, so maybe a 25 florin price hike would be in order.

Your idea about giving some of the cavalry bonues against other cavalry is interesting, but would introduce a new mechansim, and as such I don't think it's appropriate for a patch. Making lance armed cav less effective against infantry would IMO not be a good idea.

And to quickly correct a misunderstanding, anti-cavalry bonus factors do not increase with valour. Not sure where you got that idea.

The slow cavalry represent cavalry charging at the trot instead of the gallop, so I think there slow speed is reasonable. I also want to maintain a clear distinction between faster and slower types. I'll take a look at the stats and see if there's room for a slight nudge upwards though.

From an aestetic point of view it'd be nice if the cavalry were a little faster, but I don't think the animations warrent it. I'm also not convinced it would improve gameplay. Maybe an extra 10% is worth considering. I'll think about it

Puzz
Thinking about the battlefield being a big place is good. One of the things the Total War system tries to do is to give an impression of a much bigger battle than we can currently simulate. Some of the effects such as fatigue or shooting distance, are scaled to simulate this. They try to give the effect of big battle, rather than the moderate sized skirmish that current computers can manage.

I think you're figure of 30mph for light cavalry is way too high. These are horses bred for strength and stamina rather than speed, carrying a warrior with a bunch of weapons and armour, probably not in the best physical condition due to the rigours of campaign, and operating on a bumpy, quite likely churned up battlefield. My guess (and it is a guess) would be more like 15-20mph.

I also agree that 10,000 florins is too high. If upgraded units are still too powerful, maybe we should think about increasing the cost of a valour upgrade to 55%


Magyar
Pursuing may cause cavalry to tire, but history is littered with examples of cavalry that pursued too long and hard, and couldn't return in time to affect the main battle. Again maybe a tweak could be considered, but I see no case for a major change.

Whitey.
Your desire for a slowmo speed is noted for the future ( and some other people have suggested something similar ) but won't be in the patch.

DOC
Royal knights are indeed a waste of money for MP. They're included for strat map purposes. I'm inclined to agree that maybe knights could be a shade cheaper.

I haven't made any decisions whether to do anything at all about unit balancing yet, although anything that's going to go in the first patch will need to be decided in the next few days. I'll tell you what I'm thinking may be worth doing though, and I'd appreciate your comments.

i) Increase cost of pavise units
ii) Increase cost of spear units, or maybe reduce their defence a shade.
iii) Make the more expensive cavalry a little cheaper.

In particular why are the Kataphraktoi and Gothic Knights so much slower than the other heavy cavalry?

I'm liking the proposed changes of lowering Spear defense a tad and making Cav a bit cheaper.

Together, the balance might be about right. As it is now, I agree, Heavy Cav just doesnt seem worth it. They perform fairly-poorly against an awful lot of units that cost a fraction of their cost. If you are trying for the flanking, the lighter cav seem better.

Overall, I think its on the right track with the above changes.

My $.02

Talenn

Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
Lots of discussion here. Apologies if my reply misses bits of it.

TosaInu
Ok lets talk about GK vs Alans first. Frankly I think your example shows a well balanced system. The Alans are about 10% cheaper, but get a slight edge in the combat (the numbers left at the end are irrelevent, as once the balance tips the fight gets very one sided ). They are also faster. On the other hand, they have almost no armour, whilst the GK are the most heavily armoured unit in the game. The also have a very useful bonus against heavily armoured troops, that is factored into their cost, but counts for nothing against lightly armoured Alans. Given there are around 14000 individual pairings you could make, having any particular comparison costed correctly to within 10% seems as good as you could reaaonably expect to achieve.
I also have no problem with the morale disparity either. Alans are supposed to be the best light cavalry you can get, and a valour 4 unit represents a unit of battle hardened veterens. The valour 0 knights on the other hand are green as grass, first time in battle. Anyway, both units have excellent morale, and at this level it really only affects how long the unit will stand around getting slaughtered.
OTOH Alan Cavalry do seem to be a popular choice, so maybe a 25 florin price hike would be in order.[/QUOTE]

VEry good points. Comparing AC v GC isn't solely a basis for changing either unit although as you say a 25 florin price hike might be a good idea nonetheless.

Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
The slow cavalry represent cavalry charging at the trot instead of the gallop, so I think there slow speed is reasonable. I also want to maintain a clear distinction between faster and slower types. I'll take a look at the stats and see if there's room for a slight nudge upwards though.[/QUOTE]
In particular why are the Kataphraktoi, Gothic Knights and why camels so much slower than the other heavy cavalry? Camels are actually quite fast believe it or not! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif Otherwise I'm generally happy with the movement speeds although i wouldn't be against a minor upward change.


Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
I also agree that 10,000 florins is too high. If upgraded units are still too powerful, maybe we should think about increasing the cost of a valour upgrade to 55%[/QUOTE]
Yes, i play with 6K florins and don't have so much of a problem. YEs increasing the cost of valour, weapon and armour upgrades might be a good idea. Valour is so much more powerful an upgrade than the other two.


Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
Magyar
Pursuing may cause cavalry to tire, but history is littered with examples of cavalry that pursued too long and hard, and couldn't return in time to affect the main battle. Again maybe a tweak could be considered, but I see no case for a major change.[/QUOTE]
I would consider an increase in time for cavalry to fatigue, cavalry tire a lot less quickly than infantry in genreal. Horses also have the best aerobic potential of any mammal.... trust me, i'm a doctor. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif


Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
DOC
Royal knights are indeed a waste of money for MP. They're included for strat map purposes. I'm inclined to agree that maybe knights could be a shade cheaper.[/QUOTE]
Ok, maybe they could be increased to 30 or 40 sized units. Same with the Ghulam Bodyguards. I also find their 20 unit size in the campaign annoyingly pathetic, but maybe that just because the way the Ai uses its leaders.

Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
i) Increase cost of pavise units[/QUOTE]
YEs absolutely. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
ii) Increase cost of spear units, or maybe reduce their defence a shade.[/QUOTE]
Even more absolutely!! These guys are superpowers on the battlefield. Either option, or maybe even both would be greatly desirable. Certainly option 2. They also tend to be 100 men units which certainly helps in making them the UBER units they currently are. There are so many spear/polearm units which are anti-cav in the game that these guys need either toning down or a price lift.

Quote Originally posted by longjohn2:
iii) Make the more expensive cavalry a little cheaper.[/QUOTE]
HEar hear, these guys are way overpriced considering they are all smallish units (40 men) and a low cost spear/pike unit or a mid range polearm unit will make absolute mince of them. As mentioned above there are currently an awful lot of anti-cav units, especially in MP battles, and therefore an overpriced small-sized heavy cav unit is not really that useful.

Thanks for taking the time to inquire and help longjohn. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
[/B][/QUOTE]



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=MizuDoc Otomo=

Quote i) Increase cost of pavise units
ii) Increase cost of spear units, or maybe reduce their defence a shade.
iii) Make the more expensive cavalry a little cheaper.[/QUOTE]

i) agree, pavise and non-pavise units shouldn't cost the same

ii)agree, especially for those 100 men units, thats 2.5 times the size of calvery or elite infantry units. and IMO, the spear bonus against cavs should only work when they are holding formation, and only effect on the cavs in FRONT of them, not behind them as well.

iii) agree, those 600+ florin cavs are almost useless in MP.

another thing, if swiss pikemen are only producable in one province, they shouldn't be allowed in MP.

Konnichiwa Longjohn,

Thanks for answering this.

And to quickly correct a misunderstanding, anti-cavalry bonus factors do not increase with valour. Not sure where you got that idea.

F1. I purchased V0, V1..V4 Spearman and (att) and (def) increased with each valour. Is that a 'bug'?


The Alan is cheaper and performs better (+1 combat), not specific vs other cavalry but against all units. That's not perfectly balanced ihmo.

The Alans have better morale (makes them fight longer) and are faster. Indeed, the GK are better armoured, but that armour value doesn't help in hth, it only protects vs missiles. Due to their low speed they are longer exposed to fire. So, the extra 6 armor isn't that 'cool'. Ihmo, the drawbacks of this unit outweigh the pros.

The armorpiercing, how does that work?

Increasing the cost to upgrade valour doesn't seem like a good idea: people will play higher florins. It's better (I understand that this is also more work) to balance those units that cause problems (you make the upgrade for the 'bad' units 5% more, but also for the 'good' ones).

I wish I had invented that thing of anti cav cavalry (I might be a CA coder then). STW had this (Yari Cav, MHC), MTW doesn't.

It is actually not my worry if and what you change for the unitbalance, as anyone is able to create their own stuff (I will do, and want to thank CA for enabling this). I just point out where things may be wrong and suggest changes. I also say again that other tweaks than unit_prod fixes are far more important.

Good luck with the patch.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

No.... fatigue and cav speeds are the same for all....learn to adjust to what is avaiable to use, learn the game, when and where to use what.....If the developers will do this for one person's wishing then they will have to do it for every person who wants a change to be made to fit their playing style....

some units with sizes of 20 are fine. our Khan likes to take the bodyguards (whatever their value) for teh roleplaying value of having a more real general unit.

esp these small sized units are nice for the online campaigns as well.

about the pursuing by horses. Mongols pursued teh hungarian army from Mohi to BudaPest and there are no recording of tired horses.

and btw real camels are darn fast...

tweaking little things are ok, eventually u will never really been able to balance the game, people shouldnt try it. we can only correct some real misbalances.

overall our Khan is highly pleased with Long Johns input, knowledge and programming skill. Therefor all actions which may seem rude at his adress will be apologised for.
Esp. the routingsystem is welldone.

So many people are in total worship fo cav and want to make them "superashi" by increaseing their speed, reducing their cost, our reducing the combat ability of spears.....this is not balanceing the game but bringing it out of balance, Polar is suggesting cheaper heavy cav, and ineffective spears but brings all cav to the battlefield, Maggy and other people who attack mostly want to reduce the effects of fatigue, the first patch is not the time to jump to this, and the developers should not be swayed by the few who post suggestions in this forum but wait untill suggestions are voiced by the community as a whole....To make balanceing changes based on suggestions at this stage is more likely to reduce balance in favor of the playing style of the few, And not create the game intended....If you will recall MI as it came out had effects of morale reduced because people cried about their men running away in STW... So with all the new units we had, we used ashi and guns.....DONT make "balance" changes yet....

TosaInu,

Armor piercing attack bonus = (target's armor - 2)/2

The shield and horse armor are removed first.
So, on a low armored unit there is no bonus.

1dread1lahll,

That's exactly what longjohn is doing here. Nothing major IS talked of being tweaked, so far only obvious imbalances are in question such as those that lohnjohn has has himself suggested:

1. Increased cost for pavise
2. Increased cost and/or decreased defence of spear units
3. Decreased cost of heavy cavalry (knights)

These are the major ones that stand out so far in the time we've had to play MTW, especially for MP...

Obviously in SP we can do these ourselves. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

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=MizuDoc Otomo=

Lahll,

I only made this thread because I recall LongJohn asked for opinons, and there aren't going to be many patches. It doesn't matter if unofficial stats are made later because 90% of the players will only play the official stat. So, if any adjustments are going to be made with a chance for the whole community to evaluate them, we want them in the first patch. I expect they will only be two patches, and the last thing you want are unevaluated balance changes being made for the final patch. That's exactly the reason WE/MI v1.02 had the flaws it had.

However, I agree that playing style colors what people ask for. In the battle we had together last weekend I noticed you fielded 3 pumped Alan Merc cav, so you see the advantage yourself. My answer to this is simple. I'm playing at lower florins so the lower morale of the cheaper units cripples them as it's supposed to. You just have to keep your units together more rather letting them range out in individual attacks with exposed flanks.

LongJohn obviously won't change anything without a very good reason to do so, and I'm very pleased with the gameplay in MTW. Your front line will hold long enough for you to actually get in a flank attack if it's there. It's pretty clear only small tweaks will be made, so nothing drastic is going to change. I hope all cav army rushes are not currently viable. I'd be surprised if that's the case. If the proposed tweaks to spears and cav cost are made now, we have a period of evaluation and can have them adjusted back, assuming there is at least one more patch, if they prove to unbalance the game.

I do agree that people have to forget about how they played Shogun and adjust to MTW. I've already slowed down my gameplay style to adjust for the 'larger' battlefield. Personnaly, I don't mind spending 1 or 2 hours fighting a battle while I wait for my men to recover from fatigue. At the same time I've seen a lot of players just quit the battle because they don't want to wait, and I sometimes make my second attack too soon because I can tell the players are impatient to finish it up by what they are typing.

i make those suggestions to spears not because i like cavs, but because they are realistic and logical, and i believe thats how the game is supposed to be played. pikemen are defensive units, they are set to hold formation by default, they are supposed to stop enemy charge, not to charge at enemy. thats swordsmen's job. and if you let enemy get behind your men, you are supposed to lose, you shouldn't beat a knight charging you from behind.

oh and i think the 60 men spears are fine, its those 96 or 100 men spears that need more balancing. in this game number is usually more effective than quality.

longjohn2,

was there a certain florin value for a 16 unit multi game that was used as the more or less default value for balancing and if so, what was it?

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

My opinion is here: http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001559.html

IMHO, anyone complaining about 96 or 100men units isn't playing the game right. A 100man unit IS going to be more effective in battle and shouldn't have its effectiveness cut down so that a 40 or 60man unit can be its equal - that would be illogical. As for what I mean by "not playing the game right" - if you're sitting there with two 40man units and the enemy has a 100man unit, send one unit in to lock up that enemy unit, then send the other around its flank and stick them in the back with your swords/spears/pikes/whatever and they will quickly succumb.

I REALLY don't see ANY unit balancing issues needed in this game - I DO however see a few additional options that should be presented to the players such as the ability to set the level of Fatigue for a hosted game (No Fatigue, 25%, 50%, 75%, Full), ability to set Limited Ammo and Restrict Camera instead of having it default to your singleplayer game options setting, and adding another digit to the number of florin available for games. Because more player options means more people have an option that satisfies their preference without hurting others by just a mandatory change or adjustment we all have to suffer with.

And about adding another digit to the florin - this isn't even disputable, it's simply silly to restrict players to 99,999 florin, especially in 8player games. What if we want to have an 8player game with everyone fielding 16units of maxed out Swiss Armoured Pikemen? I'm not saying it would be fun, I'm just saying it should be POSSIBLE. There is no logical reason to restrict the max florin we can have, especially to a 5-digit number.
Sure, most of us will still play games where each player is alotted 5,000 florin, but there are some times when it just feels good to go all out and try something new. We don't even have that OPTION right now. Please at least allow us the possibility. Thanks.

[This message has been edited by JRock (edited 09-12-2002).]

jrock,

i like a wild florin game at times also, but wouldnt it be easier to simply make the florin alotment ..by person.. rather than ..by team..? that way, the current number would still be 99,999, but each PLAYER would get that amount rather than it representing the entire team. doing it your way each player in a 4v4 could get 250,000 florins... i think it would take longer to pick my army and add all the extras than it would to play the game :)

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

In STW, a single sword unit could defeat a spear unit. Sword units beat spears, spears beat cav and cav beat sword. It was a nice rock, paper scissors, and there was another one with ranged, spears and cav, and ranged beat sword even more decisively than they beat spears. Also, there was a less pronounced RPS within the cav units themselves between CA, NC and YC.

In MTW, you've got 100 man spears beating everything I guess. It takes two sword units to beat a spear, but I could just as well use two spear units to beat a spear if I'm going to use two units to do it. You've got the cav beating the ranged, but I don't know about the ranged beating the 100 man spear. You can do it with the crossbows given enough time, so there is an RPS there. It's probably accurate the way it is because it's my understanding that those spear and pike units did dominate the medieval battlefield once they were perfected until guns became strong. Some of the ideas expressed here might be an attempt to make the RPS stronger, and some players may be trying to use the units the way they did in STW. If sword units can't beat spears then sword units will dissapear from online play. If ranged units aren't effective enough then those will vanish as well, and then there will be no need for cav except to chase routers. That will leave spear dominated armies which may very well be accurate, but there are a lot less tactics involved in battles with just one unit class.

I think the key here is morale because that has been figured into the unit cost structure. I played some 6K florin games tonight and I had valor 2 spear units routing all over the place even though I kept them together. Low morale or the high cost of the swiss pikemen probably has to be the balancing factor here.

YEp Puzz you have it there in a nutshell. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

No-one's really arguing for the sake of realism here. Ordered pikes or spears were ruthless on the battlefield, however, they had to be ordered and in MTW it just assumes that all spear and pike units are ordered?! The basic primitive spear units were essentially just rabble with spears, only slighly better than militia and peasants. It wasn't until pikes hit the scene did cavalry take a major backseat on the battleground.

So therefore, one idea is that maybe the basic spear and pike units shouldn't be "formed" and only units like ordered foot, pikes and sergeant types should be "well formed" or "disciplined"?

Another possibility is that maybe spear units should only have 1 supporting rank rather than 2, and pikes 2 or 3 rather than the current 4!

Anyway, for the sake of gamplay we need a balance since as it stands everyone will just take plenty of the spear, pike and polearm units as these contain very effective all round troops. If they do, that'll reduce the need for cavalry unless for chasing routing troops and swordsmen because they're numbers are too small and spears still have too great an effect on them.

[This message has been edited by +DOC+ (edited 09-12-2002).]

[This message has been edited by +DOC+ (edited 09-12-2002).]

for what my Khan have experienced.

the big size spearmen units are very good, and the expensive smaller elite infantry are just to expensive for use in his army. better save the florins for the horses.

horse armies arent very strong or dominant. although he didnt tried it yet it might be so that an army consiting of sole combat units with 12 units and 4 cav (tank-concept) might be very strong over an morebalanced army with shooters.

Quote Originally posted by Kraellin:
jrock,

i like a wild florin game at times also, but wouldnt it be easier to simply make the florin alotment ..by person.. rather than ..by team..?
[/QUOTE]


From a coding standpoint, no, it's actually easier to leave everything the way it is and just add an extra digit to the custom game and to the multiplayer florin limits. But yeah, I like your idea as well.

It's true a few units like Order Foot are extremely strong and have a large number of men in each unit. Thing is, they're wonderful for holding a line as defense. They buy time. [PERHAPS what should be done is to reduce their Offensive stats, such as charge to make them more truly defensive units.]

For my infantry, I still take around 2/3rds shock troops (swords) and 1/3rd spears/pikes to hold the line while my shock flank and encircle to rout the enemy units.

I have my general as cav and maybe one other unit of cav, and sometimes if I have an extra 200florin I'll grab a crossbow unit.

I really find that enemies using crossbowmen and arm-molesters, and also longbowmen seem to always be more effective with them than I am with my missile units, so I tend not to take any unless I have a little spare cash and I'll take one to fend off the enemy missile units for a little while.

[This message has been edited by JRock (edited 09-12-2002).]

GAH!

Vanya has no problems with fatigue as it is now.

In fact, the current system promotes you walking your men to their destination and not ordering them to sprint all over the map. The latter was typical in Olde Shoggy. So, if you have your men sprint, expect to be exhausted. Vanya thinks this is realistic, and that its a great feature.

This penalizes those who just want to win by outclicking the enemy.

GAH!

I'm interested why you feel that fatigue works differently to Shogun. All the factors and thresholds are the same.
The biggest difference is that exhausted units can only walk. This was kind of in Shogun, but there were lots of exceptions. Now the only exceptions are routers.
I also tweaked the fatigue in rain and snow, but made the factors less to compensate for the greater armour being worn.

On the subject of balancing, please don't anyone worry that there are going to be major changes. There might, or might not be, some minor tweaks that's all.

Konnichiwa Longjohn sama,

You may have missed this:

And to quickly correct a misunderstanding, anti-cavalry bonus factors do not increase with valour. Not sure where you got that idea.

F1. I purchased V0, V1..V4 Spearman and (CAvatt) and (Cavdef) increased together with Melee and Def for each valour. Is that a 'bug'?

Edit: We haven't performed tests to verify whether the displayed numbers are correct, they are just there.


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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

Konnichiwa,

I don't know if fatigue is changed, not tested that (what we did test was the shield protection vs missiles: shields indeed protect the front and not (much less?) the back).

I'm not supposed to feel, but since you ask for it: fatigue does kick in because units rout in all directions. That's good and realistic but it also makes the chasers tire faster.

There may also be the morale effect -in STW H2-H4 units were the 'default', a monk had 12-16 morale. In MTW valour 0-2 are the default, best units have 8-12 morale. Units tend to rout and rally more -> tires.



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

hello again... yes i use more cav now that in stw.. and i like the Alan merc cav (for the speed) but i was saying no to greater improvements to cav... i like the spear units as they are, they are not super units and suffer greater penalities that other foot units when attacked in the flanks, cav get great attack bonuses attacking them from the rear... they dont need to to excell over spears from the front too...Unlike Maggy I also like the small foot units, their size makes them great flankers and mass attack units....

Concerning fatigue, when you played Shogun it was like playing on a highway. Movement of routers was foward or back in a straight line. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. So, routers are chased off in the shortest possible time. In addition, the chasing army is still together when they are finished chasing. So, you just regroup right there which is probably a great spot for moving into the flank of any remaining enemy armies. The fatigue in MTW doesn't feel greater to me, but several factors combine which makes fatigue require more management. They are greater path length chasing routers, more dispersion of your army if you do chase, bigger maps, heavier armor on some units, greater chance of rallying a tired unit and possibly more routing as TosaInu indicates. I play mostly in dry weather and I was concerned about the fatigue in stormy conditions being very restrictive to how you move around, but longjohn has reduced fatigue a bit in those conditions which I am glad to hear. Tests I did on heavy cav and naginata in heavy rain in WE/MI showed them going to totally exhausted just standing if you waited long enough. In a situation like that, you couldn't just rest and recover from fatigue. The heavily armored units are probably just bad choices for bad weather conditions.

I had a good 4v4 battle tonight attacking on a hilly map. Everyone on my team took it nice and slow, and it was the best 4v4 I've had since the game was released. One player on my team was a bit impetuous to make the final assault, but the rest of us were just able to hold him back from going in too soon. Uncoordinated attacks on a hill position are usually a complete disaster. Since I've adopted the slower pace, I haven't had any units become exhaused in dry conditions unless I was routed which causes your units to run all over the place and get exhausted.

I agree with Lahll that you want to use the small unit's better maneuverability to weave in and out of the larger units once they are engaged. The big unit front line is static enough while fighting to allow for some nice maneuvering with the small units. Going head to head with a small unit against a 100 man unit is probably a desperate measure.

Quote Originally posted by TosaInu:

F1. I purchased V0, V1..V4 Spearman and (CAvatt) and (Cavdef) increased together with Melee and Def for each valour. Is that a 'bug'?
[/QUOTE]

Hi Tosa. I'm cant access MTW now, but if I recall correctly the () figure is the net melee/def points vs cav. The bonus is in the difference of x(y), bonus = y - x. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy
loyal roach of Clan S.G.
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
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TosaInu,

The number in parentheses for vs cav is the combat stat that unit has when fighting cav. A V0 spearman has a base stat of -1/-1 att/def. With the large shield added that becomes -1/1 which is what the F1 screen shows. If fighting cav the stat in the () is used which is 0/5 since it gets +1/+4 vs cav bonus. I you go to V1, then both att/def get +1. So, both the standard stat and the vs cav stat will increase by 1 giving 0/2 standard and (1/6) vs cav.

As mentioned in other posts, I too think the pace of battles is too fast even with the speed slider full to the left. In a large game the experience turns into a pause/clickfest/unpause/pause/clickfest/unpause charade.

If a slow motion button can't be added to the next patch, can the slowest setting on the slider at least be made to run the game slower?

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http://us.f1.yahoofs.com/users/b3df3...9Lki9AGMAt4i2d

Frankly, these looks more like attempts to make the game easier for new players, then addressing any serious balance issues.

Troops do not get tired to quickly. When my troops go through a entire battle and most are only tired, I know it's ok. Battle is exausting, you know, and if this was changed there would be no point to considering the fatigue involved in charging across the entire map.

Cavalry do not need their speed increased. They are plenty fast enough to respond as long as you don't position them poorly.

Moral certainly doesn't need to be changed.

I agree with Faceless, although I find myself pausing the game once in a while in Custom Battles for one reason that has nothing to do with how long you've been playing the game:

*Basically, allow more movement in the camera - allow us to zoom out farther and rotate the camera down lower to get more of a top-down view on our units so we can click spots next to them more easily instead of accidentally double-clicking on the unit which pulls the camera out of position and FUBARs the commander for a few seconds until he can reorient himself.

Our clans shaman foresee a boring online future if the unitbalances aint patched.

every noob can field this

DANES
4 vikings
4 men at arms
4 fannatics
4 alanmerc cav

make a nice line, cav on the flanks and rush.

this army will beat many vets with balanced armies. many regular players must have noticed that in games your army is just "walked over" by others.

still we would like to give a demonstration online to longjohn since he is hard to convince and has his own reasons not to change things.

With situations like this there's really only ONE way to fix things.

CA have to come up with seperate multiplayer Florin costs for units.

Until this is done we will have cheese rushes and uber units ruining the game for those of us who like using balanced armies.

Austaro