ZX MiniMod Beta Released!

The ZX MiniMod takes a different approach from the popular big Mods like BKB, XL or Medmod.
ZX aim is to bring an AOE flavour into MTW by using the exisisting MTW+VI unit set in a more specialized way, increasing faction specialization and rebalancing the game.
http://microsoftusernetwork.com/hosted/zxmod.rar

Some features:

- Increased faction specialization

Now each faction has more marked strenghts and weaknesses, focusing on the importance of developing customized strategies shaped on what you have and increasing the importance of mercenaries/strategic troop production territories in order to increase your army efficency.

- Revisited crusading system

Instead of having crusading orders tied to each faction, now they work on their own "zones of influence", where you have to build your chapter house or walk with your crusade in order to acquire an order's services.
Crusading roster has also been increased, moving a few units (like Turcopoles) into this specialistic role and giving two units to the factions with less chances to get a chapter house into the right place (this is done because the AI cannot recognize them).
In order to balance it and avoid a crusader swarm to Byz and muslims now crusading price has been doubled.

- Improved strategic balance

Now underdog factions gets their chance, they've been given money/territory bonuses so that they won't cripple the economy with the heirs.

- Peasants role redefined

No more peasant armies, they now appear only in crusades (early only) and rebellions, where they belong.

- Refined dimounted units

Now all light and non-noble cav can dismount outside sieges, improved the dismounted version of many units so you'll always get something useful.

- Other minor changes

A few units have been slightly retouched so they won't be nearly useless anymore (like AG).

Also, dismounted versions of many units has been improved, giving an increased tactical flexibility to cavalry commanders.

- Looking for feedback and suggestions!

- Now with install/uninstall guide inside the ReadMe.txt file

HRE, Rus, Novgorod and muslim factions needs some more work, how can they be specialized in order to get more specialization from them?

Admins, i'm posting here because the modding board isn't very visited except for the big projects...

Sounds interesting, could you tell us a little bit more about this?

Quote:

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- Increased faction specialization

Now each faction has more marked strenghts and weaknesses, focusing on the importance of developing customized strategies shaped on what you have and increasing the importance of mercenaries/strategic troop production territories in order to increase your army efficency.

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Sure...
Each faction (a bit like in AOK) has one or more defined attributes that rules out the unit set.
For example the Danish are an Heavy Infantry faction.
What does this mean?
Their unit roster is mostly focused on heavy inf (like Landsmenn or Huskarles), while they are weak in most other aspects, especially cavalry (so you'll have to get heavy cav from the steppes or hire mercenaries), meaning that you won't get knights but only the crappy raider cav or druzhina...

Another interesting faction to try are the Italians.
Being a Militia and Late Tech faction they'll have to makedo with an overall low morale army and may need to bring numbers against an heavier foe, especially on early where they won't get anything better than MS and ILI...
Things improves a lot with time for them (halbs in high and other heavy units in late) but mercs and crusades will be a resource through the whole game since they don't get killer units.

On the opposite tactical side you'll find interesting the Hungarians, which are a low tech cavalry archer faction.
I found them great on early as with Szekely you can make a pincushion of most enemies and engage lighter foes, but their roster won't improve much in high and late.
Facing the Horde head-on with them is an unique challenge, as you'll have to use amored spears and get nothing heavier than feudal knights, but ranged cav dueling is very interesting.

Since many faction have a big weakness in their roster conquering territories that allows the production of some units is vital, so the steppes will be the favoured cavalry source for some players while others will want to take Swabia or Switzerland to get good infantry, though my favourite is Navarre to get the Almughavars, which are the infantry equivalent of Boyars imho...
Also pay attention to valour bonuses in the territories as they have a purpose now and gives suggestions about what you might get from the lands...

Finally, while the concepts are more or less developed this is still a beta so that while stable the faction aren't 100% shaped yet and you might find some unbalanced things exploitable by the human player...
Playing the game i also noticed that now no faction manages to get easily so big that they can kill anyone in a few turns, and some manages to exploit the naval superiority in an interesting way... I've seen the italians making viking-style raids quite a few times, they can be a powerful foe but usually the papacy manages to keep them in check and they have problems with rebellions... Ironically now they plays a lot like the real history and Byzantium seems to be their favourite crusade target

Meh, doesn't sound like my cup of tea mate, I want at least a small level of universal faction units.

For instance what turned me off Medmod was the fact that playing as England my only swordsman unit for all eras was the damned galloglaises, no Men-at-Arms at all.

One of the things that has always seriously bothered me about the Byzantines after the VI was the fact that they had NO spearmen at all.

I think every faction should have at least the lowest level of each basic and important grouping i.e. archers, swordsmen, spearmen.The unique units are the ones that come after these and lend specialisation to a faction, every faction though should have the basic units to fall back upon in the absence of more advanced types.

I shouldn't be completely handicapped against any enemy because for some strange reason I can't arm a bunch of glorified peasants with something as simple as a spear.

Each faction has a common tool set, or at least equivalent units...
More specialized factions doesn't mean 100% unique tool set, just that you'll have to focus more on certain units to get an hedge over the opponent.
Simply while all factions got the same basic units (spears, archers, light cav and men at arms) some got more advanced units in a respect or the other.
For example with the hungarians you'll get FMAA but not CMAA as they aren't focused on infantry rather than cavalry, while the Italians gets MS which are a bit weaker but this is compensated by the ILI...
Without the basic toolset it would be a nightmare to balance the thing, but my idea is simply to give more character to the factions rather than having them unique, so with the English you'll always get FMAA and not only Gallowglasses... This is not Medmod.
You'll also be happy to know that the Byz now gets something better than vanilla spears... Anyways the download is less than 100k and it's just 4 files so you can try it and remove it in 2 minutes if you don't like the concept.

I d/l it but I have to admit a readme would come in handy... Where to install and what to backup and how to remove (or at least the first because I figure those to be overwritten should be backuped) Also how do I start the mod - there will be a new option somewhere or ...?

I am new to mods so that is why so many questions but I am sure there are other people lacking expertise on that field :wink:

Sorry about that, i'll put a readme later today...
Installation is simple, backup crusader_products and builiding files, replace them with the ones in the rar file plus the projectile_stats one (it's needed for the MOD but wouldn't change gameplay in case you revert to vanilla MTW:VI) and put ZXMOD.txt into the campmap/startpos folder.

This way you'll get an extra early campaign (haven't figured out how to change the campaign name yet) which you can recognize because of the changed territories.

Gr8t! I am looking forward to a readme! :wink: Thx

You're welcome...
BTW, did you manage to install it with the instructions i wrote before?
I need some points in order to understand how detailed the readme should be...

I would like to setup a new installation of the game so that I don't mess up any running game, so I haven't tried it. But I am sure I will be able to do it with your instructions.

Sounds very interesting Zarax . Several of these ideas have always seemed to have great merit and possibility.

Care to elaborate on the Crusading?

Quote:

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- Revisited crusading system

Instead of having crusading orders tied to each faction, now they work on their own "zones of influence", where you have to build your chapter house or walk with your crusade in order to acquire an order's services.
Crusading roster has also been increased, moving a few units (like Turcopoles) into this specialistic role and giving two units to the factions with less chances to get a chapter house into the right place (this is done because the AI cannot recognize them).
In order to balance it and avoid a crusader swarm to Byz and muslims now crusading price has been doubled.

---

ichi :bow:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ichi

Sounds very interesting Zarax . Several of these ideas have always seemed to have great merit and possibility.

Care to elaborate on the Crusading?



ichi :bow:

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Sure, here's my take on the matter:

Historically (BTW, this mod is more focused in gameplay than historical accuracy, let's say you can expect a few "compromises") the knightly orders were'nt tied to a kingdom, but rather they had their own bases of operation and land holdings.
Nearby countries this way could call their help (for a price of course) and acquire their services.

I'm trying to simulate this by changing the crusader units requisites from "FN_xxx" to specific territories (IE Teutonics in Prussia, Hospitallers in Malta etc).
This way all you need to get an order instead of the other is to build a chapter house in an order's lands (still working on this, look for the valour bonuses in the beta).
Personally i'd get Prussia or Malta as those two orders gets an extra unit (i've unlocked the foot knights as separate unit for the Hospitallers), but if you like the other ones try Leon or Tolouse.
BTW, any historical info on where the various orders got their lands would be welcome ~;)

In addition to this system English and Danish gets a surprise (as their AI has problems in conquering the right places) so you'll want to do plenty of crusading with them :charge:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

I would like to setup a new installation of the game so that I don't mess up any running game, so I haven't tried it. But I am sure I will be able to do it with your instructions.

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You don't really need a new install unless you got other mods running as the gameplay changes are all in two files.
Ok, tell me if this one is good enough for you.

Installation instructions.

1) Make a backup of your CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT, CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.TXT and PROJECTILESTATS.TXT (this one only if you plan to play other mods that uses the ninjastar as composite bow, otherwise it won't change the game).

2) Extract CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT, CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.TXT and PROJECTILESTATS.TXT to your Total War folder (usually C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War).

3) Extract ZXMOD.txt to your \campmap\startpos folder.

This way you'll get a second Early campaign (will change it later) that you can recognize because of the changed land ownership.

How to uninstall/restore:

1) Copy your old CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT, CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.TXT and PROJECTILESTATS.TXT over the modified ones (just overwrite them).

2) Delete ZXMOD.txt from your \campmap\startpos folder.

Have fun and hope to hear feedback from you soon!

Readme added in the package, look under my sig to get it.

Ok, looking for a couple of game balancing suggestions right now...
Both Byz and HRE are a bit overpowered when used by the human player as their rosters have no real weaknesses and they got lots of "free" land (read: rebels) to start expanding with...
Since i can't really find a good way to cut their units for now i was thinking about downgrading their gunpodwer and naval rosters a bit.
What i was thinking about is to give no gungallyes and gunpodwer artilley to the Byz (never read about them fielding that kind of units, maybe i can write off handgunners and arquebusiers too), while HRE could get nothing better than caravels at sea and top their artillery to demi-culverins (though with 5 of them i had few problems in softening out even citadel defences).

What do you think about it? Any other ideas about the unit rosters?

Just one question. You mentioned retouching a few units to make them less useless, and I remember an earlier thread where you asked advice on the usefulness of Gothic Sergeants, possibly upping them to 100 men like other spearmen. Any changes made to them to give them more purpose?

Yes, Gothic Sergeants are a 100 men unit now and their requisites are in the spear line instead of the knight one like before... Just keep them away from AP units or your investment will be a short lived one.

Some more details on the unit specialization mode...
If you ever played Age of Empires (or AOEII) you surely have seen that while all faction shared most units each one was limited in building something (IE a cav faction like the huns couldn't build advanced inf and so on).
This model has been picked up as example and translated to MTW.

Each faction will get one or more of those attributes:

Heavy Inf (Danish, HRE, Almohads)
Heavy Cav (HRE, French, Spanish, Byz)
Militia (Italians, Swiss, Papacy) (this means they gets UM, MS and Halbs)
Anticav (English, Turkish)
Medium/light cav (Polish, Hungarians, Eggys)
Steppe/mounted missiles (Novgorod/Hungarians)
Advanced (HRE, Italians, Spanish) (means that they will get one or more gothic level units, lancers are counted as gothic level)
Specialist (Danish)

The classification is not yet 100% complete, but to give you an idea of how things works the only playable faction with vanilla halbs will be the Italians, making the swiss or mercs halbs quite valuable.
This is compensated by the fact the Italians gets no other heavy inf until late (and they will be GS or pikes, so no heavy duty guys), plus they can produce only light cav (again, until late)...

For a less exotic example let's take the Hungarians or the Poles, both light cav focused factions.
You'll find the spears (Poles uses the standard spear line to CS, while Huns gets AS as poor man heavy spear), light cav (mounted sergeants), FMAA and FK as usual in early.

Where the differences comes into play?
As neither one is an heavy inf or heavy cav faction you won't get the chivalric units in high, but you'll have to keep using the feudal line.

This doesn't mean you aren't underpowered, just that you can't stand in a toe to toe fight against heavier enemies and you have to change your tactics a bit (hint: your specialistic cavs got their use when dismounted too, learn to use them and you'll have some good fun especially against the Horde) or bring some extra numbers if you want to feel safer (older units are cheaper).

Without going into full details for every faction be assured they all got the tools to do combined arms tactics (Specialist factions are less suited for that but their bonuses compensate for it... I don't think you'll miss good cav very much with the Danes).

So, did anyone try it?
I need feedback to improve things here...

Nope, I haven't had time, I hope I can give it a try in the weekend...

Ok, i won't be at home this weekend so i'll answer any feedback on monday...
Have fun!

Update!

- Now the Campaign title is showed!

- Rebalanced a bit Byz and HRE

- Made the readme more descriptive

Did anyone had a chance to try it this weekend?

(downloads it)

Will try it as soon as I have finished my current game on the XL Mod. ~:)

sounds like a good mod m8, I got an Idea that I always wanted to have in MTW, could u somehow make it that, your armies can travel through your allies land? that would be really cool.

Unfortunately no...
The only way would be to modify a crusade but i can't see any way to do it yet...

Update!

Crusading AI should be slightly more effective now, they're not devastating but usually you don't see them depleted to 200 men or less like before.

Sounds interesting I will install.
You may want to use.
sfx factory, to make setup modules.
I think that it will work with rar files,
:)

Well, for now i think an installer would be a bit too much since you'll have to just move 4 files.
If i'll ever increase the overall size and complexity then ease of installation will be top on the list, even though the aim of this minimod is to give new flavour to the recipe using the available resources in different ways.

I'm currently working on the Turkish in order to optimize them a bit as right now the AI tries to take on both Byz and Eggys ending crushed before 1205...
The best chance you can get with them is to ally with the Byz as they will shield you from receiving full impact from crusades (HRE desperately wants Antioch, this is making me suspect AI follows GA even in World Domination) and you can focus on the pesky Eggys...
After Cairo was mine i encountered a new foe, and a difficult one to counter: Italian raids!
Until i was able to build a navy of mine almost every turn they were able to land at least half stack in a coast of their choice, forcing me to keep a rapid response team ready...
In the end i had to turn Syria in a Jihad center as their balanced forces are quite painful to counter without heavy inf...
Luckily for me i had an unexpected ally: The Pope!
The yellow arbiter often manages to put a crimp on the Italian ambitions, this time by making them fall on civil war...
Now that i'm safe from their raiding i'm currently facing the Horde as the Byz were hit badly by them and HRE that advanced up to Constantinople... My old ally paid the price of shielding me...

I'm now thinking about changing the unit requisites a bit as they are very complex for the AI to reach (they will never build Janissaries this way), maybe i'll change the Grand Mosque to be built more than once while the Military Academy will become the unique one (there are units like the Nizaris that requires GM and you aren't going to build JHI in Syria imho)... I'm open to suggestions.

Another minor update, just improved cavalry dismounting criteria for Muslim and Byz units as well as improved some dismounted units choice.
Currently testing the Eggys, they looks fine so far.

Ok, i was away for a week so i couldn't work on the mod...
Did anyone had a chance to try it?

Zarax:

My suggestion would be to edit your first post on a continuing basis to keep us up-to-date on the changes you make to your mod:

Add the date (in BOLD) plus the version number (in bold).

For example:

DATE: ####

Mod Version ####

Changes to date:

1
2
3

After a while this thread is going to get long, and it will be hard to read through to find what changes you have made to your mod.

Thanks :)

Will do, thank you :-)

Thanks for your work on this mod.

I am currently knee-deep in playing two campaigns so far, so I haven't had a chance to play your mod.

I would suggest you continue to tweak it on your own, and when I get a chance I'll download and play it. The changes you have made so far sound quite interesting.

What I also like is the fact that your mod is a very small download.

One suggestion that I find works:

In the default VI Campaign the first farm improvement (land clearing) takes 16 years and 1200 florins to complete. I think 16 years is just too long to tie up the AI.

I changed this myself to: 2 years and 1000 florins. The other farm improvements progress 4, 6, and 8 years.

As a general rule to help the AI, I think buildings should NOT take longer to build than 10 years (maybe even 8 years) in all the default campaigns.

Cheers!

Well, i'm experimenting with the building times to help the AI to tech up a bit, and i'm leaning towards a small speed boost for non farming upgrades.

What i still haven't managed to ackieve is to improve the AI economic management...
Despite all my attempts instead of investing money into creating an infrastructure the AI tends to squander almost every florin in units, and crappy ones more often than not, only to go into deep red once they cannot sustain the army anymore...

That said, there are some improvements so far, thanks to the improved roster focus you actually see the AI trying to build good units when it gets the chance, one of the happiest moments of modding development i ever had was when i happened to fight against gothic units in late... There weren't many but still it's much better than fighting vanilla spears in 1350...

Personally, I wouldn't waste a lot of time trying to improve the AI's economic situation. That may be a road to frustration.

I have found a very simple way to make the AI a formidable opponent both militarily and economically:

Have the player choose a faction, and then instruct the player on how to give ALL other factions more florins (from 10,000 to 2,000,000) for the difficulty setting they have selected.

So whether the player is playing a default campaign, your mod, or any other mod, doing the above will give the player a great game.

With lots of florins the AI can squander money on units AND have lots of money left over to build improvements. This also means that the AI doesn't have to worry about building a trading system; only the player has to worry about it.

I would concentrate on:

* getting rid of crappy units (like peasants) and have better units available for the AI

* make ALL factions playable

* include some unique units

I have also found by switching Faction Behaviours around, I can get some factions to be more aggressive.

They are found here:

C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos:

For VI Campaign:

For example, in the default VI Campaign, the Northumbrians are set as CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE. I often change this to CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST. With this behaviour, the Northumbrians will attack me and build ships. As the Scots, I am having quite a war against them and the Saxons in my current VI Campaign (I also gave all other factions 200,000 florins).

//Faction Behaviour
//This is the default behaviour of each
//faction, various in game factor will
//alter it. Rebel are always set to REBEL
//these are the available options
//also note that these are related to the
//product spreadsheet
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST
//CATHOLIC_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
//ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
//ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
//ORTHODOX_DEFENSIVE
//MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
//MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
//MUSLIM_DEVOUT
//POVERTY_STRICKEN
//DESPERATE_DEFENCE
//CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT
//POPE
//BARBARIAN_RAIDER
//REBELS
//========================================

SetBehaviour:: FN_01 CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST // Irish
SetBehaviour:: FN_02 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Mercians
SetBehaviour:: FN_03 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE // Northumbrians
SetBehaviour:: FN_04 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER // Picts
SetBehaviour:: FN_05 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Saxons
SetBehaviour:: FN_06 CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER // Scots
SetBehaviour:: FN_07 BARBARIAN_RAIDER // Vikings
SetBehaviour:: FN_08 CATHOLIC_TRADER // Welsh

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pericles

Personally, I wouldn't waste a lot of time trying to improve the AI's economic situation. That may be a road to frustration.

I have found a very simple way to make the AI a formidable opponent both militarily and economically:

Have the player choose a faction, and then instruct the player on how to give ALL other factions more florins (from 10,000 to 2,000,000) for the difficulty setting they have selected.

I would concentrate on:

* getting rid of crappy units (like peasants) and have better units available for the AI

* make ALL factions playable

* include some unique units

I have also found by switching Faction Behaviours around, I can get some factions to be more aggressive.

---

Thanks for your feedback, i'll try to reply all your points:

1) Economic Management:

Frustrating or not i still think there are better ways than having the player changing his available money and give the AI a gazillion florins...
I also think this is not a really effective way, as i already tested it with poor results (gave 1.000.000 flourins to the Danes, they managed to create an enormous army and expanded to the east, the problem is that after i killed 20.000 or so Thralls they were so deep in red that it wasn't even funny).

On that side i might choose to follow the XL way for the weaker factions (Danes, Novgorod, Aragon, Sicily) as the other ones manages to expand quite nicely after some behaviour tweaks, so i'd rather give some free improvements to their starting lands than money... This way they manages their economy in a more rational way and build more.

2) I've got rid of peasants since the first release (it should be in the first post), they now just appears in crusades and rebellions, where they belong (Early only)... Other less useful units, such as the vanilla ones gradually disappears with time, forcing the AI to upgrade and keep building.

3) Novgorod is now playable (it should be in the first page too) and it's a viking-like faction, kind of orthodox Danes with better cavalry.
The Papacy was playable but it's a bit cheesy as player faction plus it gets some weird bugs sometimes... I don't think more factions are needed however, as now the available ones are more focused on certain units so their playing style tends to be different in a AOE-like way.

4) Having new units is beyond the scope of this minimod...
Besides that MTW covers pretty much anything can be done with the available variables so most of the new stuff would be almost a clone of the existing units.

What i did is to give extra usefulness to some underdogs and use part of the VI roster in an intelligent way...
Light cavalry especially is now a flexible tactical unit mix, making it unvaluable for factions like the Polish or the Hungarians which lack many heavy units, making the steppes an important recruiting pool.

Finally, some factions gets nice crusading bonuses in terms of units, so i wouldn't miss the opportunity to kill some pagans when possible ;-)

5) Many factions have their behaviour changed, in some cases this is very effective (the Italians are lovely sea riders now, while Byz and Novgorod make a nice hold on the steppes), but others still lack enough aggressivity (this might be due to economical reasons).

Zarax:

Sounds good.

It is true that some factions can be frustrating to let the AI handle - it just can't seem to get them going properly.

From my understanding of some of the other mods, tweaking the build system; giving the AI some improvements; and changing the build order; all have yielded positive results.

I think you are definitely on the right road...

All the best.

Yes, i just discovered that the Danes benefits immensely if they find some extra ports nearby to get trade with, i think in a few days of work i'll get them tweaked enough...

Next challenge: having the Turkish survive long enough to build the Janissaries.

Your mod is sounding quite interesting, keep up the good work.

Thanks, i'm currently working on improving the Bulgarian Brigands and next release is due on a few days...

Ok, a new release with tweaked Bulgarian Brigands and improvements for the smaller factions is ready, though it won't be available yet as i'm moving my website to another server and the DNS haven't changed it yet...

Did anyone actually play it?