The Medieval Mod IV v 1.7

[WesW]

The new version of the mod is up at my webpage, and this is definitely the biggest upgrade so far. (so much for the last version being, uh, the *last* version.;) ) I initially went into the mod to re-do Crusades and implement the few changes discussed in the 1.6 thread with the Vikings and what-not, but once I got into it, one thing led to another, and another, and then I remembered a couple of things I had meant to do before, and then I saw this stuff in the units text that really needed fixing from what CA had set it to, and then... well, you get the picture.

I will try and be back tonight (been feeling bad the last few days) to further explain all this stuff, but you can view the readme through my signature here, or when you get the download. Installation is the same as in the last two versions, though you may notice that the mod is significantly bigger than before (about 1.4M). This is mostly due to the new units' pics and such.

Anyway, read over the readme, then read it again, then at least one more time, then go to the spreadsheet. I will try and sort it all out later.

[Elmo]

Got it Wes. Thanks.

During unzipping an extra directory is created in front of the Medieval - Total War directory called Mods. IOW if you unzip to C: you'll put the files in C:\Mods\Medieval - Total War. Just wanted folks to know because I was scratching my head for a while trying to figure out where the files went when I unzipped them.

[Elmo]

Wes

Just had my first CTD ever with MTW. Not sure if it is due to 1.7 or not at this point. I was moving at the start of my first battle when I had the crash. It was me (Turks) and Egyptian allies against the rebels in Lesser Armenia. I will reload from my last save after a reboot and try to repeat it.

Elmo

P.S. - OK, I rebooted and got to approx the same point as my previous crash. I saved just prior to the battle. Started the battle and while moving my troops forward to engage the rebels the game crashed again. I have a save if you have any interest in seeing it. Not sure what would cause the crash but as I said it has never happened even once prior to the 1.7 install. If nobody else sees this I will reinstall MTW and then your mod. In the meantime I'll probably defrag my HD while waiting to see if anyone else has problems.

[WesW]

Thanks, Elmo, I just zipped the damn thing up wrong again. I have just uploaded a fixed version, so if you already have it, be sure to check for the MM 1.7 on the Main Menu screen, otherwise you need to do as Elmo did and pull the files out of the "mod" folder.

I will list what I wrote down of the changes made in this version. I got to tweaking so many things that I am sure I left out a few small details, but that should not matter unless you already had the spreadsheet memorized.
Btw, it's really crucial that you keep a printout of the units' page handy, even if you had made one for 1.6. I didn't change any of the buildings except for the Charter House, so there is no need to do that one again.

I had not been able to read the 1.6 thread since Tuesday, so it was interesting to see the post about Kerns being useless. I agree with that, and fortunately one of the things I decided to do was re-work the Kerns, along with the other two javelin infantry units, the Murabitin Infantry and Almughavars. The readme and spreadsheet will give you more detail, but basically all three keep their javelins, while their defenses have been raised to that of Spearmen, Saracens and Pikemen, respectively.

And speaking of Pikemen, I raised the stats of all three versions by three or four points, spread out among charge, attack, defense and armour, while keeping their costs the same. I have been one of those who never understood why their stats were so low when their costs were so high, so maybe this will make them an attractive unit.

Swiss Halberdiers now have a defense (not armour) equal to regular Halberdiers. I didn't understand the defense descrepancy since they carried the same weapon, but more importantly they always dropped like flies in my battles. Oh, and their cost has been raised accordingly.

I increased the cost and building requirements for Vikings (and no, I had not messed with their stats prior to this), along with the req's for Woodsmen (a spearmaker), and restricting Gallowglasses to the high and late eras.

I tweaked the stats for Ghazi Infantry, Saracen Infantry and Nubian Spearmen. The Ghazi's trade some offense for defense, while the two spear units trade a little armour for speed compared to their European counterparts.

I adjusted cavalry speed to separate the units into basically 3 classes, heavy, medium and light. The readme gives more detail, but I think it is going to give some needed variance to that part of the game, especially pursuing.

I added a *whole lot* of buildings to the early and high eras, so that all non-Rebel provinces start out with at least a fort, town watch and spearmaker (or bowyer or horsebreeder). This should give the AI an alternative to producing large amounts of peasants at the start of the game, and help speed things along in the early going, so this is a win-win in my opinion.

But of course the biggest changes for this version deal with crusading units (and the building that enables them).

Chapter Houses are now unique, and have been placed in all the crusading units' capitals at the start of the high and late era campaigns, plus a couple of regions that give bonus valor to crusade units created there, just for an added twist.

Crusades now take ten years and 4000 florins to build, but they should create about 4x as many units as before. And since Chapter Houses will be, or probably will be, in your capital province, this means a long, hard decision about devoting an entire decade's time of your best province to making one.
I have not had time to playtest the effects of this yet, but I suspect it will make Crusades few and far between, as they were historically, but also they should be much more powerful, also as befits history.

I am really happy with the new unit setup for the Crusades, though it will take some getting used to for some of you. The chart and explanation in the readme does a better job of explaining it in detail than I can here, and I think trying to synopsize it here would cause more confusion than enlightenment. Therefore I will leave it to you to look over and post comments and/or questions. If you don't get something at first, reference the spreadsheet, which has been updated with everything, even the individual faction pages, and then read it over again slowly before rushing to the thread here. I feel sure that you will like it once you get it straight in your head.

And also keep in mind that I didn't start out to re-arrange things to much, it's just that I about went cross-eyed Tuesday night trying to figure out which faction had what using the old setup. This new one is both simpler, once you adjust to it, and also more adaptable to gameplay and closer to history, so I think this is a win-win-win situation.

And finally, Old Templar asked about shifting over to the Viking Invasion in the last thread. It may be possible, from what I read, to use our mods with or without it. If not, it may be that you would only need to get the exe from somewhere, so that you could make use of the new settings that will be available in the starting position and units files. And a lot of the interface upgrades seem to make it worth the money, in addition to the Viking scenario itself.
Anyway, that is over two months away, so we will have plenty of time to think about it.

[Red Harvest]

WesW,

Really like many of the ideas you have put out/incorporated. I'm not running your mods, but I have been incorporating selected improvements from them into my own "personalized" version of MTW.

The Crusades changes I especially like. A 10 year commitment makes far more sense. This should eliminate the endless stream of small, ineffective crusades. Coupling that with the ability to have a lot of high quality units in the Crusade makes even more sense. One of the biggest problems with Crusades was that the non-trainable units were well understrength before they got to target. Therefore, most of the money was wasted. With your mod several viable full strength units should be available even at distant targets. Also, the new size of the core crusade army should make my strategy of opposing them (even if excommunicated) very dangerous. In the past I had learned to oppose them, whip them in battle, and wait for civil war to develop in the origin faction when the crusade finally dissolved. Getting excommunicated with your mods could be a *really* bad idea

Hope that CA is looking at what you have done to: 1. Fix the obvious errors in the game/patch. 2. Get rid of the peasant fetish that the AI currently has. 3. Get trade working. 4. Make sense out of crusades (obviously). 5. Make sense of some unit builds being too late/unuseful such as the Lith Cav., Polish retainers. 6. Make javelin units work right...Spanish do OK with Jinettes but the Murabitin and the Almughavars don't work right. 7. Make sense of oddball mercenary units that are available such as Mangonels, specialty infantry/cav. 8. Sort out the advanced unit availability--esp. for minor factions and Poles/etc. (presently a bit strange.) 9. Improve Mongol abilities somewhat.

The parts of your mod that I'm not as comfortable with are some of the attempts at balancing Muslim units with heavy infantry type units. I want to see factional historic differences that make sense, even if it does make balance tougher.

[Galestrum]

could you please make a post here or elsewhere on how you are/were able to make more & better units spawn with a crusade - i know how to mod basic unit/building stats, but how do you tell a crusade what to spawn and how many?

[econ21]

Wes, thanks for this, I don't know how you find the time to keep updating these mods. I was considering doing one but have hardly begun on the reading. I'll have a look at v1.7, as I am finding v1.6 a really big improvement over the official game in terms of challenge from the AI. (BTW, have you tried the "large" unit setting? - I am playing v1.6 on it and think I prefer it to the default.)

Minor point - you might want to think about the changes you made to Swiss halberdier's defence and armour. The defence stat includes the effect of armour, so it is a little strange to boost one and not the other. The halberdiers represent late period troops clad at least in part in plate. The Swiss ones only light armoured. That the relatively unarmoured Swiss ones should drop like flies while the regular ones are relatively impervious makes sense. The Swiss ones are still worthwhile because you get them in the High period whereas the regular ones come in Late and halberds are pretty good weapons, AP and bonus vs cav. The correct usage is presumably fairly historical, as flankers protected by spear/pike units. I am not sure what your concern was here?

Bigger point - the documentation in the excel sheet seems a little short for the new changes. For example, changes from the original stats seem no longer shaded yellow and it does not have movement speeds so it is not possible to tell which cav is fast etc. You might want to review this for the next version of the mod. Also, is there any way to make your crusader unit txt file compatible with Gnome's editor? If we do have to dig into the txt file for the stats changes, Gnome's editor is so much better than wordpad.

My other big initial reaction is that I think changing the cavalry speeds to generic light/medium/heavy is a step backwards from the original game. In the original game there were three speeds - slow, for horses overburdened by armour (kats and Goths); the default normal; and fast, for some of the Arab and Eastern horse that it was difficult for the West European armies to catch. I think that was just right (ok, I'd get rid of the full horse armour on the lancers to justify their normal speed). Kats were famously slow - they kind of walked up to the enemy. And there just wasn't significant "light cav" in most medieval knightly armies. The hobilars, for example, were essentially mounted infantry with very inferior horses (think of the derivation of hobby horse). They should not be able to outrun knights. Knight's armour was not that heavy (80lbs or so), and their destriers were too good even to be ridden on campaign outside of battle. I don't know exactly what the mounted sergeants are supposed to represent, but it is either similar mounted infantry or inferior heavy cavalry, not faster "light cav". Having Western light cav might give an extra dimension to the game and make it more "balanced", as would giving the Islamic armies heavy foot, but I just think this is throwing away some of the historical distinctiveness of the game. The factions should have different strengths and also gaps in their line up leading to different fighting styles, otherwise we end up with a generic ahistorical strategy game with factions distinguished only by cheesy Age of Empires type unique units. Giving the Eastern/Islamic type armies fast cav is a useful and historical offset to the superior armour of the West (I'd also give them composite bows for similar reasons).

My preference with this mod is for a conservative approach to the units "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The mod improves so much of the game outside of the unit stats, unjustified tweaking seems pointless. It's ultimately not a big deal for me, as players can easily unpick changes they don't like but I guess that for both you and players like me that doing that would not be the first best solution.

This post might seem like complaining, but I find your mods invaluable and just want to give some feedback.

[Old Templar]

WesW - I really appreciate the work you have done to "correct the shortcomings of CA's MTW". With Mod 1.7 however, I think you have been carried away to far from your initial intention.
IMO there are two different types of people/gameplayers (and a lot of people in between) who are interested in playing your Mod -
1.Group: Gamer who seek the trill of an individual battle, the battle taktics, the compatibility of different troop types in battle and other more action related game aspects.
They look for challenges in the battles.
2.Group: Gamer who enjoy a more strategic approach and are very happy with a decent battle scenario. They are looking for the AI to supprice with the strategically unexpected. These people look also for historic accuraccy (I realise that this is a game and not a history lecture) and the action and challenges in the pre-battle part of the game. I am one of them.
Like for a game company, the individual who makes the Mod will sooner or later have to decide which part is more important to the game, if you make the Mod for others as well.
Now to Mod 1.7 - I played two campaigns:
Danish/Early: The loss of early Vikings was no big deal. Income was secured relatively early and plentiful. For the first 15 years I build only ships and improved farm income.
The Germans had two stacks of troops in Saxony but never made an attempt to wipe out my measly 300 early troops in Danmark. They were initially strong but were completely annihilated by the French (THEY WERE OVERPOWERING IN BOTH OF MY GAMES). Spain was strong like in Mod 1.6. The Muslim factions remained unussual weak throughout both games (what a pitty). The SICILIANS ARE TO STRONG IN BOTH GAMES (historically completely incorrect) - they took over Greece and even Constantinople in the second game by 1220. The Kiev faction was completely set back. There were no moves and the faction remained small and obscure throughout the entire game. The English seemed fine in both games.
The second Campaign was with the Kiev faction/Early - no money (only F250 on the books year after year), very weak troops. I could not even defeat the rebels which attacked in 1210. Without the Vikings early and no funds to get to them soon it was a doomed game. There was nothing for me to do but pressing "Year End" for nearly 30 years - than I lost interest and quit. I challenge every "action gamer" to play this faction and end it succesfully at the time they would end the French or Spanish faction. Here again, France, Spain and Sicily dominated the game. The Muslims were cornered and did not play the usual role we saw in CA'sMTW and Mod 1.6.
Changing the stats on units is probably important for the action player and I appreciate the strive for correctness; but it is of no major importance to me. Possible, I would not even notice it and than in real life not all troops from the the same type are equal.
Most of all there are NO more crusades, none not even one in 50 years - what a pitty.
I have a Master Degree in History and I know it never took 10 years to historically arrange a Medieval Crusade, just one example:
The First Crusade started in 1095 with the first part of the crusade (Peter the Hermit's People Crusade (mostly peasants) leaving the same year the Pope asked for it. The second part of that Crusade with H. Vermandois, Godfrey/Baldwin, Bohemoud and Hugh arrived in Constantinopal in 1097.
People (at least the important ones) going on crusades had to be sworn in by a priest and received a robe with a cross. If they did not go on the assigned crusade shortly they were excommunicated until they went. While I agree to strenghten the troops of the crusades, restricting the start is a set back. I missed the Crusades or as they were called than "Pilgrimages". CA tried to create the game in consideration of historically events.
In the end it is your Mod and you can do what ever you like with it. I for one, liked Mod 1.6 (it is my Mod as well)which needed some improvements, but not to the extent of imbalancing the game that we see now in MOD 1.7.
I agree with Simon, "if it ain't broke, dont fix it".
This is not a complaint, just a friendly comment.

[Elmo]

I switched from my usual Turks to the Kievans for my current game. It's only 1101 but I have 6 provinces with Moscovy next on my list. I have about 3K florins in the bank and have been building conservatively. It does take a while to get this economy going. Have yet to fight a battle as my large forces cause the rebels to retreat every time. I have ships in the Black Sea and the sea zone around Constantinople (can't recall the name) so trade is building. So far so good and having fun which is the main thing. Thanks Wes

[Red Harvest]

From Old Templar's description of the lack of Crusades there is still some tweaking to do. The problems I saw with the old crusade system in the original patched game were the shear number of crusades going on at the same time and the ineffectiveness of many of these same crusades.

While historically crusades might spring up over night, in the original game there seem to be about 10x as many as needed. It doesn't make sense to have giant high quality armies continuously spring up in one year. There has to be some sort of middle ground. Play Poland in original patched game and there was no doubt that the crusade frequency was ridiculously high. Silliest thing I've seen is having less than ten provinces and three crusades simultaneously moving through my lands (not targeting me.) So it looks to me like the answer will be somewhere in the middle. From the base value, increase the $ amount and time per crusade, perhaps six years and $2000 or so. Hopefully the AI will get a better supply of base troops but build fewer crusades. This should lead to fewer early stalled crusades that end up destroying the initiator. Wish CA had put in ability fo change targets to another province of the same faction IF (and only if) the target territory falls to another first.

As a side note, shouldn't Crusades be "Preferred" for General's candidates? Seems like it would be the natural focal point for leaders to spring up. Plus a crusade with a no star general is usually doomed from the outset...but I see a lot of these formed by the AI.

[WesW]

Well, this is just strange. I finally started a new campaign with 1.7 last night, as the English, High, Expert, and in the first 20 years I there have been at *least* four Crusades started. At one point, there were two Crusades marching through Spain heading south, and another heading north. The two heading south, a French one bound for Granada and a Sicilian one bound for Algeria, happened to join up at Aragon and proceeded in tandem to Granada. The one heading north was Spanish, obviously, and I remember a German one being declared earlier and perhaps one more that I can't recall clearly.
Before logging on tonight, I went into the units text and lowered the Crusade priority, convinced that my attempt to rarify them had failed completely.

I think we all obviously need to give these settings some more playtime before making conclusions. And this goes for most of the other controversial changes as well, as my experiences for a number of them are far different from the posts and emails I have been getting.

And remember everyone, the more changes I make to the game, the more likely it is that some of them will not suit you individually. The posts and letters I am getting from most everyone now are very enthusiastic towards the overall mod. I think that people are beginning to love it the same way they did the Medmods I and II for the Call-to-Power games, especially the Medmod I, which became almost a requirement among Apolyton visitors for both the single and multi-player crowds. (I still remember this one post where a new-comer was complaining that he preferred the original game, and that it was becoming almost impossible to find multi-players who were not using the Medmod I, with the effect that he had not been able to play the game hardly any recently.) People here wouldn't be making all these long, detailed posts regarding the mod's new features if they were got becoming passionate towards it.

I just want to remind everyone that most any significant change can seem uncomfortable at first, like a new pair of shoes that need breaking in. This is one thing that all my mods have in common- a certain amount of initial resistance to significant changes. And there is not a lot that I can do to assuage those doubts at first, other than to say that I never make changes arbitrarily, despite what it may seem like, and to ask people to have faith that the guy who has done so well this far is not going to suddenly go clueless as to what will help the game.
But this does not mean that I don't mess up sometimes, or change my mind after a while, and I always encourage people to keep posting about what they like and don't like. After giving it some thought, for example, I have restored the valour bonuses to Clansmen and Gallowglasses.
A couple of people have said regarding this latest version that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" in reference to various things, but then I see kudos from other people for the same changes. I will try and elaborate on specific changes that have been questioned, but in the meantime, play with this version for a week or two, and if you still think that some things aren't working, post with your observations and recommendations for improvements.

Old Templar said in his games that the Spanish were strong and the Muslims weak. In my games it has been the reverse, with the Almos taking out the Spanish rather quickly.

I had been trying to play as the Germans before switching to the English, and I have found the HRE as the most difficult faction to play in terms of trying to simply survive. You can be attacked at any time on any front by powerful enemies, your generals always suck, and losing a single province can lead to civil war. It seems that if you can conquer either the French or Italians, and defend what you have everywhere else, you will be alright, but oftentimes I was assaulted by huge armies within the first 6 or 7 turns, then ganged up on by everyone else, and the game was over. How have you guys faired as the HRE?

Simon, how do you increase the unit sizes? I have been wanting to try this for some time, now that I have a fast computer.

Elaborations:

Cavalry speed- The changes I made were pretty small, only about 10 or 20%. I also followed the recommendations that OT made pretty closely, in that Muslim and Eastern European units are generally faster than Catholic units, with exceptions for heavy units like Ottoman Sipahi, Khwarazmian Cav and Kats. If you say that historically the Kats were very slow, I will believe you, but in the game their defensive stats are lower than the heaviest Catholic cav, so I just can't see making them significantly slower than those units.

Basically, those three units mentioned above, along with Chiv Kn., High and Late Royal Kn. and the three late era Catholic units have run and charge speeds of 16 and 18, respectively.
Feudal Kn, Ghulam Cav, SotPorte, Pronoiai A., Early Royals, Boyars, Polish Ret., Lith Cav., Mtd. Crossbows and Mounted Sgts. are the default speed (20 and 22).
Horse Archers, Hobilars, Steppe Cav, Armenian Cav and Saharan Cav are 24 and 26.

This list is not official, coming off the top of my head, but it should give you a clear idea of my intentions.
If you compare these with the original settings, I think you will see that a number of units have not changed.
What I wanted to do was give lighter units a better chance to disengage from heavier units, and to be able to ride down fleeing heavy units if the opportunity arose.
This is another of those changes that I think you will like once you adjust to it, and is not too big to just ignore if you preferred the old settings.

Swiss Halberdiers- In my games as the HRE, dating back months, I eventually found that this unit was almost useless due to its weak defense. I tried the tactic of letting the AI engage my spears, then bringing this unit up through them to engage the occupied assailants, but it rarely worked well, and lord help them if they had to fight head-up with another unit.
I only increased their base defense to match that of regular Halberdiers, which makes sense to me since they both carry the same weapon, which is what I assume defense is based upon along with training.

This is also the same line of reasoning that led me increase the defensive stats of the Muslim infantry (non-spears). The Ghazi's defense value was -4 originally, which is equal to peasants, and far lower than any other infantry unit. I raised their defense to -1, which is equal to the *naked* Highland Clansmen.

Btw, defense is added to armor, not the other way around. I am not saying this to be smart, but to point out that you have to think about it this way to understand how defensive stats are figured.

I don't know if it is my fast computer or not, but battles move so quickly that once melee starts I always end up in a pattern of: pause, survey the battlefield, issue orders, unpause and count to three, pause, repeat. If I ever stop and observe a portion of the battlefield for more than 4 or 5 seconds, I began to see surrender flags appear because the battlefield has changed drastically somewhere.
I guess this is one reason I have improved defense at the expense of offense for some units- so that they don't get in trouble as fast. Also, the AI seems to change onto attacking these units (Ghazi, Swiss Halb, etc.) almost immediately even if it was already engaged with another of my units, so the tactic if engaging with one unit to leave my attacker unmolested doesn't work very well.

I have been thinking about reducing all speeds for all units by 50% to try and make battles manageable in real time, and to get out of this jerky stop and start routine. Do any of you know if this will work, or if you would welcome the change? I know that battles have been sped up considerably from Shogun, apparently due to players' requests, but they are just lightning fast to me.

I am most always conservative in my changes, and I never start tweaking things without a clear idea of what I want to create in regards to enhancements, or of what I want to fix with my corrections. And what is broken, or weak, is a personal opinion, though if it is frequently complained about then you can get a general consensus.
Also, I go by own experiences a lot. I don't think many people complained about building times, but after I implemented it I think most people consider it a big improvement.
I also didn't read much regarding the javelin units, but after I overhauled them I am now getting a lot of people saying that they had felt the same way.

It is true that some of the changes make a few units more average in their stats, but I always keep faction uniqueness at the top of my head. (This is why I have resisted adding new units to the game, like some other mods have done.) I don't feel that these changes sacrifice any individuality.
And as far as historical accuracy, remember that creating a large empire in the game is not historical, so who can say that the Nizaris wouldn't have started wearing more armor if the Egyptians had extended into Europe like the Turks did. The Muslim cavalry units gradually added more armour after the success of the first crusades, until they mimicked the Crusaders from some accounts. And the only one of the three Muslim factions depicted in the game to survive were the Turks, who developed the Janissaries to lead them to greatness.

I decided to take the yellow background out the rest of the spreadsheet's main unit page because it had gotten so thick by the time I was finished with this version that it was distracting. (The color is still present on the faction pages, though I think it is from version 1.5 or so. The stats themselves are linked to the main page, so they are updated automatically.) I thought about starting it out again as I make current changes, but this would probably confuse new users, who would assume that all the changes from the original version were marked.
The best thing to do is to print out the main page, preferably with a color printer, and keep it handy as you play. And use the Windows or Escape keys to minimize the game if you want to scan the readme or see if there is a comment on the spreadsheet that pertains to a question you have.
I always try and keep an overall vision of what I want to create with all these individual changes, and I think that you will find the mod to feel like a pair of very comfortable shoes once you get accustomed to it.

Simon, I use Edit+ 2 for my text work, and it does fine for what I need. I don't know what would need to be done to make it compatible with an editor. I have tried editors in the past for other games, and I have always went back to edit+.
I have a pretty good customized template designed for the units text, and it also works well for the other texts if anyone wants me to send them a copy.

Galestrum, look up Eat Cold Steel's post in the 1.6 thread for some info on manipulating Crusades. You can't tell the Crusade exactly how many and what kind of troops to create, but you can narrow it down some. AFAI can tell, the game spawns a certain monetary amount of units, probably modified by the level you are playing at, and regardless of the Crusades cost in the units text. Therefore the only way to increase the quantity of units is to decrease their cost, hence I created Crusader versions of some regular units to go with Crusade-only units.
Mod-makers need to keep in mind that you can change the cost and/or turns needed to produce a Crusade without affecting the units spawned in it.

[Tyrac]

OK I am going to DL this new version. I do have one suggestion though. Lets give this one a bit of time before and if 1.8 is done. I have only been able to do one and a half campaigns per mod really. I have not been able to play a Muslim faction with medmod yet, and I have never played the HRE in MTW because I always felt it would be too easy. I still want to try all those things out.

In terms of games here is the pattern I see in AI faction strength up to and including 1.6.

Danes kill French and HRE and English (talked about in detail already). French survive but are pushed to a corner and slowly waste away.
Turks die to Egypt and Byzantine.
Crusades and other factions kill Byz and push them out to a small area where they waste away.
Either Almo or Spain completely replaces the other, seems random which one wins.
Italy gets some fleets at first and looks good but is totally replaced by Sicily.
Sicily ends up taking the Mediterranean.....and the mid east strating with constantanople and moving down. I think it is because they are pretty safe at the start with no real border and they do so much trade.

Golden Horde. These guys piss me off. They appear with these HUGE stacks and take 2 provinces and then.....do nothing for turn after turn. Then when they do move it is to take one lame steppe province at a time. They whittle themselves down on revolts etc until they are just another weak faction. I want them to come in and hand Europe its ass, or better yet hand me mine . When the mongols invaded europe the only thing that stopped them was the death of a Khan.

Well I am off to try HRE.

[Tyrac]

Why doesn't the unit stats list the speed? I am having difficulty telling which units are supposed to be light, heavy, and medium as relates to speed when deciding what to build for. Maybe a list in the readme dividing them into classes along the lines of what you did with crusades.

Also please change the walk speed on Horse back. Changing this is way too inaccurate.

[Mr Frost]

Why does 1.7 CTD at an apparantly random point during almost every campain battle {only one actually went the distance , and it was a small and short one} .

I was going to try to figure out how to install just what I wanted from the mod , but now time is a commodity I have rather less of to spare . I hope the CTD can be easily remedied .

[Mr Frost]

I now theorise that the CTDs might have been caused by playing campains of minour factions in GA mode {I like GA} . Somehow it might have effected the battles ?

[Elmo]

I have seen 1.7 CTD's as the Turks and have been working with Wes to isolate the cause. My first battle as the Kievans did not result in a CTD.

Mr Frost, please post the faction you are playing and any other details that might help identify the cause.

[Trousermonkey]

Ok, just a comment; I think the speed is just right and doesn't need to be reduced. If all the units were slowed down proportionally it would mean I would spend more time at 100% speed while I line up for battle. The way it plays now, I can play the SP game without the pause key and often without resorting to speeding up time. I don't have any problems with battles getting out of control.

I'm afraid if the units are slowed down it will damage the continuity of the battles by reducing it to a series of fast forwards to get into position and then molasses slow maneuvers. At the moment I have no problems controlling the troops in real time and units are fast enough that I don't often have to resort to the time slider.

My two cents: don't slow everything down.

Tm

[WesW]

Tyrac, no problem with waiting awhile until the next version. I have found a few errors with 1.7 so far, but nothing that would cause a crash. I have been enjoying playing a battle-free game with the English, but that will change soon when I start playing after I make this post.

Tyrac, don't worry about the cav speeds. They are not big enough that it should impact what units you decide to build. My aim was to give lighter units a little more speed and manuverability, not alter the battlefield significantly. I will try and put the speeds in the spreadsheet for the next version, though, if only to mollify any uncertainties.

The walking speed for light units and mounted archers are unchanged. I only altered the heavy units that I keep close to my infantry so that they don't get out of formation when moving the whole army and get mixed up with the infantry.

I played a number of custom battles to various degrees of completion while making 1.7 in order to see how the new crusader versions looked, as well as adding things to some of the other cavalry units (anyone notice the swords the Sipahi of the Porte hold now?).
Anyway, I never had a crash during this time, though I have not had a campaign battle yet.

I really can't think of anything I did that would cause these crashes, unless it was the changing of cavalry speeds somehow. All the files I deal with are stats and the textures settings which determine how units look on the battlefield. I made all kinds of errors when I first started messing with the textures, and if none of them caused a crash, I can't see how these latest changes did, though I will keep looking for something.

When reporting crashes, list the era, faction, and individual unit types participating.
I found something that I was doing with the Turcoman Horse weapons and didn't finish for some reason. I looked and didn't see anything in my setup that would cause a crash, but your setup may be different. These are the hardest bugs to catch- those that mess up the players that dl the mod, but don't mess up my computer for some reason.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: A 1.71 patch/update is now available at my website. It should correct the battlefield crashes some of you have been experiencing.

A couple of months ago, I found out that putting an empty file in the textures portion could make a weapon *disappear* while the unit was engaged in a certain motion, like fighting. Well, while studying units last week, I saw that my previous solution to the problem of units trying to use two weapons at the same time, which was to make the lance appear at the unit's feet, was not working well. So, I decided to use the empty file trick in these situations.
Well, apparently, doing this causes some type of instability in the program, leading to the possibility of a crash whenever the empty file was being referenced. Myself, I had been trying to find out what was causing crashes from the strategic map in my games, and only happened to try a quick battle to see if what Elmo had described in his email would happen to me, too. I had thought that his email must have been vague as to exactly when his crashes were occurring, since mine were occurring before I got to the battlefield.
Anyway, sure enough, my battle suddenly crashed, and after about 30 minutes or so I had narrowed down the problem to the Knights of Santiago units. Then I had to try and figure out what was different about them, since I wasn't getting crashes with other units. I finally remembered the empty files, and through testing proved that this was the cause. Then it took awhile to replace the other empty files and be sure I had them all, and to fix the referencing files so that the units would go back to using only a lance for all motions.

This still left me with the problem of my strategic map crashes. After hours of trial and error, I finally found that these crashes were due to changes I made in the units text after quitting my game last night. These involved setting the honor step value to a decimal number. Apparently this screws up the game too.

So, everything seems to be running smoothly again. I made this the 1.71 version of the mod. I also made a few updates and corrected several bugs from the 1.7 version.

I caught errors in the settings for the Almohad Urban Militia, Woodsmen, and Gallowglasses. Also for the Pomerania region bonus.

I gave Clansmen and Gallowglasses back their region bonuses, as I mentioned earlier, and the English now get cost bonuses for some of these units.

I made Vikings a little costlier to support, and made them undisciplined and their formation unformed. The Vikings were famous for going berserk, not for holding a shield wall ala Roman Legions. Maybe now they will be more even with Feudal MAA, though probably still some better.

I replaced the Camel Warriors' spear with a sword, which better fits their stats and review panel pic, and makes them look a lot better. They looked stupid to me with their spears.

I also upped the priorities for some of the more expensive ships that I guess I held off on initially, in order to see if the concept or higher priorities worked or not.

And lastly but maybe bestly, I gave Switzerland a goldmine and a general's star, to help both the Swiss faction and the HRE.

Now, this is about all I plan to do as far as changes for a while, so I hope we can set back and give the mod a good long test and see how everything works.

[econ21]

Wes,

Thanks for the very detailed replies to people's feedback. You are right about the initial conservative reaction to modders changes - each time I get the readme for the latest version of your mod, there are some changes that make my heart sink but after I sleep on it, I find it not such a big deal. My impression from v1.6 was that your mod is a great success in (a) dealing with the trade/ships issue; (b) improving the competitiveness of AI armies (I am seeing very few peasants). These are enormous improvements over the official game, especially for a veteran MTW player like most of the mods users. I also like the more historical maps you have researched. For me, any stats tweaking is very secondary to the importance of (a) and (b) and ideally, I'd like it be minimised (hence my early plea for a minimal and a full verison of your mods).

On a couple of specific points:

You can raise the unit size to "large" via the preferences/ options choice on the main menu. I forget which heading on the sub-menu it is, but it is towards the end of the list. When you get to the relevant page, there is a slider at the bottom that you can drag from "default" through to "large" and "huge". Huge doubles unit sizes but also build times. I prefer large, which raises sizes by 2/3 (along with costs). I don't actually like the larger units in themselves (they are rather unwieldy on the battlefield) but it does reduce the importance of reinforcements on the battlefield. This makes the game more challenging, as it is harder to hold off a numerically superior AI with a smaller, high quality force. It also reduces micromanagement a tad, as you have less units on the strategic map and build fewer.

On armour and defence, have you read the couple of threads on this posted in the TOC? They include contributions from CA people and my reading of it was that armour is the stat used to defend against missiles; defence is the stat used to compare with the attack stat when determining melee fights. So the armour stat is not added to the defence stat for anything.

The armour stat is very systematic and related objectively to the supposed equipment of the units. In the unpatched crusaders unit txt file apparently there is a listing of the armour types (eg mail, light mail, heavy mail, three-quarter plate etc) and this is also in the strategy guide. I went through the armour description in the strategy guide and armour stat for all the units and there was an almost perfect correspondance (Armenian cav was one possible exception, IIRC).

The armour and the defence stats are correlated, but far from perfectly. Weaponry makes a difference (eg spear units appear to have higher defence than swords, presumably as spears might be used to hold off an enemy, whereas swords relied on getting inter-mingled), but there are other things at work. Partly, I think CA were trying to model some less well trained, "barbarian" type units that relied on the initial charge to break the enemy and would get into trouble in sustained close fighting. (This is similar to the concept of the "warband" unit in the ancients/medieval minatures wargame rules system DBM). I think this helps explain the high charge, low defence of the Highlanders and Nizaris. I also suspect CA were trying to balance somethings up - for example, it is not clear why Feudal Sergeants had much lower defence relative to their armour than Chivalric Sergeants. I suspect it may be to make cavalry more powerful in the early period and less so in the high.

The only twist on all this is that the contribution of the shield does seem to be separate from both the armour and the defence, and is added to both as appropriate. I think this may be an innovation of the patch - certainly, all the armour values in the strategy guide appear to incorporate the effect of the shield whereas those in the patch txt file do not. I think CA made this change because sometimes the shield should contribute to armour/defence and sometimes it should not (eg if you are shot in the back or are meleeing with a 2handed weapon etc). Keeping the shield out the armour stat post-patch makes its variable contribution more clear and avoids the problems CA had in explaining to people pre-patch why the shield effect entered as a negative effect on armour/defence.

If I am wrong on all this, please let me know but it seemed pretty well spelt out by CA people in the two threads in the TOC.

Finally, on the horse speeds - I am just not convinced plate armoured knights were any slower than mail armoured ones. Plate was just not that heavy - people could leap onto their horses and even do somersaults in it. I too was puzzled by the slower speed of kats, but reading about them it does seem to be accurate. Recall they are ancient units - dating back to ancient Roman times - and do not have the full plate, but bulky "heavy mail". This is why their armour and defence is inferior to Gothic knights. I suspect it is the armour of the horse rather than the rider that is the key factor in determining the horse speed. The kats and Gothic knights - and a few others - are modelled as having full horse armour. [Actually, I am beginning to suspect that kats should not be in the game at all - I think they belong to an earlier period and that in the MTW period, the Byzantines used Frankish heavy cavalry (ie knights). However, I need to do more research to confirm this suspicion.] My personal view would be to make units with full horse armour the slow ones (ie keep chivalric knights at normal speed). I would probably remove the full horse armour from the lancers - lower armour/defence one point - and keep their speed up.

I would also keep the hobilars at the default speed. With their inferior mounts, I don't think they could outrun destriers and so should not be able to disengage from knights in combat. I am not sure if they are still specific to Britain and France, but I don't think fast light cav played a major role in either country.

[Elmo]

Wes, thanks for the outstanding support of you mod. I only wish CA gave MTW half the support you are giving it

Excellent post Simon. Keep the historical perspectives coming please.

[cugel]

"Well, this is just strange. I finally started a new campaign with 1.7 last night, as the English, High, Expert, and in the first 20 years I there have been at *least* four Crusades started. At one point, there were two Crusades marching through Spain heading south, and another heading north. The two heading south, a French one bound for Granada and a Sicilian one bound for Algeria, happened to join up at Aragon and proceeded in tandem to Granada. The one heading north was Spanish, obviously, and I remember a German one being declared earlier and perhaps one more that I can't recall clearly.
Before logging on tonight, I went into the units text and lowered the Crusade priority, convinced that my attempt to rarify them had failed completely."

Well, isn't this odd, Wes I was just logging on to give you a report about my experiences with a new 1.7 campaign as the English in high and experienced the exact same thing

1. Crusades. Crusades are now better and stronger. Fewer useless troop types, no peasants and more feudal knights. However, I saw four or five crusades in the first 25 years. Historically, there were only 8 major crusades in two centuries, an average of 1 each 25 years, so this is almost exactly twice too much. They almost all failed as well. I kept close track of them through the .matteosartori. cheat and noticed that if a crusade needs more than 3 turns to reach it's objective province it deteriorates to the point of inevitable failure. This corresponds to my own player experience. The only player generated crusades that are useful are those that proceed directly by sea to their target. The idea of taking 10 years to build them and increasing the cost is very good

I would recommend lowering the AI build probability by 1/2 and reducing the cost by 1/2 of all crusade units as well from what you have it. Increase the cost correspondingly. Also include more strong units as crusaders. The crusade should ideally generate an army of about 4-5000 men.
If these armies were at least twice the size they are now (apparently about 1500) they would have a chance. As it is they degenerate so quickly they are still not much of a threat at about 1000 troops a piece after they reach a nearby province. In addition, they suffer because the AI doesn't consolidate troop types properly when they are reduced due to desertion. This results in many small or half-strength units appearing on the battlefield only to be defeated in detail.

Is there no way to increase the number of stars their general appears with? The same problem is true of the Mongols, as Tyrac notes. IMO, the horde doesn't attack, despite the huge stack size because of it's piss poor 1-2 star generals. After they lose a battle or two it gets worse. I've never seen the Horde make any real impact on Europe in this game. They ought to be such a threat that if the player doesn't deal with them they will eventually conquer everything on the map. Like Crusades, they really ought to put the fear of God into you We ought to think about this problem. I think there was another thread some time ago addressing this issue, but I can't find it. Your increases to the Horde are good in their way, but don't go far enough.

Here I have a complaint. I modded the game to be able to build feudal and chivalric footknights and then noticed that you had reduced the cost to 150 fl. I figured out that rather than add a CrusaderFeudalFootKnight you just lowered the cost so that they would appear in crusades (according to Cold Steel's post in response to my post in the 1.6 thread), however, I then had to go back and spend time editing the files to create separate buildable footknights and crusader-only footknights (with the lower cost so that they will appear in crusades).

First, footknights ought to be buildable anyway for historical reasons. This looks to be a classic case of where CA decided late before release not to include them for some reason, but left them in crusades and, as with other questionable decisions you have already modded, this ought to be changed. Footknights were present in considerable numbers in feudal armies. There were many poorer knights who could not afford destriers. See Phillipe Contamine's War in the Middle Ages for a discussion of the expense of providing suitable warhorses. Mounted knights were the medieval equivalent of modern tanks. Just as no modern army could possibly afford to equip it's entire infantry force in tanks or heavily armored vehicles, in medieval times no king or lord could afford to equip a very large army exclusively of mounted knights. For example, the first crusade (a very powerful force for those times) had 4-5000 mounted knights compared with around 25,000 infantry (of all types). Destriers had to be specially breed and were prohibitively expensive for all but the elite. Those footknights presumably represent poorer knights serving under a lord or captain. They could probably acquire decent armor and could ride to the battlefield, but you can't charge into battle in heavy armor on a palfrey (I mention this because it is an independent phenonmenon from the evolution of tactics during the later era favoring fighting on foot as a response to improved anti-cavalry weapons like the pike).

If you don't want to make footknights buildable, o.k., but you should create regular types (at the regular cost) and crusader types (non-buildable with the costs lowered to increase their representation in crusades), so that other modders can easily add them without having to screw around with deadpage_coordinates.txt, names.txt etc as I did.

2. For God's sake don't worry about those who say "if it ain't broke don't fix it." If people don't want to play a modded game, they have the regular one to play. For those of us who want the game to live up to its potential as a real challenge even against experienced players, because of improved performance by the AI, and to fix problems with various units and factions, this is the only way to go. For example, your decision to mod Swiss halberdiers makes a useful unit out of an unsuccessful one (they died like flies). I like the way they play now - a badly needed improvement.

3. The Byzantines. IMO the Byzantines (AI) still need
help. They build ships, (now everyone builds ships BTW - reducing the build times to 2 turns was key here), but they still don't keep a ship in the Marmara. I was not surprised at this since the ship and build prod values in my original mod were very similar to yours in 1.7, and I am very familiar with this phenomena. I've played many campaigns (at least partway through) in playtesting my own mods, based on Paladin's 1092 mod, staying neutral as the Sicilians and just keep hitting end turn, just to observe a number of campaigns, so I think my experiences are comparable to yours. The Italians also still don't keep a ship in the Adriatic despite building hordes, so Venician trade is still a problem.

I would strongly recommend changing the first sea zone for Constantinople in earl.txt to the Aegean Sea (you could move the port image too, but as DOC points out this is cosmetic). This will cause their shipping to appear there and define the Aegean as the home waters for Constantinople, which in turn should solve the trade problem (they have no trouble keeping shipping in the Aegean). Trade links throught the black sea from Crimea will still be cut by the lack of a ship in the Marmara, but Constantinople trade is key for the Byzantine AI.

I've finally reached the conclusion that possession of the Crimea screws up the Byz. AI. Even on Catholic_Trader, they still attempt to conquer asia and use all their troops to do it, leaving Constantinople relatively undefended. As with almost every campaign I've seen since I installed Paladin's mod back in November, they wind up losing and regaining Constantinople several times before ultimately losing it for good and without it they have no chance. Historically, they held this province, but do you think that CA could have deleted it from their possession because it caused problems for the AI? It might be worth seeing whether they do better without it, since they might not be lured into the depths of Asia while other factions attack them through the back door.

[Tyrac]

I just wanted to give my support for Cugel's points on the Byzantines. His observations on their AI behavior mirror my own.

[WesW]

Ok, thanks for the feedback on the Byzants, though I doubt holding the Crimea is having a big effect on them. I have observed, and it has been widely reported, that the Byzants have spent all their efforts in eastern Europe only to lose Constan since the game first came out six months ago. The first campaign I ever played with MTW, I chose the English, and decided to build my empire up in the rebel provinces of eastern Europe to avoid excommunication, and I met the Byzant empire around Chernigov. They had lost Constan, too. Unfortunately their behavior doesn't seem to have changed much since.
This may be why the designers made the rebels in Khazar so strong, to make the Byzants think twice about expanding that way, I don't know, but the rebels in the Crimea were set very weak, and the Byzants always seemed to take that province along with Moldavia right away.
What I could do is make the Khazars into a major faction for the early era, using the Golden Horde's names and so forth. I am pretty sure that we can add a couple of extra factions to each era, the hard part traditionally being making all the names and such.
Or, I could give the Kievans Khazar, and cut the Byzants off that way. I think they just expand into Europe because it is the easiest route, rather than taking on another faction.

Oh, and I will look into changing Constan's port sea. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. What I may do, though, is try and eliminate the Sea of Marmara, expanding the Aegean into its territory, which would seem to solve even more problems.

As to Crusades, the file I included in the update had the lowered priorities for Crusades that I made before logging on and seeing what everyone else was observing. I had lowered them about 50% for everyone, so let's see what others report. I raised them back up for my current game, and Italy, France and Spain started making Crusades on turn 1. I am only about on turn 15 or 20, so I don't know what the other factions are doing.

Also, everyone keep in mind that Crusades can have more than 16 units in their stack. All the Crusades that I looked into had at least three rows of units in them, with one containing 40 units.
I may adjust their settings sometime, but I worry about making them so expensive per turn, or making them such a bargain for the buck that everyone builds as many of them as they can.

I don't know of any way to affect the generals that appear in Crusades. I had hoped that maybe they would siphon off some by virtue of being created in the capital provincce. It's too bad that CA did not set them like it does uprisings, which often contain good generals in them.

As for the Horde, the heavy cav and warrior units are "preferred" for generals, so they should regularly spawn 2-star or even 3-star generals. There is nothing else I know to do for them.

Cugel, you misread the new readme regarding the foot knights. I have switched the Hospitallers and Chivalric in the availability section of the spreadsheet. Chiv and Feudal are only available for Crusades, while the Hosp are available as regular units to the western factions.

Note: I forgot to mention last night that I color-coded the dismounting info column in the spreadsheet to show which speed category cavalry units fit into. I added a comment at the top of the column that details everything.

Regarding Hobilars, I made them faster to set them apart some from Mounted Sgts. The way they are now, the only difference (and their stats have not been changed in the mod), is that the Sgts have a little higher charge value. The Hobilar's lower building reqs might make it easy to rush out a lot of them in the early era, but this is not much for a special unit, imo. If they were not fast historically, well this trade-off has already been discussed.

Simon, the threads on armor, etc, are quite difficult to make sense of. I had to read the key points several times before I got it straight, I think.;)
Armor is indeed the factor used for missile defense, along with shields if the unit is facing the volley. Armor and shields are also added to the defense value for melee. This is why you have a setting as to whether a unit can melee with its shield or not. It is also why, I believe, defense values for spearmen are so low- they get about all their protection from armor and shields, along with a shield bonus against cavalry and the supporting ranks. If you invision holding a spear in one hand and a shield in another, you are not going to be able to parry with a swordsman very well. This is why spears have such a low intrinsic defense value. This is also why I lowered the upkeep of spears significantly, IIRC, in the mod- by the time you multiplied the factor by 100, they were among the most expensive units in the game to upkeep.
When you view the F1 battle screen, the armor value is already incorporated into the defense value, I believe. This is why the defense value shown is never less than the armor value (try this out for yourself.) Understanding how much of a unit's defense comes from armour can make a huge difference when it comes to armour-piercing weapons.

As you can tell, I have been quite busy with the mod and the barrage of questions and comments lately (the six hours between my two posts last night were spent entirely on fixing the two CTD problems), so if their was something you posted that I didn't address, just ask again and I should be able to notice it when things slow down a little during the next few days.

Oh, and finally, since there is so much interest in the Crusade settings- they are very easy to adjust. Simply open up the Crusader_units text, and scroll down to the last entries. The Crusade and Jihad units are the last two regular entries, right above the new Crusader units I added for 1.7. You can adjust the price and turns to build in the first few entries. I have pasted them below. (I substituted spaces for the tabs so that they would show up corrently here.) Cost you should recognize as the 4000 value, and turns to build is the 10 two entries after the price. Priorities for the various behaviors begin right after the Preferred entry. To get more units to show up in Crusades, you have to lower the price for the Crusade-only units. 7 are the units I added to the game at the end of the file, and the others are the OrderFoot, ChivalricFootKnights, FeudalFootKnights, KnightsTemplar, KnightsHospitaller and TeutonicKnights.

Crusade CRUSADE 4000.....0......10.......0.......80......1.......1.......PREFERRED

[Red Harvest]

I might have a "final" solution to the Sea of Marmara problem...although I haven't tried plugging it in yet...forgive me if it has already been tried.

Idea: Change the sea connections ("SET NEIGHBORS") so that it isn't actually used. Transfer the port to one side or the other, AND arrange it so that you can move directly from the Black Sea to the Aegean. Perhaps leave Marmara in as a "triangle" so that it can be occupied and doesn't crash the game, but it no longer blocks the flow of trade. Graphic will be the same so it will look a bit screwy, LOL. Hope they fix the root cause in VI (beta testers, make some noise&#33 Suppose this is a bit more difficult than I've stated, but perhaps it will get the creative juices flowing.

I've also got a game going with 2 year build time for base ships (3 for others). The AI has a number of boats in the water, even though I'm the Spanish and overran the Almo's Egyptians and Aragonese pretty early. I like this effect since the Egyptians and Italians worked together to allow a behind the lines troop drop that rarely happened in the past. Of course, the Egyptian King died in the attack and the faction disappeared, but it was a pleasant surpise. I'm having real trouble making dollars off trade because the AI has enough ships to prevent normal expansion.

Other main point I wanted to make was the discussion about changing overall troop movement speeds in tactical mode. I think it will cause insurmountable trouble, here is why: how do you change the speed of castle defenses? They will tear you up if you attack them at half speed while they are at 100% (OUCH Imagine a fortress assault.)

On the Horde issue, I think the main problem has been that they can't replace their early losses (would help if they had better generals though.) The only heavy unit they have is Heavy Cav. When I play as the Horde in late (my own quick mod) I find that they can't get heavy cav without substantial upgrades. However, when they capture territory it gets downgraded. When fighting against the Horde I always fought a battle of attrition, give up a province or two in a fighting retreat after cutting their heavy cav down. Once the heavy cav was whittled down they were easy to steam roll with spear units, arbalests, and light cav. Soon I had the initiative.

[cugel]

"Cugel, you misread the new readme regarding the foot knights. I have switched the Hospitallers and Chivalric in the availability section of the spreadsheet. Chiv and Feudal are only available for Crusades, while the Hosp are available as regular units to the western factions.
"

Yes, Wes, I see now that you've switched the Hospitaller and Chivalric Footknights (making Chivalric only available through crusades).

I just loaded up the unit_prod11 file in the Gnome editor, noticed that column 17 (buildings needed to make this unit) was blank for both chivalric and feudal footknights, and wanted to make them buildable (for the historical reasons I mentioned), so I added build requirements. Then I noticed that you had lowered the cost from what it ordinarily was to 75 and 125 respectively. Obviously, this was in order to make them spawn more in crusades as Cold Steel mentioned, but it meant that I had to create new crusaderFeudalFootknights (with the 75 cost) and add references to them in all the proper text files (after figuring out which these were, a simple name search didn't disclose all of them at once and I got error messages when I started the first battle and had to go back again and re-edit more files, etc.), as well as changing the price for the ordinary buildable ones back to the way they were(otherwise they'd be ridiculously cheap). I got it figured it out, but it took some time and I was simply trying to make life a little easier for others who might want to make similar changes. This is a fairly popular modification, I believe there's even a mod downloadable from the Org that does nothing else but make them buildable. If no-one cares, don't bother. I think feudal footknights are a nice cheap alternative to regular knights in some circumstances, and historically accurate, so I wanted them. As for Hospitaller footknights, {ARMOURER4,SWORDSMITH3,ROYAL_COURT4} seems a bit steep for them. Have you seen the AI build any of them? I doubt it would ever get the necessary buildings, but I'll have to see. You might want to lower those requirements. I think with the way the AI swaps around provinces and degrades their structures it will be tough to get the AI to build fortresses (which you'd need to build to have armorer4). I haven't seen the AI build one yet. There should be no units that only the player builds (because the build requirements are too steep for the AI).

As for giving the Horde better generals, someone mentioned some ideas on a thread some time ago. Hopefully I can eventually find it. If they had better starting generals they could be a much bigger threat.

Don't you still find that AI crusades are too weak? The 4 or 5 I've seen so far in my last campaign didn't accomplish much. Now that they take 10 years from your capital province and especially if they cost a bit more players's wouldn't be able to abuse them, but they'd finally be a good investment for the AI. Ten years without being able to build any other troop types in your capital is a real sacrifice. Frankly, I doubt I'd ever bother to make them unless they would appear with at least 3-4000 troops. Even then, I'd question the value since I could just as easily make equivalent troops and have much greater tactical flexibility. Perhaps if I could ferry the crusade by sea to it's destination, it would be worth it, but if it had to march over land, forget it (remember that one could build fewer ordinary units in that time, BUT ordinary units don't degrade by about 20% or more each turn, so the cost benefit ratio would only favor crusades that reached their target in 2 or 3 turns at most)

Maybe it's just me, but I haven't bothered with crusades much and am approaching this issue wholly from the standpoint of making the AI crusades worthy of the name.

They still aren't in my opinion and need further strengthening.

[econ21]

Hi Wes,

I don't think you are right about adding armour to defence.
Longjohn from CA was fairly explicit on this in the TOC thread:

"It's been discussed quite a bit already, and is explained in the strat guide.
Armour = defense against missiles
Defense factor = defense in melee.

The defense factor already includes the effect of armour, troop training, weapon type, and mode of fighting."

I can give you quotes from the Strategy guide too, if you like. (It says the kill chance in melee is determined by the attack value minus the defence value and a host of modifiers. You do add in the effect of armour upgrades and for AP weapons the attack stat is boosted depending on the defender's armour. But the armour stat per se is not a modifier.).

Basically, the defence stat already includes the contribution to armour so the game never adds the armour stat to it.

Before the patch MTW subtracted the effect of the shield if it was not appropriate (eg shot in the back). After the patch, the shield is added to both defence stats and armour stats if appropriate.

I am 100% sure about this, but if you doubt it, you could try an experiment with two heavily armoured units (eg knights) fighting, having lowered one's armour stat (only) to zero. I am saying they will have roughly equal casualities. If you believe armour stat is added to defence, I guess you believe the armour zero guys will get creamed.

[Jon von]

In my opinion feudal knights are too cheap and kat too expensive; a kat unit costs more than 200 fl. more than feudal knights

[ToranagaSama]

Old_Templar

Quote[/b] ]The Germans had two stacks of troops in Saxony but never made an attempt to wipe out my measly 300 early troops in Danmark. They were initially strong but were completely annihilated by the French (THEY WERE OVERPOWERING IN BOTH OF MY GAMES).

Gosh, at last someone sees what I see This is the single biggest advantage the Danes have. The fact that the HRE simply doesn't steamroll them. You'd think that at some point the HRE would see all that money in Denmark and Sweden and go for it.

There must be some way to Mod a correction to this situation, BUT even if there is a way, a GOOD deal of "balancing" would be required. Otherwise, the result would be the HRE easily and repeatedly rolling over the Danes each campaign.

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Regarding the Kievians. Oh, before that, Wes, you are the Master Modder, but dude, few of us are capable of keeping up with your modding proficiency. You are amazing.

I tried 1.5 and was having a grand time, but then you came out with 1.6. I decided to skip that for the moment and continue my 1.5 campaign, BUT then you've come out with 1.7. So I've skipped 1.6, quit the 1.5 campaign and started a new 1.7 campaign.

Might I suggest we subscibe to a Timetable, say 2 or 3 weeks between Major mod versions. This would allow folks to manage to play through a campaign and gain a better perspective upon the changes; in addition to allowing for deeper discussion and thoughts.

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Back to the Kievians. You guys are right, to a point. My intitial thoughts are that this is a rather difficult faction to play, but that's cool.

Though, when I actually saw the map, it seemed the Kievians were in a good spot. Think about it, they start with Kiev, which has two tradeable goods and Lithuania with three tradeable goods. Also, they surrounded by Rebels and Seas. So far, so GREAT

The problem is that to take advantage of these great assets requires dual SIMULTANEOUS development. This is tough on the pocketbook, but can be done. The real problem is not the simultaneous development, BUT the fact that you need dual simultaneous, costs and maintenance for Ships

Since these two provinces are on two different seas, in order to gain trade benefits from BOTH provinces, you have to bear the costs for 2 ships and their maintenance per turn (sorta).

Actually, its a bit worse than that, with Lithuania, you'll need 3 ships to get to the North Sea (roughly 2 ports to trade with) and a 4th ship to get to the Channel and the big payoff (3 or 4 posts to trade with). A total of FOUR ships required.

[The key to Trading is "efficiency", as you can see getting that one ship into the Channel can really pay. In comparison Denmark can get there with 2 ships.]

With Kiev the situation is somewhat better, but still problematic. If your neighbors develop nicely and get a couple of ports onto the Black Sea, then a single ship can give you a trade return with Kiev; another ship will get you to Constantinople. This is about it at the very beginning.

The problem here is that Kiev only has 2 tradeable goods. So while you can start trading rather early, the return is not enough to fund Lithuania's development and to push your Kiev ships around toward the big payoff(s) round the pennisula where the Egytians have 2 or 3 ports in addition to the Byzantine Island port for a total of 4 ports to trade with; or you could go around toward the Adriatic (and Venice) with the usual 3 or 4 ports to trade with there.

Again, the issue here is that the above requires 3 to 4 ships w. their maintenance costs. Not possible to accomplish this while also developing Lithuania toward the Channel.

So, you guys are right Kiev is in a pickle.

So what to do?

You must abandon Lithuania I say again abandon Lithuania.

Timing in doing so is crucial, and I still have to perfect the timing, but abandonment is the core strategy. At the correct (early) moment, Destroy the buildings and gain the income from doing so, better than 1000 Florins to be had; then move your troops and invade Khazar

Khazar has THREE very tradeable goods and is rebel held. If you attack properly you won't even have to fight, though the rebels might retreat to the fort.

If they do so, then you must choose between, taking the fort and losing a few, MUCH needed, men. Khazar is VERY rebellious, on the order of Portugal and Scotland. So you'll need the men to deal with Loyalty. Yet savings in the cost and time to build a Fort may be worth the loss of men. Allowing the Fort to fall, may save the loss of mean, but will add the cost and time of rebuilding the Fort(,etc.). You decide.

Whatever choice above you make, the benefits of abandoning Lithuania and taking Khazar are great and probably the only viable option for Kiev. The 1000 plus Florins you receive from destroying Lithuania's buildings should serve to fund Khazar's early development for the most part.

The full benefit is that you no longer are faced with the "dual" shipbuilding costs and maintenance; and with each ship in the water you get the benefit of FIVE tradeable goods (Kiev w. 2 and Khazar w. 3).

Implementing the above strategy should do the Kievans quite well, with few close threats there's plenty of time for development. Rebels to the north, east and west of Kiev and to the north of Khazar with the Turks to South (they are busy dealing with the Eygtians and Byz.)

Now, with all the above done and accomplished the Kievians are still in a tough spot. As war between the Byzantines, Egytians and Turks will soon lead to the destruction of some of their ports, effecting your trade income negatively. This is inevitable, in addition to the fact that at some point you may want to take one or all of them on in battle.

So, you must plan your strategy accordingly. Rather than focus your trade empire upon the Eygtians' coast, I'd focus and go round toward the Adriantic (Venice and Scilily); with the Egytian trade income viewed as supplemental. Do not become dependant on this income.

Now, with all the above accomplished (or on its way), I'd re-take Lithuania. A bit of a chore as there may be mucho rebels (3 or 4 stacks) to deal with. Bribery never hurts I'd also look to take Livonia (and her 2 tradeables), and also the other neighboring province (forget name, but has 2 tradeables as well). Get some ships in the water heading toward the channel and you should be quite fixed for income.

Now, you can begin your conquest WESTWARD. Poland, Hungary, HRE, Spain and Almo, are all targets that should not effect your income negatively. OH and Sweden/Denmark are such tempting targets, GO FOR IT

Lastly, if you like to try some "HardCore Rules" to make things even more interesting, try these:

1) Limit your Kiev/Khazar ships from sailing past Scilily. At first the Adriatic was off limits, but that's a bit much I think.

2) Limit your Lithuania/Livonia, etc. ships from sailing past the top of Spain (forget the sea name) or not further than Portugal (which is more practical considering Portugal's difficulty).

Now, if you really want to have fun add these rules:

3) Govenors should be Knights (or equivalent);
4) Governors should be of Royal blood or at least married to Royal blood.

If you do not have units to meet the above criteria, then your province(s) should read: Govenor None Simply suffer through the consequences (see further comments in the Entrance Hall, "Governorships" thread).

These are the rules I'm using. The Kiev faction is so tuff to play (I made a few mistakes too), I adjusted my usual rules by adding the Adriatic for trading and item 4) "...at least married to Royal blood". Hehehe.

Well, that's pretty much how my Kiev Med Mod 1.7 campaign has shaped up. I've taken Lithuania and to my surprise was rebuffed in Livonia where my newly ascended to the throne King died a heroic but senseless death. The impetuous fool thought the 3 stacks of rebels with a 3 star general would abandon and flee before his devine right to rule. Invaded with a 3/4 stack and his lowly 3 stars. Idiot The Rebel reinforcements just kept coming and coming. Luckily, I have a spare. Not sure if I'll finish this Campaign, because I want to get a better feel for the changesand for that I need to go play as the Danes (not sure but I might favor 1.5 over 1.7). I will certainly revist the Kievians as they are very challenging, not much room for error at the beginning.

Thoughts?

[WesW]

Ok, Simon, I believe you now. I ran some tests like you suggested, and the armor stat definitely didn't have an effect on melee. This is going to cause a whole re-evaluation of the units stats and costs (thanks a lot) .

Also, could you elaborate a little more on the affect of armour-piercing melee weapons? I mean, if defense and armour are two un-related stats, then shouldn't the armour-piercing be factored against the defense stat rather than the armour stat?

Finally, and this is for everyone, do you think there needs to be more of an increase in stats as you move up the development line, e.g. from Feudal MAA to Chivalric MAA to Foot Kn.? Looking at the spreadsheet in light of this new info, Feudal and Chiv MAA have exactly the same melee defense when the shield is factored in. The only deference in them is the one point of attack and a little better morale.
Considering what a difference a couple of generals stars means to stats, this is why battles are often decided before they are even begun based upon generals alone, regardless of the troops involved. I have been considering this move for some time, and now seems a good time to propose it.
I had been using armour as a primary stat when deciding on troop costs, along with offense, defense and shield. Now I will treat it as a minor stat, as with charge, cav att and cav def, discipline, morale and honor, etc.
This is going to make the units much more bunched in price, as they are in ability it turns out.

If someone would like to try a solution to the Sea of Marmara on their own, I would appreciate the work taken off my back right now.
I posted details for some Crusade tinkering last post. The AI Crusades I have seen with 1.7 seem to do alright as long as they reach their destination within a few turns.
Maybe the solution would be for CA to to severely cut down on both the joining and desertion rate?

As for building requirements, the ones for Foot Knights are very high so that it would be very hard to get them. I mean, why have a Fortress upgrade if it doesn't give you access to enough units to make it worthwhile for anyone, human or AI? If the AIs are not building any Fortresses, then you need to change this, not make Fortresses irrelevent. I read that in the expansion, buildings will not be destroyed unless the castle is taken. This should help some, though they also said the same amount of buildings will be destroyed when it is taken.
I posted a thread a couple months back arguing that the financial structures only should be destroyed, and not anything else, other than maybe the castle itself if it is stormed. A couple of people posted with some historical examples supporting the current setup, but I remain convinced that this arrangement would be better for gameplay at least.

And finally, as to the rapidity of mod versions, I don't set out with a schedule in mind. I just play the game and read posts, and if I see something that I think I can improve upon, and I feel like it, I alter it for my own playing enjoyment. I also like debating this stuff, too, so I document it and upload it for eveyone else to try. After last week, I don't really care to do anything else big for a while, and we certainly have enough to talk about for a while, but if I am playing and something begins to irritate me, you never know...