The Caravel Mod

[gollum]

Regarding general stars, a balance needs to be stricken from a gameplay perspective, and this mod sticks with that.

The need for balance comes from the fact that General stars give +1valor per 2command stars to all units under their command and that means that every unit gets a +1attack,+1defence,+2morale per valor point.

Essentially most mods charge up the game with more command stars for generals and also from titles. This mod sticks to the vanilla command stars that are more moderate, because past a certain point, if too many high star generals are around morale is downgraded as a gameplay element - armies fight to the last man as a rule. This is not how this mod is meant to play at all.

On the other hand, reducing too much the initial stars of generals does not make much sense either because the generals upgrade command stars as in Shogun TW that is: 1star for 1 victorious battle, 2 stars for 2 vict battles, 3 stars for 4 victorious battles, 4 stars for 8 victorious battles, 5stars for 16 victorious battles, 6 stars for 32 victoroius battles, 7 stars for 64 victorious battles, 8 stars for 128victorious battles and 9 stars for 256 victorious battles. Every loss counts as -1 to the general's record and he has to counteract it with +1 victory and reach the numbers said before for the stars. So for example, a general that has 32 victorious battles and loses 1 battle will lose his 6th star.

However, ShogunTW had 4 turns(seasons) per year while MTW has 1 turn per year (1turn=1year). This means that generals in MTW are around much less time (typically a faction leader will last 25 to 45 turns) in order to accumulate stars with Shoguns system (where a faction leader would live from say 25 to 65 ie 40yearsx4turns per year=160turns! much more time to raise his command stars...). Hence it is necessary to give them some initial stars, especially since hero characters (Jeanne d'Arc, Saladin etc) make appearances as Generals.

If however, too many initial stars are given (or from titles etc) the gameplay becomes warcraft; ie morale practically doesn't impact on the battles, and battles are won by greater numbers and more uber units and upgrades.

This is what most popular mods are doing including XL and BKB. This is however NOT how this mod is made or its intended to play. This mod aims to keep command stars moderate and so morale always relevant in battles.

The general star issue is also another reason why i didn't follow Caravel's idea to make most units elites (elites + 4-5 on average stars = morale matters less). Of course, Caravel also suggested to make the default stars of heros and starting generals too small as well, but that would have run into the problem i described (too few years of life for generals to accumualte stars). To be honest from my perspective, that would have been better for gameplay reasons, but it would have skewed the vanilla gameplay too much and i wanted this mod to be reckognisably vanilla blah blah :)