The Caravel Mod

[gollum]

enjoy :)

[Cyprian2]

I'll keep experimenting, but I can't see what was incorrect. I notice that Crusade was blank and thus available to all factions (?) so I imagine that is to be left blank... I haven't been anywhere near modding before..

You're a braver man than I, Gunga-Glenn! I've always worried that any modding attempts made by me at this late juncture in my MTW career would result in the game falling to pieces before my eyes. Here's hoping that you get your desired game to work without a hitch. Of course, with our savy friend gollum's guidance, I have no doubts on that score. And when you do get it working...I may be tempted to follow in your footsteps. (Sorry, gollum--but I really think that making Crusades available to all the Catholic factions adds a unique flavour to the game.)

That said, I'm going to try The Caravel Mod first as it was originally intended. In fact, I plan to fire up a campaign as early as this evening. (I'm currently on vacation, and away from my usual setup, but there's no such thing as a vacation from MTW!) I will be sure to share my initial experiences with all of you fine folks.

EDIT: Given the fairly heated debate in the Main Hall recently about the various merits and weaknesses (mostly the latter) of the HRE, I am tempted to try a campaign as Kaiser. I'm curious, gollum, to see how you've tweaked them. Hmm, yes. I might just do that... Even if it means I go down in flames.

[gollum]

No need to apologise Cyprian2. We all like our our personal twists and most people i know in the Main Hall make their personal mods. As i said, i will make available the mod as i intend it to be, but there's nothing from stopping anyone to mod it, and enjoy the flavor you like.

The HRE is no more or less difficult than vanilla, as are most factions. The factions that you will find have become more troublesome are: the Danes, the Byzantines and the Spanish (somewhat). Even these factions though are not made impossibly difficult or anything, just they have more difficult climbing curves than vanilla in which they are all too easy; the danes because of their spam cheap and deadly Vikings, the Byzantines because they start with huge forces as well as the jedi princes, and the Spanish because Spain is the richest area in the map for no good reason. All these aspects are tweaked in Caravel. The Danes still have vikings and longboats, but they are not so easily accessible neither so cheap; the Byzantines still start big, but with very little forces to guard their many lands, and Spain is a land with much more realistic wealth and far more divided than in vanilla so as to require a decent effort to unite and so as to have dangerous opponents elsewhere on the map after that.

[Tristrem]

I must say this mod is quite wonderful. I have not had time to try the newest version (2.1), but the first version was a nice change of pace from most other mods.

I have one suggestion, and that would be to lower the overall number of cavalry per unit. 80 man knight units on huge is just a little unwieldy, and I feel as though reducing them back to forty man units would be more accurate since knights were more historically rare, and easy to use on the battlefield.

I could do this myself for my copy of the mod, but I thought I would bring it up, and see what everyone else's general thoughts were.

Good work on the mod though!

[gollum]

Thank you for your interest and kind words Tristrem, i hope you enjoy.

Thank you for your suggestion, which has a definite historical point, but i must decline, as i would like to keep the ratios of unit strength between cavalry and infantry to those of the vanilla game. They affect both balance and reckognisability of the game, and i am keen on it being readily recognisable for anyone who has played vanilla.

If you haven't played on huge before, its possible that this is temporary and soon you'll get accustomed to it.

So, yes, feel free to make the change yourself. The BGs Knights are small units, but the reason (of the vanilla designer) was most likely that since the AI factions get them without their will (everytime a heir is borne), its better they cost less to maintain so they don't unbalance the cash flow of the Ai factions.

If you will and can, try when you have time the latest version (v2.1). Its much, much, better than v1.0 and far more polished. If you liked v1.0 you most certainly won't be dissapointed.

[gollum]

Reagrding xbows/arbs having an ap attack:

I have made much more melee tests with these units against medium melee units (FMAA) and light melee units (UMs) and the tests show that the ap attack makes hardly any difference at all.

There is a possibility that the ap attack will be more pronounced when the AI controls the xbows/arbs due to the dfficulty bonuses (do they get extra attack points from expert and hard? i remember about morale but can't remember about attack). But that can't be bad - it only will force the player to attack them more properly (charge them properly, use the outnumbering morale bonuses etc) in order to dislodge them.

The other possibility is that the ap bonus will make some impact on the performance of those units when they are upgraded with the weapon upgrade, and from the +1 attack they get for every valor point - but then again, so will their enemies.

In any case, it seems that at th moment, i can't see anything too bad with it. If anybody finds out that xbows/arbs perform annoyingly well in melee, then i can certainly change that - as soon as you report it :)

[Stazi]

Reagrding xbows/arbs having an ap attack:

I have made much more melee tests with these units against medium melee units (FMAA) and light melee units (UMs) and the tests show that the ap attack makes hardly any difference at all.

You won't see any difference when fighting with low armor units.

AP forumula is (armor - 1)/2 for foot, and (armor - 2)/2 for horse. And, shields don't count when making this calculation.

It's rounded down so the bonus +1 for attack starts with 3 armor foot and 4 armor cavalry. You have to start a fight with at least 5 armor infantry to see any difference. IMO now xbows will be useful for flanking heavy armored units like kata, gothic or chivalric knights. Say +5 for flanking (or +7 rear) , +3 for AP, + 3 if in wedge ... nice. I'll probably change my favorite pavise arbalesters for the faster shieldless version.
btw I didn't say that this bonus is a bad idea. I only wanted to know the purpose of giving such a bonus to units like xbows. Thanks for the very detailed info. I really appreciate it.

About unit size. I personally don't like the bigger unit size. Most of the maps are small and with huge units there is not much space left for tactic, only frontal charges.

[gollum]

Regarding unit size of feudal knights as suggested by Tristrem interfering with campaign balance:

The problem with making the Knights half size, is that immediately this will drop their maintenance to half. This may lead the AI to "spam them" which will inrefrere with AI stack composition. It could besidestepped by halfing the size but doubling the maintenance cost which will give the same (training)/(maintenance) ratio, as so will lead (hopefully :) the AI to make the FKnights as often as he would normally do.

Huge setting cavs will feel a bit unwieldy if you are coming from playing normal all the time, and they require some adaptation to their size in terms of control. However, eventually (after 1/3 of a campaign i'd say) the "problem" is solved and you can deal with using the larger sizes. larger sizes have many benefits for the strategy part of the game, but they also make the battles more spectacular and more decisive - you usually have less number of units to use and if you make a mistake there are fewer and less space (as space armies take is larger and so distances from flankto flank say longer) to cover it up. They also require skilful micro to maneuver which is another plus. Flanking occurs in flanks, and it is in flanks of battle lines that a lot of micro is required. Melee lasts longer due to the larger sizes, and chain routes and morale outnumbering bonuses are more cutting edge due to the large numbers involved.

[gollum]

There will be an upgraded version of the Caravel Mod up soon, which will have modified weather: more rain, more snow and more fog in the MTW battlefields :)

[Cyprian2]

There will be an upgraded version of the Caravel Mod up soon, which will have modified weather: more rain, more snow and more fog in the MTW battlefields :)

This sounds great. Probably not save-game compatible, though?

[PershsNhpios]

My HRE campaign was drowned early on, Cyprian and I was interested to see how long you could last in the same situation!

It seems I have become accustomed to small kingdoms employing blitz tactics, which means a steep learning curve for me in order to find success in this mod. Sounds like fun to me!

More about that later though, right now I want to help out with this problem of yours if I can Cyprian, as it seems you have missed something else. In my game, Novgorod is available to play as the Russians, as are all factions except the papacy.

Allow me to manufacture a checklist of what I did.

1. Copied a fresh installation of Medieval: Total War Gold Edition (Unofficially patched to 2.01) into a new sub-folder within Creative Assembly folder.

2. Opened Caravelmod1.2.rar

3. Extracted these files to my CA/Caravel/Medieval Total War - Gold Edition/ folder:

CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.txt

CRUSADER_UNIT_PROD11.txt

PROJECTILESTATS.txt

regowner_table

Overwriting all files of course

4. Opened 'Loc' then 'Eng' within the .rar

5. Extracted all files in Loc/Eng/ to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/Loc/Eng/ folder

6. Opened 'Units' in .rar file then copied all .BIF files and .txt file within to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/ folder

7. Opened folder 'Muslim' within 'Units' in .rar and copied all files to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/Muslim/

8. Finally, extracted EARLY.txt to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/startpos/

9. I also created a shortcut of the MTW.exe and added -ian -loyalty:180 -green_generals to the target field.

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I think though that you have done all these things, Cyprian. Have you installed the files on a fresh, plain copy of MTW:VI?

[Cyprian2]

My HRE campaign was drowned early on, Cyprian and I was interested to see how long you could last in the same situation!

Er, yes. But I thought there was talk of "the new France"? Oh, well. This challenge intrigues me. Maybe an HRE campaign is not off the table for me, after all. (At least once I've completed my designs as the Aragonese ;).

It seems I have become accustomed to small kingdoms employing blitz tactics, which means a steep learning curve for me in order to find success in this mod. Sounds like fun to me!

As I've said before "slow and steady" is often my strategy; and, when you're the little guy, you really have no choice!

More about that later though, right now I want to help out with this problem of yours if I can Cyprian, as it seems you have missed something else. In my game, Novgorod is available to play as the Russians, as are all factions except the papacy.

Allow me to manufacture a checklist of what I did.

1. Copied a fresh installation of Medieval: Total War Gold Edition (Unofficially patched to 2.01) into a new sub-folder within Creative Assembly folder.

2. Opened Caravelmod1.2.rar

3. Extracted these files to my CA/Caravel/Medieval Total War - Gold Edition/ folder:

CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.txt

CRUSADER_UNIT_PROD11.txt

PROJECTILESTATS.txt

regowner_table

Overwriting all files of course

4. Opened 'Loc' then 'Eng' within the .rar

5. Extracted all files in Loc/Eng/ to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/Loc/Eng/ folder

6. Opened 'Units' in .rar file then copied all .BIF files and .txt file within to my CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/ folder

7. Opened folder 'Muslim' within 'Units' in .rar and copied all files to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/Info_Pics/Units/Muslim/

8. Finally, extracted EARLY.txt to CA/Caravel/MTW-GE/campmap/startpos/

9. I also created a shortcut of the MTW.exe and added -ian -loyalty:180 -green_generals to the target field.

All of these things have been done to the best of my knowledge and (seemingly limited--ha, ha) ability. My initial travails were the result of my thinking that I could simply unrar the modfiles into my main folder. Gah! I paid the price for my ignorance. Once you and gollum set me straight, I made sure to follow the instructions in the readme down to the last detail. I'm not sure why I should be having this problem. Also, based on my posts of late, I'm starting to look like someone who's never installed a mod! Well, I can tell you: I've installed plenty! Personally, I will blame my blunders on sleep deprivation––a perennial joy of my life.

Most importantly, Glenn and gollum: your efforts to help me get my act together with this mod are much appreciated––and if I can, someday, repay you both for all the help you've so readily offered, I will do so with interest!

Finally, Glenn, I will spend the next little while noodling with the files and following, again, the install instructions. One of these days, my talk will be of the gameplay and little else!

[PershsNhpios]

Don't fret, Cyprian, every post is a post in honour of MTW.

We happy three shall keep the fire well stoked. We have a similar experience with MTW in that we are both well advanced in our exploration of mods but when the wheels start falling off we must run for help!
This means that I can only assist by saying what I have done so that we can make comparisons. Unless due to an excess of fiddling there is an error somewhere in your installation folder, I can't offer any further advice good ally, and so we should wait for Gollum.

Good luck, and now I will return to a little project of mine... !

[Cyprian2]

Travails. I was hoping to be well into my campaign as the HRE by now, but the game keeps freezing during the initial campaign loading. I get the error message: "Attempted to place a unit in a region owned by a faction with a different cultural origin."

I wasn't sure if it was -ian, etc. that I'd applied, so I started it from the root .exe, and still got the error. I'm stymied.

EDIT: I'm going to try unpacking the batch-files again.

EDIT: No dice.

[gollum]

Right, it occurs when a unit of a certain culture/religion is placed in a province of a different culture/religion, and the game won't load. I was getting this during "development" but i fixed it long since, and the campaign plays fine for me.

You play MTW VI version 2.1, right Cyprian2?

What about you Glenn? Can you load the campaign?

[gollum]

Also, which era do you play Cyprian2? I know i said before the game can be played in the other eras, but come to think of it again, it might cause this trouble you are having as i have not "fixed" any other starting positions apart from the EARLY era, which is theonly era the mod explicitly treats. So the game will play in only that one if so.

[PershsNhpios]

Sorry to hear that Cyprian, but Gollum will set you straight I'm certain!

Last night I had a glimpse into the world of Caravel mod.

I can see Gollum that you are not at all in favour of an early blitz by any means. I looked at the Polish situation and decided on a quick Danish campaign. Unlike what I am surely accustomed to, everyone seems to start out with little other than sticks and stones!

I was unable to move anywhere militarily until exactly 1099 when I captured Sweden in a pitched battle, with about 500 men pitched against 1000 or more. Luckily the AI units became clustered and easily flanked. After this, I spent twenty years just trying to get out of debt and finally upgrading infrastructure and recruiting sufficiently so that I could take a few crossbow units, UM, RK and 3 units of FMAA with 2 pavise crossbows as mercenaries into Norway. Norway was actually a very interesting battle which occurred on a map I have never seen before, and it was more a series of ambushes defensive and offensive with mixed skirmishes in the heavily wooded hill country. Very fun.

Then I continued to upgrade my infrastructure, watch the south and recruit a navy in order to receive crucial trade income.

Around 1140 I had seen enough and decided to end my short experiment on a good note by sending a crusade to Granada which had been crippled by civil wars. I did not fail to notice how every faction bordering on the Almohads who were allied to me also went immediately to war with the Moors.

Having taken Granada successfully and seen many features of the mod, I quit around 1150. I will make a rough note of some things I witnessed.

Firstly, obviously, every faction seems to be given very austere beginnings, and no factions were willing to go to war with one another until about 1130. This is excepting the Byzantines who fought short wars against the Turks, Sicilians, Egyptians and Italians in this time. France went to war with the HRE around 1135, but put little effort into the offensive. The Egyptians attacked the Turks around 1125, but the Turks seemed to have a great success over the Byzantines and the Arabs simultaneously.
Then Castile and Aragon attacked the Almohads when I declared a crusade against Granada, but they were allied with the Moors until then.

No other inter-faction wars occurred in my campaign (1087-1150). Except for the Byzantines and Turks, there was a strong desire for peace (I think due to the destitute military status of most factions) which led to all factions allying with each other whenever given the opportunity excepting the enemies mentioned above.

No ships were built anywhere by anyone except my faction during the entire campaign, and it was 1138 or so before other factions began to build ports.

No crusades were launched.

Around 1150 when I quit, I used -ian to check the other factions. France had the second highest financial income, England the first, HRE had a small (350) income, Almohads were losing over 1000 a turn and were 18000 in debt. The Egyptians were also much in debt (Though they like the Almohads had lost a major war). The Polish expanded early into Pomerania and then sank into heavy debt. Novgorod was in the same position as Poland having taken Finland first. The Italians had a modest income.

I noticed also in the battles that the AI seemed highly unstable in formation. What I mean is that in all three major battles I fought, when I would place the defending AI in an awkward position by cornering it, the result would be an endless shifting of formation which was useless to both attacker and defender. In my other experiences, the AI would in this situation relocate to better ground or if forced, would attack the weakest part of my line.

----

Don't misunderstand the use of negatives as a dislike of the experience though Gollum, overall I was quite impressed by the financial and military challenge, since I was forced to expand north using very basic troop types which I would otherwise overlook. I wanted to post my first experience here so I could understand what of these occurrences is planned in the mod, what is unique, unwanted, and generally your thoughts.

I have a few questions related to whether you expect to happen in the mod what happened in my small game, but I will let you read this first part to hear your initial reply.


Thank you for the mod though, I am going back for more!

[gollum]

Thank you very much for ascertaining, first of all that the mod works and for being the first to make a report :)

The AI behaviour you report has to do with the battle AI which has not been modified from the vanilla one. The only thing that i have changed is the preffered rows of units in order to match them to the huge unit settings. May i ask which difficulty you used? The AI degenerates and retreats in battle much ore often in normal and easy and less in hard and expert. Also rebel forces with low command stars often do not play to their strengths (not an exclusive feature of the mod). In any case, what you get with vanilla in terms of AI in the battlefield, you get in the Caravel mod, and as far as i can tell in most - if not all - other mods.

Some of the things that contribute to a slower start build up are: the huge unit settings - they make building an army slower and more expensive, the loyalty:180 that makes the AI reluctant to commit to opportunistic attacks too much, and for that more stable, the much larger rebel garrisons, that make it slower for all factions including the player to acquire their lands an last but not least the 2000flrs starting treasury for all, which is, as i explain in post#1 of this thread the starting treasury of all AI factions in fact, hence it should be of the player.

The strength of the mod is in the AI stacks and building dependencies; notice those, and compare them (i know you don't play with vanilla, but if you ever) with vanilla, even vanilla without peasants and ballistas. They are considerably better because the tech tree and the dependencies have been extensivively re-worked and calibrated.

Another area the mod touches is the missile units; generally speaking bow units are quite weak especially in the hands of the AI in vanilla. In the mod they are better, especially the eastern ones. By the way, eastern factions have no crossbows, but composite slightly AP bows from early on (only the Almos have xbows and arbs). Catholics have xbows, and later arbs.

In any case, the mod is meant to be an optimised vanilla, no more and no less than that. It is also meant to make a campaign appealing in the long term, as the AI factions can train easier and faster decent unit stacks and are more stable.

I have playtested the mod playing full campaigns with the autorun - i have done about 15-20 of those already. I have also played about 7 campaigns in person. From the late early era/ high era when certain factions emerge as strong powers you will see that the seas become quite active and that because of the loyalty:180 setting the AI uses his ships much more prudently. In sum, the mod aims for a slower, more stable for the AI factions build up and in that its the opposite of what Tyberious, XL and other mods are; factions (including the player) take longer to mobilise and go to war more wholistically and less peace meal when they do. The seas being empty early on is due to the slower build up - except the Italians/Sicilians that start with ships.

This is the reason why you sound slightly dissapointed, as you play and prefer those mods (Tyberious/XL), which is understandable and not at all problematic for me. For my part, i am completely left cold by XL in general and Tyberious in particular as far as gameplay is concerned. In that mod, economic resources are peaked so quickly that you essentially have won after the first 50 turns. The vanilla game that is my matrix is much slower than that. It just suffers from many redundant building and unit choices for the AI and other imbalances and inconcistencies, which i have (i think :) fixed.

Thank you very much for your interest in the mod and for your input - both are greatly appreciated :)

[PershsNhpios]

If I was anything like disappointed before, it was because I was met with something unfamiliar in the extreme. However, this is a natural reaction and was more of a serious intent to learn and understand the new concept, rather than the disapproval of it.

My only concern was that activity would remain low throughout the campaign. I should have known better than to think that of course, and your reply has confirmed that I did indeed quit just before things started moving!

I apologise for not mentioning unit stack composition, as this is certainly something which I noted and must praise you for. Although limited recruitment had occurred in my short campaign, I noticed no stacks full of a singular unit nor unintelligent combinations, as in other mods it will be found that units are brought together randomly. I saw the AI in every case using all units available in the positions they should fill, and also recruiting what troop types were lacking.

What you say of XL and such mods is true, and I look forward to doing something I have always wanted to: pursuing a campaign from early to late.

Can you say whether there are distinct trends in faction growth or whether there is great variety in development and individual fortunes in each campaign? Are factions like Poland and Novgorod likely to stagnate?
Have you modded the Mongol invasion at all?
Also, is there any way of selecting factions other than those accessible by 2 - 0 in the game? I believe the Turks and some other favourites of mine are not included in the nine. (I am really looking forward to playing with the house rule of one reign at a time which you use).

I always play on Hard difficulty.

Well, tonight I think I will play the Caravel mod again, although I really must get on with the AAR. I am enjoying the exploration of it Gollum. I have never actually conversed with any of the authors of the mods I use, so it is of course wonderful to be present at the opening of yours, having read many of your posts in the Main Hall and coming to know your tastes. It is impossible that I would miss out on it and as it happens I am enjoying it very much too.

More so than MedMod in fact!

I'm going off to try out a campaign as the HRE (My first ever in any mod! Cyprian, this is a challenge!) and I will make a report of that here too if you wish - I do love a discussion of our vintage game.

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EDIT: Oh and for Cyprian; I should confirm that yes I have made all catholic factions able to crusade successfully. Gollum's advice was correct, use the Editor to make the changes in the buildings file, but you must change the unit file personally. The Editor will assist you in knowing what and where to write. It might take you about half an hour of fiddling. Thanks to Gollum for the help in butchering his work here!

[Cyprian2]

gollum: if by 2.1, you mean 2.01, then yes--that's what I'm running. (The VI expansion plus 1.1. patch.)

Glenn, though internet connection where I am is sporadic at best, I've read your account with interest. Way to beat me to it!

[caravel]

(The VI expansion plus 1.1. patch.)

I'm sure you mean the 2.01 patch?

[gollum]

As far as Crusades are concerned, all AI factions that had a CRUSADER personality, that makes Crusades a priority for the AI (there are plenty of those Crusader_defensive,_offensive,_trader etc), they are all replaced with other personality types. This is because with those personalities the AI factions prioritise crusades even before they are ready in terms of stability or economy to do so. Without the Crusader personalities, AI catholics will launch crusades once their factions have become great powers. In this way, they are both: a) safe from failed crusade influence hits b) can come up with better organised crusades when they do that have more men in them, better transport back up (due to fleets) and so more chances of success, and jeopardize less the stability of their faction.

All this i have observed in the many playtesting campaigns i did, and did not pull it out of my behind. It does happen and if you bother to do a few autorun campaigns or play some more campaigns in person, you'll (hopefully) come to observe the same :)

[gollum]

Apologies Cyprian2, yes i meant v2.01.

And you are trying the early campaign, is that right?

If so, may i, unimaginatively no doubt, ask you if you have copied the EARLY starpos file in the correct folder?

And you have patched the game before you installed the mod, yes?