The Caravel Mod

[gollum]

Ok, v2.1 is now available. Thank you all for your patience and to org and TosaInu for hosting.

[PershsNhpios]

Baargh! Envy!

Between the calls of life which are like in power to the angry waves, and my Byzantine campaign - I have not been able to sit down and play a campaign in 2.0.

I really want to! I say to myself; 'Yes, this evening we are relaxed and have time, but let's first make headway on the new update for the AA- ZzzZZzzzZzzzzzZZZzzzz...'

Thank you Gollum for this, I do in fact believe it to be more suited to my tastes than MedMod, since your mod provides more of what I am looking for when I turn to Wes' work. That is, better, challenging AI and gameplay.

I will write more when I have some experience of it - and I await the final version of your final version!

[Stazi]

I don't have time to play now but I've checked unit prod file and found some interesting changes e.g:

1. All crossbow units got armor piercing weapons. Why? And why no other ranged units got it? Answer is probably balance but I can't see the balance in this.
2. Now the only difference between all types of bows is armor modifier and most of the foot archers use longbows, hmm...
3. All provisional bonuses are gone. I'll miss them. It was a really nice strategic element.
4. No artillery for revolting armies - very good idea.
5. Cost of artillery - more historically accurate but if it will be worth to use? We will see..
6. Kataphraktoi has only 20 soldiers! This is unforgivable

This mod is so different from the others that I'll have to try it as soon as possible. I'm a little short of time now so maybe next week..

[gollum]

Thank you Glenn and Stazi for your kind words and interest.

Glenn, play if an when you like and in your own time. There is no rush.

Stazi:

1. Crossbows/arbs are armoured, have poor morale (0), a tiny attack (-1), are slower than archers and fatigue faster (due to having more armor) and their missile weapons which are flat trajectory/long reload that require them to be in front of an army to shoot. Archers when threatened can skirmish/retreat behind their melee line and shoot from there, but crossbows often cannot (although as discussed previously the long range will help them do better); this is all the more for AI pavise units that are slower because of their shields. Since the Ai is poor at protecting them and moves them too much around, he ends up frequently using them to attack spear units and also resorting to hand-to-hand with them, when they are charged by the player's cavalry or caught by the player's infantry. Its for these reasons that they get an ap attack that will improve their survivability and usefulness at the hands of teh AI by a tiny bit - the attack rating (-1) is low enough to ensure that. The alternative was to increase their attack stat, but they die relatively slowly in melee already due to their armor and increasing the attack may have started to make them more powerful than missiles should be - i dont want units that can fulfil two roles at once, because obviously they make other units redundant/useless - in other words giving them the ap bonus was a compromise. The idea is to make them slightly better at the hands of the AI, while at the same time, this better not being an exploitable advantage at the hands of the player.

I've done some tests in custom and i got encouraging results, i mean that the tweak seems to work as intended. If, however, in the long run it turns out that it gives in fact more of an advantage to the player that it improves the AI performance of them, be certain that i will take the melee ap bonus out. Or it may turn out that regular xbows and arbs do not need the ap bonus. In that case it can be left to the pavise versions, and taken out of the normal xbows.

2. Yes, that's right. Shortbows used by catholics have a very slight ap effect (-10% of enemy armour), then mounted longbows have a slightly higher ap efect (-40% of enemy armour), and finally foot composite bows/longbows have the -50% of enemy armour of the "longbow" designation of weapon. There is a second difference and that is the speed of the arrow. Shortbow is lowest, then its mounted longbow, the the foot compositebow/longbow. This parameter determines teh arc of the missile, less speed more arc. Hence, an arrow from foot comp/longbow will reach the target first, from a mounted longbow next and from the shortbow last due to low speed/high arc.

This makes a difference on the battlefield in MTW. Archers in the medieval battlefield were not marksmen - they were sort of mobile artillery. They all fired a shot at the same time at the general direction of the enemy at a pre-determined angle, and the game models that very well with its drag-free physics engine. In MTW units that move are less likely to be hit by missiles - the engine calculates that, unlike in RTW/M2TW that moving does not have an effect while being hit by arrows. Anyway, If archers are made too accurate, gameplay will suffer - and many people mod the accuracy of the weapons. This mod does not do that. All acher units have the same accuracy, and this also helps in balancing them out against one another.

There is no reason why unit A of that faction be more accurate than unit B of the other faction. Again, it should be unit use, and not the better weapon/units that decide the outcome of battles, and this is the intention. Most missile weapon parameters are weapon related parameters; accuracy and lethality which are the most readily modifiable have very little reason to be different from bow to bow - they rather express the class of weapon, that is the bow, more than different bow types and you can see that in the original file, that significant differences in those are from weapon to weapon (ie from gunpowder firearm to bow to xbow/arb to grenade to javelin and then to the siege weapons).

Regarding inter faction balance between missiles, the catholics have (long range) xbows from early + short bow archer units and later arbalesters, while the eastern factions have composite bows (the vanilla "longbow" and a nerfe mounted "longbow" for mounted missile units). The intention is to give to the easterners ap composite bows with which historically they fought, while at the same time keep the balance of the vanilla game and i have played enough battles now to say that it works as intended. Only the Almohads have the best of both worlds, ie xbows an arbs and composite bows as a compensation for the lack of decent heavy cavalry in their roster and that they historically adopted tactics and weapons of the Iberian Christian Kingdoms they fought against and of course the English.

3. Yes provincial bonuses are taken out. I in fact miss them myself, however in MTW/VI 2.01, the AI is pre-determined to build up the infrastructure that would get him the unit that gets the bonus in that province and then he stops there. Do an autorun campaign in vanilla and notice that Provence (south of France), rarely gets more than fort level castle. This is because Province gives +1 valor to peasants, and peasants are trained by the fort. So the AI builts the fort and stops there. This is of course not very good for him, because Provenece is quite rich, as is say Constantinople that the AI builds to up he can make kataphrakts and then abandons. Without the bonuses, the Ai sticks to develop his more rich and more teched up provinces much better and to completion, than with the skewing effect from the provincial valor bonuses. So, they are out :)

4. Very good idea indeed. Since then i haven't seen a single siege weapon rebellion.

5. Maintenance cost of artillery has a much more practical reason than historical accuracy. Its now for all siege weapons (gunpowder or not) about 60 to 100 florins - depending on the weapon. The reasons is that the AI trains units on the basis of the (training cost)/(maintenance cost) ratio it appears to me. So units that have a high such ratio, like the naptha throwers, the siege weapons etc he spams because of it. By bringing the ratio down to closer to those for other units the Ai builds one siege weapon per good full stack at the most ie siege weapons in AI stacks are really balanced now. This works as described, tried and tested.

6. I know, i know, but, the huge meintenance costs of the Kata units was not allowing the Byz to develop their roster. The AI was thinking that there was little point to train other units, as he was calculating (correctly) he could win the autocalc with the jedi kataphraks. However, this was stagnating their cash flow and was unbalancing their stacks that were having mostly the katas and little else. Since i put the kata BGs to 20 men like other factions the Byzzantines work perfectly as a faction and i am looking forward to play against them as the Turks, teh Egyptians, the Hungarians and the Sicilians. Their stacks include their full roster, including Varangians and Byzzie cavalry which they now train regularly.

This mod is different, yes. The idea is to bring the gameplay potential of the vanilla game to fruition, have fun and challenging campaigns and fun and challenging battles above all with plausible historical feeling/setting. Balance is a key ingredient of the mod, while trying to retain all the flavor and the MTWish feeling.

This mod is not about more factions/units/provinces, not about new graphics, not about more historical accuracy than the game has, not about impossible challenge. There are plenty other mods that do these things and they are pretty good at that.

Thank you for your interest, and i hope it adds to your enjoyment of the game



PS Stazi, the Polish Retainers now are really worth it ;)