The comprehensive guide to hotseat play

[Myth]

Hi Domen,

yes theoretically they are good. But you seem to be matching high attack/AP shock troops vs. high armour units like OS and Dism. Polish Nobles. They are best when pitted against enemy units who cost more and rely on 20+ armour. Try making stacks of basic infantry (let's say militia level) with a few elite units thrown in as a core. There you will see just how well the high armour units perform and how the 16 attack SP infantry loses out when the bulk of the enemy are hordes of 150 MPU spears with 9 defence, but outnumber them 2 to 1.

Not only will they diminish in performance because there is not much enemy armour to pierce, they will also die more due to their own armour being low. Yes, theoretically Lithuania can become strong in an AR game, but it requires a lot of juggling. If it's lead battles then Poland, Novgorod and Lithuania all have excellent units (jav cav, HAs), as well as the Mongols.

You got me curious about Poland, I think they have some units that perform adequately in AR but I can't remember. I remember Nightbringer nearly beating one of my fullstacks as the TO with his armies, he had some halberd units IIRC. Let me look into that, perhaps we can play a deathmatch game with me as Poland and you as Lithuania?

Regarding agents, this rule I took from the .net and I think it caught on here pretty well. One action per turn - spy first, assassinate second. So two agents, two actions, in that order. This makes it fair, reduces the value of massing the agents but still allows one to have fun with them and use them as intended.

I see you toying with Crusades but the mechanic is so broken that unless it's a team battle people will be hurt by it.

On the destroying of buildings - that will make any warzone cities absolute fodder with only farms and walls in them. It also gives a lot more value to raiding - go in, loot, destroy 6 buidings and suddenly you have 30k gold. That is not balanced IMO, as it will give a lot more of an advantage to backstabbers, factions that have better positions to attack and retreat and to factions that have better units in their earlier level barracks (since less rebuilding is required)

[Nightbringer]

Hi Domen,

yes theoretically they are good. But you seem to be matching high attack/AP shock troops vs. high armour units like OS and Dism. Polish Nobles. They are best when pitted against enemy units who cost more and rely on 20+ armour. Try making stacks of basic infantry (let's say militia level) with a few elite units thrown in as a core. There you will see just how well the high armour units perform and how the 16 attack SP infantry loses out when the bulk of the enemy are hordes of 150 MPU spears with 9 defence, but outnumber them 2 to 1.

Not only will they diminish in performance because there is not much enemy armour to pierce, they will also die more due to their own armour being low. Yes, theoretically Lithuania can become strong in an AR game, but it requires a lot of juggling. If it's lead battles then Poland, Novgorod and Lithuania all have excellent units (jav cav, HAs), as well as the Mongols.

You got me curious about Poland, I think they have some units that perform adequately in AR but I can't remember. I remember Nightbringer nearly beating one of my fullstacks as the TO with his armies, he had some halberd units IIRC. Let me look into that, perhaps we can play a deathmatch game with me as Poland and you as Lithuania?

Regarding agents, this rule I took from the .net and I think it caught on here pretty well. One action per turn - spy first, assassinate second. So two agents, two actions, in that order. This makes it fair, reduces the value of massing the agents but still allows one to have fun with them and use them as intended.

I see you toying with Crusades but the mechanic is so broken that unless it's a team battle people will be hurt by it.

On the destroying of buildings - that will make any warzone cities absolute fodder with only farms and walls in them. It also gives a lot more value to raiding - go in, loot, destroy 6 buidings and suddenly you have 30k gold. That is not balanced IMO, as it will give a lot more of an advantage to backstabbers, factions that have better positions to attack and retreat and to factions that have better units in their earlier level barracks (since less rebuilding is required)

Ha! That stack of yours that died was defeated by three stacks of mine. And the one that only nearly won was facing nearly two stacks of polish units! (the remains from the previous stack) From what I could tell, in AR the units poland started with were quite worthless. Although their high cav numbers could be very strong in lead battles.

[Myth]

Yes but you tend to carry archers in your AR stacks which IMO is a liability - like in the second Britannia game where you had expensive longbowmen in all your armies. Sure Poland is nowhere near as strong as the TO but a 2 : 1 ratio with archers in your stack is still a decent result. Ask Thanatos what casualties he took in a 3v1 fight of his lithuanians vs one full TO stack. Granted, he had archers in his stacks too...

If you want to see perfect AR stacks, look at how Tristan had composed Antioch's armies in LS and later how Thanatos continued playing, or see my army from the first Britannia game where it 1v2ed the Irish+Welsh armies led by their respective kings, I think it really matters just what percentage of the whole are good AR units and what are fodder units that are only marginally effective but take up income via upkeep.

Of course when the enemy is coming at you, you recruit whatever you can, so I can't blame you for having archers as Poland since you've got literally two turns to recruit before the TO comes to play.

[Nightbringer]

Yes but you tend to carry archers in your AR stacks which IMO is a liability - like in the second Britannia game where you had expensive longbowmen in all your armies. Sure Poland is nowhere near as strong as the TO but a 2 : 1 ratio with archers in your stack is still a decent result. Ask Thanatos what casualties he took in a 3v1 fight of his lithuanians vs one full TO stack. Granted, he had archers in his stacks too...

If you want to see perfect AR stacks, look at how Tristan had composed Antioch's armies in LS and later how Thanatos continued playing, or see my army from the first Britannia game where it 1v2ed the Irish+Welsh armies led by their respective kings, I think it really matters just what percentage of the whole are good AR units and what are fodder units that are only marginally effective but take up income via upkeep.

Of course when the enemy is coming at you, you recruit whatever you can, so I can't blame you for having archers as Poland since you've got literally two turns to recruit before the TO comes to play.

I have never considered myself particularly good at AR, and I do tend to just recruit everything that is available. Which is what I did with poland. I didn't really have the option to try to get an army of heavy infantry.

[Domen]

yes theoretically they are good. But you seem to be matching high attack/AP shock troops vs. high armour units like OS and Dism. Polish Nobles.

I've been testing Dism. Pl. Nobles vs Sam. Axemen both on battle map (here Axemen win) and in AR on campaign map (same result - Axemen win).

Of course those tests were 1 vs 1 or several vs several but of same type units (i.e. only Dis. Pl. Nob. vs only Sam. Ax.).

I guess not just Armor Piercing attack plays its role here - but maybe also actual weapon type (axe vs short spear)?

Anyway I have been playing in modding M2TW, so my tests were also useful for modding (I've been trying to balance Teutonic campaign together with 2 friends by modifying unit stats and such - we haven't finished yet though).

I think morale is also a factor in AR battles - for sure.

It doesn't show in the game - but if you check export_descr_unit.txt file, you can see the actual morale value for each unit. Order Spearmen have 8 points of morale - compared to 5 points of morale of typical Spearmen of other faction (for example Polish or Novgorodian Spearmen who can be recruited in castles of these factions have 15 defence and only 5 points of morale - compared to 8 of Order Spearmen).

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PS:

When I changed attack / defence stats (without changing anything else - e.g. without removing "Armor Piercing" attribute from Samogitians) to 15 attack, 17 defence for Dism. Pl. Nobles and 15 attack 10 defence for Sam. Axemen - they were equal in AR battles.

So Dism. Pl. Nobles were roughly equal in performance (in strength balance game was showing them as having slight superiority, i.e. ratio was 1:1 but the blue / red coloured strength "belt" was a bit in favour of Nobles - but this was not reflected in actual performance / battle results of AR battles) only when they had 7 att / def stat points more (15 + 17 = 32 of Nobles vs 15 + 10 = 25 of Samogitians).

I remember Nightbringer nearly beating one of my fullstacks as the TO with his armies, he had some halberd units IIRC.

I guess so. Woodsmen are quite good ("decent" is better, actually). And this Halberd Militia - I've also heard from someone that they perform in AR battles better than they would seem to. But I didn't check it personally yet.

Woodsmen & Halberd Militia probably at least sometimes (for example woodsmen are good in snow, IIRC) perform surprisingly well considering their "on paper stats" and their cost / upkeep. But they are still not nearly as good as "elite" units of TO or Lithiania, I think.

On the destroying of buildings - that will make any warzone cities absolute fodder with only farms and walls in them. It also gives a lot more value to raiding - go in, loot, destroy 6 buidings and suddenly you have 30k gold. That is not balanced IMO, as it will give a lot more of an advantage to backstabbers, factions that have better positions to attack and retreat and to factions that have better units in their earlier level barracks (since less rebuilding is required)

That's why it is not good for mods which are not balanced, like Teutonic campaign. But historically warzone cities indeed were absolute fodder. In fact there were never any big and prosperous cities in borderlands which were sites of constant war.

Plus to let the attacker capture 6 buildings would be stupid. When you see them coming, you demolish buildings before they lay siege.

Like Russia did when Napoleon was marching on Moscow.

As to backstabbers - with our diplomacy rules everyone knows more or less from which side they can expect an attack and from which they are save for the moment. Of course one can renounce a pact / declare a war, but then they must wait few turns before attacking.

So you have some time to prepare defence. Few turns at least.

[Myth]

A nice list of M2TW commands:

Command Shell Codes

Use 'logon to enable with an administrator password.

add_money : adds an amount of money to a faction's coffers, can be negative, default is player faction

add_population : adds an amount of population to a settlement, can be negative

move_character , : moves named character to position on campaign map

auto_win : the attacker or defender wins the next autoresolved battle

create_unit : creates one or more units of the specified type

toggle_fow : toggles the fog of war on or off

toggle_restrictcam : toggles camera restrictions on or off

save_battle_replay : saves battle replay in file replays/.rpy

save_battle_replay : saves replay

give_ancillary : gives the character an ancillary

remove_ancillary : removes ancillary from the character an ancillary (default = all)

give_trait : gives the character a trait at level (default = level 1)

remove_trait : removes a specified trait from the character (default = all)

disable_vnvs : toggles whether to disable game applying traits and attributes

process_cq : Completes all (possible) construction pending in queue

character_reset : resets the character back to it's start of turn settings

show_cursorstat : shows the cursor position and region id

toggle_terrain : toggles the terrain to display various data sets, no param resets to normal

bestbuy : sells units cheaper

oliphaunt : the biggest around

jericho : and the walls came a-tumblin' down

write_ui_cache : writes out the ui texture cache to disk

give_trait_points : gives the character points for trait

list_traits : lists all the available traits

list_ancillaries : lists all the available ancillaries

mp : gives the character movement points

list_characters : lists all the characters in the world or those belonging to a faction

show_landings : shows the landing positions available to the ai from a given region, default hides them

filter_coastlines : applies filter to world map coastlines

toggle_coastlines : toggles strategy map coastline display

set_building_health : sets health of a building of the specified type (eg core_building) in a settlement, so that the final health percentage is as specified; for building chains see export_descr_building.txt

ai_turn_speed : sets the maximum speed of turn processing during the ai round maximum supported speed is 255x

amdb_min : sets aerial map overlay depth bias for min zoom

amdb_max : sets aerial map overlay depth bias for max zoom

amdb_offset : sets aerial map overlay offset towards camera

zoom : zooms to specified aerial map zoom (only valid during a view of the strategy map)

set_ranking_interval : sets the denominator of the faction ranking graph interval which is calculated as (number_of_turns / denominator). If set to 0, then the denominator will be set to number_of_turns, giving an interval of 1

regenerate_radar : Does what it says on the tin

adjust_sea_bed : adjusts whole sea bed to specified height

reload_shaders : reloads all vertex shaders

reload_textures : reloads all textures

toggle_game_update : unknown

toggle_perfect_spy : toggles everyone's spying ability to perfect and infinite range, and off again

reset_display : Forces a display_close(); display_open() display reset cycle

process_rq : Completes all (possible) recruitment pending in queue

force_diplomacy : Forces the negotiator to accept or decline a proposition

diplomatic_stance : Set the diplomatic stance between the two factions (factions must be different)

invulnerable_general : makes that named general invulnerable in battle

test_ancillary_localisation : adds all ancillary to the character info display

perf_times : Toggle display of simple performance times of game update vs display

burn_piggies_burn : ignite all the piggy winks

test_message : Test the event message specified in descr_event_enums.txt

test_movie : test_movie

reload_movie_db : Reloads movie db

show_terrain_lines : display defensive terrain features

message_collation_set : Set the message collation on or off (sets all factions)

show_all_messages : Show all messages to all factions (on/off)

clear_messages : Clear all the current stacked messages

upgrade_settlement : upgrade settlement level

toggle_wireframe : Toggle wireframe rendering

reapply_rigid_model_influence : unkown

toggle_flowing_water : toggles display of campaign map flowing water

nw_stats : toggles display of network stats.

toggle_pr: toggles pr mode.

list_units : lists all of the units in an army, with details.

army units (total strength: %i) : unknown

victory : show victory message for faction for short or long campaign.

trigger_advice [] : - triggers an advice thread

damage_wall : Damage wall of settlement. Forces 40% damage to a random gatehouse and a nearby straight section. Destroys gatehouse if 'gate' parameter present; breaches wall if 'breach' present

test_victory_scroll : Opens up the victory scroll declaring that the given faction is the victor

date : changes the campaign date to the given year

season : changes the campaign season to the given season

force_battle_victory : forces the local player's alliance to win the battle, completely destroying the enemy alliance or optionally capturing a percentage of the enemy alliance

force_battle_defeat : forces the local player's alliance to lose the battle, completely destroying the local alliance or optionally capturing a percentage of the local alliance

output_unit_positions : output the positions of all units in the battle to the specified file

Format: - alliance_index, army_index, unit_index, formation_origin_x, formation_origin_y, rotation_in_degrees, unit_width_in_metres, unit_width_in_men

zoom_to_unit : zoom the camera to a unit of a specific id

show_battle_marker : display a marker at (x, y) for t seconds of height h

show_battle_line : display a line from (x1, y1) to (x2, y2) for t seconds

show_battle_circle : display a circle at (x, y) of r radius for t seconds

kill_faction : removes the faction from the game

diplomacy_mission : creates a diplomacy mission

event [ ] : creates an event

kill_character : kills a character with the given name

control : switches player control to specified faction; old faction may not act correctly as ai faction

create_building : creates a building of the specified type in a settlement; for building level id's see export_descr_building.txt

capture_settlement : evicts any resident characters and armies and gives the settlement to the local player

disable_ai [opt: tac | sub | dip | name | priest]: disables all (default) or part of the ai for all factions

halt_ai : halts the turn sequence just before the start of the specified faction's turn, or the current faction if no faction given

run_ai [opt:x]: re-starts an ai turn sequence after disableai or haltai has been triggered; (use x to also re-enable all parts of the ai which have been individually disabled)

surrender_regions : gives all this faction's regions to the slaves. "horde" surrenders regions for all factions that can be hordes

toggle_chat_log : shows or hides the multiplayer chat window

bounds : toggle display of bounding objects

lights :

set_option : Set new value for specified option (use 1 and 0 for boolean options)

capabilities : list details of the recruitment capabilities of a settlement

recruitment_pool : list details of the current recruitment pool of a settlement

diplomacy_costs : displays a list of raw and perceived diplomacy items costs from the perspective of the receiving faction.

create_mission : Attempt to create and add a mission to the specified faction

toggle_HUD_mode: switches between full and minimal HUD during a battle.

print_shortcuts: prints all the keyboard shortcuts for the current handler to documentation/current_handler_shortcuts.txt

logon : enables console with an admin password

logoff: logs out administrator to disable console

clear_password : clears the current password for a specified faction

set_password : sets a new password for a specified faction

set_email : sets a new email address for a specified faction

Taken from this article, credit to IGN/Paranoidx2