Crusade unit composition?

[V'ger]

Hello,

I don't know whether I screwed things up or this is just the way things are in the new version of MTW, but all I seem to get in crusades now is Fanatics. Now, looking at units_prod, I don't see anything that I changed that would have affected it, but I thought I would ask. Maybe I just haven't played enough of the new version to get used to how the crusade units break down.

One thing I did modify is who gets the various holy orders of knights, but everybody has at least one knight they should draw, as well as the Order Foot. I'm playing Aragonese, if that matters. I should be seeing Knights of Santiago and Order Foot.

I did notice that, while Fanatics are listed as Crusade(20), the knights are all listed as (-10), but that's stock. I presume this has to do with the chance to appear? I'm in High era now and still nothing but Fanatics. Rather boring. Thanks muchly for all help.

[Lord Of Storms]

You might want to try just switching the values for each Fanatics and Knights Santiago and that should solve the problem

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ June 06 2003,18:00)]You might want to try just switching the values for each Fanatics and Knights Santiago and that should solve the problem

No, that won't solve the problem. If he switches the settings around the crusade unit won't appear as a core unit.
see ecs' post on the subject:
http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/foru...=ST;f=7;t=6864

[Lord Of Storms]

I read the post I dont see what you mean by changing the value of the fanatics to -10 and the knights to 20 still leaves room for one to be the core unit and give the Knights with the higher value more of a chance to appear, I dont know makes sense to me?

[Charlemagne]

I had the same problem with crusades as French..they were all damn fanatics in the crusades Anyway..I remember reading somewhere in the forum about how to change that..

I changed the Cost Integer and Support Cost Integer values in the crusaders_unit_prod11.txt file to small values (Cost integer=125 when it was 675, support cost=5 when it was 10) for the KnightsTemplar. Did the same to OrderFootSoldiers and voila..just 2 fanatics this time. I didn't change the crusade(xx) values though. Hope this helps

[cugel]

"I changed the Cost Integer and Support Cost Integer values in the crusaders_unit_prod11.txt file to small values (Cost integer=125 when it was 675, support cost=5 when it was 10) for the KnightsTemplar. Did the same to OrderFootSoldiers and voila..just 2 fanatics this time. I didn't change the crusade(xx) values though. Hope this helps
"

The only problem with that approach is that you now you have screwed up the cost for high end units. You have to add new units. For example, if you want Teutonic Knights to appear in crusades, add a new entry: "Crusader_Teutonic_Knight - lower the AI build probability numbers (Crusade -10, -20, etc.), now search and find all the text files you need to enter and duplicate them, just add "Crusader. . ." to the original entries and you've got it. Now you have a unit identical to the original, that has very low cost (say 100 or even lower) and will appear in crusades in larger numbers, but has no building data in column 17 (you leave that blank), so you can't make them, and you haven't lowered the cost of the original unit to a ridiculous figure. (You may already know that the number of units that appear in crusades is related to the cost, the lower the cost, the more units the AI can "afford"). This makes strong crusades without unbalancing the game. If you make the crusades very strong, however, you should increase the cost and/or build times of crusade.

WesW. has done all this in his MedMod(except that I increased the strength of crusades beyond what he did - I don't use them but wanted AI crusades to be stronger so I'd have more fun crushing them),so you could just install the MedMod and you wouldn't have to do all this.

[V'ger]

Hi,

Well, thanks for all the suggestions, but my problem is that I wanted to make the Crusader units buildable. So, if I lower their costs it will screw that up.

What I'm wondering is, are the Crusades like this normally now and I just didn't see it since I modded before playing again?

I did try changing the probabilities, putting Fanatics at -20 and Santiago at 20, but that didn't help. I just get Fanatics in my Crusades. So does everyone else that I've seen. No holy orders of knights at all and no Order Foot.

I'm now going to meditate on what ECS said in that thread. Thanks again.

[V'ger]

Hi,

Well, my problem SEEMS to be that I made the knights and Order Foot buildable. I took those lines out and now my Crusades have the other units in them. (However, only 3 units, is there any way to increase the number of units? I'd also increase the cost of a Crusade.)

I'm going to experiment more, but something that puzzles me is that I made Fanatics buildable, yet they still appear. So, why them and not the knights?

What I'd like, is to have Crusades contain 6-12 units, with half being Fanatics and the rest Order Foot, knights, etc. BUT, I'd also like to be able to build those units, eventually. (I have it set that you need a Chapter House, Armourer3, Spearmaker3 and Royal Court 4 to get the knights, so it's not like they're units you could build easily.)

I'm going to go look at Wes' mod and see what all he did. Thanks mucho, everyone.

OK, I tried out Wes' mod and he has HUGE Crusades (that take forever to build-10 years). Everybody appears that should. I changed Teutonic Sargeants so that they could be built (Armourer3, Spearmaker3, Royal_Court4,just to see) and they DIDN'T appear, while the Order Foot and Teutonic Knights did, just as they did before I changed Wes' mod. (I was playing the HRE in the late period.)

So, there is NO way to have Crusader units be buildable AND appear in Crusades?

[Hoplite]

I've had no such problems. I've modded Templars, Hospitallers and Order Foot buildable, and they still appear in my crusades. But I only changed the build requirements, I didn't touch the other stats, and I also used the chapter house as one of the required buildings. Maybe that's a factor.

I trust that you've also taken into account the zeal of the province from which you start your crusades?

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (Lord Of Storms @ June 07 2003,21:56)]I read the post I dont see what you mean by changing the value of the fanatics to -10 and the knights to 20 still leaves room for one to be the core unit and give the Knights with the higher value more of a chance to appear, I dont know makes sense to me?

My understanding is that the '-' denotes a core unit, the number after that is probability of that unit appearing. To keep the knight as a core unit and increase the probability, he should consider the setting at -30. The '-' is supposed to ensure that at least one of these units appears.

[pyhhricvictory]

The number of knights and order foot n a crusade seem to be related to money. If the build cost is lower you will get more in the Crusade. I was playing around in the file and set the build cost to 75 per knight and 100 per foot just to see what would happen and I got 7 knights and 5 foot in addition to 2 fanatics and a peasant.

[V'ger]

Hi,

Thanks for all the help, everyone. From talking to Wes, I believe I now understand the problem. However, a solution that provides acceptable results does not appear to be possible.

How it works:

1. If you make a Crusader unit buildable, then they won't appear in a Crusade UNLESS the province where the Crusade was raised meets the requirements.

2. The cheaper you set the price for Crusader units, the more you'll get.

Therefore, my goal of having my cake and eating it too won't work. What I wanted was to have large, beefy Crusades with many knights and Order Foot that would be a threat to me (when playing Muslim nations or when I just didn't want to let them through) and have much greater chance to succeed.

I also wanted to be able to build Crusader units, eventually and have their costs and build requirements fit into the rest of the unit tree.

From everything said here and from what Wes told me, both goals are not possible in the same mod. If I make the cost/build requirements fit in with the rest of the game, then Crusades will mostly be wimpy things full of Fanatics, except for Player Crusades, giving players an unfair advantage.

Likewise, if I set cheap prices and low build requirements (like only the Chapter House), that will throw the unit structure out of whack. Mostly, I wanted to be able to build Crusader units to give them provincial advantages and to fill them back up after combat. I wasn't planning to build hordes and conquer the world.

Hoplite, if you have any light to shed here on things that might let me achieve these seemingly mutually exclusive goals, I'd appreciate it.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

[Hoplite]

Sorry, I don't think I know any more than you do..

[Grell]

In some aspects this game is almost sensitve to psychic wants Some things have happened which I have wanted to happen, yet I am not entirely sure how I did it. This crusade issue is one and also I was annoyed at how when you gave titles to generals they used their second name rather than their first, so if you made Godfrey of Bolougne lord governor/etc of Tripoli he would become "Lord of Bolougne - Lord of Tripoli", I was fiddling around with Loc/Eng/names.txt and now all my titles keep their first name rather than last, so now to use the above example I have Lord Godfrey of Tripoli. No idea how this came about but it is now working across the board for all generals. Similar thing seemed to happen with crusades - the AI was NEVER waging a successful crusade and I also REALLY wanted to be able to build the Order units normally so I edited the build reqs and also edited the Crusadeunitprod.txt column 11 (rebelling troop mixes) which determines Crusade composition, I also added in royal knights, feudal swodsmen, etc - but made the Order knights more favoured with -20 or -15 values. Not entirely sure why it enables you to have these units in a crusade even though you dont have the build reqs (but I am not complaining) As I said before this game is psychic

Quote[/b] (V'ger @ June 12 2003,18:15)]Hello,

I just got your Interregnum mod and started it up to see how you handled the Crusades. I'm obsessed with trying to make Crusader units buildable, not blow up the unit relationships and still have them show up in Crusades in provinces where those units can't be built.

Hence my excitement when I saw that in your mod, you don't have to have everything built to get (at least) Order Foot and Hostpitaller Footknights to appear in a Crusade. I would be interested in how you did this.

I've inspected your prod files and nothing obvious jumps out at me. From what I've seen and learned, I THOUGHT the rules were that if you made Crusader units buildable, then they would only show up in Crusades built in provinces where their building requirements were met. Yet, after destroying a couple of buildings in Anjou, I had Hospitaller Footknights and Order Foot show up in my Crusade (playing the French).

Now, I'm not sure of what I saw, because I just realized as I'm typing that I MAY have had those buildings up when I started building the Crusade, so I'll have to go back and see.

Another rule, at least I thought so, was that if you wanted big Crusades with good units, you needed to make the Crusader units cheap. I see in your Crusades, that while they are not huge, you do get 5-6 good quality units, which is along what I wanted.

In any event, thank you so much for whatever light you can shed on this matter.

Ciao,
V'ger gone

[V'ger]

Grell,

Thanks for your timely reply. I don't know why my PM box said full, I only had one message in it. Anyway, armed with your information, I shall try new values and see what transpires. At least with the values I have now, the AI does have mostly successful Crusades. Probably 2/3rds of them work now. Maybe more.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

[V'ger]

Grell,

Well, I don't understand it, but things are fine. I can build Crusaders and the Crusades have all their units and are of a decent size. A complete mystery I shall have to explore.


Ciao,
V'ger