sweet mother of rotten olive orange juice

[Duraz_asks]

why must everyone have online standards of money, especially the 10k thing my theory is just use the fricken 15k it gives better units used, but its a more strategic if u use 10k duraz NO IT ISNT U FLABBER GASSED MONKEYS. if u both use 10k then its even therefor the strategy needed is the same: a 1 valour cmaa vs a 1 v cmaa is the same as a 3v cmaa vs 3v cmaa so just play 15k.. games are about fun and there is no fun if u use armies consisting of low valour good units and urban molitia. thank you

[Kekvit Irae]

http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=18;t=16306;st=0

[CBR]

Yes as long as units have same amount of valor then there is no difference in killing power as units in theory will fight just as long. But the big difference and why some people are interested in lowering florin level is because of morale.

The lower valor the lower morale and what does that mean for the game? Well if units have too high morale they can can take a lot of beatings before routing. There is actually quite a difference between say 10k and 15k although it really only is a difference of 2 in morale on most infantry.

Its about how much maneuver or attrition you want in the game. If units have very high morale then flanking means less as units wont rout that easily.

This game unfortunately doesnt use most of the units/unittypes available so the result is people use practically same infantry units and same upgrades (swords with valor 2-3 in 10k or one higher valor at 15k)

That means players dont have to worry too much about the correct matchup and that skill is nearly taken out of the game. Only thing left is flanking and/or how fast you are with the mouse plus cavalry v infantry, and the higher morale you have the less impact good manuvering will have.

You say if u both use 10k then its even therefor the strategy needed is the same but if you think the strategy is the same for 10k and 15k then why do you dislike 10k?

You say you want fun and it appears that your fun is about units running less and fighting more and therefore you want high morale. That is a matter of taste and thats fine and I still see 15k games being hosted so I dont think you will run out of such games in the near future.

But some of us want lower morale because of the reasons I gave above and the 10k gameplay in VI 2.01 is the closest thing to the 15k gameplay of MTW 1.1


CBR

[Puzz3D]

When you change the florin level in multiplayer games you change the gameplay due to how upgrades affect the performance of individual units. 15k is or was the standard in MTW v1.1. It was found by the collective experience of many players over 1000's of battles to be a level where unit balance, faction balance, attrition (the length of time units fight head-to-head), flanking (the length of time an outmaneuvered unit fights), fatigue and relative cost of ranged units are all figured into the overall gameplay. It's a compromise to prevent one or more of those factors from dominating the gameplay, and it's actually just an approximation in the sense that the standard is a simple 3x the 5000 florin default value. 5k was the standard for multiplayer in original STW. Since you can't optimize the relationship of all the factors with that single parameter, minor fluctuations around the standard doesn't make the gameplay noticably better.

Suggested changes to improve the gameplay were made by the community to CA prior to VI's release at CA's request. All those suggestions were based on experience with the 15k florin standard. Some of the suggestions were incorporated into VI. However, a global change in morale was made in VI which was something not requested by lowing the morale level at which units rout by 2 points. It doesn't seem like a big change, but it did affect the 15k gameplay quite a lot. Flanking became less important, quite a few unit types started fighting to the last man and certain rather strong units which were previously brought into balance by low morale now didn't have that disadvantage.

Since we know that a valor upgrade costs 70% of the current unit value and changes morale by 2 points, you can take 15k and divide by 1.7 = 8824 florins as the VI equivalant to MTW's 15k. However, all things are not quite the same because ranged units get varying discounts, certain ranged units such as xbows are often fielded in MTW v1.1 at v0 anyway, battlefield upgrades were removed in VI v2.01 and the swipe was eliminated as well. The result is that 10k has gradually come to the forefront as a new standard for VI partly because it's a nice round number which actually provides a higher morale gameplay than 15k in MTW v1.1 did. It seems to me that there is still considerable room for unusual upgrades at 10k, although, it is less than 15k because not as many unit types can be brought up to a usable morale level. In truth however, there are far too many unit types within each RPS category. They are purposeful in the single player campaign, but superfluous in multiplayer.

Raising the florins up higher so that a unit such as urban malitia don't run away too quickly doesn't help gameplay because they will still get beaten up by the better units which will also have more upgrades. This can get skewed at very high florins because you bump into the upgrade limits which introduces a discontinuity in the upgrade process and could allow certain lesser units to gain ground on units that are superior below this discontinuity. The main thing that gets compromised as you move to higher florins is the importance of flanking, and what little RPS exits in the game is also swamped out by the extra upgrading. So, at 10k you do sacrifice the usability of some units because their morale is too low and they run away quickly, but those units aren't really effective anyway at higher florins, and the problem of some units fighting too long starts to show up. When units fight too long, having units positioned in the right place at the right time becomes less important since you have longer to recover from being out of position. Going the other way to units fighting for too short a time is a problem as well because you then can't effectively respond to an opponent's initial move such as a strong flanking move. The gameplay becomes more of a first strike type of thing without much defensive capability. So, I see the 10k standard as a way of retaining somewhat of a balance between defensive and offensive attributes in the gameplay. What you don't want is outright mass rush tactics winning all the time on basically fair maps or players being able to set up impregnable defenses on those same maps either. Of course, given a large terrain advantage either of these things could and do happen.