Team for a Better Total war

[Ambassador Sacrifice]

We have been working on a mod for mtw vi that is designed to be more like a patch to the game. No unit stats have been changes, some unit speeds adjusted, and some unit costs increased or decreased. So far through test at 10k a lot more units are now worth taking, spearmen are much tougher and Arab factions now tend to be on equal terms with euro factions. I was hoping that other clans would give it a try and comment on it. So far in our tests it has been very fun and much more balanced and hope you like it to.

Thanks for your time.
VDM Sacrifice and the team for a better VI.
form; http://p209.ezboard.com/bclanofvalidusduxmundus

V202f www.geocities.com/mcpheei...epage.html

[Ein]

http://www.geocities.com/mcpheeian/homepage.html

As clost to a patch as I have seen.

[Ambassador Sacrifice]

Thanks for fixing that link Ein.

[Ambassador Sacrifice]

Here is a little of what where working on. All work has been done by the team of testers and all mod work was done by VDM Ein.

This mod is a simple mod to correct the balance of game play in MTW VI 201. Currently causes no conflicts with any origninal MTW games, so no need to make a second install of mtw to play mod.

This mod can be played at any florin level but be warned lower florin game will have lower moral troops for no stats have been changed. Also cheaper units will tend to be more effective in low florin games where in higher florin games they will not be so. Units should now match up better both on a valor level and florin level. Simialr price units should have close battles and higher florin or valor units should win.

I hope these small changes make the game more balanced and less focused on a few pumped up units.

7-23-4 So far all high games at 10k have been far more balanced and engaging than first thought. Fast cav now can play a huge role in combat doing things normal or heavy cav never could. Pav wars as we knew them so far are a thing of the past.

[Sociopsychoactive]

is this mod suitable for SP use aswell? Does it change anything other than uit things, like building things?

[Ambassador Sacrifice]

No not at this time its still a beta. But you can play MP in all the era. Low high and late. Also Custom battles.

[Ein]

I guess I worded it on my page alittle confusing for some. The install doen't affect single player or normal mp games, you can still play them and select the v202 mod.

As for single player I would guess it would work too, after all the units have the same stats and prices are not changed that much, so it should effect single player all that much. You could try it I guess I don't see why it wouldn't work, because I changed nothing in the build part of the program just units. If you like you can go to my page or the vdm page and ask me to make a single player install with a backup to go back to the orignal game if you don't like it.

[Ambassador Sacrifice]

Here is the download URL as some have said they didnt know what one to download. This one is for all eras

V2.2f

There will be an update comeing soon. As the mongols are haveing a tuff time. Where looking hard at history stuff trying to find something they would have had But dont. Only thing so far that we have found is that.

cav archers

The long bow was used when they were fighting at long range and the composite bow was used in a charge and in fighting from the saddle at close quarters. The composite bow had a pull of 166 pounds and was deadly accurate at a range of 200 to 300 yards. The horse archers carried three quivers each containing different types of arrows for different ranges and uses. One type could penetrate armor,


In addition to mounted archers, the army had both light and heavy cavalry. The light cavalry carried bows and javelins, and the heavy cavalry carried lances with hooks on the ends, and sometimes maces. They both carried sabers for hand to hand fighting. Shields were generally used when on guard duty. Eventually their light artillery used various missile-throwing machines, mangonels, catapults.

If you have any Ideas for mongols post it here And we can see what we can make.

[L'Impresario]

Yep, Ein has worked hard for this and went through many phases before reaching a conclusion regarding the final form of the mod - or should I say the concept around which it should revolve.
Actually his timing can't be worse, as the VI era is nearing its end. Anyway, mods directed at MP can't attract many players to use em, mainly due to laziness and fear of the unknown (some people can get really frustrated when their world turns upside-down ).
Most mods demand learning a great number of new units, or in the case of CBR's excellent mod, adjusting to a new niveau and style of playing.
Ein's mod is very enjoyable because there are only 5 changes, no additional unit learning for the lazy generation :
1. Higher prices for powerhouse infantry
2. Faster speeds for fast cavalry, Lancers become slow
3. 40-men and 12-men infantry become stronger.
4. Mongols in high period
5. Same units with different graphics are removed( ck and teutonic knights for example, as well as order foot soldiers,which remain only in hte form of italian infantry-exclusive unit)

Changes requiring not great modding skills to make but an eye to retaining the form of the original game and turning a valour level down those nasty swords, making em more vulnerable to cavalry and thus demanding the presence of spears and anti-cav. This idea has been the core of many mpmods, it's just applied differently in this one.

In effect, the mod in 10k lowers the base morale standard to 6 from 8 tho it s purely up to the player if he wants , say, to keep v2cmaa as his main infantry, paying for them around 1300 florins IIRC. Only cavalry and 40 men units will be able to get mrl 8 for less than 800 florins. So spear and sword mrl is more close this time, with swords having still an advantage vs spears but being unable to rout em without significant losses.

The question of having a better mongol horde has risen up as well. Altho I personally believe that the horde is well equiped unit-wise to handle large plain map situations, the fact that the retreating shot cant be reproduced in MTW engine is naturally the greatest problem in depicting their real might, without resorting to mindless cav rushing if the opponent is eqiuiped with lbs and many pavs.
Some ideas have popped up like mongol horde warriors getting a lb..
Ofcourse the mod is still in progress

[Ein]

Every mod goes about somethings in its own way all towards a goal that is enjoyable one way or another. CBR's community mod, and well as the Recon mod I have enjoyed playing for they both are fun. Im not going to say mine is any better or worse than anyone elses mod, its just my view on balance. Here are some things I have tried before that I have found not to work for me, but have for CBR and others.

1. Giving units a bonus or penalty vs cav. Sounds good but like charge I will talk about later it seem to have multiple effects. From my experiments it seems bonus vs cav apply to the natural def of a unit thus can affect shield bonus too.

2. I gave lance cav a charge bonus of 20. Sounds to powerful but 3v fmaa still won vs ck after a charge although the charge did more damage, actualy killed about a consistant 20 maa each charge test. Then I gave the fmaa a -1 def vs cav and when they got charged the ck killed all but 21, and about the same in other test too. Based on some test it seems charge bonus caps the max kills to 20, but with the negative def bonus to the fmaa it seems to double that multiplyer to max of 40. I might be wrong but it was odd that charge bonus doesn't seem to play that much of a roll, now add a +1 att bonus to a cav with a high charge and what how much more powerful it is.

3. Unit speeds. I tried adapting the Recon mods units speed but found the word confussing came to mind, so I made the 3 speed classes more distinctive than they were before which required little chage. In normal vi hardly anyone used fast cav, because of stats and they realy were not all that much faster.

4. Shield multiplier is another mess all together, I wish CA would have just made it simple. If a pav shield you get +3 if large you get +2, ect. No they have a sort of dumb muliplier effect to determine shield value. Its funny but alot of large shield units get no more value from their shield than most small sheild units.

5. Valor mulitplier. vdm buu game me the formula for figuring cost for units that CA used I guess, so if I changed unit size or stats I could refigure costs. It works in that respect, but due to the different valor mulipliers for differnt class units CAs forumal can make things to expensive or way to cheap.

Im not say everyone should support this mod to change VI, for one it is kind of late, and people just don't want a change. Well in my view rtw is almost here so why not have some fun and play some mods after all we are all going to have to go through change when rtw come out, I hope.

[CBR]

I downloaded it today and checked your changes.

I know some have complained about spears being too strong in the Community Mod but seems you have made them even stronger FMAA now cost the same as chiv sgts so they will come with same valor whatever florin level people will use. That means spears are too good now. An Italian 10k army with v2 chiv sgts and v1 italian inf seems very powerful now.

You have effectively reduced overall morale for the inf. That might not be bad but it definately will change the gamefeel for most people. If people tries to use same swords as regular game they have to buy them with one valor (2 less morale) less for all units. As spears are better and will be used more the overall morale drops another 2.

Cav being faster might be good. I would change cav speed if I was to make a 1.1 version of Community Mod but dont know if your speeds are too fast.

Polearm units like billmen are now just as good as FMAA in standard melee power but have anti cav stats too (ofc they have 2 less armour so take higher losses v missile) IMO best thing to do is reduce sword cost a bit


CBR

[Ein]

As for spear units so far in our test, their lower moral keeps them in check, plus even though they fight like devils now and take a long time to kill head on, maa still win, not by much but so far in all our practice games swordsmen still win vs spears.

Moral is supposed to be part of the game, people go "they have to low of moral" well no kidding, isn't that why normal vi games went from 20k to 15k, to now 10k avg games because moral and stats were boosted to high? In our games so far even maa seem to fight longer, maybe because there are more spears to pick on or due to lower stats just don't get killed as much or kill. So far moral hasn't been an issue with the test games played so far, some have actualy said their units seem to tough it out longer. If peope don't like to have low moral take an arab faction, or play a mod where everything has balance moral of 6 to 8.

Polearm troops seem better, but they realy aren't. Typicaly slower, poorer moral, low armor and cost more too.

If im not mistaken some of the units I changed prices on once you pump them up have similar stats and cost to the Community mod, if not better, and without the cav penalty.

Fast cav might be alittle to fast but so far hasn't lead to any unfair advantage, but has made for alot more tactics and less static pav wars.

So far its works fair no realy over powering units that aren't deffeated by its counter part. If someone brings all spears, I will have a few ffk to wipe them out. 40 and 20 unit groups will win vs their opposite in value, but can't afford to lose much.

I hope to play with you online so you can get the feel of the changes, and point out anything I have missed or got wrong.

[Orda Khan]

I will download this Mod and give it a whirl. Thanks 'VDM', I know Rome is on the way but there is still time to get MTW/VI right IMO.
Mongols in High era.......
Like CBR's Mod, great. They should have been in High from the start.
Giving them Longbows, though inaccurate historically, would at least give them something to counter with during the shoot out, as would Turcoman foot. I do realise that HA and MHA are historically the projectile units of the Horde, however, as you mentioned, the engine just does no justice to them and frenzied cav attacks on the enemy pavs can be all too easily countered but above all is very limited and costly. Obviously they have Golden Horde Warriors but who is going waste such valuable troops to weak enemy range units?

As with CBR's Mod, Turcoman Horse and foot are viable options that are historically accurate. I even suggested Armoured spearmen, for the simple reason that subjugated countries would provide troops when required. People don't seem aware that many of the Turkic tribes of Eurasia were more than happy to engage on foot and I don't suppose there was much in the way of feigned retreat when Batu stormed Kiev.

I don't think there is much more you can do for the Horde, from my first game of MTW it became aware to me that 40 man HA units were not going to be anywhere near as effective or annoying as the 60 man CA of STW.

Let's just pray RTW is better

......Orda

[Orda Khan]

Hello Ein......page unavailable

......Orda

[Ein]

The page should be available to view.

http://www.geocities.com/mcpheeian/homepage.html

Download link:

http://www.geocities.com/mcpheeian/Savefiles/v202f.zip

Sac isn't right in all he said the web page has the list of all the changes, which isn't many. The stuff about longbows and mongels in high I haven't been able to do yet, after all I have only put about 3 hours total into learning and making this mod. VDM buu still finds it hard to believe I did most of my figures just in my head and so far they have seemed to work, so far. I hope to add the mongals to high soon, but as for unit stats I want to keep them the same as CA made them which isn't to bad only a few units that might need actual stat changes.

Oh, another thing with the community mod that factored into me not going that rout to balance things is archer units need to pump up their valor to increase their effectiveness. The difference between a 0v and 3v catupult is huge, same with archer units, so in that aspect not being able to add valor to some units in the community mod reduces their effectiveness even more.

Techincaly I had all this done in my head months ago, just never got off my lazy butt to do it, then again I figured CA might patch it by then.