STW mod

[Puzz3D]

A lot of vets say STW v1.12 had the best and most balanced gameplay of all the official Total War game stats, and I think that's true. There is no online server for STW that's up 24/7, and not everyone who owns STW v1.12 can run it on their new computers. Barocca made this nice graphic STWmod for MTW, and all that's needed is the STW stat to bring back that gameplay. There seems to be an endless go around on what constitutes the best gameplay, and some excellent mods for MTW never got used much. So, this isn't an attempt to make something that's better than the original gameplay. If it stays close to the original, I think more people are likely to use it. The army purchase in STWmod is quite different than STW v1.12 because you buy units at valor 0, the valor upgrade is a lot more expensive and there is a 20% tax on purchasing more than 4 of a unit type.

MTW does bring some benefits. There are no battlefield upgrades in MTW, so no super units near the end of the battle. Valor upgrades are expensive, so cheap units can't become more powerful than elite units for less cost. Routing away from the threat which is a feature that many players asked for in STW, although, some players don't like this feature. Another requested feature, the possibility to pull cav units out of melee, although this is hard to do with 60 man cav units. Guns which for some reason don't have the extreme back killing they had in STW. No red zoning. No Benny Hill routing of ranged units if they still have ammo. Better method for calculating the outnumbered morale penalty. Dropped player's units withdraw after finishing their last orders. Money cheat check. No deployment cheat. Can take the same clan more than once. Can't accidentally attack your ally. Replays with full unit info on mouse over.

Varying unit sizes doesn't necessarily provide a benefit to gameplay. What's important is that the unit performs well when used properly and doesn't perform well when used improperly, and that proper use is readily understandable after a few battles. A test in original STW v1.12 custom battle shows H2 no-dachi (300 koku) beating H2 yari samurai (200 koku) in 45 seconds killing 51 YS and loosing 27 ND. In STWmod, the same tests shows V0 no-dachi (600 florins) beating V0 yari samurai (400 florins) in 45 seconds killing 49 YS and loosing 30 ND. If the yari samurai were given more than 60 men, it would alter the ND vs YS relationship. There would be a ripple effect through the stat if changes were made to the no-dachi to compensate, and the gameplay and balance would move away from STW v1.12.

It's true that guns don't fire in rain, and there is enough rain periodically in MTW to stop them from firing. We could make them fire in the rain, but that was a consideration in original STW and muskets still got used. The rain in MTW doesn't last for the entire battle the way it could in STW, so it's not as much of a risk to buy them in STWmod. If most players want them firing in the rain, we'll change them so they will, but I'd like to wait until after players try the stat for a while. The the guns in STWmod are doing well enough to justify their cost, and the Japanese teppo can hold it's own vs archers and is cheaper. The guns in STWmod are not exactly like the guns in STW v1.12. The Portuguese teppo is exactly like the muysket of STW v1.12, but the Japanese teppo is 50% better than the STW v1.12 musket. There is no unit in STWmod equivalent to the arqubusier of STW v1.12. The arq was rarely used in STW multiplayer.

Right now there are two speed classes of cavalry: heavy cav (HC and NC) at 20 run / 22 charge and light cav (YC and CA) at 24 run / 26 charge. It's true that in original STW v1.12 CA was in the slower speed class, but it was most often used with honor sold off to cheapen it's price. It would be faithful to original STW to drop the speed of CA to the slower class so that it can't escape from YC. I'm inclined to do that, but I thought there were complaints that CA should not be as slow as HC because they were light cav. We could drop the price of CA to reflect the honor sell off and drop the speed.

I'll post the latest STWmod stat soon so players who are interested can try it with their STWmod beta 5 download. We just have to run some battle tests with the special units: hatamoto, ninja and kensai which are untested at the moment.