What R:TW adjustments have you made for 1.2?

[Proletariat]

I was curious what tweaks others have made to their game since the patch came out.

In 1.1 I had;
1) Fast buildings,
2) Fire arrow fix,
3) Vercingortrix (horrible sp) horse jumping fix,
4) All factions playable,
5) Ninjacool's historical battles, and
6) I had installed all of webbird's skins for all the factions he has made available so far. (from over at the twcenter.)

So far in 1.2 I have only the fast buildings, all factions and also the HA tweak/bug fix. (Thanks again, Qwerty!)

What mods/personal tweaks/skins have the rest of you found to increase gameplay quality so far?

I'm also curious if any of you know where to find some nicer skins for the Eastern factions, especially for the garish looking Parthians. I've searched the twcenter but haven't had much luck (Of course if you want five million different Spartan skins you'll find them there.)

Thanks for any feedback!

[The Stranger]

I was curious what tweaks others have made to their game since the patch came out.

In 1.1 I had;
1) Fast buildings,
2) Fire arrow fix,
3) Vercingortrix (horrible sp) horse jumping fix,
4) All factions playable,
5) Ninjacool's historical battles, and
6) I had installed all of webbird's skins for all the factions he has made available so far. (from over at the twcenter.)

So far in 1.2 I have only the fast buildings, all factions and also the HA tweak/bug fix. (Thanks again, Qwerty!)

What mods/personal tweaks/skins have the rest of you found to increase gameplay quality so far?

I'm also curious if any of you know where to find some nicer skins for the Eastern factions, especially for the garish looking Parthians. I've searched the twcenter but haven't had much luck (Of course if you want five million different Spartan skins you'll find them there.)

Thanks for any feedback!

where can you get the HA fix

[Doug-Thompson]

where can you get the HA fix

Here. It's on page 3. QwertyMIDX did it. Works great.

With the improvements to infantry using their shield on the move, which make well-armored infantry with a good shield something less than dead meat to cav archers, I'd say that HA with the "Qwerty" fix are just about perfect. Very strong without being overpowered.

============


I'm also very curious about whether the "jumping horse" fix is still needed.

[The Stranger]

thanks

[Red Harvest]

What I have done so far.
1. HA/chariots/camel archer fix.
2. Made Head Hurlers non-buildable.
3. Made wardogs non-buildable.
4. Fixed the building stat error that was preventing Spain from building Long Shield Cav.
5. Fixed the oversize Egyptian unit stats and dropped their upkeep correspondingly (Bowmen and Desert Cav.)
6. Adjusted Pharoah's guard for proper shield size.
7. Changed Cilician Pirate merc formation to "square" in place of horde. In horde they really cannot use their pila.
8. Fixed an error in the mercenary file that was preventing merc HA's from appearing in one of the pools in which it had been placed.
9. Added "and resource elephants" to Seleucid elephants that were missing this...
10. Unlocked factions myself, added in descriptions and maps from one of the unlocker mods.
11. Adjusted vanilla slinger range to 100 (from 80)
12. Gave Iberian Infantry: 4 armour and 3 shield.

To do list:
Unit Balancing
1. Adjust foot javelin range slightly higher, perhaps pila too.
2. Tweak down vanilla foot archer range, and probably missile attack (but less than in 1.1.) Tweak down elite archer range to 150 (from 170) and adjust down attack as well.
3. Swap War Elephant mounts to proper Indian elephants, rather than African Bush Elephants. Adjust mount file for rider positions.
4. Increase cav upkeep cost for all but the poorest Eastern factions and Numidia (similar to what I did in 1.1.)
5. More negative and scaled mount effects for most cav vs. elephants.

Unit Additions:
6. Add unit to replace Britannia's lost "head hurlers." Considering either a javelin skirmish unit, or possibly a "Naked Fanatic" with a javelin.
7. Add a low level spear unit for Spain (would like to do this with javelin, but there are some issues...)
8. Add forest elephants for Numidia after the Marian reforms--perhaps with javelin armed riders.
9. Create javelin armed chariots for Brits in place of archers.

Strategic Fixes for a "Provincial Campaign":
10. Give minor/poor factions more money at start so that they can get traction.
11. Give most cities more population and higher upgrade level at the start so that they can build decent armies on large unit size...I'm tired of facing stacks of basic warbands and town militia and velites/hastati.
12. Cut most infantry builds by one level and some selected cavalry builds as well. Put better barracks in key towns. The fun part of the game is facing historic AI armies with historic player armies. Unfortunately, that is not as common as it should be.

EDIT
Other fixes:
13. Fix the broken 'scarred' and other traits once all those fine modders have it all figured out and confirmed.

[professorspatula]

My current changes are:
-----------------------

Units:
-----
i) Increased morale for all units by +3/4/5/6 depending on their training and general elite status. Ie.. rubbish units get a +3, most units get +4, highly disciplined and generals get +5 and advanced generals, Spartans etc get +6.
ii) Lowered upkeep of some units, including peasants, militia and skirmishers.
iii) Lowered training time for basic units to 0, plus reduced training time to 1 for those barbarian temple type characters to 1.
iv) Minor changes here and there to various other units, including lowering armour of Cataphract archers (they should be lower than lancer variation) and upping upkeep for Cataphracts considerably (best cavalry unit should not be so cheap).
v) Wardogs now much more expensive to build and take 3 turns. Done to discourage me from building them, plus the AI. Seeing Scipii have 3 wardog units in one army is crazy.
vi) Changed Desert Axemen into a more basic, militia type unit with a low unit upkeep to compensate. No more crazy iron-skinned axemen. Also made some changes to the Pharoah's guard and their invisible shield situation.

Buildings:
---------
i) Minor happiness or law bonuses added to a couple of structures.
ii) Modified the largest temples to make their construction more appealing (ie no more pointless +2 growth rate when the city is already huge size).

Other
------
i) Minor trait changes here and there, including the recent fixes for scars and coward traits (thanks for the person responsible for it).


That's about it for now. I plan to make a lot more changes when I finish my Numidia campaign, which is probably the toughest and most interesting I've had so far. I'd really like to change the starting conditions, and where some factions start to make a really random game or create some kind of crazy scenario.

[hrvojej]

So far:
0. all factions enabled
1. longshields and onagers buildable for Spain
2. some low level temple units, such as fanatics and woads 1 turn to build, slightly higher cost; also removed gaul fanatics being buildable by dacian farming shrine
3. increased No. of machines, range, cost, & damage to units for ballista-like artillery, decreased damage to buildings to compensate
4. increased range for javelin and pilum
5. changed desert infantry to 3 armour and pharaoh's guard to 8 armour, removed PG shield
6. thrown fix for HA
7. fixed building prerequsities for praetorians and seleucid elephants
8. replaced old faction-eliminated movies with "death" ones which are not otherwise used, but are way cooler
9. put in inidian elephants for seleucids and parthia
10. decreased likelihood of getting useless assesor trait; added another trigger so I get disinherited only 50% of the time; some other minor adjustments to traits
10. scarred and related fixes
11. removed the intro movies
12. a few other minor things, I'm sure

To do:
1. overhaul of morale, frequency of attack, and lethality for all units to get longer and more involved battles; I'm halfway done, but it's taking a while since I'm also testing as I go
2. move wardogs up the production chain, reduce their attack to half (once I'm done with the present campaign where I'm fielding a few of them myself...)
3. maybe a few other modifications to buildings that I'm not sure yet whether I want them or not, such as the abovementioned pantheon changes

Thanks to all who discovered/proposed the things I didn't think of myself.

[The Stranger]

1 all factions enabled
2 minor law bonus to structures
3 new units added
4 new skins added
5 the HA fix
6 the scarred trait fixed
7 ports added
8 roman unit stats changed
9 made mercs more expensive
10 made cavalry more expensive
11 changed most barbarian units to horde
12 changed spartan unit stats
13 changed a lot of egypt units stats
14 changed end year from 14 ac to 180 ac

changes that still has to be added

1 the longshield and onagers for spain
2 indian eles for parthia and seleucia
3 reducing the time between throwing of javs
4 changing mercary spawning places
5 making gladiators to mercs
6 arcani, dogs, pigs, headhurlers, unable to build
7 add starting money to factions
8 add bigger armies to factions
9 fix the characters are unable to be bribed
10 fix that you cant build forts in protectorates territory

[Proletariat]

I'm also very curious about whether the "jumping horse" fix is still needed.

I've seen cavalry do flying leaps over infantry units a few times during campaign battles, but couldn't reproduce it in three attempts in a custom battle with Gothic Cav versus SS Pikeman. I'll test some more later since I guess this means the jury is still out.

9. Added "and resource elephants" to Seleucid elephants that were missing this...

Didn't know about this, what does this affect?


Thanks for the feedback everyone.

[Slider6977]

9. Added "and resource elephants" to Seleucid elephants that were missing this...

I believe what he means is that Seleucid Elephant units (the non-archer unit, with only 3 pri attack) is able to be created without the elephant resource. So you can effectively build this unit in any province with the correct Cavalry Stable. I believe this happens with Carthage as well, though I will have to check.

[screwtype]

Increase cav upkeep cost for all but the poorest Eastern factions and Numidia (similar to what I did in 1.1.)

That's a nice idea, not only to increase cav costs but also make it cheaper for historically cavalry strong factions like the Numidians.

Add unit to replace Britannia's lost "head hurlers." Considering either a javelin skirmish unit, or possibly a "Naked Fanatic" with a javelin.

Yup. War dogs - out. Flame pigs - out. Head hurlers, screaming women and 150 mm high explosive onagers - all out. Maybe fire arrows as well.

Give most cities more population and higher upgrade level at the start so that they can build decent armies on large unit size...I'm tired of facing stacks of basic warbands and town militia and velites/hastati.

Yeah, I too am thinking of giving all the AI factions huge amounts of dough and upgrades so they can build really kick-a$$ armies.

Cut most infantry builds by one level and some selected cavalry builds as well. Put better barracks in key towns.

Yeah, this stuff about hastati from one level, principes from the next and triari from the last in nonsensical. I'd like to mod the game to make all three units available with militia barracks, but just have their stats improve with building upgrades. Not sure if this is possible though.

Oh, one other thing I intend to do - mod the Roman units so they ALL have the highest level of discipline short of "impetuous". I'm really sick of watching my hastati mill around aimlessly like a bunch of demented old folks on a picnic.

[screwtype]

ii) Lowered upkeep of some units, including peasants, militia and skirmishers.

That's a good idea.

iii) Lowered training time for basic units to 0, plus reduced training time to 1 for those barbarian temple type characters to 1.

What happens when you lower training time to 0? Does that mean you can build as many as you like in one turn?

And what do you mean by "basic units"? Just peasants, or units like town guard as well?

i) Minor happiness or law bonuses added to a couple of structures.
ii) Modified the largest temples to make their construction more appealing (ie no more pointless +2 growth rate when the city is already huge size).

I wonder, would it be possible to mod the game to have more than one type of temple in a city? Then you could mod the temples to have all kinds of different effects and just cherry pick the particular effects you wanted.

[Red Harvest]

Proletariat,

The missing elephant resource limitation means the Seleucids can build the heaviest elephants *anywhere* they have the corresponding building.

Also there is Praetorian Cohort error...CA did not limit them to Marian reforms. So it looks like I need to do some more editing.

[Proletariat]

Proletariat,

The missing elephant resource limitation means the Seleucids can build the heaviest elephants *anywhere* they have the corresponding building.

Also there is Praetorian Cohort error...CA did not limit them to Marian reforms. So it looks like I need to do some more editing.

Ouch, me too.

I feel silly about asking this, but what file can you edit the recruitment costs for different units? I know I used to know, but I can't think of it right now and am having no success searching the modding forums for something so elementary.
Am I right to assume the same file contains the info for editting recruitment times?

Also, what did you finally decide regarding the pilum-launching-issue for the Roman units? (IIRC in another thread you mentioned adjusting their speed)

[Suebius]

1.2 immediately began giving me problems, and I was actually looking to ask about this when I came here, but saw this discussion. First of all, is there an area here for probs? I didn't see one.
Anyway, after I installed the patch suddenly some of my armies are weakened, full-strength auxilia now at 24, 35, 36 men, and when I tried to send them into battle, 3 men show up from each unit.
I asked how to uninstall the patch cause I couldn't find one, and was told to uninstall the game. I tried, but on the setup screen the progress bar finished and nothing happened. I cleaned the bathroom for 5-10 minutes waiting, and nothing happened. So then I guess I made my mistake: I clicked cancel. Now I can't uninstall the game, and I can't play it. Its sort of uninstalled, the files are there, but only some of them, and they're empty. Most of its hard drive space is still taken up too, I only have about 24mb more free afterward. Any ideas?

"Hearthless and homeless, they must take their wives and families and tramp the roads like beggars...They fight and fall to serve no other end but to multiply the possessions and comforts of the rich. They are called the masters of the world but they possess not a clod of earth that is truly their own." -Tiberius Gracchus

[Proletariat]

Any ideas?

Sorry, I can't help you but maybe these guys can.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=15

[The Stranger]

Proletariat,

The missing elephant resource limitation means the Seleucids can build the heaviest elephants *anywhere* they have the corresponding building.

Also there is Praetorian Cohort error...CA did not limit them to Marian reforms. So it looks like I need to do some more editing.

before the patch it wasn't needed cause if you build the building needed you would get marian reforms. but now if you built it before 220 you can built them.

that's what i modded yesterday. + some new units and skins

any suggestion for new units cause i'm running out.

[Suebius]

Thanks fellow Prole.
"I am more upset than I perhaps ought to be over the death of a slave." -that @#$*! Cicero

[professorspatula]

That's a good idea.


What happens when you lower training time to 0? Does that mean you can build as many as you like in one turn?

And what do you mean by "basic units"? Just peasants, or units like town guard as well?


I wonder, would it be possible to mod the game to have more than one type of temple in a city? Then you could mod the temples to have all kinds of different effects and just cherry pick the particular effects you wanted.

Lowering unit training time to 0 means you can fill your training queues with units and they'll all be built next turn. I made it so all basic peasants and militia units (which includes militia cavalry, plus all the simple barbarian units, but not their elite ones like Chosen Archers/Swordsmen/Noble cavalry etc) can be built fast. Unfortunately the AI doesn't seem to take full advantage of the 0 build time so it's more of an advantage to the player. Additionally the AI then decides to focus more on building the cheaper units instead of the better ones. There's some balancing to be done, but its a good way to build up garrisons quickly or migrate peasants from one town to another fast.

As to more than one temple, that sounds tricky and perhaps is something hard coded into the game.

***

I've also made a fair few changes, including upping the quality and size of Carthage, Antioch and a few other changes here and there and been more generous with money. I do have some more radical ideas but I'll probably get bored half-way through implementing them.

[the tokai]

I made quite a lot of changes:

-decreased size of cavalry units (roman and greek cavalry are now 24 per unit, parthians, scythians and armenians are 34 and the rest is somewhere in between)

-cut the missile attack of all archers in half, but gave the elite archers ap

-lowered the attack power of all javelins with 1 but made them ap

-pila are no longer ap

-increased upkeep for most cavalry (especially cat's and companions)

-fixed ha

-made all hoplites and elite pikemen stronger but more expensive

-doubled the morale of most units so that battles last longer

-removed province outlines on the mini map

-increased the cost and build time of all chariot units

-gave the britons barbarian cavalry

-increased the cost of praetorians and urbans

-increased the cost of elephants

-made eastern infantry and hillmen slightly more powerfull

-i guess that's about it

*note: cost also includes upkeep

[ulyanov]

I don't think any of mine are 1.2 specific, just general gameplay stuff...

I made "badfarmer" require 10,000d in the treasury before activating - I was getting bugged by all the bad farmers when all my egyptian towns were growing at +3 or better and I had better things to spend the cash on...

I lower slubberdegullion chance, and a few of the other negs that seem to appear rather more often that mathematical chance says they should. ..

[Proletariat]

Lowering unit training time to 0 means you can fill your training queues with units and they'll all be built next turn.

What file can this be changed in?

[hrvojej]

What file can this be changed in?

Backup then open export_descr_unit, change the first number in stat_cost to 0 for the desired unit.

[screwtype]

Lowering unit training time to 0 means you can fill your training queues with units and they'll all be built next turn. I made it so all basic peasants and militia units (which includes militia cavalry, plus all the simple barbarian units, but not their elite ones like Chosen Archers/Swordsmen/Noble cavalry etc) can be built fast. Unfortunately the AI doesn't seem to take full advantage of the 0 build time so it's more of an advantage to the player.

Okay, thanks for the explanation. Yeah, it would have really helped me in my last campaign to build more than one peasant per turn. It was such a chore churning them out to go and replenish my exterminated cities, LOL.

[Red Harvest]

More stuff to add...

• Horse jumping fix
• Give Thrace ability to continue building phalanx pikemen with higher level barracks (they get replaced at present)
• Give 1st level roads a 1 point trade bonus. It is daft that basic roads provide zero trade bonus.
• Beef up many rebel provinces to include walls, some population, and an army that fits with this.
• Give most AI provinces walls at the start, and sufficient population to deal with most early recruitment drain on large.
• Replace bow unit weapons with lower range, weaker, and non-flaming projectiles.
• Use 3 or 4 classifications for bow units. Weak 100 yard simple weapons with lower velocity for vanilla archers and camel archers. 110 or 120 yard range bow units for base horse archers. 120 yard range elite horse archers with AP (but lower overall power than at present.) 150 yard range elite archers (with lower overall power.) Still have some work to do figuring out classifications...
• Consider giving archers/skirmishers small negative mount effects vs. cav.
• Consider giving phalangites "frighten_mounted" trait or other ways of making them more effective vs. cav.
• Reduce melee ratings of most spear/lance armed cav. Their offensive melee power should be weak.
• Put Equites back on medium horse, they should be slower than Numidians and Horse Archers--rather than just as fast.
• Consider reducing horse mass to reduce its penetration into phalangites--presently they make it completely past the spearwall in the initial charge with few casualties.

[hrvojej]

[*]Put Equites back on medium horse, they should be slower than Numidians and Horse Archers--rather than just as fast.

I don;t think the speed is linked to the mount type. For example, since the patch barbarian cavalry are fast moving, yet they ride medium horses.

*rant*
Btw, has anyone noticed that majority of the light cavalries in 1.2 are now fast moving? As if the battles were not fast enough, and there were no complaints about the battle speed...
And there I thought that battle speeds would be hard to change due to animations etc. I guess someone at Activision really had problems catching and dealing with the HA...
*rant over*

[therother]

Give 1st level roads a 1 point trade bonus. It is daft that basic roads provide zero trade bonus.

May I ask how you achieved this? I thought that the trade bonuses for the different levels of roads were hardcoded, although I not that familiar with the files. Or did you add trade_base_income_bonus bonus 1 to the capabilities of basic roads? Hmm, I suspect that this might have some unwanted side effects if you did.

[Red Harvest]

I don;t think the speed is linked to the mount type. For example, since the patch barbarian cavalry are fast moving, yet they ride medium horses.

*rant*
Btw, has anyone noticed that majority of the light cavalries in 1.2 are now fast moving? As if the battles were not fast enough, and there were no complaints about the battle speed...
And there I thought that battle speeds would be hard to change due to animations etc. I guess someone at Activision really had problems catching and dealing with the HA...
*rant over*

Speed was tied to mount type previously. Light being the fastest. Heavy and medium were about the same speed, although now medium seems faster than heavy. I haven't done race testing in 1.2, but now would be a good time to do so.

[Red Harvest]

May I ask how you achieved this? I thought that the trade bonuses for the different levels of roads were hardcoded, although I not that familiar with the files. Or did you add trade_base_income_bonus bonus 1 to the capabilities of basic roads? Hmm, I suspect that this might have some unwanted side effects if you did.

The big multiplier trade bonus is hard coded (something like 100% for paved roads, and 50% for highways.) So the only option left was to add the same sort of trade boost as is given by other structures.

road_level 0
trade_base_income_bonus bonus 1

I then went back and added the same amount for the other roads (all set to 1) so that the trade bonus doesn't revert to zero at the next level. (That is how it is structured with markets anyway.) A "1" seemed to provide a 10% boost in the limited testing I have done so far. My testing of this has been in Thrace, which is well situated for testing roads.

[Proletariat]

Speed was tied to mount type previously.

On a related note, can anyone suggest how I might decrease the speed of routing units? I'm getting very frustrated when my light cavalry is tied up for the rest of the battle because it's been chasing down routing pikeman (and never ever catching them) for the last 7 minutes.