Question for new patches, Terazawa ?

[Yamaga Shimazu]

I would change at once the only major bug i actually see.
It's the cost of units/honour which unbalances the game towards guns.

Guns are too effective compared to their cost.
First of all, being ashigaru they should rout and they don't.
Second, they shoot too far.
Third, they shoot THROUGH friendly lines and THROUGH hills.
Wherever taisho is, then if he routs the army should as well. It doesn't happen if he is in gun units, they never rout even when seeing samurais routing.

Yeah..i think there's something definitely wrong in the way gunners behave.
Would like to know if someone is working at that...changing of units' morale, firing rate , speeds, costs, and so on.
thanks

This is not a bug actually....it is the way it is interpretated. That is:

1) They rout less than YA but they are much worse in h-t-h combat.

2) Yes, they shoot through friendly lines. Sometimes they kill your men, but many times they don't. Solution: it would be frustrating that your units kill your men, so they made it that way.

3) Guns have a very long range compared to archers, especially muskets. But that you can use as your advantage.

4) Shoot through hills..mmmm...this is new..
I'll experiment it.

Whatever, 1.13 will probably not include the solution to this possible problem. But Richie is really excited about this new patch and surprises and miracles should happen.


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Honour to Clan Kenchikuka.

Visit my resource centre at:

http://terazawa_tokugawa.tripod.com/terazawatokugawa

[Yamaga Shimazu]

Quote Originally posted by Terazawa Tokugawa:
This is not a bug actually....it is the way it is interpretated. That is:

1) They rout less than YA but they are much worse in h-t-h combat.

Well being ashi, they should rout like ashis do...don't you think ? Besides, knowing to be poor in melee, their morale should be affected by an enemy charging.

2) Yes, they shoot through friendly lines. Sometimes they kill your men, but many times they don't. Solution: it would be frustrating that your units kill your men, so they made it that way.

50%50% would be nice but the best is to prevent them from firing. An archer can raise a bit his aim, the gunner can only shoot point blank, look at the range.

3) Guns have a very long range compared to archers, especially muskets. But that you can use as your advantage.

Actually, the real range of archers EXCEEDS by 2 to 1 compared to a gunner, at least until 19th century that is. The rate of fire of a gunner should be of a shot per minute more or less (AT LEAST a minute) while an archer is able to shoot 4 or 5 arrows in the same time.
It's history, not me talking. Accuracy is degraded until the maximum range (300yds) is reached but gunners are to hit only at 100-150yds.
Yes, gunners are to be DEADLY in point blank.

4) Shoot through hills..mmmm...this is new..
I'll experiment it.

Try

Whatever, 1.13 will probably not include the solution to this possible problem. But Richie is really excited about this new patch and surprises and miracles should happen.

I am not thinking about a new patch but to an editor for units.

I have seen many games carrying on in development with third party add-ons and utils. A shining example for us all is Falcon4 by mps/hasbro. The hasbro disbanded the mps team after 2 patches, now we are at patch 6 (and i repeat SIX, 7 is due out). The most credible patches come from a guy named Erazor (whom they say has "stolen" the code of Falcon4) and the realism patch group from Ibeta corporation (www.ibeta.com).
They, but not only these 2 groups, released patches to keep the game alive, modern, and dramatically REAL.

I seem to understand that while the model remains the same in stw (the battlefield advantages such as honour, general, weather and terrain)in fact, all missile units perform the same (gunners shots are hampered by tree leafs as well and pass "over" your lines in melee like arrows do ) what changes between units are the sprites and values assigned to them.
An editor should be easy for as it is possible to change the sprites so it should be for the ranges and morale, the cost, speed of movement and the like.

Even if at this point in time it seems to be impossible (and i am sure it IS possible to alter these values), the game will die sooner or later for every game has a life of its own.
Foreknowledge of exact location in the code of these infos would be invaluable for the longevity and immense beauty of this game.

We studied Sun Tzu, history is involved, it's not an arcade but a simulation. The quest for realism and longevity seeks new patches and editors.


[/QUOTE]

[The Black Ship]

Wow Yamaga...turn off the bold- it hurts my eyes

A map editor first if you please, then a unit eitor for the cherry on top

[Yamaga Shimazu]

Quote Originally posted by The Black Ship:
Wow Yamaga...turn off the bold- it hurts my eyes

A map editor first if you please, then a unit eitor for the cherry on top [/QUOTE]

mustave been the improper quoting i guess.
But the idea is cool, dont u think ?
Yes, the map editor is great...some more huts, towers, eye-candy stuff i mean that would be great too.

[The Black Ship]

Thanks Yamaga

[Shimazu Tokugawa]

YS,
enjoyed our little online conversation last night and applaud your work figuering all this out.
I think that the archer range should be adjusted to be historically correct. We both agree that this game would be more balanced if guns were omitted from it totally.
I am sure the next version (STWII) will be without guns (Roman Empire!)

Terazawa, we should make this guy "Master at Arms".
Humbley,
ST

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"Strength and Honor for Clan Kenchikuka"

Yes, guns are too effective compared to their cost. Yes, they shoot through all things they meet and yes, they don't rout.

Think of archers. 300 Koku.
Think of muskest: 175 Koku.

That's an enequality. They should be same price same value.
Or archers are really better?

------------------
Honour to Clan Kenchikuka.

Visit my resource centre at:

http://terazawa_tokugawa.tripod.com/terazawatokugawa

[Dwimmerlaik]

I think archers are worth it if only because of their decent h-t-h performance, gunners are useful for their morale reducing effect but are prone to rout when battle is joined close to the formation, especially if your fav tactic is to allow the enemy to 'collapse' your center and then enveloping the flanks with fast attack units.If you are attacking they are even less reliable if you are relying on them for longer range arty support..not only do they shoot you in the back they are likely to run coz all that empty space round them reminds them of their mammmas!
Bottom line: If defending (especially elevations) go with gunners, if attacking or on level ground go for archers.

And that is my two cents.

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To be happy it is necessary not to be too intelligent
- Flaubert-

[Yamaga Shimazu]

Quote Originally posted by Terazawa Tokugawa:
Yes, guns are too effective compared to their cost. Yes, they shoot through all things they meet and yes, they don't rout.

[I]Dat's because in multiplay given their ridiculous cost, players use to give them very high honour...but an ashi will always be an ashi. I was thinking about a "honour limiter" for ashigaru which could make the real difference for gunners/samurai comparison in morale.
But after all, the easiest thing ta do is to edit the morale of ashigaru units and check out how big is this factor for gunners or, well, as it seems far more real to me, increase the cost of rising honour for ashigaru and limiting the honour an ashi unit can have.
Yes, the latter seems more credible.
The solutions are at hand, we could just sit and talk but something will surely come out

Think of archers. 300 Koku.
Think of muskest: 175 Koku.

That's an enequality. They should be same price same value.
Or archers are really better?

Archers in reality were far better, the range is almost twice though penetration and kill reduces with distance. Archers were samurai (morale) while folks, mind that ashigaru were peasants, not that possible to train beyond a certain limit.

Rate of fire, archers are indeed faster...and dats' why the ammo is used up earlier. But their volley also travel in arc while guns shoot boresight only (friendly fire).

The thing making the difference is lethality in point blank against ANY armour.
Gunners excel in that. Archers don't of course. Weather factors, archers are extremely affected by wind and water (range and accuracy) while gunners only fear water.

I am used at seeing many muskets on the field and there's only one solution at this moment : RAIN. This is extremely unfair, unbalancing and silly. Attacker has the move. If it rains he tires up quickly but as things are now attacker has no choice. Either face rain or muskets

In stw how can one beat a gunner with honour 6 if it skirmishes through friendly fresh troops with low honour (means that when u catch them they will back off, KEEP SHOOTING at you while their infantry makes u flee) and doesn't ever rout even when seeing the taisho dead on the field ?
A good player cant make miracles...and koku are the key.
Let's edit the units and see what comes out of it I guess we can change the range and the morale, that would be a million dollars

[/QUOTE]

I apologize since now for the bold characters. i have tried inserting a [I] and let's see if it works!

[Kraellin]

guns and arrows, or how the west was won. i tend to agree that guns are too cheap compared to bows and other units. i'm really not sure of the creator's reasoning on this one. guns were far more expensive to make than arrows but were about the same cost and time to train as archers.

i also agree that gunners reload too quickly. the napoleonic troops were some of the best musket users around and it took the best men a minimum of 30 seconds in the best conditions to reload. i've never timed the shogun gunners but i'm thinking it's a bit shorter than that. i know the gunners swap ranks, which is accurate, but i've never timed how long the back rank takes to reload. maybe someone can do that and post it here.

K.

[The Black Ship]

Kraelin,

Remember you're plaing a game where an entire day takes something like 30 minutes (more for a big 4v4 multi-play). So I figure it's taking them a leisurely 10 minutes game-time per volley!

Gunners were simple non-samurai rank soldiers, so cost to train was historically cheap (thus there rapid intro into most Daimyos' armies). As to logistics, well let's just say that arrows weren't cheap either, then you had to have depots to keep a large quantity at hand, etc....

Try an on-line battle in the rain and tell me muskets are way to effective for cost! Their achilles heal is easy for everyone to see

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Niger Navis Navis Sesquiculus

[Kraellin]

hi ships :)

good points. but if the game day realism is to be taken into account then in a 30 minute day your troops would be moving so fast as almost not be able to see them so reload time shld be based on real time as well.

as for costs, i've never quite figured out if the koku cost was for making or maintaining the various units, or both. if it's for simply maintaining the unit then i'd say yes, gun units were cheaper to maintain, but if the cost is for creating the unit then i'd have to say (and this is somewhat a guess) that gun units were more expensive.

moot points all at this point since a new patch is due out at the end of the month. we'll just have to see if they've altered any of this or not. fun to speculate though ;)

K.

[Yamaga Shimazu]

Read please my topic named historical infos or something...(i dun remember now!)
There ull find quite interesting things on hun realism.

As to the koku cost, well.
In the solo game u first have to contact port/dutch
then u have to build a trading post
then u can levy teppos.

In multiplayer, all u have to do is get those 175koku together....quite too easy i think.

I am playing a shimazu game and am trying a new technique i encourage all of you to try.
When levying troops, just levy 1 samurai and 2 ashigaru units.
Keep this the same wherever u go.
U can levy any number of ashi, but in any place u train, the ashi under training must be double in number than samurais.

U ll notice two things:
1) armies cost cheap and big numbers.
2) battles start getting really really...REAL and if u make a mistake ure doomed.

Here come the tactics

Now try and let me know.
Remember, 1 sam, 2 ashis, 1 sam, 2 ashis and so on.
Focus on technology and u will definitely have lotta fun!

[hach]

yeah i'd like to see archers fire at least 50% farther.

i still want heavy cav stronger.

and on campaign mode the computer gets to reinforce an attacked province and we don't get the same courtesy.

remember diplomacy.
all the sides moved all the units at the exact same time.

now that would be cool!!!
and you are committed to the movement.

hach

[Kraellin]

i seem to recall hearing on a PBS show that muskets were pretty much worthless after about 100 yards. remember, 100 yards is the length of a football field and those guns were terribly inaccurate. they also tended to blow up in your face at times.

english longbows could easily shoot 400 yards or better. i dont know what type of bow the samurais used, but i've noticed in the game that bows and guns seems to be about the same range. this really surprised me when i first started playing in battle mode.

remember also that cav units used a much smaller bow with a much smaller range. they had to for manueverability's sake.

i've also heard the arguement about initial costs of units and the game says something like 'the cost to feed and maintain the units for one year'. that's far from an exact quote but it does point out that a unit's cost is based NOT on training or initial equipping but rather for maintaining the unit over a years time. this also surprised me regarding the multiplay. a gun was much more expensive to build. you needed forges and gunsmiths and miners and so on to build the bloody thing or the 'dirty foreigners' to trade with. since in battle mode you are 'buying' your army it seems to me that you would include not so much the maintenance cost of a unit but rather the initial training and equipping cost in order to 'buy' that unit, in which case, guns would cost at least twice the amount that bows do.

by the same token i've seen arguements about the costs of other units and if the game really is trying only to reflect the maintenance cost of a unit then how is it that a samurai eats any more than an ashigaru or a monk. if the cost is just 'the value of an amount of rice to feed a unit for a year' then all human values would be very close to each other. and have you ever tried to feed a horse for a year? it aint cheap, bubba!

did the japanese reward different units in pay at diff rates or what? i'm really ignorant here about their system of rewards and pay for varying unit types. maybe someone else knows this?

K.

[hach]

the rewards rice m8 as rice bought anything and everything in old japan.even gold would be swapped for rice.

the average ashigaru would get 1 koku'whereas a low samurai might get a 50-100 and a wealthy 1000 above.

o course daimyo's would be much more and some even were 2 million plus

[Yamaga Shimazu]

Yes, everything is correct kraell.
Go, seek the rules, its the only thing we can do until the unit data is tweaked.
Again, anyone interested in testing : icq#58294718, or just meet any of us in the project there at the ea lobby :-)