Feedback & Campaign reports

[aokubi]

Firstly, I would like to say how fantastic this mod is. I was bowled over by Beta 5 and then Beta 7 came along...

As for a campaign report, I always seem to find Tohoku is the most dominating region of the game. It seems that whoever wins the initial 2 or three wars over Dewa and Mutsu (usually between Date and Satake), then goes on to steamroll over the rest of Japan (at least, without player intervention).

One more thing, I was wondering, would there be any way to make any suggestions or even contributions to the mod?

Once again, many thanks to all those involved in this mod, best one I`ve played in a long, long time.

(First time poster, apologies if I`ve made any mistakes in this post.)

[R'as al Ghul]

Thanks aokubi,

your feedback is appreciated very much. It's encouraging to know that people actually play the mod. So it's already a good contribution to let us know that you like it.
Suggestions are also welcome but keep in mind that this mod is very old and a lot of suggestions are stored in the diverse threads. For example, we've had a lot of suggestions concerning the mongols but don't have put any of them in the game yet. But don't let this discourage you. Speak your mind.

R'as

[aokubi]

Thanks R`as.

I guess the first suggestion that comes to mind is about the Portuguese Teppo. I think in the original STW, the Portuguese arquebusiers were an early access firearms unit which came with a price (acceptance of christianity). I think it would be a good to put the PTeppo back into this kind of context and perhaps increase the effectiveness of the firearms to reflect their historical value. In MTW, they were probably more novelty units than anything else, but in Japan, the firearm had an instant impact on the nature of warfare. Maybe this trend towards guns could be shown more in the campaign, perhaps forcing the player to seriously think about adopting the same tactics (I know I for one hardly ever used the gun units in the original STW, simply never felt that they were a threat to the traditional units).

Ok, I hope I didn`t squeeze too much into that suggestion!

[R'as al Ghul]

Thanks R`as.

I guess the first suggestion that comes to mind is about the Portuguese Teppo. I think in the original STW, the Portuguese arquebusiers were an early access firearms unit which came with a price (acceptance of christianity). I think it would be a good to put the PTeppo back into this kind of context and perhaps increase the effectiveness of the firearms to reflect their historical value.

Okay I 've to make some interpretation here as I'm not 100% sure if I understand correctly.
1. You'd like to have the firearms earlier.
2. You'd like to see a connection to religion like in original S:TW.
3. You'd like to have the effectiveness increased.

In S:TW you had to wait for the Portuguese to arrive in your province and accept a change of religion to get the firearms. This is not provided by the engine of M:TW. We can only tie the access to a certain date or to a religion/ faction. Changing a factions religion in game is not possible. But, I do agree that getting the firearm units takes rather long in campaign play. So we may make them available earlier. I could also imagine different eras for the final version of the mod, where you could start off with firearms available from the start.
The stats of the units have been worked on for literally years and are close to perfect. But they are mainly tailored for Multiplayer. We've since the beta_7 seperated eras and stats for Multiplayer and SP campaign. So we can make changes to the campaign play without affecting the MP part too much. However the projectile stats are used by all eras and increasing the effectiveness of any teppo will effect MP gameplay. A workaround would be to provide a seperate projectile file that those who don't play MP can use.

Have you played to the stage where firearms are available? I did some playtesting and long auto-run tests to ensure that the AI trains them and was quite satisfied with the results. A problem is that teppos are missile units and thus are played with the "skirmish mode on" on default. The AI doesn't know that the teppos are meant to be used in "close formation" and I can't teach it. But the Ai does use them quite well under the given circumstances.

So, there're a lot of details to consider and before we alter their stats I'd also like to hear some more opinions.


R'as

[aokubi]

Ah, right. Well, what I mean is, for the Portuguese Teppo to be an early firearm unit (available a good few turns before the Japanese teppo), but with a catch (a religious one).
I started to tinker with Beta 5 a while (just to tailor it more to my own prefs) and I managed to get the Jesuit Church and cathederal in the game and used them as prerequisites for the Portuguese teppo. As you said, it`s not possible to change religion in MTW, but I did manage to get the buildings to produce penalties (as well as bonuses - for incentive). It`s not perfect (you can end up with 100% of the people following different faiths!), but at least it gives the Portuguese units that 'early gunpowder units, but with complications', feel.
So, its not to have the guns earlier (I kind of like long games anyway), just really to restore the Portuguese Teppo as the earliest unit, which the player has to make a decision whether to use them is worth the associated hassle.

Hmm, I forgot about the MP projectile stats. I take your point there.

Yeah, I`ve played to the late era, and I`m not so much talking about the battle behaviour, (I know there`s not much scope for influencing that, but I' pretty happt with MTW`s default behaviour anyway) but more the distribution of the units. It seems the AI builds a few here and there, but doesn`t seem to rely on them too heavily as battle winning units. They're usually outnumbered or equalled by archers.

Just a note, I also added the LateAshiYari back in as a kind of pike unit to support the teppo in their era. They seem to work pretty well as a kind of cavalry screen.

Hope I explained myself a bit better there.

[Puzz3D]

The guns are more powerful than they were in STW v1.12. The Portuguese teppo is equivalent to the musket in STW v1.12, and the Japanese teppo is 50% stronger. If troop morale is getting too high in the campaign, the guns will loose their ability to rout enemy units. Units of morale 8 or higher won't be routed by guns. We could lower the morale of all the SP units to offset excessive morale boosting by campaign bonuses.

I think the reason it's taking a long time for guns to become available is because the campaign starts in 1470. The STW v1.12 campaign started in 1530, and the Portuguese arrive in 1545. I think it wasn't until the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 that guns demonstrated high effectiveness, and that was when they were protected by palisades and samurai and they were shooting at cavalry which was charging up an embankment and across wet ground.

[aokubi]

I never thought to compare the stats to those in STW 1.12. I never really used the gun units in STW, and I didn`t feel that they posed much of a threat when the ai used them, so I suppose my memory of the STW units is a little bit dim. But maybe offsetting the morale is a good idea though, the VnV's make a big contribution to morale, which of course STW didn`t have.

I don`t think it takes a long time for the guns to become available (SW Mod = 73 turns, STW = 60 turns), I just think it would be good to have the Portuguese teppo available as the earliest (but least effective, as you said, Nagashino was the first time they were utilised well) firearms unit. Maybe putting them in the high era & pushing the Japanese Teppo up to the Late.