Getting armor, weapon and valor upgrades via retraining

**Maizel** · 12-02-2006, 21:08

It's probably done that way to prevent cheap units from being uber units.

But it could be compensated by raising the defense skill, or the shield defense.

Man, i wish i knew how to mod.

**dopp** · 12-03-2006, 01:08

But some of the units affected are pretty advanced units themselves (pikemen and musketeers). It is also very costly to upgrade them, since you have to build armorsmiths to do so. I want my money's worth really. In RTW, smiths upgraded every unit produced or retrained there. So catatanks with 21 armor got +2, peasants with 1 armor also got +2. In M2TW, you only get upgrades if your current armor is lower than the level of the smith. This suggests that armor upgrades are supposed to bring weak militias in line with tougher professionals, at least in terms of armor. It will hardly make them uber, since professionals are still better fighters (higher attack and def) and have better morale and perhaps collision mass. But as you can see, the armor upgrades are inadequate and the upgraded units are significantly weaker than they should be.

**Shahed** · 12-03-2006, 05:30

As I was playing just now, I experienced another variation.

This time I have a tanner in Symrna, and a Castle. Trained a unit of Turcomen, came out without armor upgrade. Retrained and it got the upgrade. This has already been mentioned but I wanted to mention my experience as well.

Armor upgrades are bugged, sometimes.

On the armor level discssion I'm a bit disappointed because I thought it worked by giving unarmored units padded armor level, and so forth, but it does'nt. That IMO would be IDEAL, it adds a specific armor level classification to the game. It's not only very cool, it also makes it much simpler to understand and use the units. The upgrades in TW past (and present regretably) are definetly flawed because that allows you to have more uber n00b units going around. That system has proved it's weaknesses.

I believe a simplification along the lines of armor level upgrades is much better.

Nevertheless M2:TW is a step ahead, but these armor bugs need ironing. They are directly affecting the gameplay.

**dopp** · 12-03-2006, 14:07

Update: Armor upgrades actually seem to have been intended to work as I have described. The partially unpacked units_desc file reveals an additional line that lists the amount of armor a unit gets when it is upgraded. For mailed knights this is 5, 7, 0, 0. 5 is their base armor (light mail), 7 is their upgrade (heavy mail), the two 0 means they cannot be upgraded further. For Byz Lancers it's 5, 7, 8, 9, meaning they get 3 upgrades and can max out at partial plate like katatanks.

Edit: The code is commented out, so it's not working properly. I still say someone should ask the devs what the deal is.

**dopp** · 12-05-2006, 14:58

Sorry for resurrecting this thread. The unpacked data files have been released, and it seems that the code is indeed not implemented. Maybe a developer could comment on why the new armor system was scrapped? It makes a lot more sense than using the old RTW one. If it cannot be made to work properly, maybe the unarmored units need to be tweaked to bring them more in line with the units that come equipped with armor. Otherwise, they are rather gimped.

**Derfel von Saljeth** · 12-05-2006, 16:09

I join the request
Looking at the txt file... it seems they made some work on this, but didn't finish...

**Kraxis** · 12-05-2006, 17:23

Or perhaps it has indeed been finished but is not being used currently.

Look at the top of the file it says the _ex line is optional. So if we remove the ; then perhpas it will work? But I would also like to hear what is/was going on, as this is baffling.

**maestro** · 12-05-2006, 17:32

The so-called "new" armour system, the one which hasn't yet been implimented suonds much better IMO... I hope it's either patched in or it's simple to add

**dopp** · 12-05-2006, 18:04

I tried modding it in. The game crashes if you uncomment it, so I guess it's not working. I tried a different approach by giving all unarmored units 3 armor (except 4 armor for musketeers and some elite pikes that go from unarmored straight to light mail). This way a pike unit with heavy mail has 6 armor, 1 less than it should have (heavy mail should be 7) but a bit more acceptable than 3. The effect is dramatic. 50% less losses from peasant archers between armor 3 and armor 6 and 65% less losses than armor 0 (unmodded).