2h Fixes: Discussion

**Foz** · 01-07-2007, 01:32

I've seen numerous threads related to the 2h weapon bug, and an equally large number of suggestions for what to do as a fix to this problem. For those of you not already familiar with this, there is something wrong with the attacks of units using 2-handed axes, hammers, and polearms: they fail to attack cavalry.

What I'd like to see here is open discussion of the problem and its various solutions, as I haven't found anything on the forum yet that appears to be a solution that is endorsed as "the best."

To get things started, I've heard 2 proposed solutions typically:

1. Modifying the unit descriptions to use the animations of a different unit that isn't bugged.
2. Replacing the animations with non-bugged versions. This mostly seems to be animations ported from the demo.

Is one of them clearly better in any of the following senses?:

- Fixes the problem more effectively without modification of unit attack stats
- Presents a nicer or more natural looking fix
- Easier for a typical user to implement

**Musashi** · 01-07-2007, 01:44

It's not just the fact that they don't attack cavalry. Sometimes they don't attack infantry either. And even when they do, the animation is easily 10x longer than an attack from a normal unit, and it goes off very rarely as well.

In short they're utterly and completely gimped.

**pevergreen** · 01-07-2007, 03:03

zxiang's 2h fix is the most complete. It ports the demo ones, and fixes the then made problem with another group of 2h weapons. Billman can now be a decent part of your army.

Easy to install? Yes! just replace 2 files with the ones downloaded. Done.

**Tristrem** · 01-07-2007, 03:52

i agree with the above poster, this is the easiest, and best fix I have come across yet

**hrvojej** · 01-07-2007, 05:49

I think the best way to go is to use the fixed animations, but with toned down stats for the fixed units. Fixed animations with vanilla stats turn those units into monster killing machines. I used something similar to Lusted's LTC stats for the two-handed units but with fixed original animations (and not JHI animation that LTC is using), and I find that it works well and in line with how I think those units should perform.

**pevergreen** · 01-07-2007, 10:42

Yes, each player will have different ideas on how each unit should perform but even with "high stats" they still get smashed on the charge. Check out the 2h Test thread i made that has results.

Basically mounted sarges will take win by 30-50 every time. With billmen bracing and in deep formation.

**dopp** · 01-07-2007, 17:13

The most impressive stat line in the game will still not save a unit of infantry from any proper cavalry charge. Cavalry has double the mass compared to RTW, plus they get very strong charge bonuses against infantry. The only way to stop the charge 'properly' is to have special formation bonuses of your own. Pikemen and halberdiers have spear wall, plus someone at TWC was working on re-enabling shield wall for spearmen, since their normal spear resistance to charges is either not working properly or is insufficient to stop cavalry.

I don't have a major problem with powerful cavalry charges myself but it does make both spearmen AND heavy knights a little redundant when all you need is Mounted Sergeants or even horse archers to break an infantry line that happens to lack pikes.

**Roy1991** · 01-07-2007, 18:26

Just increase the mass of the infantry - problem solved :)

**Foz** · 01-09-2007, 02:19

Originally Posted by hrvojej

I think the best way to go is to use the fixed animations, but with toned down stats for the fixed units. Fixed animations with vanilla stats turn those units into monster killing machines. I used something similar to Lusted's LTC stats for the two-handed units but with fixed original animations (and not JHI animation that LTC is using), and I find that it works well and in line with how I think those units should perform.

So far I am liking the replaced animations. I had been using the quick fix of replacing the bugged unit animations with those of the Zweihander unit, but of course the demo-ported animations look a lot more natural. As for balance, let's look at the following. If you compare for instance English Armoured Swordsmen with French Dismounted Noble Knights, they break down like this:

Armoured Swordsmen:
Attack: 13
Charge: 3
Armour: 8
Defense Skill: 8
Shield: 6
Cost: 610
Upkeep: 150

DNK:
Attack: 21
Charge: 6
Armour: 8
Defense Skill: 5
Shield: 0
Cost: 530
Upkeep: 225

Based on those stats, I'd expect the units to match up very well against each other, having close fights as their frontal attack and defense numbers match each other (13 attack v 13 def, 21 attack v 22 def). In practice, though, the Swordsmen get slaughtered, only taking about 1/6 of the DNKs with them. This tells me the stat rebalancing is in fact necessary. Anyone wanna link me to a well-balanced unit file to use with the replaced animations? It would be much appreciated.

Originally Posted by pevergreen

Yes, each player will have different ideas on how each unit should perform but even with "high stats" they still get smashed on the charge. Check out the 2h Test thread i made that has results.

Basically mounted sarges will take win by 30-50 every time. With billmen bracing and in deep formation.

This should be something more akin to mutual assured destruction, I think. Most of the horses making the charge should die, but then so should all the billmen in the first few lines as wounded/dead horses plow into them at ramming speed. IRL this would probably be one hell of a mess.

Originally Posted by dopp

The most impressive stat line in the game will still not save a unit of infantry from any proper cavalry charge. Cavalry has double the mass compared to RTW, plus they get very strong charge bonuses against infantry. The only way to stop the charge 'properly' is to have special formation bonuses of your own. Pikemen and halberdiers have spear wall, plus someone at TWC was working on re-enabling shield wall for spearmen, since their normal spear resistance to charges is either not working properly or is insufficient to stop cavalry.

I don't have a major problem with powerful cavalry charges myself but it does make both spearmen AND heavy knights a little redundant when all you need is Mounted Sergeants or even horse archers to break an infantry line that happens to lack pikes.

I also don't have a problem with powerful charges, since as I mentioned the horses, even if wounded/killed on impact, still pose a huge threat to any men that are in their way.

As for increasing the mass of the infantry as Roy1991 suggests, I don't really think it's a good solution. The horses really should be able to knock men around a great deal, they weigh a LOT more and are of course charging. It seems to me a better solution would be to fix the formation bonuses for applicable units, as it's clear that a unit not explicitly bracing and prepared for a cav charge should in fact be completely cut to ribbons by it, while a prepared unit of the correct type should be able to hold its own or at least be assured of slaughtering a good number of charging knights on impact, which does not really seem to happen now in general.

**sivlar** · 01-09-2007, 21:38

Originally Posted by hrvojej

I think the best way to go is to use the fixed animations, but with toned down stats for the fixed units. Fixed animations with vanilla stats turn those units into monster killing machines...

Just wanted to throw this out there, since lots of folks say using the vanilla stats with the pre-gold animations unbalances units.

In the pre-gold demo with the old animations, the stats were even higher on those units than they are in the final release with the broken animation.

I'm at work atm and don't have access to the EDU from the demo but I recall all the 2-handed units in there having an attack rating even higher than what the final has.

I personally think the unbalance comes from the animation itself, not the stats. Since the spin attack and such are very fast compared to what other units have.

Any way to make the animation run slower than what it does now instead of nerfing the stats of the units that use it?

**hrvojej** · 01-10-2007, 00:49

I did my tests with e.g. dismounted English knights vs. dismounted gothic knights (no shield, so one less problem to worry about), and even with an attack of 8 (like Lusted's LTC mod is using) DEK thrash the gothics more often than not. When you look at the raw stats though, they actually favor the gothics (DGK 14 att vs. DEK 13 def, 8 DEK att vs. 9 DGK def - after ap is factored in; also, I set the skeleton compensation and mass to 1 and morale to 11 for both units). So, from the front, DGK should have an advantage of one point for both attack and defense.

Since defense value is only taken into account from the front and to the right, it is likely that the value of 9 total def for DGK actually will not hold in a number of situations (it's just the maximum def they can have). The ap of DEK reduces the def of DGK to 5 if DEK hit them from anywhere else other than front/right. However, in the opposite situation the difference is 14 vs. 8, so if the difference is assumed to be linearly factored into the calculations, DGK should now have an even larger 6 vs. 3 advantage when hitting from other directions. Therefore, there's either something going on with the animations or the math is not what I think it is.

With an attack of 21 it's just ridiculous what DEK are capable of, and so I set their attack at what feels right for me (9 att). I tried to slow them down with increasing the delay between attacks, and I tried to make them less lethal by decreasing skeleton compensation, but it didn't seem like it made a tangible difference. However, it also seemed that, with the fixed animations, the 2h axes were less powerful than the maces of dismounted knights, but I didn't feel like doing another round of exhaustive tests to determine that for sure.

I don't know how to mod animations though, nor whether it's possible to do so at all. But yes, I agree that this sort of thing could have an effect on strategic AI, since, unlike the battles, it is most likely still guided by stats as such.

**Foz** · 01-10-2007, 02:57

Did that testing I was talking about, and the results are in: shields are totally borked in close combat. Before I discuss, here are the raw numbers listed as "Armoured Swordsmen kills/Dismounted Noble Knight kills":

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

A is our baseline, the way the game operates with vanilla unit settings. Assuming that the units primarily engage each other from the front, this should be identical to B, C, and D if everything is working correctly. They in fact do primarily engage from the front, which I helped assure by lining the swordsmen up in a 20x3 formation like the knights use.

Note that B and C have almost identical results, indicating skill is as good as armour in this battle. D is absolutely horrible by comparison, telling us that the shield does not protect its bearer in close combat as much as his armour or skill do. In fact we can see in E that a unit with 0/0/0 def stats performed slightly better than the one with 22 shield stat only, which means if anything the shield points actually hurt its defense. This is not at all significant though, and should probably be chalked up to random error in testing.

F further illustrates what happens if the unit's shield points are converted into the skill stat - it performs about on par with the 22/0/0 and 0/22/0 unit, further affirming that armour and skill are good while shield is broken.

What this all tells us is that the shield stat at least in this case (I'm guessing in all cases) doesn't do a damn thing to protect the unit in melee combat. It does work for ranged protection from what I've seen: I set shield in 3 different runs to 0/6/26 and took as corresponding losses 60/48/13 from an unmodded unit of french crossbow militia.

So then the main problem now is that all the shield units are operating at less melee defense than intended, by an amount equal to their shield value. For knights this is a 4 mostly which is probably why they're easy kills in melee. Lots of infantry have 6, which explains why shield infantry of all sorts seem so horribly underpowered. The easiest fix I see is to add the shield value right into the skill field, because the problem is the shield isn't affecting melee, which points in skill ONLY do, so will fix the problem. I'd expect it to throw the recruitment AI a bit of a loop though since according to the computer the defense stats of all shield units will have gone up. Maybe it'll make shield troops look more tempting than buttloads of artillery. I'd rather face stacks of armoured sergeants any day, it's more interesting

**Musashi** · 01-10-2007, 14:06

I doubt that the shield stat is actually hurting the unit in melee. More than likely you're just seeing the small variances that come from random chance (There is a random element in unit combat you know).

My guess it the shield does absolutely nothing in melee combat. It's just meant to provide cover from ranged fire.