hmmm i think all i just posted can be denied... somehow my game shows the changes... but doesnt change anything... im not sure what happend
hmmm i think all i just posted can be denied... somehow my game shows the changes... but doesnt change anything... im not sure what happend
We do not sow.
i do check the stats... shows what i changed in the text... but somehow it doesnt change...
We do not sow.
Lol... my bad. That comment was meant for The Stranger to check those things, since he is having the TOTALLY off the wall archer unit test results that apparently reflect none of his changes to the file. My apologies Rev. I didn't (and still don't) mean to step on any toes, it's just difficult to tell who knows how much on here, so I'm trying to take some precautions by eliminating potential sources of error.Originally Posted by the_foz_4
Your stuff is intriguing Rev, though I'm not totally surprised since the AI is involved.
@Stranger: My only idea here is to make sure you check that stuff I listed, though I don't have any idea why your game would list the stat changes but not apply them...
hmmm i cant find the problem... im going to sleep... :P i made a total idiot out of myself... its stupid though... what i change in the building files is aplied...
We do not sow.
Well just to confrim it I did some tests with Retinue Longbowmne shooting at DGK. 7 volleys each time:
Basic
13
26
24
24
24
No AP
19
16
17
11
10
Ap and 20 Missile Attack
40
30
32
29
39
Pretty clear to me. Didn't check the effects of defence as i'm willing to assume AP works as advertised and modifies defence anyway.
Knowing that animations truly are what most units draw their power from. Has anyone taken the time to look at the attack and kill animations of the same units, with and without a shield stat? It may be that the shield stat somehow slow's them, or somehow adds an interupting parry movement that lock's them from really attacking. Need to go off to work so I can't test this atm.
Also The Stranger, common problem. Make sure your .bat file is correctly worded and it's located in the M2TW folder.
Wine is a bit different, as I am sure even kids will like it.
"Hilary Clinton is the devil"BigTex
~Texas proverb
Testing results are coming out right now. I've got the following units having at each other:
Dismounted Feudal Knights, England
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 14, 6, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale
Dismounted Norman Knights, Sicily
stat_pri 13, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_pri_armour 7, 8, 0, metal
stat_mental 9, normal, trained, lock_morale
I'll be controlling (letting sit) the DFKs.
Pre-combat mouse-over shows 13/27/1 (atk/def/cha) as DFK stats, 13/15/1 for DNK, which is as expected. Results are DFK kills/DNK kills.
01. 59/61
02. 53/61
03. 61/43
04. 57/61
05. 61/43
06. 51/61
07. 54/61
08. 61/39
09. 45/61
10. 47/61
11. 47/61
12. 39/61
13. 49/61
14. 49/61
15. 61/58
16. 61/59
17. 45/61
18. 37/61
19. 51/61
20. 61/43
---------
1049/1139
Difference of 90 kills, 90/20 = 4.5 kills per test run advantage for the DNK, which from observation appeared to be due to getting a few extra kills when they charged into the stationary DFKs. As the result favors the unit with shield removed instead of the one with equal skill added, one would conclude that if anything the shield detracts a little more than its indicated value, but from my observation and how close these results are, I feel good saying it detracts a roughly equal amount. We'll know if my observation is correct as soon as I run off results for the vanilla units. If they come out roughly the same, I win![]()
Did you do your tests on medium difficulty? If so, the medium difficulty level might be slightly biased towards the player, and therefore the player wins more often. I though that the best way to counteract this was to use the very hard difficulty for the tests, since if anything it should be biased against the player (even though from what I've gathered from the forums on VH the battles are in fact balanced). This is also a problem if all of the test runs are done by player controlling only one side - the effect of difficulty level cannot be discarded, which is not the case if you alternate which side you are controlling.Originally Posted by Revenant
I watched closely all my test runs, and though I have no numbers to show for this, from what I've seen the animations were the same. The French simply got slaughtered really quickly after the charge.Originally Posted by BigTex
EDIT:
For missiles, the things are a bit more complicated. I think they actually have to hit the model of a man in the target unit unit before the att vs. def is even compared, and I think that the hit rate is dependent on more than just stats. Also, you have a lot more variables to consider: the general scatter of the projectiles, the speed of the target unit if it's moving, the actual density of the soldiers in the target unit, the spatial arrangement of the firing unit (perhaps the shooters are blocking each other), perhaps even angles (I seem to get almost no kills from those 90 degree 'high shots'), etc. While some of these things could be affecting the melee as well, it is my impression that they would more pronounced when trying out ranged combat. Hence, if the effects are small, whoever tests this would have to be very careful to control for as many of the things as possible and also to do a lot more test runs because of the larger inherent potential for variability. Of course, another thing that would help would be to push the stats to the extreme in an attempt to increase the effect size.
Cheers,
Last edited by hrvojej; 01-12-2007 at 00:45.
Some people get by with a little understanding
Some people get by with a whole lot more - A. Eldritch
Results part 2. This time it's the same 2 units, but both set to have the same stats. I used the stats from my proposed armour-fix for the shield problem, since that was the easiest. The actual stats should not matter at all except that they are identical for the 2 units I'm testing, but for the sake of completeness, the defense of each unit is now 13 armour/8 skill/0 shield. As always, results go DFK kills/DNK kills.
DFK 13/8/0 vs. DNK 13/8/0
01. 38/61
02. 61/30
03. 44/61
04. 61/36
05. 56/61
06. 61/57
07. 56/61
08. 44/61
09. 61/41
10. 34/61
---------
516/530 difference 14/10 = 1.4 advantage to DNK.
The advantage of DNK is not quite as high as the previous 4.5 per run, but it is close enough to easily be considered a similar result. Likewise I suspect that the armour-fixed units I used here are operating at a higher effective front defense rating (an effective 21 instead of the effective 15 anticipated in the previous DFK vs. DNK test), thus meaning the advantage gained by DNK from having the initial charge into a still unit of DFK would be substantially lessened as we see here. All signs point to the shield stat directly giving minus defense points in close combat.
I'll hopefully run the other 10 of these tests at some later point as I'm tested out at the moment...
the_foz_4: so your proposal for now is to direct convert shield value into armor?
The shield seems to be working as intended against missile fire, as is armor. I ran lots of peasant bowmen target tests when researching the armor upgrade problem and units with shields were consistently tougher. Spear militia and pike militia both have 1 skill and no armor, yet the spears take 30% less casualties on average from normal missile fire due to their 6 points of shield. If they have armor in addition to a shield (like Italian spear militia with 4 points of padded) then it can cut their losses by 50%.
Melee is a very tricky thing to test. Often one side gets hopelessly muddled and doesn't even strike back when charged, giving the attackers a 'free' strike at the enemy, regardless of whether you set the charge bonus high or low. This tends to mean that combat tests are inaccurate as the side who didn't bug and charged successfully first inflicts disproportionate casualties. I've run tests where vanilla JHI massacred everything and tests where they got stomped badly. Unless a dev comments on this, I am reluctant to rely on combat tests to prove anything major.
I'm not great at testing these things so i'd like to pass on a proposal.
Can someone test (with identical units obviously, dfk and dnk seem to be the popular ones) a unit with 0/5/0 attack/shield/skill vs a unit with 5/5/5 (i think we shouldn't use 0 as it seems to be unpredictable) and then 0/0/5 vs 5/5/5 instead of doing both modifications at once....
The test results we're getting are interesting but imo in no way a fair test (as more than one variable is often changed).
If you want to test adding shield to def skill, test with just shield, then just skill, then shield + skill
From wise men, O Lord, protect us -anon
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions, a statistic -Stalin
We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area -UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer
It sure is. Both fixes have the disadvantage of borking other aspects of the unit left/right/rear defense as I mentioned in a previous post. As dumping shield into the armour stat keeps the game's impression of the unit's defense value the same, it should end up being the fix that maintains the current functionality of auto-calc, where skill-fixing the units presumably will make auto-calc heavily favor units that have high-valued shields. This is due to the game calculating defense as Armour+Skill+Shield, arriving at a value that has 2 times the shield added into it with the skill fix. You can tell that for the purposes of figuring out balance the game uses the shield stat correctly... because when you boost the shield stat of a unit and nothing else in a 1v1 mirror match (like the DFK v DNK I've been testing), that unit will be noticeably favored in the blue and red bar at the bottom of the screen at the start of the battle.Originally Posted by Revenant
I may do so tomorrow if I'm really motivated... but I sorta doubt it. I might actually want to play the game one of these days, lol. It'd be really cool if someone else could do it. If not then I'll probably get to it soonish.Originally Posted by Sapi
As for the "add shield to skill" thing I hear everyone mention, I don't call that a fix at all. There is clearly some detriment associated with shield usage. Adding shield to skill will give the unit the defense it should already be getting from the shield, but does nothing to account for the extra detriment of the shield stat. So while it is better than vanilla, this will still leave your shield units underpowered in combat. The skill fix I've mentioned is to add TWICE the shield into the skill field, and IMO it makes the units behave how you expect based on their stats. No more of this town militia being stomped by peasants garbage, or cavalry just plowing through spear units like they're not even there. It makes things act intuitively how the stat sheet says they should, which is one main reason I am set on thinking I've assessed the situation correctly.
The other has nothing to do with testing, and everything to do with my experience writing code. The sum of that experience tells me that in cases like this, the thing that almost always is at fault is that the programmer put the wrong sign somewhere in the code or omitted one that was needed, and so something gets subtracted instead of added or vice versa. So in my estimation there is a relatively small chance that, having noticed that the shield has some sort of negative effect instead of a positive one, it would be in any amount other than the amount of the shield field.
In any case, I am satisfied enough with the various results to stick by my assessment of the situation until evidence appears to the contrary.
Also since some of you are undoubtedly wondering how the heck I found the time to mod my entire EDU file with the armour fix, I'll just say that... I didn't. I wrote a program to do so. I'll see if I can find time to get it posted sometime tomorrow in case other people would like to apply it. Should I post a fixed EDU file, or the exe that fixes the file?
i can do it... i found the problem :P... this time i shall have real results ;)
We do not sow.
Having just stepped back into the forum after about 2 months I have to make the following point.
Keeping in mind the 2 handed issue and now this shield issue;
Can you all imagine the delicate balancing act that has had to be done on play testing with these two issues not working correctly in the background this whole time!!??
Just think about it for the moment....assuming CA knew about both issues from the beginning...how do they compensate to get the game out on schedule, but somehow re-balance the gameplay to reduce the effect of these two "issues" so they don't become real "show stoppers"?
I pray that CA already knew about this "issue", because if they find out now by reading this post, then it wont be corrected in time for the next "update".
I still want to see vanilla vs 0 shield testing exhaustive enough to prove that the shield is (Or is not) a detriment. If it's just not any help in melee, I don't care... I'm fine with it only being applied to missile fire. I'm only concerned if it actually hurts in melee, and the only way to prove that is vanilla vs 0 shield tests with identical shield bearing units. The 0 shield stats should be vanilla stats, with just the shield zeroed out, and not added into something else.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Try the sheerwood archers that have 0 shield points against feudal knights and you'll see the usulessness of the shield![]()
That doesn't prove anything. They're different units.
I decided to do a truly controlled test, by copying the entry for dismounted chivalric knights, and pasting it as a new unit called "test knights". Two units with exactly the same stats, same unit entry in the modeldb file, and therefore same animation set, everything.
I got a little over halfway done with my control set (Vanilla stats with the charge bonus zeroed out) but unfortunately medieval has decided to stop working for me now.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Musashi,
I'm not really sure I could accept shields just working for missile fire only.
That's simply not viable in my opinion.
The mere fact they could be detrimental in melee combat is laughable. I'll be interested to see how your test goes once you have the game back up and running.![]()
I hate to say it... but I'm convinced. I ran a 20 battle control set. The difference in performance between the two units was negligible. I ran my test set and quit after five battles. It was obvious. Suddenly the unit that I zeroed the shield on was winning by 30-50 kills reliably.
Clearly Shield value hurts a unit's performance in melee. I still can't say whether this is because it applies a negative to armor, or because it introduces an extra animation that slows their attack rate however.
For the sake of completeness, this is my control set data:
As you can see it's within the tolerances of "normal distribution" for a 50/50 system.Code:############################################# ## Control Set ## ############################################# ## Test ## DCK ## TSK ## Win ## Loss ## ############################################# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## 1 ## 119 ## 107 ## X ## ## ## 2 ## 120 ## 111 ## X ## ## ## 3 ## 116 ## 100 ## X ## ## ## 4 ## 100 ## 116 ## ## X ## ## 5 ## 106 ## 119 ## ## X ## ## 6 ## 112 ## 119 ## ## X ## ## 7 ## 119 ## 105 ## X ## ## ## 8 ## 100 ## 97 ## X ## ## ## 9 ## 120 ## 109 ## X ## ## ## 10 ## 96 ## 97 ## ## X ## ## 11 ## 118 ## 108 ## X ## ## ## 12 ## 113 ## 119 ## ## X ## ## 13 ## 115 ## 96 ## X ## ## ## 14 ## 118 ## 97 ## X ## ## ## 15 ## 119 ## 108 ## X ## ## ## 16 ## 120 ## 111 ## X ## ## ## 17 ## 118 ## 108 ## X ## ## ## 18 ## 95 ## 118 ## ## X ## ## 19 ## 112 ## 119 ## ## X ## ## 20 ## 109 ## 119 ## ## X ## ############################################# ## Tot. ## 2245 ## 2183 ## 12 ## 8 ## ############################################# ## Mean ## 112.25 ## 109.15 ################# ############################################# ## W/L Ratio ############### 3:2 ## #############################################
The first five battles of the test set looked more like 90/50, 100/60, etc. I just threw in the towel.
Last edited by Musashi; 01-12-2007 at 12:31.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
I may be wrong, but a higher sheild value seems to mean they get the sheild up into a blocking position more often in the animation. unfortuinatly the recovery animation is longer a they have to stumble back a step then lower the sheild. If they don't do that as much they just stumble back, and start hacking again.
May just be me though so don't take my word on it.
Hi Carl,Originally Posted by Carl
I'd say what we have here after looking at Musashi information is the same as the 2handed issue.
There is the "theoretical" concept that is sound, but once implemented into the graphics the end result is not realised.
In this case the result is completely reversed.
Obviously what we have to determine now is whether or not it's an animation problem or a data inversion problem. I'm going to run another test set. This time I'm going to set their shield to 1 instead of zero. If the battle resutls fall back into a normal distribution pattern then it will be safe to conclude that it is an animation problem.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Ok, I just ran another 5 battles... It's still giving me one-sided results comparable to my previous test set. This means it's mostly likely not an animation issue. In my personal opinion, the shield value is being subtracted instead of added (or vice versa) in the game's battle calculations. I should really run a test with an inflated shield value to see if I start losing battles, just to confirm it, but I'm lazy.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Ok, I'm not as lazy as I thought.
Setting the shield value to a whopping 30, I went from winning battles with kills generally in the 100/50 range, to losing battles with kills in the 50/100 range, 5 times in a row, with the worst being a humiliating 45/114 loss.
That pretty much confirms that there's an inverted operation in the battle calculations. Shield value subtracts directly from a unit's defense in combat.
Fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain.
-The Maestro Sartori, Imajica by Clive Barker
Nice Musashi.Originally Posted by Musashi
Hopefully that can be added to the bug list and it is as easy to correct as it sounds. (I hope!!)
Cheers
I added this issue to our buglist here on the 10th, and Sapi recently posted that he updated the buglist front page and shipped the new ones off, so it appears we've done all we can do already toward getting an official fix going.
@Musashi: Thanks for all the work, we needed more evidence illustrating the problem to get some of the skeptics on board. I think your results make it clear that removing a unit's shield points makes that unit less vulnerable in close combat, and not just by a minor amount. This in turn clearly indicates that the shield stat is conferring a penalty on its unit.
I'll be looking forward to any further testing results anyone might want to post![]()
Originally Posted by the_foz_4
I hope they have time to deal with this "foz".
Have a good weekend all.
I have one issue with this shield mess...
With the working shield, a lot of units will have much increased performance, their defence will actually go up of 12 points in some cases. And so a lot of late era units without shields, which performed admirably against them, will be totally outclassedhalberdiers, zweihanders, Lancers, Gendarmes etc.. There will be no point in fielding newer units.
I spotted this trend even now, some late era units are just worse than their feudal predeccesors. For example dismounted Eastern Chivalric Knights compared with dismounted Feudals. Or some italian dismounted later eras infantry, all are worse than plain dismounted Feudal knights...
Yep, the whole roster needs rebalancing if you try to fix the shields with upping the def skill. However, I think it's less problematic to up the def skill of the 2handers than it would be to deal with the missile combat (and ap) issues that could arise if armor is upped as a shield compensation. So, I think I'll do that.Originally Posted by Revenant
I was thinking about giving around 8-10 skill to late game elites (DGK etc.), around 6-8 to midrange units, 4-6 to archers and low-end units, and nothing to peasants as a revenge for them owning the militia earlier... I think it should bring more balance to the battles with fixed shields, and the autoresolve and AI build priorities as well once the shield fix is implemented. Well, at least there won't be any more complaining about the fast kill rates or battles being over too quickly.![]()
Last edited by hrvojej; 01-12-2007 at 20:13.
Some people get by with a little understanding
Some people get by with a whole lot more - A. Eldritch
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