The Shield Problem(s)

[Carl]

This is what I am also using, though I also upped the defense skill of the units without shield to compensate for autocalc and AI building priorities. So far the battles have been playing out nicely with these changes.

BUT IF YOU DO THIS YO ONLY HALF FIX IT AS SHIELD UNITS STILL DON@T BRACE PROPERLY.

Sorry for shouting but a lot of people seem to have missed this very important point. It effect Shield Infantry and Spears against cav tremendously, as well as non-spear Shield infantry against anything in general.

[Lusted]

I'm not trying to knock the effort you've put in of course, just that I think the Shield fix deals with so many issues at once that many of the other modifications you've already made simply aren’t needed, although I can understand you'd resent abandoning so much hard work. It's annoying me how much modding I’m having to do to get a working game TBH.

Well actually i think i've got a pretty good balance with the changes i've made, im not sure i need to incorporate this into my mod. and the changes i made weren't that time consuming(increased mass of spearmen, change to charge bonuses). The most time consuming was rebalancing the bugged 2 handed units after changing their animation tot hat of the JHI.

[Carl]

substantially better than even I had anticipated it would be, and hard to exactly describe well. Much easier to experience.

Yeah, that’s what I’m finding. Great fun but hard to describe.

Well actually i think i've got a pretty good balance with the changes i've made, im not sure i need to incorporate this into my mod. and the changes i made weren't that time consuming(increased mass of spearmen, change to charge bonuses). The most time consuming was rebalancing the bugged 2 handed units after changing their animation tot hat of the JHI.

I wasn't suggesting you had bad balance, just that the shield fix adds new balances that you can't achieve any other way because they rely on bracing that works, when braced shield units act as though they DO have better mass which really throws things. In addition they can actually nullify charges from many Inf units totally, I mean literally the enemy inf causes no kills when they charge in because the braced shield absorb it all. Cav and high stat Ap 2-handers can get through. But they are a special case. Without AP you need an attack in the 30+ range to get through defence 24 sword and shield units on the charge.

It helps give you extra defences against light cav, and as a result REALLY changes the HA dynamics.

Likewise I’ve never seen Spearmen fight effectively in Shilstrem with a shield value of better than 0. Although others seem to have them working so it could just have been me. I think I’ll start a separate thread on the matter as I’m not sure if that’s a shield bug thing or just me.

As Foz says, just give it a try for a session or two and see how it feels, even if you don’t like it you know you aren’t missing anything and can give an explanation of this in your mod readme.

[hrvojej]

BUT IF YOU DO THIS YO ONLY HALF FIX IT AS SHIELD UNITS STILL DON@T BRACE PROPERLY.

Sorry for shouting but a lot of people seem to have missed this very important point. It effect Shield Infantry and Spears against cav tremendously, as well as non-spear Shield infantry against anything in general.

Then reduce the mass of mounts, and you're set.

[Lusted]

One of the changes i've made in my LTc is mod is to remove the charge bonus for light cav so HA no loger own spearmen, and reduce hev cav charge bonus so they don't wipe out armoured sergeants in a single charge. But i've also increased the mass of cavalry to make charges feel more realistic. Now testing the shield fix i've found late shield sword infantry very resistant to cav, when they shouldn't be considering that they're swordsmen. That, plus the fact that ap units are far too effective against late era units with the fix aren't really endearing me to this

[Foz]

Now testing the shield fix i've found late shield sword infantry very resistant to cav, when they shouldn't be considering that they're swordsmen.

Should this not be the case? Don't forget that said shield sword infantry units are wearing and carrying enough metal to practically build a small tank, and have an 8 point advantage in defense over 2H AP units that in fact do get slaughtered by cav. It should be considerably harder for cavalry to make a dent in sword+shield units with them able to bring so much defense to bear against the charge. They do still take some losses from the initial charge, but are (and should be) in a better position defensively to hold against the ensuing melee sword assault of the cavalry, and once a horse is near you in combat, it shouldn't be very difficult to hit it with a sword.

The real point, though, is that the sword+shield unit's stat sheets tell me they should survive a cavalry charge pretty well. More than likely it's just that you're so used to enjoying being able to plow into what ought to be high-armour units and win the day easily with cavalry that it's never occurred to you that maybe it doesn't make all that much sense.

I would also recommend working with the vanilla shield fix file as a baseline, as any changes you've made like lowering charge values and such will certainly affect your results. A fair number of shield guys should still die on initial contact, and I'm gonna guess the charge modifier is largely responsible for those kills. Just figured I'd mention this, since it's entirely unclear whether you've added the fix into your modified LTC file, or are actually working with the vanilla fixed version I provided. Also when I say using a 2H fix along, I mean an animation replacement fix, like zxiang's 2h fix, not replacing soldier types in the unit definitions, which could be another source of potential disparity.

[Carl]

That dosen't do anything for the effects against infantry though (and they are very important). I'm also not convinced we'll see the on contact MAD that occurs with them properly braced. Of course if you've tested it and you do see this. Fair enough.

Finially, which is easier. Moving a sheild value to the armour. Or adding the Sheild to the Defence Skill, AND rebalanmcing 2-hander stats, (which messes up auto-calc), AND playing with unit masses, AND implimenting some kind of fix for the lost Effects vs. Infantry?

It's clearly easier to transfer the sheild to the armour and makes the units perform as intended when engaged from the front and sides, (assuming defence skill affects a 180 degree arc when the sheild is set to zero as appears to be the case with 2-Handers).

[Carl]

You need to put those charge bonusus back in or it will mes things up. Likewise AP 2-Handers SHOULD be massacering sheild units. Pikes and AP 2-handers are the best late infantry, they are also sluaghtered by cav and archers (unlike Sword and sheild units). Noble Swordsmen with the Charge Bonuses back in correctly can tack on Mailed Knights, but Anything better massacres them with some, (but not massive losses).

To test this objectivly you need to use a fresh file set with ONLY the sheild fix, swaped animations, and if you ant, the pike fix. Anything else will skew things massivly in some way towards IMBA.

[Lusted]

It's only cav charge bonuses i have reduced to stop them wiping out spearmen in 1 charge, but my reduction in cav charge bonuses has been sort of counteracted by my increasing cavalry mass.

[Carl]

It could still be having knock on effects. anything with an 8 charge stat, (or one with 6 and very good stats), should decimates Sword and Sheild units. Your statment makes me belive this isn't happening for you and thats what prompted my post.

Sorry if i was a bit over aggressive about it BTW.

[hrvojej]

It's clearly easier to transfer the sheild to the armour and makes the units perform as intended when engaged from the front and sides, (assuming defence skill affects a 180 degree arc when the sheild is set to zero as appears to be the case with 2-Handers).

But it's clearly less in the spirit of the game, IMO. The TW games have always been about units having different defense on different sides. If they now have the same value for all sides for both melee and missiles, especially if the skill applies in a 360 arc without a shield as you seem to imply, then I am playing an Age of Empires game and not a TW game any more. We might as well dump everything into armor and forget about it.

And btw, I didn't notice any difference with bracing/not bracing.

[Carl]

They won't brace when in Guard/Hold mode. Yiou must also be tottaly still, if you order them to move whilst reciving a chage they won't brace.

And defence on diffrent sides dosen't matter here. Leave the sheild value in and you get too high a defence on one side and almost no defence on the other. Lets also remeber that this is a GAME. It's meant to be a Balanced. With the sheild value still their and crazy defence values for sheild units and weakened 2-handers and other similar stuff the game isn't balanced at all, in or out of auto-calc. we allready know the sheild isn't working right against missile fire and may be effected by AP so theirs no point keeping it, and considering most sword units have a defence skill VERY similar to their sheild value, it doesen't actually change their left/right defence values by more than a point over what they should be with working sheilds. So with working sheilds you'd still be playing an AOE game not a TW game anyway. Except it isn't things like that that set the systems apart. It's the fact that the TW games actually include Startegy and complex Tactics as apposed to simpile ones. As an AOE player i can tell you that the fixed game STILL uses the rock/paper/scissors system that has dominated RTS so long, (with good rason). and at the basest level isn't much diffrent in terms of unit interaction in head on fights. It's things like Morale, Flank and Rear Charges, units instead of individual models and many other things that set the games apart. these introduce a lot of new tactics to the TW games that AOE can never have. The sheild fix dosen't change that one bit. it just makes units work more as intended.

p.s. it's 180, not 360.

[hrvojej]

And defence on diffrent sides dosen't matter here. ... *snipped for brevity*

Right... To each his own.

[Carl]

Right... To each his own.

Of course, Agree 100%. We each have our own veiw on how things should be, and are free to implement them like that in our mods.

I was mearly trying to point out that the sheild fix only really disfavours HA as a unit class in general. Whilst not fixing it disadvantages 3 classes. Spear units, Sword & Sheild Units, and Cav with a sheild. It might give them slightly better rear charge resistance and Enfidle fire resistance than we'd like. But overall it fixes a much bigger set of problems much more cleanly and without creating as many more and is thus a better fix in general IMO.

[Blademun]

I have to agree with above. It almost sounds like you guys are trying to neuter the game.

The days of your HA simply shooting half the enemy army to death and then running the rest down with formed charges are well over IMO.

A little bitter, eh? Last time I checked, historically, a good HA army (mongol/Byzantine/Turk) was suppose to do just that to a all infantry army.

While I feel its nice that we have the opportunity to 'balance' the games for ourselfs, it shouldn't be left to a small community of modders to decide how the game shall play for all of us. Already, when we are discussing strategy, its automaticly assumed that your using the '2H fix' and the 'Pike' fix. I can see this new 'sheild' Fix being mandatory for strategic discussion in the not too far future.

It is a shame that the shield does not contribute to melee fighting like it should. However, I still feel the idea that sheild values contribute negativly to defence in melee is still debateable. However, if it IS true, I would prefer to wait for a official patch.

Why? Well lets state the problem: We want our shields to have a effect in melee.

Well, of the possible solutions, the best two ways are to:

A: add sheild to the armour and 0 the shield value. This has the effect of nerfing the depth that CA took in simulating archery based combat. It also does not produce the above desired effect.

Why? Well lets talk about what happens when you add to armour.

There are three 'quadrants' of defense to each solder. The Front-Right, Front-Left, and Rear.

the Armour value adds to all three quadrants. The Skill value adds to the front Right, and the Shield value adds to the Front-left. So, Lets look at a vanilla DFK from a Quadrant perspective assuming the shield bug is true.

Front-Right: 7 Armour + 8 skill= 15 defense
Front-Left: 7 armour + -6 shield= 1 defense
Rear: Defense = 7.

Now add the Armour fix.

Front-Right: 14 armour + 8 Skill= 22 Defense
Front-Left: 14 armour + 0 shield.= 14
Rear: Defense = 14

This game is balanced under the assumption(not knowing of the shield bug) that DFKs are actually: 15, 13, 7 respectively, not 22, 14, 14. Thus, we get a unit that is overpowered in terms of the way this game was meant to be played. What -you- think is how it suppose to be doesn't matter as much. If you think Dfk's should be Zomg death knights, then great, mod your game...don't declare it a universal fix for everyone.


The other Fix:

B: Keep the shield value and add double the shield value to the skill value to offset the inverse effect sheild has on melee defense. This also does not produce the desired effect:

With this fix the DFK's Quadrants are

Front-Right: 7 Armour + 20 SKill(6*2+8)= 27 Defense(Zomg)
Front-Left: -6 Shield + 7 armour= 1 Defense
Rear: Defense = 7

So we get a Dfk who's Quadrants are 27,1,7. Crazy, but at least arrow fire will continue to work like its suppose too.

TO me, both of these 'fixes' are not really fixes at all. Assuming one used the Shield-to-armour fix..I think there is only way it could be done barring a official patch. You would have to go through every unit in the game and readjust their stats to balance accordingly with the new and improved shield units. With that goes hours upon hours of balance testing just like the designers went through when they made this game.