The Shield Problem(s)

[Musashi]

To be fair in the Hungary/Byz comparisons, Byzantium has Kataphractoi to back up the Vards, and while they may not be the greatest heavy cav around, they don't exactly suck either. Add in Byzantine Infantry (Sword and shield guys... basically legionaires who don't toss pila) and Varangians and they can field a combined arms force, but only in the middle and late periods. Still, they can field one, and it's not so weak.

[Slug For A Butt]

Great work guys, really good bug-spotting :) The reason that we don't usually comment is that - to be brutally frank - there just isn't much to say about these things. We try hard to prioritise core gameplay bugs, but it's a huge piece of software with many people working on it, and obviously a few things have slipped the net that shouldn't have.

Rest assured that we do read these forums, both here in the UK and in Australia, and that these things do get discussed internally and passed on for investigation to the folks in Oz who are dealing with the patches.

Sounds a little trite, but hey... I'm one of the TW series biggest fans so I hope it's true.

[Ulstan]

Lastly, I really don't like this fix mainly because it strengthens units that -should- be weak, namely spear milita and town milita. Spear milita should die like flys from Enfilade/rear fire, because Spear Milita are just peasants with spears.

Spear militia are currently too weak. They get dashed aside by cavalry as though they aren't there. They definitely need boosting, though more in their ability to stand against cav charges, not necessarily in their ability to absorb arrows from the rear.

A schiltron though, would be a fairly effective anti-archer formation in that suddenly, there isn't an exposed flank/rear to shoot at. Not quite as good as a testudo, but then, a schiltron isn't completely inept at melee combat either.

Also, don't just dismiss them as 'peasants with spears'. We have a separate unit of peasants to be the peasants. ;) That would be like calling longbowmen 'peasants with bows', as the french knights were happy to do until they got massacred :D

[Musashi]

My point on schiltroms is that it doesn't work that way in the game. The arrow trajectories in the game mean that half or more of your arrows are going over the guys facing you and striking the guys facing the other direction in the rear or sides...

[Blademun]

Thats not a fair comparison at all! We all know that longbowmen are professional soldiers, not milita. Militia ARE peasants..they are farmers that work part time as soldiers to make extra money.

I'm sure you just forgot to qoute the rest of my paragraph, where I went on to say that I felt spear milita should cause MAD against light cavalry..maybe. No more, however, because they lack the training and displine to properly brace themselfs for attacks by heavier forms of cavalry. Notice they don't plant their spear in the ground, and they only hold them WITH ONE HAND. That is why I feel they should largely get busted by heavy cav.

Take a charging knight on a spear militaman. The spearman may be smart and go for the horse, or attempt to strike the armoured knight. However, since hes only holding his spear by one hand, that means upon contact...that spear is 99% most likely to get ripped out of his hand, painfully. It will either wound the horse, or either break or bounce off the knights armour. Since mounted units can't dismount and fight after their mounts been killed...I would like to see this count as a "healed casualty" after battle. I feel spear milita should have only a small(30-40%) chance of scoring a fatal kill and a much higher chance of causing a healable casualty(50-60%).

I know it doesn't mean much for multiplayer where a 'kill' is a kill. Perhaps a few years down the road we can see our knights get up from their dead horses and keep fighting...

[Musashi]

Actually a lot of times militia weren't even paid... Just expected to train in order to not get killed when the enemy warlord decides to invade and the actual army is three towns away...

[dopp]

Great work guys, really good bug-spotting :) The reason that we don't usually comment is that - to be brutally frank - there just isn't much to say about these things. We try hard to prioritise core gameplay bugs, but it's a huge piece of software with many people working on it, and obviously a few things have slipped the net that shouldn't have.

Rest assured that we do read these forums, both here in the UK and in Australia, and that these things do get discussed internally and passed on for investigation to the folks in Oz who are dealing with the patches.

Ah, excellent. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

[Carl]

however, because they lack the training and displine to properly brace themselfs for attacks by heavier forms of cavalry. Notice they don't plant their spear in the ground, and they only hold them WITH ONE HAND. That is why I feel they should largely get busted by heavy cav.

Two points here.

One, ALL spear units, (including Papal Guard, who are the best), use spears in EXACTLY the same way as Spear Militia. They ALL carry their spears in one hand, and NONE of them stick them in the ground.

Second, Spear Militia, ARE NOT peasants given spears and shields and shown how to use them, that’s Town Militia (who only get Light_Spears and Spear_Bonous 4), Spear Militia represent professional militia unit. Individuals given equipment just below the level of professional soldiers and the best training that can be given to Militia level units. Italian Spear Militia, (and similar top level Militia units), are better more because of better equipment, they actually have professional equipment instead of high quality Militia equipment.

NOTE: the above may or may not be historically accurate, but it IS how they are portrayed in game, and that’s what I really worry about as it shows designer intent IMHO.

My point on schiltroms is that it doesn't work that way in the game. The arrow trajectories in the game mean that half or more of your arrows are going over the guys facing you and striking the guys facing the other direction in the rear or sides...

This isn't actually as common as you'd think and comes with disadvantages. On small size at least, most arrows that would not hit someone with a shield will simply skim right over the unit. Larger unit sizes will probably result in the arrow hitting the shields as their more rank for it to fall into. Some will of course hit them in the back AND if you do really big angles on the arcing fire then YES you will get them hitting guys in the back, but your sacrificing a lot of hitting power to get that kind of angle, (it also won't work with Crossbow units at all, gunpowder being powerful enough to not care about the shield).

Don't get me wrong, the current shield fix does bork things, but in my experience, short range arrow volleys are too flat a trajectory to hit the unit without hitting a shield more often than the hit someone in the back. less flat trajectories introduce problems with reduced impact power. Their IS a perfect position I’m sure, but it's probably not easy to judge and get right.

Don't get me wrong, Schilstrom IS a LOT more resistant to missile fire ATM, but I don't think the difference will be quite as large as you think it will be either. In the end I think we should just wait and see.

To those worried about late era units getting wailed upon by early era units. I would point out that most good late era infantry is AP 2-handers and pikes. Even with the Shield immunity to AP back in, the shield units will be at a heavy disadvantage to them, so they won't be getting any weaker really. They also typically have much of the shield value dumped into armour anyway. This will make them a lot more resistant to enfidle fire, and hence HA anyway. (At least in the case of mounted units,. Late era Inf tends to be more vulnerable).

[Shahed]

Great work guys, really good bug-spotting :) The reason that we don't usually comment is that - to be brutally frank - there just isn't much to say about these things. We try hard to prioritise core gameplay bugs, but it's a huge piece of software with many people working on it, and obviously a few things have slipped the net that shouldn't have.

Rest assured that we do read these forums, both here in the UK and in Australia, and that these things do get discussed internally and passed on for investigation to the folks in Oz who are dealing with the patches.

Good to hear. Thanks.

[Jambo]

By the way, how do we know "skill" only works to the front and right? How do we know it's not cumulative with the shield?

[Foz]

By the way, how do we know "defence" only works to the front and right? How do we know it's not cumulative with the shield?

You'll have to clarify your question a bit. Defense would be the generic term for whatever sum of numbers applies to the unit's defense from any given direction against a particular kind of attack. The individual stats that comprise it for each unit are Armour, Skill, and Shield. For instance, Armored Sergeants have defense listed 14 on their info sheet, which is their front melee defense rating. This is the convention applied in the game. That number is arrived at by adding the unit's armor, skill, and shield, which all apply from the front in melee. Armor applies to all sides of the unit, skill to the front and right, and shield to the front and left. Additionally, armor and shield apply (in the same directions they do in melee) against missile attacks as well, while skill is ignored against missile fire. Hope that clarifies the terms and their interaction for you, but of course feel free to ask further questions or rephrase the current one if I haven't covered what you were trying to get at.

[Slaists]

IMHO, CA should jump on this ASAP and issue a hot-fix patch... The shield bug is game breaking. With it present, the tactical dimension of the game is lost and what we have is just an application with pretty soldier animations running around and doing random stuff in eye-candy environmental settings...

And it's not that we can fix the shield issue easily through modding. None of the currently suggested modding solutions work without grave side-effects. Putting the shield defense value into armor nerfs all missile units while putting it into defense skill distorts melee aspects of the game.

[redriver]

IMHO, CA should jump on this ASAP and issue a hot-fix patch... The shield bug is game breaking. With it present, the tactical dimension of the game is lost and what we have is just an application with pretty soldier animations running around and doing random stuff in eye-candy environmental settings...

finally a realization of the truth!

I've been sayin' this for ever since before the game was released -- m2tw is a big flop.. it's an overhyped mtw clone with better graphics for those lucky to have state of the art systems in order to appreciate the only thin' m2tw has goin' for it -- graphics

sorry for not bein' on topic or constructive.. just had to get it out of my chest

[Jambo]

You'll have to clarify your question a bit. Defense would be the generic term for whatever sum of numbers applies to the unit's defense from any given direction against a particular kind of attack. The individual stats that comprise it for each unit are Armour, Skill, and Shield. For instance, Armored Sergeants have defense listed 14 on their info sheet, which is their front melee defense rating. This is the convention applied in the game. That number is arrived at by adding the unit's armor, skill, and shield, which all apply from the front in melee. Armor applies to all sides of the unit, skill to the front and right, and shield to the front and left. Additionally, armor and shield apply (in the same directions they do in melee) against missile attacks as well, while skill is ignored against missile fire. Hope that clarifies the terms and their interaction for you, but of course feel free to ask further questions or rephrase the current one if I haven't covered what you were trying to get at.

Sorry, I meant "skill" instead of "defence" then.

[Musashi]

Carl: I've played with schiltrom vs. missile fire with the unmodded game, and it does suffer badly. I never play on any settings other than Huge unit size, as far as I'm concerned there is no other unit size setting. But in my experience schiltrom has a unit get massacred under missile fire, because even when they're firing on a relatively "flat" trajectory approximately half the missiles fires in a given volley will go over the front facing ranks and hit the men behind them.

[Carl]

YES, but sheilds don't work right against NON-AP missile fire in vanillia eithier, you can expect SIGNIFICANT reductions once sheild ARE working.

The unit size thing is being hard headed IMO, most people don't play on that size as their comp simply can't handle it from what I can tell. Remeber, the larger the unit size, the more likliy a miss is to still hit somone enyway. On smaller unit sizes, many of those hits in the back will be misses on the smaller unit sizes as they'd sail rght over-head. This is true in AND out of Sciltrom BTW.

iIm, not knocking your results though, i'll trust you as i can't handle above normal in non-seige games and small in seiges games because of jumping. (allthough i probably could run a test the jumpiness starts at around 3500-4000 models). However it is worth remebering that your results are probabky getting skewed in your favor by your choice of huge unit size compared to normal, (which is also probably what they tested and balanced the game at IMHO).

[Foz]

By the way, how do we know "skill" only works to the front and right? How do we know it's not cumulative with the shield?

Hmm... interesting question. We don't know it's not cumulative with the shield on the left. And frankly, I cannot think of a good way to test it. The only way possible is to have a unit get flanked in melee from their left. And even then, you'd have to set it up with the unit in one case having stats x/0/1 and the other having 0/x/1 to make sure you were able to see any difference that was there. The 1 shield point is to make sure skill is forced to right-side only in case shield points are relied on to make this happen. X should be fairly large, so there is a big difference in the unit's left defense value if skill is not applying there. Then of course you have to work the combat so the unit gets engaged from the front, then flanked... and I guess either time how long it takes to be wiped out, or judge by how many of the enemy units it is able to kill (should be less with x skill point case if it has less left defense due to skill not applying there, or ~same if skill does apply left). Of course this also introduces a lot more error into the testing as the player is required to maneuver around 2 units on the battlefield, and try to precisely engage the enemy left flank at the same time and in the same manner each time.

[Musashi]

Most people's rigs can run huge unit size if they turn off shadows. Shadows are a huge performance hit, and they don't add much to the looks of the game, so I always turn them off.

[Ulstan]

Thats not a fair comparison at all! We all know that longbowmen are professional soldiers, not milita. Militia ARE peasants..they are farmers that work part time as soldiers to make extra money.

Well, fine, what is the professional spear armed infantry unit for that same period then?

[Carl]

Most people's rigs can run huge unit size if they turn off shadows. Shadows are a huge performance hit, and they don't add much to the looks of the game, so I always turn them off.

Mine can run it, but not with full stack armies!

And I don't consider my PC THAT out of date yet, (allthough it DOES need an update). Plus if given a choice between more guys (and the pathing problems it induces), or less men and better graphics and pathing. 'll go for the better graphics.

[Musashi]

Yeah but shadows are something you don't really even notice, so it's not like it makes the scene much prettier.

My rig is quite out of date, 64 meg GeForce card, 1.7ghz processor, 1.5 gigs of ram, but I can run huge unit sizes with two full stack armies with no problems whatsoever. Even when the men pile into one siege tower.

[Carl]

Thats really bloody of then as i'm running a 9800pro on an AMD Athalon 3200+ with 1 Gig of ram and theirs no way I could run 2 full stack armies at that size, at least not infantry stacks anyway.

[Musashi]

Yeah, it seems to like nVidia cards better than ATI cards, from what I've been reading... And it seems to want more than a gig of RAM.

[Carl]

That probably explains it nicely then. plus of course my processer dosen't have SSE2 which dosen't help.

[Musashi]

To be fair, my system's a laptop, and Pentium M's are a little sweeter than an equivalent speed P4... But still, my specs are hardly top flight. Especially in terms of VRAM.

But my little mobile GeForce card seems to work shockingly well, better than you'd expect it to, since I was able to play Quake 4 from end to end...

[Blademun]

Well, fine, what is the professional spear armed infantry unit for that same period then?

Armoured Seargents, Papal Guard, ect. There are probably more that are similar but I can't think of them now. As far as I'm concerned, "Professional Militia" is a Oxymoron, seriously.

Personally, I'd like to see units like the Armoured Seargent, Papal Guard, ect, get a "brace" option to put them up and above the militias so they could actually absorb a head-on cavalry charge. Let Spear militia continue to get bowled over to send home the message that in the early days before professional armies..Knights trully did rule.

Also, to Carl, who's mentioned on several occasions that he wants to merely have the game work as the Devs intended I have this to say..GODS NIPPLES?! Who drank my ale...






And also, we, the paying customers, do not answer to the Devs whims. They answer to us and our desires. Instead of focusing on how to go backwards in game design, why don't we focus more energy on improving this game above and beyond what "The Devs Intended". I know thats probably heresy for questioning the might of our almighty CA gods, but then I'm a protestant..

[Musashi]

Sergeant spearmen, armored sergeants, etc.

Basically all professional spear come from castles.

[PaulTa]

To be fair, my system's a laptop, and Pentium M's are a little sweeter than an equivalent speed P4... But still, my specs are hardly top flight. Especially in terms of VRAM.

But my little mobile GeForce card seems to work shockingly well, better than you'd expect it to, since I was able to play Quake 4 from end to end...

Not bad. I myself can't run the game with playable framerate on huge unit settings, but that's because I desire quality over quantity, so I crank up the visuals (except for shadows and bloom).

I'm running a 2.8 P4 proc, 1 gig of ddr2 RAM, and a eVga 7900 KO. My next upgrade is going to be another gig of RAM, which I believe is the cause of any woes I might have in MTW2. It seems like a really RAM/Proc intensive game.

[Musashi]

You'll cry when you hear this, but I play on huge unit sizes, with unit detail set to "highest" and texture detail set to high.

[PaulTa]

You'll cry when you hear this, but I play on huge unit sizes, with unit detail set to "highest" and texture detail set to high.

Actually, the crying will set in later tonight over some ice cream and bon bons.

Would you mind giving me an above average run down of your system specifications? Proc, speed of proc, ram, amount, speed of ram, size of individual ram sticks, configuration of ram (overclocked, dual channel, etc), graphics card, etc.