ProblemFixer Pure V1.0

[Carl]

No specific reason at all, I simply kept the basic stats for these units, the balance in this games seems to run something like this, (with all the fixes in place):

S&S are missile resistant and resistant to light and medium Cav charges, so they make good all rounders with specific benefits vs. infantry.

Spears: Highly Cav resistant for their price and somewhat missile resistant, however they are very weak in melee vs. other infantry and thus S&S beat them.

2-Handers: They tend to have reversed stats compared to S&S units and also have AP attacks, thus they tend to beat S&S units. Their low defense makes them VERY vulnerable to missiles/Cav however with even Mailed knights able to inflict substantial losses with a frontal charge.

Cav: Fast maneuverable and very powerful on the charge, very vulnerable to units with the Spear attribute and the lighter kinds can have severe issues with S&S units too. Very effective vs. both missile units and 2-Handers though, also good at flank attacks.

The basic rules are:

S&S beat spears, 2-Handers beat S&S, Cav bat 2-Handers, Spears beat Cav.


Fairly basic RPS balance, although missiles, missile Cav, and Pikes throw Spanners into the works with Pike being utterly unbeatable from the front, but vulnerable to flank/rear attacks as well as missiles, and missiles being effective vs 2-Handers/Pikes but vulnerable to S&S/Cav.

Thus I don't worry too much about DFK being beaten by DPK/DNK/DEK, (they are all identical except in name BTW), as thats exactly what these units are supposed to do, although like many I think the speed at witch they beat S&S is a bit high.

A few last points:

1. They have one of the highest upkeep values in the game so their is plenty of arguments for them to be good, (bearing in mind that CA have decided to use upkeep as part of the primary balance mechanism, something i don't agree with as it messes up custom/quick battle balance).

2. After the effects of AP are factored in the DFK only have 15 defense, so they are only 1 point of defense better than the DPK and the DPK has 8 points better attack so it's hardly surprising the DPK are winning so easily.

TO SUMMARIZE

The reason boils down mostly to me liking the RPS balance that emerged after all the bug-fixing, coupled with the fact that DPK have severe disadvantages in some areas compared to DFK and thus having the DFK beat the DPK in melee would probably be IMBA. Lastly the stats difference isn't as big as it looks like and neither is the cost difference, AP negates much of the DFK's good defense whilst CA have, (stupidly IMHO), chosen to factor upkeep into the balancing act and as a result they only look right in the campaign where it becomes much more difficult to get large numbers of them.

In custom However it's quite possible for Portugal to bring along 4 unit of them, and 4 units of Dismounted Conquistadors and 4 units of Pikes on top of Missile Cav and Foot missiles, so I agree it probably looks a bit OTT as Portugal is getting some seriously powerful combinations there.

Hope that explanation Helps, and thanks for the appreciation, let me know of anything else you spot that worries you though, and tell me what you think of the above, (sure you will though).

[Carl]

I've just updated the links again as some of them had gone down for some reason, not sure why. The FileFactory one WAS working though so I think I must have copyed the links wrongly when putting them in. Sorry for the inconviniance.

EDIT: Just to make sure no one thinks i'm being dismissive of the 2-Hander concerns, i'd like to add that R'as al Ghul is mearly the latest in a line of worriers and it's beginning to make me worry that so many people are concerened. So please, keep giving feedback, i might be a stubbourn young fool , but if i get a lot of people expressing concern then WILL change things, i'm just hard to convince.

[HoreTore]

Carl, regarding my campaign as the moors with thieves guild changes, the result was as following(drumsolo):

It failed. Horribly. It did change what I as the player got offered, but every AI city still had a thieves guild. I've checked Italy, germany and france, and all of them had thieves guilds...

It seems the problem comes from the AI mass producing, as opposed to mass using spies.

However, I'll have another go with a new campaign now. I'll halve the spytraining trigger down to 5, and the "ended in settlement" down to 1.

And I'll cross my fingers on this one....

[Carl]

Thanks HoreTore. i'm also going to have a look at Foz's free Upkeep fix so that might make the next version too.

[HoreTore]

Free upkeep fix? For castles, ie. tourney fields?

[Carl]

Yeah...

[R'as al Ghul]

I'm also going to have a look at Foz's free Upkeep fix so that might make the next version too.

Foz has this great program in his signature. The beauty of it is that it can automatically add the required changes to the unit_prod file, any unit_prod file no matter what you changed before.
However, that's not all that needs to be done. You still need to edit the building file. I've done that and could send you the file but it's easy to do yourself, too.

R'as

[Carl]

Thanks, hadn't got round to looking at it yet TBH, so thanks for the info, just a case of not enough time, spent the last two days working on another PC and comingback here for breaks.

[Foz]

Well I've got an update on the thieves guild stuff I was talking about. First off, you in fact cannot set the thiefs_guild to exclude itself - it won't compile correctly on game startup, and yelled at me for trying to make something exclude itself

The next option in line was to try to test for a thiefs_guild building each time a turn starts, and if one is found then to beat down the thiefs_guild points of all the other settlements. What I tried looked like this:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Whatever
    WhenToTest SettlementTurnStart

    Condition SettlementBuildingExists >= thieves_guild

    Guild thiefs_guild o -500

Basically, when a settlement is processed for its faction's turn starting, this will fire. If a thieves_guild or higher is found (yes thieves_guild is correct, the building name is from the EDB and different than the guild name in this file) then it should subtract 500 from the thiefs_guild points of all other settlements in this faction.

So, I fired up a new English campaign to see what would happen. I got offered a Thieves Guild in Rennes as my first offer anywhere, which isn't that surprising given how much I was using the spy you initially start with - if he does 10 missions, you've earned 100 thieves guild points everywhere. I took it there, to see how it would play out once my trigger was hopefully firing every turn in Rennes. I didn't get offered any other guilds for a while. London where I was trying to build for Mason's Guild got offered a guild next: a Merchant's Guild, also not surprising, I prioritize economics pretty highly. Then came the stumper - London got offered a Thieves Guild on the turn after I declined the Merchant's Guild. I declined that and got the Masons I was looking for on the next turn, but if the trigger was working like I thought, I wouldn't have been offered a Thieves Guild at all in London.

So, what happened? I couldn't have built up 100 points in London in a single turn - I produced no spies anywhere, nor any brothels, so it could at most have gained maybe 25 points from my one active spy and if say London upgraded that very turn.

Here's what I consider as possibilities:

- The settlements lost no points from their thiefs_guild totals because I set the malus too high. It's possible that the modifier is just not applied if there are not as many points to lose as are required, in which case the trigger I tried would only affect anything if a settlement had 500 points built up already.
- The changes to the file do not stick. We've found a couple settings in the EDU that just do not take changes at all... but in this case I think it's unlikely, since triggers have never shown this behavior to date.
- Some as yet unknown item(s) gained London tons of thieves guild points all in the same turn. This seems quite unlikely, as the reason for the txt file is to lay out the guild behavior, and I see nothing in it that should do this.

So currently I'm running with the first idea, that the malus is too high and therefore not affecting any settlements. I think next I'll try -100, as it represents the exact amount needed to build the first guild level. I'm not sure whether it belongs at turn start or turn end though. It depends when guild points are updated for a settlement, and when the event to offer a guild springs. Thinking about it for a moment, I'm guessing triggers from the same file are checked in the order they appear in that file... so if I make sure to put the new trigger at the very bottom of the guild file, then all guild points should be gained first (from the building-related triggers in the guild file), and then 100 removed if the total is high enough for thiefs_guild and any settlement has a Thieves Guild building already. As some guild points trigger on turn start though, I think I should actually duplicate it for the beginning and the end of the turn. I'll post results when I get 'em.

[SMZ]

thnx Carl for putting this together... i'ma give the game another shot now

[Carl]

I havn't fixed the AI yet so be warned, it still acts dumb, the next version if I can get some Beta testers should include down powered inquisitors, up-powered assasins and merchants, and improved AI.

However, it still fixes many other bugs so it should help your expiriance significantly IMHO.

[grapedog]

is the cmd prompt window supposed to close on it's own...? i used your .bat file to start it up and it leaves a cmd prompt window running in the background while the game is on and even after i turn it off.

i'm guessing i don't need to leave it running, it's only needed for the startup, but just wanted to ask how it's supposed to work before i futz with it.

[Carl]

It should shut down about 10 secobnds after the game does, i'd advise leaving it running, allthough I suspect it isn't necessery. I don't know enough to say for sure though.

Anyone else know for sure?

[SMZ]

it runs in the background of mine too, i don't think it affects anything... mine shuts down when I exit game

-------
Feedback: everything's working beautifully so far, no complaints yet - i'll go ahead and drop some small changes i did myself, you can decide whether they seem worthwhile or not

1. Several people noticed that the Russian Dismounted Druzhina and Dismounted Boyar Sons are basically the same exact unit. Same stats, same cost, same everything... one suggested fix was to change the DBS to a heavy javilin/axe troop (sorta like a roman legionare because the mounted version carries javilins) - but that will require animation work to make it look right...

What I did instead is change both the Druzhina and Dismounted Druzhina to 2hp, half-size units. They are after all described as bodyguards, and have the flavor of a kinda primal, ancient style of warfare which is becoming out-dated.

2. HRE's Forlorn Hope are supposed to be 2hp units, CA made a booboo. (they're half-sized, and described as being 2hp style units)

3. Somebody else posted about this, and it's seemed to be working for me too... so lemme pass it on:

In the descr_campaign_ai_db.xml file, there are some suggested parameters for the ai to follow mentioned at the top. Scrolling down slightly you see "GLOBAL AI PARAMS", there's a note saying it's disabled currently - but it seems to be working to me at least. Right now the values are at "999.999" or something - if you place the suggested numbers you saw at the top into those values, diplomacy suddenly seems to work. (Those numbers describe how you can become a "trusted ally" - currently, it's impossible because you can't get to 999. Trusted allies don't get attacked randomly, etc)

4. After running the string.bin converter, I switched England's Sherwood Archer info to say they have 'expert woodscraft' and are 'expert woodsmen', instead of the current description that they can 'hide anywhere', which they can't.

5. Demi Lancers are described as foregoing the more usual heavy armor of the time for greater speed. So I switched their mount to 'fast_pony'. That might just be personal taste, but it seemed to match the description better, and made them worthwhile considering their cost, and the effort taken to get them.

6. Spain's Tercio Pikemen are described as being 'well armoured', despite having no armor initially. I changed the description on them to thus read, 'often refitted with armor' instead, and in the short version I just clipped out the couple offending words.

I think that's it... the other tinkerings I did are really more personal taste than in line with CA's vanilla.

Oh, one final thing... I mentioned it already - but I like it, and I think it helps, so I'll see if you do too. The Knight Orders. Right now, Templars and Knights of St. John are the same exact thing, except St. John is easier to get and offers a health bonus. Well that stunk to me. Then I noticed that the Knights of Santiago weren't any different either, other than being restricted to Spain and Portugal. The Teutons were at least different and had flavor, as they were likely to come from battling pagans and they carried maces.

Well, what I did - is instead set St. Johns as the basic model so to speak. Left them alone. Templars are described as being very involved with business, so I gave their Guild Houses a trade bonus. Santiagos are described as training in naval warfare also, unlike the other orders, so I gave their Guild Houses a ship bonus. Teutons are described as being very effective at forceful conversion, so I gave their Guild Houses a religion bonus. So now, the orders have different uses - instead of one just standing out as being good and the others useless except for those who were roleplaying.

Secondly, I wanted to change the Knights themselves just slightly. The Teutons already have their maces, so I left them alone. The Templars are described as being renowned for their ferocity, but their stats are the exact same as the St. Johns except the St. Johns don't ignore orders. Well that had to be balanced, so I gave the Templars 1 point in attack, charge and secondary attack. So now my St. Johns follow orders, but Templars woop butt.... as things should be. Lastly, to give the Santiagos some flavor - and up to this point I just followed the descriptions, but on this one I stretched just a wee little bit - I gave them very_hardy stamina, instead of just hardy. Spain is sposed to be known for their horses anyway I figured. So now on my game the Guilds and the Knights all have a little variance and some niches. Makes the choices a little more meaningful.



EDIT: All those tinkers were easy to do... (obviously, cause even I figured em out) But if you like any of those changes, and think they fit in line with the intent of your ProblemFixer, but it'd be quicker to just copy paste, or you're having trouble implementing one of them or whatever... PM, and I'll copy the code to you.

[CountMRVHS]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just bad luck, but my Venetians haven't had any new family members for quite some time. I'm on around turn 40, playing H/VH. My family tree shows, at the top level, my first faction leader (now dead); at the second level there are the original 2 or 3 family members, and at the third level each of those 2nd-level family members has 1 child -- all males, btw. Everyone's married, but no one's having kids. And the ones who *did* have kids stopped at one.

I installed your fix over the original unpatched game; I'm not sure if that would have an effect? You mentioned in another thread that I wouldn't get text for traits or ancillaries because of this (and I don't see that text, as you said), so I'm wondering if this is another issue, or simply the result of a paticularly infertile family.

As a side note, how big is the patch 1.1? I dled your fix very quickly on my dialup connection, so I wonder if it would be worth it to try the patch as well, and if so, would I be able to install it *over* your fix?

Thanks for any advice and for a great fix,

CountMRVHS

[Carl]

It depends on how many provinces you hold, but it IS also possibbile it's bad luck, and I have noticed that ceartin combinations of changes produce the result as well as I found out when playing with some stuff.

So I can't say for sure what the cause is, but it could be any of the ideas you've suggested.

The Patch is a few MB I belive, But I deleted the compressed bit after downloading it so i'm not 100% sure how big it is. it's about 80mb decompressed though so i'd geuss about 8-16Mb, but don't quote me on that, about 30-60 minutes at dialup as thats what my connection runs at most of the time.

[Foz]

It seems the problem comes from the AI mass producing, as opposed to mass using spies.

I doubt it. I think the problem is with the AI mass of everything-to-do-with-spies. They make so freaking many, and send them on missions, and all sorts of crap, that you'll probably have to make spy recruitment AND use entirely non-related to the guilds in order to make the AI have other guilds at all. At the least you probably have to nerf everything really hard - and possibly tweak with the thresholds for getting the thief's guild.

Just had another thought though. I think we're approaching the problem poorly. Maybe we can check each settlement at turn start to see if it has at least 150 thief's guild points, and if it does then it could severely hammer the points of all other settlements. Or maybe hammer the other settlements based on whether this one has any level thief's guild. That way once the first one is erected, the other settlements are immediately slammed, and thus prevented every turn from gaining enough points to get the guild. If that settlement with the guild was then lost, you'd gain your points normally again (because the trigger trying to find a thief's guild house of any kind would then fail to find one). Come to think of it, maybe thief's guild can be set to exclude itself! Since this mechanic seems to mean that as soon as you have one of that kind of guild the excluded kind cannot be built, it may actually be possible to turn the mechanic on itself and use it to restrict thief's guilds to one per empire. This would be the absolute best solution, as the settlements presumably gain the guild points normally, but are just prevented from recruiting one if one already exists!