V1.21 Rebuild-ProblemFixer BETA testing thread

[vonsch]

Hey guys. Sorry for not doing much replying yesterday. I've got a bad cold and sore throat ATM so I wasn't feeling up to replying much and was in bed a good 2 hours early anyway.

I may be like this for a few days so if i seem to have disappeared, hang in their, i'm just taking time of I'll.


First, I'm glad to hear that your enjoying yourself enough to go all the way to Gunpowder. Do you like the recruitment changes a lot now you had chance to experience them for a while?

Second, I'm pretty sure Rep hit effects don't kick in till the end of the turn.

Third, I'd say i'm not giving the AI enough siege equipment, they don't build any nearly now so it sounds like a slight increase in availability might be in order. Your thoughts?

Fourth, damm Mongols, they do that sometimes, get just stuck their not attacking. It's annoying to hear about TBH. I'll see if i can't figure out whats causing it, or otherwise try to correct it.

Fifth, sounds lie your encountering a lot more big armies than you used to, what do you make of that?

Ick, cold. Get well. I dodged it this winter. (knocks on wood)

1) I think the changes overall are good.

2) I think you'[re right on the rep hit. Seems to kick in the next turn and doesn't change during the turn, unlike replationship changes from interactions in diplomacy. But I think things tend a little too positive at the moment. The bribing changes aren't the issue. I only really bribed PS much. I think tweaking the PS effect back might be all that's needed, not general brinbes. Not enough gold to keep everyone bribed. But non-Catholics do need some sort of faster decay with the Pope since they dodge the Catholic-on-Catholic effects and mission effects.

3) I'm seeing more now, but the first 70 turns or so I saw little. I'm at turn 90. What might work is adding them back into cities later in the tree. You can do more than one per tier if needed. I see Venice with about 5 near Durazzo now. They are gonna need them to have any chance on my walls. Even then hurting my towers much will be hard. But apt to start seeing some bombards and mortars. Try allowing the building one tier later that vanilla in the city and maybe bunch up the ballista and cat that tier. We can slip them another if we see the old behavior.

4) Mongols went a long time without declaring war at all. Maybe they need to enter the game in a state of war. That gives the player, at least, incentive to attack them. And it's probably necessary to get the AI to also. But it may be intended so they tend to penetrate a ways before starting to attack to mix up their effects from game to game. It's probably not a problem.

I am mostly annoyed that they won't attack my cities and storm so I can see the walls in action against them. Not that I have much doubt of the effects after seeing the two bridge battles last night. I was outnumbered 2:1 in numbers, and their quality troops were better. My general was as good, or better, in those, but chivalrous, not dreadful. That was impressive. Especially the second. Their routing troops totally swarmed my guys who just stood in their neat lines fighting and shooting. Those Janissary Archers are tough! I suspect the naffatuns were the source of most of the routing. The Mongols were compressed at the bridgehead by stakes, couldn't move to either side, and the dismounted lancers (one depleted unit!) were holding them bottled on the road. The archers had a cipped C around that up the slope a little in two tiers, but the naffatuns were right behind the lancers tossing molotovs over their heads. The 2 trebs and cat farther back the road didn't hurt either, but their accuracy isn't what it should be yet. It was delightfully ugly.

It's nice I can build lancers in castles, but I prefer Saracens. Cheaper man for man and larger units, which helps a lot in their blocking role. Easier to replace too. But having the lancers to hand in castles gives castles a good blocker. JA are better than OI by far too. OI are also okay as castle garrisons. Castles are important for naffatuns and cav. Maybe HJI once I get the chance to build the building. 10k is steep. Budget a bit tight with all these large anti-Mongol garrisons. Maybe I can cut them back after seeing them perform.

5) As for the big armies, never played this late before. I did see big armies before, but overall the composition of them is a bit better now. Eggies are throwing stacks at me with a few cav, some jav and archers, and infantry. Balanced armies are harder. I take more losses. Can't get away with overrunning the missiles to force them to keep skirmishing and not use the missiles (with my HA army, that is). And if I respond with infantry-based armies, I take more casualties too. Slowmovers always lose more.

My HA get really chewed up my Mongols with my hit & run tactics. All that massed missile fire on their side too hurts, but the light lancers are the nasties. They are FAST. But I'm preserving my units and their experience is getting up close to the Mongols. I have some into gold chevrons, and a full stack (at least) into the silver range spread among my three stacks. But one is in Greece, one in Egypt and only one in the Holy Land chasing Mongols.

I think the BIG change is the early diplomatic behavior. I was doing well early and getting swarmed by factions close to me because diplomacy is so nuts. That is annoying and frustrating. I could have all alliances and good relationships and they'd declare just because. And they were all unallied with each other. Now I can manage relationships early so I get a chance to expand a bit and turtle a bit, with a war here, a war there, off and on, until a crusade pulls them onto me or I start wrecking my rep by expanding. Once I do, I'm in a decent position to fight back.

It wasn't so much that I had no chance to beat them as I plain didn't want to deal with it at that stage. I had similar issues with Civ until I learned to manage diplomacy and killing off the nasties early in that. Some civs just must die. That's probably part of it here too. After playing quite a lot, and studying up, I know more what to expect from the factions based on which I'm playing. So I know what's coming and how to prevent some of it. For example, I know Byz is gonna attack Turkey, and Egypt too, though a bit later. So I know to build up facing Byz early, and Egypt a bit later, to discourage, or counter, that. But the diplomacy changes help hold them off a bit better, and prevent the early piling on from others from the healousy triggers. In fact, since I have allies everywhere, the additional declarations against the aggressors help buy time and earlier peace (if I want it or not!). So, I can control the pace a BIT better.

But in the long run the player has to expand and that's gonna kill alliances with him, and the tall poppy syndrome will kick in. That's fine.

6) Oh, you didn't ask 6. But it occurred to me. Not sure we need the slow tempo. But I should play another faction before being too dogmatic. The timing of events is fine. I was ready for the Mongols, but not so ready I was waiting. I didn't have all my cities with their planned garrisons, but I was close enough. That tells me the original turns per year should work. We are slowed down some, but for the blitzer in vanilla there's too much time anyway.

I'm at 28 regions with invasions working for two more. Distances are an issue since I'm heading for rear areas. Main issue now is finishing off the Mongols. Once that's done and I can look west, should roll up what I need pretty fast. The large number of battles in that crusade and Mongol invasion combined made play a lot slower. Autoresolve is not an option for those. Odds were 2:1 at best, and 1:2 more common. That PS crusade was a bear too. Beat it with a slightly depleted infantry-based army, but was a fight. The remnants were what then got attacked by the Mongols twice at the Antioch bridge.

Oh, more Mongols. Didn't know they came in waves this far apart. Maybe now I'll get some wall action. The battered first wave has turned back to Antioch. Maybe they'll tackle the bridge again. My army there is back up to full. That would be nice.

Heh, 4 HA against 2 rebel foot archers (turk or bulgarian or something) and 1 rebel spears. Raw that's 160 versus 200. Wiped them out with 0 losses. Have to go loose, Bag them close to keep them skirmishing all the time after charging in full speed. They even had the high ground at the start. If they'd turned off skirmish they would have at least hurt me a decent amount. Silly AI. Not something we can mod, again. Have to have the AI look at what is approaching and then decide what to do. Pays to stand and fight HA, but not regular cav. But then doesn't exactly pay to flee regular cav in this situation either.

Eggies still pestering me in Egypt. Their FH and FL are in same stack headed in. Maybe I can wipe them out. They can't have many generals now. My invasion fleet is assembled and about to sail. It needs to pass Alexandria to load a couple more units then it's heading to Tripoli. From there it will base to hit Corsica. Then look for targets of opportunity. The Grecian fleet is also loading. It's gonna take out Ragusa and just level the place. That will remove Venice's castle troop production, though won't hurt them as much as some factions. I'll start the conversion to a city then pull out if they start attacking. I just want them crippled since I have Hungary on my borders too. After that I'll invade Hungary from the south. Sophia and Bran at the major targets for the same reason. Both are fortresses. I'll probably level Bran first. Then double back.

Too bad the AI can't act in similar fashion. Though the Mongols sort of act that way, it's random, I suspect. And I didn't leave any cities as inviting as the AI does in its rear areas.

Turn 92: Incoming Venetian and Hungarian stacks. And Cairo under siege again. Heh. Darned Eggies. My invasion needs 6 turns to get to Tripoli. Shipping catapults takes a while. The Ragusa one is about 3 turns out. Mongols going in circles again. Trying to finish replenishing my HA army for another bite of them, while tempting them with my JA army at every bridge. Wish they'd besiege. Can sucker them into wall tower range then. I don't dare take them on in the field with that army though. It needs some sort of restricted terrain, and the desert around Edessa is not that.

Turn 93: Eggies tried to storm Cairo. Huge stone walls and ballista towers and a full garrison with 4 JA, 1 OI, 1 turk archers, 1 peasant archers and lots of infantry. I think the Eggies were actually outnumbered. Two JA put spikes in the gatehouse exit. But the Eggies never came close to getting there. The ram burned fast. The tower made it to the wall, then burned. I only had the OI and TA using fire arrows. Rest were shooting to kill. Mostly drop shots though, walls were crammed. The Eggies had 4 more rams but they never tried. Not that they had any hope. They pulled back out of range and sat. And sat. And sat. I wish the AI would just retreat and get it over.

Some shots of repulsing their storm attempt.


Fireworks as the ram is lit up.


Two incoming LAWS, err, flaming ballista missiles. Hard to catch those.


And one tower flambe.

That was it for excitement.

Heh, I lost 1 man. Must have been friendly fire. Yeah, that was a dumb siege. I had 1050 men, they had 743. And I bet my power value was way higher too. Cost them 485 men dead.

For the record, my archers killed 201. So the towers got 284, and they mostly shot at the siege gear.

The real threat in a siege is running out of arrows defending. That's where the attacker sends in the first army, does what it can to disable towers, knock down walls, etc, then pulls that out for reinforcements to assault. The second wave might meet no arrow fire from archers. But towers would still be shooting.

I can see this being an issue if the Mongols try seriously to attack. But rams won't do it. I don't know what Timmie elephants can do, but they might pose a bigger threat.

Get well.

[Carl]

Get well.

Thnx. while i'm a long way off 100% I AM dosed up ATM LOL, so I can at least string 2 thoughts together. Last night I was having trouble with half a thought .


1. Thats what i thought, I just know you where fairly unsure of it at first, so I wondered what you thought now we'd tweaked a few things and you'd had some prolonged experience using it.

2. I'll get to work on it

3. TBH i feel the recruit rates are too low anyway, i was a bit draconian again as it takes 20 turns to go from an empty pool to a full one right now and a full pool is only 2 strong. S some improvement in recruitment rate is probably mandatory for fast replacments. But if I give them access in too many places they could start spamming it again. My favorite solution is to raise replenish rate so it takes 3 turns to get the pool up to 1, but limit the pool size to 1 so that if they go through a period where they aren't recruiting any they can't suddenly spam a ton of it. I aren't sure weather putting it back in cities would d the same though. I don't think it would as the recruitment rate would probably still be too low. But what do you think?

I do like the idea of Bunching up Catapults and Ballista though. Right now Catapults need fortresses which are a bit much TBH.



I'll edit in the rest as I go. I'm taking my time.

4. What I meant is that a number of players from vanilla have reported that the Mongols/Tirmurds commonly either go ultra aggressive and dangerous, throwing serious spanners in the works. Or, (as here), they go very passive, and never attack much, and if they do it tends to be a very weak attack. I'd kinda like to see the very aggressive type more as it helps slow a player down more. I don't know if I can start them in a war situation, I'll find out.

5. Nice to hear, you seeing more late units too? Also glad you like the diplomacy changes, they really change the nature and texture of the game for me, it feels almost like a different game at times. With the removal of the War trigger and a VERY heavily toned down alliance trigger you'll see good rep stick around a bit longer, but it's harder to get in the first place. Overall I'd like it to be possible, (with a lot of difficulty and effort involved), for a player to literally buy his way to victory by making lots of strong alliances and keeping them, then buying territory they capture of others off them. SO apart from the Rebels/Mongols/Timurids/Naval Invasions from his allies enemies, he might never have to fight a single battle. The later should be very difficult of course, but it would add an interesting extra twist and be very useful in some ways to fighting players for gaining small-scale footholds in distant lands without having to send massive numbers of stacks over to establish an initial empire their.

For what it's worth my longest campaign has bee in my BETA's of this mod too.

6. Hmmm, interesting point, TBH I expected the player to be slowed down more so I gave more time. I'd still like to see how some of the western/Italian factions do, but you could easily be right.

7. Regarding the Lancers vs. Saracen militia and OI vs. JA stuff in your point 4 reply. The JA vs. OI doesn't worry me so much because of both the differences in when they become available, and also the fact that by the time JA come along, cities are genuinely starting to take more of the military burden. Castles remain important for both their unique late units and greater individual production abilities, but they are not quite the be-all and end-all of a powerful military that they once where.

Saracen militia vs. Dismounted Sipahi Lancers is another matter. First because the Militia are available a good bit earlier on than when cities become important, and because Lancers are latter to begin with by a fairly significant margin, a Similar comment applies between Dismounted Arab Cav and Saracen Militia.

Thats not to say that Dismounted Lancers don't have advantages. They have a slightly higher attack and defense as well as more Armour upgrades. They also have a higher charge. Charging Dismounted Lancers with max Armour upgrades have +2 defense and +3 attack over Saracen Militia. This makes them better at receiving Cav charges and fighting other infantry. They are also Hardy and have slightly above average mass so that they are even more resistant to Cav charges. They also have a higher Morale which means they hold longer.

Unfortunately most of these advantages are negated by the smaller unit size, the ability of heavy Cav to punch through 2 deep formations and lap round 3 deep formations of Dismounted Lancers actually makes them less effective vs. Cav.

Theirs also the issue that Saracen Militia have some distinct advantages over their non-Turk/Egypt equivalents.

The main advantage is the free upkeep and the 40 Florins lower price. Admittedly their equivalents turn up at the top barracks at the Stone Castle, which are rather earlier than Cities, but it still limits their early use a Little. Despite that i'm of the opinion they are too cheap considering they are a free upkeep city unit.

Based SOLELY on the issues vs. Cav I would say raising the unit size of all 48 man spear units to 60 would be a good place to start. he second thing I would do is raise Saracen Militia rice slightly to take into account their free upkeep status and the fact that they are so good.

That SHOULD in theory kill the issue, leaving Lancers as the Superior unit overall, but still leaving Saracen Militia as a decent unit worth recruiting alongside the Lancers.

8. Regarding Turkomen's, (I'll use TUK for short), Vs. Sipahi's Vs. THA.

First, for the sake of completeness I'll point out the advantages Sipahi's do have over TUK, (I'll deal with THA in a moment). First being mounted on a Heavy Horse still makes them faster than most Heavy Cav, whilst also increasing their mass when compared to a pony, thus giving a much higher charge impact. The increased melee attack and (especially), charge scores only increase this, making them able to charge units that TUK would struggle heavily with. They also have much better basic defense, especially Armour, (5 points higher), and they have a third again as much in missile attack. They also have much higher Morale too, and better training (that means better formation keeping and fighting ability).

On the other hand they are very expensive, are slower, and tire faster.

None of those are insurmountable issues, and considering that their Lancer versions are hardy, i see no reason for the mounted versions not to be. The real killer though is the Armour upgrades as these cuts the defense difference to a mere 1 point. If Sipahis where genuinely tougher than TUK they would have a place as a tougher, more destructive, but slower HA. The most obvious thing to do would be to swap the Defense skill (9), and Armour, (6), scores around, increasing the Armour difference after all upgrades to a more useful 4 points. Best yet, it's done without raising overall defense, and thus causing Sipahi's to encroach into the Sipahi Lancers Role.

The THA vs. TUK situation is pretty bad if you ask me. One of the really big issues here is that TUK are effectively THA with better defense and slightly better melee. Since we don't want identical units and don't want to encroach on Sipahi's role we can't really make THA better in melee than TUK. Overall I also like the way TUK are layed out, they look like a kind of general purpose HA. Master of no one category, but capable of all. They aren't the best armored, or the best ranged attack, or the best melee. They're just a kind of OK at all. It also doesn't help that THA are really a touch too expensive to begin with when compared to TUK.

So how about somehow increasing the missile abilities of THA, turn them into a kind of glass cannon, easy to hurt if you can hit them, but very powerful if used with due care and attention. The best way I can think of to give them Very Hardy and either AP or 160 range on their missile attacks. I prefer AP as it leaves them vulnerable to early archers whilst giving them a power boost as pure missile HA.

Thoughts again?

[vonsch]

3. TBH i feel the recruit rates are too low anyway, i was a bit draconian again as it takes 20 turns to go from an empty pool to a full one right now and a full pool is only 2 strong. S some improvement in recruitment rate is probably mandatory for fast replacments. But if I give them access in too many places they could start spamming it again. My favorite solution is to raise replenish rate so it takes 3 turns to get the pool up to 1, but limit the pool size to 1 so that if they go through a period where they aren't recruiting any they can't suddenly spam a ton of it. I aren't sure weather putting it back in cities would d the same though. I don't think it would as the recruitment rate would probably still be too low. But what do you think?

I think that might be the way to go. Limit the pool sharply, but allow them to build them in cities too. That way they can maybe deal with these towers before cannons. They are horrible at using them in field battles though. I still think bumping them back one tier (from vanilla, in cities) might be a good idea though. They don't NEED them very early.


Another point. Merchant Guilds build merchant cav/sipahis, etc. Merchant cav is rated has "heavy cav" according to the game! Sipahis are med cav, I'd say, as are merchant cav. After playing this far into Turkey, the Turkomen are far more useful and lighter, than Sipahis, which are a bit more expensive. But I use my HA as HA, not med cav. For that there are lancers. I've been building Sipahi because I can't make enough Turkomen! I am taking more casualties than I can replace fighting the Mongols (told ya they are the equalizer!)

THA are junky after about 50 turns. Can't give them enough armor to survive incoming missiles reasonably. They take massive losses. In the early going they fill a hole, but not for long. I think they top at padded (or leather). Turkomen get light mail, which does reasonably well against arrows. Sipahi get heavy mail, but no stamina. And stamina and speed are almost more important than missile skill. Heavy mail is... heavy, I guess. Sipahis are also med speed, the others are fast (thus racetrack!)

Anyway, thinking about those unused racetracks again. And bullrings. I think giving bullrings jinettes and racetracks turkomen (for turkey) and maybe even switching to turkomen for the merchant guild would make HA prevalent, but they would be high end pure light HA, not the bigger med ones (like Mamluks). The AI is gonna go more towards infantry for Turks, I suspect. JA and OI and JHI just rate higher, and the AI will used them better. But at the early stages it should use more HA as a result. It does build racetracks. I don't because they do zero that I need (or want). I'd prefer to have a reason to build them. Ditto for bullrings.

I'm also thinking being able to build jinettes (a few) in cities might help Portugal a bit, and will boost Spain a bit. Egypt is a problem sinice Mamluks ARE high end med HA. Maybe let them and the Moors do desert cav instead in racetracks. Could let Egypt do Mamluks in merchant guilds though. I guess it would have to be Arab Cav for the Moors. The differences will give each Islamic faction a bit more flavor too.



Turn 94: Whupped Mongol army in a heads up fight that time in the open. My HA are getting experienced. Lost 55 and killed 493. Beat them to a ridge. High ground makes a huge difference in HA battles (as in most!)

Stole Ragusa from Venice. Hit it with 3/4 stack. They had 1 general and 2 units defending. That should really annoy them. Durrazo is a large town, so it can't build much worth building. Hmm, guess I can keep this fortress.

Hungary keeps sending 1/3 to 1/2 stacks towards Constantinople. I keep crushing them with HA army. Odd. They have two fulls stacks at Sophia. Heh, that general is 22 and "Quite Mad." But he's also got 7 stars before battle-specific additions.

Turn 95: Venice pushes on to Corinth. Besieges my fort guarding the pass into the ismuth. Heh, it's there to delay, nothing more. Noth that I need the delay. Be interesting to see if they dare storm Corinth. It's a citadel and it has a real garrison.

Scot dip just turned up at Raguse. Looks like they own the Isles. England alive on the continent.

Another big fight with a Mongol stack. Hit & run this time, lots of heavy horse archers, those outclass mine too much. Did some damage and pulled out. Lost 202, killed 327. How many waves are there? That's wave one, down to about 3/4 of one stack now. 4 more wave two stacks roaming the mountains.

Aha, wave two has some siege gear. Maybe now they will tackle my walls.

My rep is down to dubious. I assume the lack of alliances to counter the wars is behind the slide. Not attacking out of my own lands most of the time. Only when actually taking a settlement. I wonder if the hordes are treated like rebels for diplomacy. They probably should be.

Turn 96: Heh, Venice besieging Corinth. Slipped past fort after one turn.

Based SOLELY on the issues vs. Cav I would say raising the unit size of all 48 man spear units to 60 would be a good place to start. he second thing I would do is raise Saracen Militia rice slightly to take into account their free upkeep status and the fact that they are so good.

I agree. I'll still prefer Saracens for cities for obvious reasons, but might switch to using lancers in field armies. Castles build more faster. But the free upkeep in cities lets me keep a pool to pull from for quick replacements too.

4. What I meant is that a number of players from vanilla have reported that the Mongols/Tirmurds commonly either go ultra aggressive and dangerous, throwing serious spanners in the works. Or, (as here), they go very passive, and never attack much, and if they do it tends to be a very weak attack. I'd kinda like to see the very aggressive type more as it helps slow a player down more. I don't know if I can start them in a war situation, I'll find out.

This may relate to them not having siege gear in those first stacks. Maybe they should have siege gear in them.

First, for the sake of completeness I'll point out the advantages Sipahi's do have over TUK, (I'll deal with THA in a moment). First being mounted on a Heavy Horse still makes them faster than most Heavy Cav, whilst also increasing their mass when compared to a pony, thus giving a much higher charge impact. The increased melee attack and (especially), charge scores only increase this, making them able to charge units that TUK would struggle heavily with. They also have much better basic defense, especially Armour, (5 points higher), and they have a third again as much in missile attack. They also have much higher Morale too, and better training (that means better formation keeping and fighting ability).

On the other hand they are very expensive, are slower, and tire faster.

Heh. This is me, others may disagree. Everything you say is true, but I use sipahi as horse archers, not med cav. So the things I care about are missile skill (they are better here, but it doesn't matter much in play), stamina (this matters!) and speed (huge). My sipahi get exp slower and take as many losses as my Turcomen, the way that I use them. If I charged them, that wouldn't hold. But against Mongols (and Tims, I'm sure), charging = suicide. We're more equal at bowshot range, at least with a human general and concentrating fire on one flank, etc. Most of my losses tend to come from when I get trapped and charged. Almost all that I inflict are by missile fire.

Formation-keeping matters zero to me. My HA tend to live in loose. And the increased experience the Turkomen have over the Sipahis makes up a lot of those stat differences too. One reason I think that sipahi underperform their stats is stamina. The way they are forced to move in HA battles they get tired, which negates their skill advantage. And they can't outrun light lancers.

But, as armor improves and time goes on, the missile value decreases relatively. That later units have MUCH higher values. HA are still useful for morale effects and formation disruption though, even late. And they can probably still serve to hit & run, though with much higher losses.

If I want to slug it out, that's when it's time for Janissaries!

Is the shield fix playing into this? Maybe we should wait for 1.2 before messing with stats. And even distribution of different types of HA. But my argument for bullrings and horseraces still stands!

I made some Sipahi Lancers and tried them on the Eggies. Ended up with 3 or 4 routing. They hit hard, but you have to micromanage them carefully. They can't live in melee range of decent infantry. That makes sense, but makes them less useful to me. I'm already micro managing HA! They will probably work better as the light cav in infantry-based armies. Guess an all cav army needs heavies more, for smashing lines to send the foot archers home early. Those are the chief enemy of HA.

If the charge issues are improved and the various combat bugs cleaned up in 1.2, this may change. It's just hard to get off a decent charge with 15 HA units milling about. Besides the usual problems!


Looks like this at first:


Then a bit later:

Hmm, AP would be interesting for THA. It would bring them back into use later. They would be nice against the armored foot junk. But very vulnerable to missiles of any sort. That would make them tempting to keep. Heh, they would also be good against generals and heavy cav... but they are VERY vulnerable to those too. Crunch!

I dunno, I fear AP would overpower them. They are very early for that sort of power. But then Jinettes and desert cav are that way. Those javs sting. They don't get the ammo. Maybe THA should get 2/3 the ammo that the other HA do to compensate for that AP. Use them wisely, they can't hang in the fight in any sense! Maybe even half. More than the jav cav, but less than normal HA. More towards the jav end. That makes them specialty, not really general purpose. They can chase routers, but that's it, and the risk to that is they run into a unit that routed earlier that has since rallied. Ouch.



Turn 97: Venice storms Corinth. They did have a catapult. Never used it though. But I was impressed that they came with tower, ladders and ram, and when the first ladder group routed, they tried another (which routed). And when the first ram burned, they tried a second. But all to no avail. It was a silly attempt in that they were outnumbered, outclassed and out. But I killed lots.

Naffatun rule over the gatehouse. A zero exp unit just massacred the armored sergeants standing in ranks waiting for the ram to work. Watched them wipe out two units mostly on their own. 20 guys with buckets! They only got 1 chevron, but bet they are close to a second. And they had zero losses. (Only two total losses.)

Heh, Eggies are back at Cairo. They want their city back, I guess. Ho hum. Like they have a chance, not even a full stack.

Tripoli has a large garrison at the moment though. My single stack won't have a chance.

Time to pay the Pope a visit. Paybacks for all his "friendship." I should jihad on Rome, but don't have the generals for that. But Florence and Genoa are sitting with one unit garrisons. I'll rip a hole in his finances. Heh, it's about 10 turns sail with siege gear though. Circumstance may change.

Turn 98: Besieged Bucharest. Bran is wide open too. They only think they're hungry now. Hangarian army at Ragusa. Full stack. Bet it's besieged next turn. That has potential to be a real fight.

Turn 99: Cairo stormed. 2:1 odds against them. Desperation. Heh, 2 towers and 5 rams. Maybe they learned something, though definitely not enough. Darn, no naffatun in Cairo. Forgot to ship some in. That's no fun! Neither tower nor ram burned. But mass slaughter at the gate. Both their generals dead, that's FL and FH. Charging 4 stacked rows of stakes might be a bad idea. Then the ghazis chased them out and ran them off towards the desert. The towers didn't do much this siege, odd. Checked after, nothing needing repairs.

Bucharest fell at a cost of 6 of my men's lives. And Bran fell immediately at a cost of zero lives. Spy opened the gates . Full stack of HA charged in. Budapest has a general and one unit as garrison too. Silly AI.

"Heh, why am I untrustworthly? They declared war on ME. I'm just responding."
(Thanks to the Turk Ministry of Propaganda for that quote.)

I was wrong about Hungary besieging Ragusa. Venice did. With three whole units. The garrison put an end to that nonsense. Hungary has a 2 star, 6 DCKs, 2 spear militia, 1 Bosnian archer, 5 magyar cav (HA), 2 town militia, 1 slav levy and 1 merc xbow. They are a little beat up, but not bad. The garrison is 1 ballista (pretty worthless for this), 3 turk archers, 2 OI, 5 saracens, 4 ghazis. The DCKs are the only reason I think it might be a fight.

I have 3 allies and am at war with 8, including the Mongols (but not the rebels). I hold 31 regions. Mongols still wandering the mountains, 6 stacks, but two are not full.

Turn 100: Okay, NOW Hungary is besieging Ragusa. Just got MG HQ in Iconium. Russia declared war on Milan. Interesting. Heh, PS wants me to pay for peace. They must have spies watching my docks. No way, Jose! Moors called Jihad on Marrakesh, darn. Have to wait to call one on Rome now.

Hmm. Mongols 2 turns from Trebizond, And that garrison isn't big. If they get serious they can take it, I suspect. It will cost them. They look depleted, though. I wonder if they take attrition damage if they don't settle. The 40 units are at 21 men now. Hitting them again. Okay, they were beat up, but now those are obliterated. Lost 17, killed 380. 120 got away. Fast runners.

Shipping garrisons around madly, trying to keep up with my advances. May have to sack some to trim populations back. But they're infidels, so no problem.

Have a fleet sitting at Genoa with a stack aboard. Waiting for a second ship with more to grab a second city before the Pope figures out I'm there. He has lots of stacks around, but no garrisons except in Rome. Bologna is one unit, Genoa, Florence is three, Milan is one. Wish I had more handy forces.

Turn 101: Hungary storming Ragusa. Odd are 1:1. Probably okay. We'll see. Two towers, two ladders, many rams. Have to study this fortress. Need to know where to fall back to just in case. Okay, ballista goes back in the fort. Can't really do much with it anyway. OI and Ghazis on the walls fighting DCKs.
OI routed theirs fast. Burned only one tower. Heavy fighting, but not too bad. 135 lost to their 531. Again, towers didn't seem to do that much. I couldn't hear them after the first tower burned. Or see them shooting.

That's one fewer stack that Hungary has. I see two more full ones around Sophia. Playing tag with one that wants to besiege Bucharest. Won't let it cross the bridges. My HA army is faster.

Spain and Milan went to war. That should help my allies, the Moors. Full Spanish garrison in Marrakesh. If they vacate, I will join the jihad.

Turn 102: Genoa is mine (destroys thieves guild and coaching house). Hmm, garrison at Florence got beefed, and they ambushed my spy. Scum! Pope has good spies. All of the garrisons are larger, except Genoa.

Looks like Hungary stripped Sofia to send a stack at Constantinople. Silly AI. (sneaks a cat into the trees close to Sofia to wait for a strike team) So many targets, so few garrison troops!

Just figured out I can transfer admirals to new ships. Not the experienced crews though. But it's something. Just build a new ship (better type, I mean) into the fleet, then disband the old ships. Admiral stays with the fleet which is now the new ship.

Turn 103: Russian sneak attack on my border for in Crimea. Gonna lose my 8 good men! 3 half stacks converging there. Interesting. Full PS stack besieging Genoa, with a second in support. Gonna be a big fight! Landed at Ajaccio. It's rebel and heretical. It will give me a closer base that's semi safe for the conquest of Italy.

Turn 104: Danes wanted peace without charging me. Deal! And trade rights. Hungary wants to fight me at a bridge. Okaaaay. 1:1 odds, it says. Bet it's a lot worse than that. But it's my HA army, so nothing to block with. But it's a turkey shoot... err, I mean Turkey is shooting! They managed the crossing, not that it mattered. I lost 9 to their 815 . I love bridge battles.

Ambushed a Mongol stack. 2:1 odds. That was wild. I've never managed an ambush before that way before. First for me. Lost 77 still, they are nasty things. But that stack is down to peanuts. 443 of 533 killed. Heh, they changed course. Aw, the Mongols hate me now. Like they didn't before.

Ajaccio is Turk. Looks like the Moors took it and lost it to a revolt. Has a masjid and caravan stop. But very undeveloped.

Heh, the Pope left the door to Florence open again. My spy got in and opened the gates. 10:1 odds. Sweet. No losses. Big siege storming coming at Genoa though. No siege gear, but lots of rams and two towers. Hope I get lucky with burning them. Garrison isn't what I'd like. Only one militia spears to block, but 4 OI helps, and 3 ghazis, 2 muttas and 2 naffs. It's huge walls with ballista.

34 regions if I can hold these two. I see 4 full PS stacks in one move's range, two on Genoa. I have another army coming a couple turns out. Running it up to take Bologna from behind. Right now the His Hatness is there with two units.

That would leave Rome and Milan. Or do they go rebel if the Pope dies? (crosses fingers)

Bombard with small HA escort just outside Budapest. HA army in range to support a quick storm. Gotta sack it to trim the pop down. No garrison close. That will be next turn unless the Hungarians have a stack closer than I can see.
Poles have a stack right there. May have a new enemy.

I hate the way retreating units can cross impassable terrain. They should not be allowed to retreat if they have no where to go. Be nice if that's patched in 1.2.

Turn 105: Genoa is stormed. 9:20 odds. Looks like only one stack. I have a decent shot. Let's see. Oh, second stack was standing behind, not beside. Not in city ZOC. Whew.

Oops. CTD. Think last save is right before turn end.

Interesting, PS using pure towers and sending up all their units. Massive wall fight. Neither tower burned again. 2 OI shooting fire at them, plus the ballista towers. Why do MINE always burn?

Ah, both towers crumbled finally. Heh, gates wide open. Spy opened them. Silly AI. Heh, now general rode up to the gate, took a few molotovs and fled. He came back alone. He's bar-be-que. Those naffs are wicked.

Final result, lost 111, killed or captured 890. My OI are a bit battered and lost a naff unit that got caught in the wall fight. Would not withdraw. Need to get this city cranking out some JA for the walls. After I root out that spy. Pope is rich but refuses to pay ransom. That's mercy for you.

Florence besieged now. Hot and heavy!

Budapest fell.

The Russians snuck a second ladder onto the wall away from where I was looking. Almost managed to get in. But we beat them back. More heavy wall fighting.

Venetians ready to tackle Ragusa again. Good luck, guys.

1:2 odds against me at Florence, they storm the walls. No ballista towers. But huge walls. More spies. Sheesh. Means scrambling to run to place.

Tower burned that time. That leaves rams. Wow, they are actually coming in the open gates. Saracens got there after the first spears had captured the gate. But beat them back. Heroic victory that time.

Ragusa and Florence back under siege again. PS has at least 5 full stacks, so gonna see a few turns of this, I suspect.

I think the plain walls without towers are more powerful still. That tower burned fast, and the walls killed about 800 to 200 the garrison killed. Something not right. The walls with ballista towers don't do as well in burning siege gear or killing troops. They seem to stall out. If they keep firing, they do fine.

Genoa besieged again, and missed killing that spy. These spies must be 10s. Mine are about 5.

[Carl]

How many waves are there? That's wave one, down to about 3/4 of one stack now. 4 more wave two stacks roaming the mountains.

3.

Theirs only 2 waves of Tirmurds though.

I agree. I'll still prefer Saracens for cities for obvious reasons, but might switch to using lancers in field armies. Castles build more faster. But the free upkeep in cities lets me keep a pool to pull from for quick replacements too.

This is pretty much what I'd like to see. The Pro castle unit remains the preference for Field armies, but the Militia are preferred Garrison troops, but can also be used to take the place of the castle unit if supplies of the castle version are running short. In effect the Militia isn't cheap garbage, it's just outclassed by it's pro equivalent.

This may relate to them not having siege gear in those first stacks. Maybe they should have siege gear in them.

Perhaps, although the Script marks the first wave as a scouting force! TBH though I think a few Anti-Personnel Ballista/Rocket Launchers and some more anti-wall siege gear in the later waves, (and maybe an extra stack to make up for the lost non-siege units when we add extra siege stuff in), would help a lot. Also I think rearranging unit distribution so as to put a better balance of units in each stack would help too. Right now the units are very poorly distributed.

Heh. This is me, others may disagree. Everything you say is true, but I use Sipahi as horse archers, not med Cav. So the things I care about are missile skill (they are better here, but it doesn't matter much in play), stamina (this matters!) and speed (huge). My Sipahi get exp slower and take as many losses as my TUK, the way that I use them. If I charged them, that wouldn't hold. But against Mongols (and Tims, I'm sure), charging = suicide. We're more equal at bowshot range, at least with a human general and concentrating fire on one flank, etc. Most of my losses tend to come from when I get trapped and charged. Almost all that I inflict are by missile fire.

Formation-keeping matters zero to me. My HA tend to live in loose. And the increased experience the Turkomen have over the Sipahis makes up a lot of those stat differences too. One reason I think that Sipahi under-perform their stats is stamina. The way they are forced to move in HA battles they get tired, which negates their skill advantage. And they can't outrun light lancers.

But, as armor improves and time goes on, the missile value decreases relatively. That later units have MUCH higher values. HA are still useful for morale effects and formation disruption though, even late. And they can probably still serve to hit & run, though with much higher losses.

I guess I'd better be a bit clearer this time. I only mentioned the extra Melee abilities because it would be unfair to ignore them. However, I DO agree with your assessment of them vs. Lancers and TUK. I just felt it would be unfair to not point out their pros vs. TUK.

Their are a few points I guess I'd better go over that have stood out from the files since last time, plus I'd like to re-cover the old Armour bit, just to help drive the point home.

1. strangely enough both Mongol Light Lancers, (MLL), and Sipahis have the same mount type, so should in theory be equally fast, so at a guess I'd say it's got to be the fact that MLL have Hardy, so giving Sipahis their well deserved Hardy trait will probably kill that, and a quick check through other units revealed only one unit with a faster mount type than Sipahis that was actually good enough to be able to beat them in melee IMHO. The formation keeping benefits DO apply to loose formation as well and in theory the unit should shoot in unison better and react to orders/units coming into skirmish range quicker as ell as faster turns. Unfortunately most of the formation stuff is killed by the changes I made to make path finding generally better.

2. another issue with Sipahis is the way their role, (IMHO), changes over time. Early on when the best anti-Cav units are Militia Spearmen and Sergent Spearmen they are the primary melee Cav, their bow being a secondary consideration. They are not at this point HA in any true sense since the majority of units they face at this stage (enemy light Cav, militia archers, town militia, peasants, e.t.c.), will simply disintegrate under a formed charge from them. Their bow is primarily useful in those rare situations where you face an army made up mostly of militia spears.

Later on however you start to see the better quality spears and the early Sword & Shield units. Both are able to resist the initial charge and do considerable damage afterwords with few losses. In addition the Sipahi Lancers turn up and further marginalize the Sipahis role. However at this point, in THEORY, (see point 3 for why reality and theory don't match), Sipahis much greater durability and TUK's lack thereof would push Sipahis into the Primary HA role. Previously their extra defense wasn't really important and their extra missile attack not sufficient justification, especially considering their speed disadvantage compared to many light Cav.

3. Armour. i know I mentioned this before, but it's effect on the value of Sipahis when compared to TUK are huge. It's my opinion that the person who wrote the entries for TUK and Sipahis, (THA where bad from day one), expected the Armour upgrade system to work as the UI says it does, namely +1 per upgrade. The fact that it doesn't has thrown a serious spanner in the works. To help illustrate the point i'm going list the expected Armour values (with Shield Fix applied), and the actual Armour values, (with shield fix applied), after all Armour upgrades possible have been applied.

p.s. I'll go into the effects of the shield fix and them working again in a moment.


First the expected Values:

THA=1

TUK=3

Sipahis=7


Now the Actual Values:

THA=4

TUK=6

Sipahis=8


I think you've probably spotted the issue already, but for those others reading this who haven't I'll explain it.

In simple terms THA have more defense vs. missile in the actual game than the designer expected TUK to have! vonsch has already said that THA even with their 4 actual defense vs. missile are too vulnerable to missile to form the main part of HA forces, especially once larger quantities of TUK become available and the Mongols show up. Thus had things worked as intended, Sipahi's would have become the Turks primary HA simply through being the only unit tough enough to survive the FA and enemy HA present in the mid section of the game. Whilst the much less durable TUK would have been relegated to a support role for the Sipahis.

Theirs no way to Nerf the missile defense down to nearer the intended value without nerfing the already marginalized THA into oblivion, and without also making TUK probably too weak early on too. That was the primary idea behind playing with the way Armour is distributed so as to give Sipahis back their missile durability advantage, and thus granting them back their main benefit, leaving them genuinely useful again.

Is the shield fix playing into this? Maybe we should wait for 1.2 before messing with stats. And even distribution of different types of HA. But my argument for bullrings and horseraces still stands!

Sipahis and TUK have a 3 point shield in vanilla. his means that they both have (with the shield fix in place), 1 point more defense to the right and rear than they should, 0.5 points less defense to the front, (Shields no longer provide their full value to the front, it was a mistake in the code for this thats created the shield bug), and 2 points less defense to the left than they should have. It's this last point that would have helped TUK if Armour upgrades had worked as the designer of the TUK expected as it would have given them 5 defense to the left, (and i suspect he expected it to apply to the front too, I doubt he knew about the reduced frontal shield affect).

I agree your guild point still stands LOL. I was just too tired to finish my reply last night. Give me a bit to deal with your THA reply and I'll sort a reply to it out.

I made some Sipahi Lancers and tried them on the Eggies. Ended up with 3 or 4 routing. They hit hard, but you have to micromanage them carefully. They can't live in melee range of decent infantry. That makes sense, but makes them less useful to me. I'm already micro managing HA! They will probably work better as the light Cav in infantry-based armies. Guess an all Cav army needs heavies more, for smashing lines to send the foot archers home early. Those are the chief enemy of HA.

What you've described is the case with all Cav. Even Gothic Knights after the Shield fix. Almost any unit in the game will beat Gothic Knights in general melee. What makes and breaks all Cav is their charge. If they can wipe out half or more of the enemy unit they will typically outnumber the enemy infantry, at which point they have the numbers to win the fight. Add the morale penalties from fighting a losing fight and the morale shock associated with the formed charge and most units will route at this point. However if the unit charged is not cut down below half strength or if it has significant advantages over the Cav in melee, (AP or an attack bonus vs. Cav), then it Will probably hold after the charge and wipe the Cav out in the subsequent general melee. As a rule of thumb, if the enemy hasn't broken within 10-15 seconds of contact, then you need to pull your melee Cav out or they will get ripped to pieces.

Hmm, AP would be interesting for THA. It would bring them back into use later. They would be nice against the armored foot junk. But very vulnerable to missiles of any sort. That would make them tempting to keep. Heh, they would also be good against generals and heavy cav... but they are VERY vulnerable to those too. Crunch!

I dunno, I fear AP would overpower them. They are very early for that sort of power. But then Jienites and desert Cav are that way. Those javs sting. They don't get the ammo. Maybe THA should get 2/3 the ammo that the other HA do to compensate for that AP. Use them wisely, they can't hang in the fight in any sense! Maybe even half. More than the jav Cav, but less than normal HA. More towards the jav end. That makes them specialty, not really general purpose. They can chase routers, but that's it, and the risk to that is they run into a unit that routed earlier that has since rallied. Ouch.

Whilst i agree that a reduced ammo capacity would be a good idea, I would point out a few things:

1. Javelins are thrown Weapons, this makes them both more accurate and harder hitting, (for a given attack value), than AP arrows.

2. Most Jav Cav have more Armour than THA, so are much less vulnerable to missile than THA.

3. THA only have 6 attack, Jienites and, (I think), desert Cav have 8 missile attack. So even without point 1 they are weaker per shot.

I've cut them to 15 ammo though. Do you think that's enough?

Why do MINE always burn?

The AI gets advantages to it's ignition chance from what people have determined, although no ones found any moddable entries regarding it.

I think the plain walls without towers are more powerful still. That tower burned fast, and the walls killed about 800 to 200 the garrison killed. Something not right. The walls with Ballista towers don't do as well in burning siege gear or killing troops. They seem to stall out. If they keep firing, they do fine.

hmmm, not good. It's probably down to the reduce activation radius, their are probably towers in range that are not activate, I cut the Ballista Tower Fire rate because of this at one point, they where just TOO good. It's also worth mentioning that they have much greater range than arrow towers, but since the AI is never smart enough to deploy his siege gear out of range of arrow towers you never see the benefits of the Towers in this regard. Specifically that they out-range all non-gunpowder artillery.

I'd also say that ordinary arrow towers burn siege gear (especially towers), too easily. That helps make sieges overly easy. Whilst small amounts of siege gear should not be effective IMHO, even large amounts seem to struggle.


Lastly, thanks for all the reports on your movements, and battles, i Haven't quoted any, but it's still been very useful, it's just hard to comment on at times as it's usefulness comes more from the overall picture i can get and how it reinforces and backs up other statements.

[vonsch]

Perhaps, although the Script marks the first wave as a scouting force! TBH though I think a few Anti-Personnel Ballista/Rocket Launchers and some more anti-wall siege gear in the later waves, (and maybe an extra stack to make up for the lost non-siege units when we add extra siege stuff in), would help a lot. Also I think rearranging unit distribution so as to put a better balance of units in each stack would help too. Right now the units are very poorly distributed.

Not sure how I feel about "balanced" stacks for them. Pure cav stacks mixed with balanced ones might pose greater problems for the player. As they come now, they move slowly. I'd make the scouting force, the first wave, pure cav. It would move and hit fast when they player is apt to be most vulnerable. Give that one more spies too. Maybe one per stack. It might pull the gate opening trick on a poorly garrisoned city and just sweep in.

But later it's gonna take balance to take any cities. One or two pure cav stacks in the later waves would still create more issues than all balance though. Strategic speed makes a huge difference, as you can see by how I'm walking all over the AI at the strategic level. Partly that's poor "thinking" for the AI, but part of it is I just move faster. It's letting me pick my fights with the Mongols too. My pure cav army is more than twice as fast (with my bonuses to speed). Even my bridge force is faster.

These PS sieges are harder and more interesting with the spies at work. And they seem to be operating a little differently tactically too. More emphasis on speed.

BTW, sacking is viable at this stage. I'm getting 5k or more per sack of these large cities. That's okay in my book. I don't really need the income now. I do it mostly for the population control (and it's barely enough... maybe). I just don't want the larger hit in dread for exterminating. Florence is rioting and Genoa is close due to the spies and the hit for being besieged. Florence is at 22K and Genoa at 28k after being sacked. Probably should have just exterminated the infidels and moved in good Muslims.

PS is pressing me hard, even though their strategy of one stack per city is poor. Much harder than anyone else has. If they threw three stacks, or even four (which they had to start easily) at me at once in one city, they'd crush me. Even so, they might get lucky with these spy tricks. Their PG are tough and if one gets on the ground inside, it's gonna get ugly fast.

[Bongaroo]

The mongels arrived in my campaign and gunpowder is now available. I'm a little confused about the army barracks for the byzantines, does it do anything? Is it needed for anything special? Also its name is army_barracks, that a bug?

I've started raking in 8 or 9k a turn no sweat and I'm running out of things to spend it on. I thought venice had gone into hibernation but they apparently took advantage of the peace between Hungry and I by grabbing Sofia from Hungry. I've killed off the jihad armies that were camped on Constantinoble so now I'll be shifting some elite forces towards venice to put them down and help out Hungry who have steadily eaten away at Poland with help from Russia our northernmost ally. Oddly the alliance between Russia and Hungry has just fallen apart but I have perfect relations with both. They are both very low on the Reputation scale so maybe thats why. A lot of nations are low on the Reputation scale, Egypt is an exception.

About 10-15 turns ago the Byz-Ven War had somewhat cooled and the turks had been stepping up operations in the east so I shifted a large force to the turkish front. The mongels were sowing confusion further east and the Turks were on the full defensive. I hade assembled about 3 stacks of troops to push in on Iconium. About a 12-14 units of assorted HA's and 2 or 3 heavy's including the general. 1 full stack of infantry and 3 or 4 siege catapults landed on the coast to join another near full stack of infantry that had moved in from Smyrna and Nicea. The all-cav army pushed into the passes east of Iconium while the infantry armies moved in to siege the 3/4 stack housed in the walls.

Was a fairly interesting opening to an invasion IMHO. Was fun to organize since my strong navy is in control of local waters and makes ferrying troops easy and safe. Iconium fell and was occupied. It is under control easily freeing a stack and a half to continue onwards with the catapults. Adanna had already been mine a while so the Turk-Byzantium Wars are probably coming to a close with the mongels assisting in the killing blows to the Turks. They are now limited to the inland cities that aren't very productive and Trebizond is a castle that is next on my target list.

Although its been fun till now, I am swinging into a dislike for this campaign. Gunpowder's arrival isn't exciting for the Byzantine's and my armies are sweeping everything aside backed up by my impressive economy and navy.

Although I felt on edge fighting Venice for a bit they never really hit me hard enough to hurt me. I was short on cash but won some impressive victories to completely change the tide of battle. Although they allied with the Turks who went to war with me, they never both attacked at the same time so I wasn't really pressured by a multi-front war.

I just can't decide who to play next. Maybe the spainards on H/VH or the Danes or HRE.

[Carl]

The Mongols arrived in my campaign and gunpowder is now available. I'm a little confused about the army barracks for the Byzantines, does it do anything? Is it needed for anything special? Also its name is army_barracks, that a bug?

It increases the max pool size and replenish rate of Vargarian Guard. Byzantium doesn't get it in Vanilla so the name is a text bug I've got to try to remember to track down at some point.

Although its been fun till now, I am swinging into a dislike for this campaign. Gunpowder's arrival isn't exciting for the Byzantines and my armies are sweeping everything aside backed up by my impressive economy and navy.

Although I felt on edge fighting Venice for a bit they never really hit me hard enough to hurt me. I was short on cash but won some impressive victories to completely change the tide of battle. Although they allied with the Turks who went to war with me, they never both attacked at the same time so I wasn't really pressured by a multi-front war.

Sounds like you had an easier time than Vonsch, but then you do have a better starting economy and better overall navy. The AI is a bit silly I agree, it's odd that those Jihad's wouldn't hit Constantinople though. I also suspect the early availability of a Byzantine Spear level unit contributed to the easiness of the early stages too. If you'd needed the next level barracks to get them I suspect you would have had a harder time early on which would have helped tremendously to increase the challenge.

Not sure how I feel about "balanced" stacks for them. Pure Cav stacks mixed with balanced ones might pose greater problems for the player. As they come now, they move slowly. I'd make the scouting force, the first wave, pure Cav. It would move and hit fast when they player is apt to be most vulnerable. Give that one more spies too. Maybe one per stack. It might pull the gate opening trick on a poorly garrisoned city and just sweep in.

But later it's gonna take balance to take any cities. One or two pure Cav stacks in the later waves would still create more issues than all balance though. Strategic speed makes a huge difference, as you can see by how I'm walking all over the AI at the strategic level. Partly that's poor "thinking" for the AI, but part of it is I just move faster. It's letting me pick my fights with the Mongols too. My pure Cav army is more than twice as fast (with my bonuses to speed). Even my bridge force is faster.

All good points. Although what I was more getting at was the way you get one stack composed mostly of Mongol Heavy Horse Archers and Heavy Lancers, and then another of Ordinary Mongol Horse Archers and Light Lancers. Having a mixture of Light and Heavy Lancers and Archers would be much more dangerous and interesting I would think.

BTW, sacking is viable at this stage. I'm getting 5k or more per sack of these large cities. That's Okay in my book. I don't really need the income now. I do it mostly for the population control (and it's barely enough... maybe). I just don't want the larger hit in dread for exterminating. Florence is rioting and Genoa is close due to the spies and the hit for being besieged. Florence is at 22K and Genoa at 28k after being sacked. Probably should have just exterminated the infidels and moved in good Muslims.

Thats OK though as at this stage the money can't fuel a blitz like it could early on, besides you'd be seeing more like 30-40K normally at this point.

PS is pressing me hard, even though their strategy of one stack per city is poor. Much harder than anyone else has. If they threw three stacks, or even four (which they had to start easily) at me at once in one city, they'd crush me. Even so, they might get lucky with these spy tricks. Their PG are tough and if one gets on the ground inside, it's gonna get ugly fast.

TBH the PS would probably be hurting you even more if PG weren't it's only good siege unit. Th trouble is that their best Sword & Shield unit (DFK), is seriously sub par, as are their Pavise Crossbows, (due to the fact that the Crossbows are very vulnerable to Cav charges due to the Skirmish mode bug, and the fact that they can't compare with JA/Longbows/OI/e.t.c. in terms of melee). This isn't helped by their lack of decent non-guild Cav. hey in effect rely very heavily on PG and Swiss Guard to give them their power and SG aren't that good in sieges.

p.s. I've added to my post previous to this one, that post 305 for reference. Just in case you missed it.

Anyway, thinking about those unused racetracks again. And bullrings. I think giving bullrings jinettes and racetracks TUK (for turkey) and maybe even switching to TUK for the merchant guild would make HA prevalent, but they would be high end pure light HA, not the bigger med ones (like Mamluk's). The AI is gonna go more towards infantry for Turks, I suspect. JA and OI and JHI just rate higher, and the AI will used them better. But at the early stages it should use more HA as a result. It does build racetracks. I don't because they do zero that I need (or want). I'd prefer to have a reason to build them. Ditto for bullrings.

I'm also thinking being able to build jinettes (a few) in cities might help Portugal a bit, and will boost Spain a bit. Egypt is a problem since Mamluk's ARE high end med HA. Maybe let them and the Moors do desert Cav instead in racetracks. Could let Egypt do Mamluk's in merchant guilds though. I guess it would have to be Arab Cav for the Moors. The differences will give each Islamic faction a bit more flavor too.

AND

Another point. Merchant Guilds build merchant Cav/Sipahis, etc. Merchant Cav is rated has "heavy Cav" according to the game! Sipahis are med Cav, I'd say, as are merchant Cav. After playing this far into Turkey, the Turkomen are far more useful and lighter, than Sipahis, which are a bit more expensive. But I use my HA as HA, not med Cav. For that there are lancers. I've been building Sipahi because I can't make enough Turkomen! I am taking more casualties than I can replace fighting the Mongols (told ya they are the equalizer!)

Hmmm, a lot to think about here. Your right in that right now the Racetracks are of Little use, yes the happiness bonus is brilliant, but the cost is often prohibitive and they don't give any other major benefits. On the other hand, I don't really want any units turning up before the Large_City level, (when gunpowder units/pikes/halberds show up), that are major parts of the Field armies of the period in which they will mostly turn up in. I could in theory limit the pool size to a low value, but then that defeats the entire point of putting them their as the size is so low that you can't get a useful number of units from the cities. On the other hand if I have a useful sized pool so you can recruit a useful number from your various cities I defeat the point of the City/Castle split by taking all the production load for these units off castles, and if i limit them to mostly out of date units i get the double issue that A) the resultant troops are only good for Garrison duty, (which defeats the idea of making some units more common/helping Portugal), and B) HA don't make good Garrison units anyway.

On the other hand i could probably solve the Bullring/Portugal/Spain issue by putting Merchant Cav their, all Merchant Cav are are wealthy middle classes who can afford the equipment of a full knight but don't have the training to match. So theirs no reason to just limit them to Guilds. They have the added advantage of being weaker than proper heavy Cav and slower than light Cav, but still being better than any city unit you'll get for a bit.

That just leaves racetracks and the eastern factions to sot out. Their more problematic as they have nothing thats really the equivalent. Sipahis for example are similar in terms of melee attack/defense to militia Cav, but have much better Morale and training plus a missile attack, (which on a mounted unit is worth more than the melee capabilities alone), Arab Cav aren't much better with a half again as much melee punch and better Morale and Training again. Where in a catch 22 situation. We want more HA early, but I'd rather not see cities as a big source of them, I don't really have issues adding TUK/Desert Cav (Moors)/Arab Cav (Egypt) to the second level racetrack as by then Sipahi's, (once we fix em), and Grenadine Jienites will have taken over for Turks/Moors, whilst Mamluk's/Royal Mamluk's will have taken over the Cav role for Egypt. THA might work for Turks on 1st level Racetracks, but it's dicey with their low defense and (if we do go AP on them), good missile power, they could be no use at all, or too much.

Any ideas?

[vonsch]

Poland just attacked me at Budapest. I'm the bad guy now.

Stormed at Genoa. 9:20 odds. Maybe the gates will be closed, let's see. I have spies in both cities now. Did see a spy and an assassin booted out. Didn't manage to catch either though. Darn, gates open again! Scum!

One tower burning. Looks like they are gonna push for the wall this time, if the other tower doesn't burn. Yep, wall fight, but they are ignoring the gate.

Sent my general out to attack them from behind at the base of the tower. Worked nicely. Another heroic victory. They are wearing down my garrison though. But they pay 10:1. One Turk is worth ten of this infidel scum! Of course, the losses don't help with maintaining order.

I keep getting offered 50+ year-old suitors. Why bother? They die too fast.

Oops, PS pulled a stack from Rome to throw at me just as the next wave of forces arrived. This time I exterminate. 23k skulls piled outside the gates. Chops the tax revenues, but I'm well in the black now.

The HA army holding Budapest sallied into the faces of the Poles. Garrison troops almost there. Should be able to start building this turn too, with the siege lifted. That was bloody. They had siege gear aimed my way and I was a bit compressed getting out. They had a full stack besieging and two half stacks supporting close by. But my general is a night attacker, so he's taking each out one at a time.

Next army is in a little bowl, how nice for me. And one more army to go to clean up this little Polish expedition. Hope it's not all Polish Nobles. They are a pain. They chase my HA all over. There was one on their right wing. I sent three divisions to take him out in about three volleys. Heh, that commander is quite mad, but he's also stellar now.

I feel better about upgrading to lanternas. The base stats of those is three better than my most experienced war galley which is at one gold chevron. Plus they have larger crews.

The AI seems to stop building ships once the seas are cleared. Or maybe it's because they are prioritizing land units since they are in wars. Hurts them in that they aren't contesting my sea movements though, and the Med is the spoke on the world's wheel, pretty much.

Another silly Venetian siege. 2:1 odds in my favor. Let them wear themselves down at Ragusa. As soon as I deal with this infidel false prophet, I'll be poised to tackle Venice. Sicily is hanging in there as ally. Maybe I should make nice. Plenty rich now, can afford large bribes. But I won't pay Spain for a ceasefire. They aren't in a position to attack me at the moment anyway.

Don't really want to go after Poland, too much long overland travel. And it's COLD up there.

Let's see, 2 towers, 3 manned rams and 2 ladders. Good, they'll all be fat targets. Ghazis are very nice at wall defense and crashing gate masses. And cheap, I keep all my jihad units for garrisons. Muttas are ok, just more brittle. That AP the ghazis have are great at bashing these armored storm troopers. Anyway, that one repulsed easily, but they really lacked a reasonable force. They did bash gate, but two units lasted about 10 seconds running into 3 saracens and 2 ghazi on the flanks. Neither tower dropped a ramp. One burned, other was destroyed. Ladders repulsed easily by ghazi. Ho hum.

Have to run out timer. One unit ran all the way around the back and is just sitting out there. A couple fragments hiding in the woods too. 20:1 kill ratio that time. A lot of militia. Venice hurting for production.

That spy in Genoa still hiding out. Bringing up more spies from Nicaea. As I can train them.

Hungary attacking garrison troops trying to get to Bucharest on coast of Black Sea. Infantry battle, though they have a general. Lots of blood in the snow.

And the storm hits Florence again, 1:2 odds. Darned spies! Looks like a tower assault though. Nothing coming up the middle so far. One tower burning, but those troops heading to other tower, not gate. Heh, it kinda of funny to watch the garrison scramble into place. lost 25, killed 885. Let's see how many the arrow towers killed. Garrison killed 137, 44 more prisoners. Rest were towers. Ah! Got both spies. Much better.

57 year-old suitor this time.

I see 3 PS stacks left, looks like they want Rome back worst.

I've cut them to 15 ammo though. Do you think that's enough?

If you're giving them AP, probably so. What's normal for HA, 30?

The AI gets advantages to it's ignition chance from what people have determined, although no ones found any moddable entries regarding it.

Yeah, I figured this was the case. That was rhetorical. Another "hidden" advantage to try to compensate for bad tactics.

Lastly, thanks for all the reports on your movements, and battles, i Haven't quoted any, but it's still been very useful, it's just hard to comment on at times as it's usefulness comes more from the overall picture i can get and how it reinforces and backs up other statements.

Yep. Trying to understand better myself how the AI reacts on both scales. I'm more impressed with the tactical. It's pulling some tricks in sieges that would work if it understood the force ratios needed to make a siege work better. One of the last couple it managed to sneak a ladder crew to my right around a corner and actually get onto the wall. Never noticed until the battle was over. My archers shot across the corner and killed them as they came off the ladder. I wondered what that unit was shooting at way over there! There were a lot of trees on that side, so suspect they were hidden.

My economy is rolling now. 125k in treasury and building expensive stuff everywhere. My income is 150k and my fixed expenses are almost exactly half of that. So I have 75k per turn to build with, bribe (which I haven't been doing) and save. Running large garrisons (12-15 units) and have 3 HA armies (with some replacements pre-built) and still have a couple foot armies around (my bridge ambush army is waiting at a river crossing for the Mongols again). I have about 7-8 3 ship fleets. Don't really need more as I own the Med aside from the Moors. Not seeing any Sicilian ships. Did you somehow make them totally ignore ships? They still hold Palermo and Naples, nothing more. Portugal is hanging in there with Lisbon.


Power curve and treasury for reference

It's turn 109. Let's check the standings. Heh, my power curve is smooth. Pretty interesting. Never had one like this before. I triple the nearest competition. Milan is 2. Then Denmark, Spain and Poland. My military is more than quadruple the second place Danes (in that category). Looks like Milan has 10-11 territories. They lost their homeland and moved west and north. Those next 4 are all grouped at 8-12 regions.

I'd say I turned the corner on the treasury about turn 100. It was shortly after I got aggressive. The additional cities covered the carrying costs of my field armies better. I haven't really increased those proportionately.

And a note on the power curve: Early on a couple factions were above me. They died. HRE and Byz that I can recall. HRE I had no hand in the destruction of.

Some screenies I've saved:


Naffatuns in action. That's 3 bottles. That mess is all of their making. They are right above the gatehouse.


Trail of Fears. That's right after I ambushed them. The one to SW is the remnant. The rest went north instead of trying east. You can see all the stacks are depleted. That's mostly NOT my doing. There's some sort of attrition happening. It's even across units like with a siege defense.



HA army "holding" a bridgehead. It gets a bit disorganized, but all the Hungarians routed after a minute or so of concentrated arrow fire. I just charge at them, and then skirmish back naturally. Once you click the ground at the bridgehead as a movement target, the HA keep trying to get there, and skirmishing back. Keeps the enemy very unsettled and unformed.

[Carl]

If you're giving them AP, probably so. What's normal for HA, 30?

25 mostly, varies for some though.

Yeah, I figured this was the case. That was rhetorical. Another "hidden" advantage to try to compensate for bad tactics.

Sorry, didn't realize you where being rhetorical.

Yep. Trying to understand better myself how the AI reacts on both scales. I'm more impressed with the tactical. It's pulling some tricks in sieges that would work if it understood the force ratios needed to make a siege work better. One of the last couple it managed to sneak a ladder crew to my right around a corner and actually get onto the wall. Never noticed until the battle was over. My archers shot across the corner and killed them as they came off the ladder. I wondered what that unit was shooting at way over there! There were a lot of trees on that side, so suspect they were hidden.

The problem is that the strength calculator rates Spears very highly.

DFK are worth 1632, whilst Armored Sergeants are worth 1320. DFK are thus only rated 23% better than Armored Sergeants, but the DFK would beat the Armored Sergeants 2:1 easily. DCK are even worse. Similar issues happen with JHI for example. They are worth 1536, making them worth less than DFK in spite of them being able to take any non-mounted/FA unit in the game. Cav are even Worse. Sipahi Lancers are only worth 1184, (or maybe 832 if it only include primary attack, but it's probs adds all attack values together so it's more likely to be 1184), and their charge is definitely strong enough to frighten any 2-hander, (including JHI). Pikes are the worst though. Simple Pike Militia are worth just 360, and even the best (noble Pikemen), are worth a meager 1020. It's really stupid like that.

I've added and update to my last post BTW.

[vonsch]

That just leaves racetracks and the eastern factions to sot out. Their more problematic as they have nothing thats really the equivalent. Sipahis for example are similar in terms of melee attack/defense to militia Cav, but have much better Morale and training plus a missile attack, (which on a mounted unit is worth more than the melee capabilities alone), Arab Cav aren't much better with a half again as much melee punch and better Morale and Training again. Where in a catch 22 situation. We want more HA early, but I'd rather not see cities as a big source of them, I don't really have issues adding TUK/Desert Cav (Moors)/Arab Cav (Egypt) to the second level racetrack as by then Sipahi's, (once we fix em), and Grenadine Jienites will have taken over for Turks/Moors, whilst Mamluk's/Royal Mamluk's will have taken over the Cav role for Egypt. THA might work for Turks on 1st level Racetracks, but it's dicey with their low defense and (if we do go AP on them), good missile power, they could be no use at all, or too much.

Any ideas?

How about make the pool for those buildings 1. That way they aren't a source in the army sense, but they are a replacement source. And I'm saying make them lower end, but not THA level. Turkomen, desert cav, etc. Arab cav is ok for Moors, I think, since they are lightweight in general. But desert cav there too is fine. Just having handy replacements would help Portugal. As it stands, Lisbon needs replacements shipped in from Pamplona unless they wipe out Spain.

Give a reasonable replacemant rate, but keep the cap at 1. Maybe 1 per 2 turns. It's more to "top off" units than actually build them. This will give them a bit more of a role early. I think the merchant guild pool is too large anyway. The same theory applies there. It's garrison horse. Not a lot is needed, but need replacements if it gets battered a bit.

The merchant cav idea isn't bad, either, but it gets away from the idea of these factions. Merchants were not all that important in Iberia. The whole merchant class was wiped out in 1492 when the Moors and Jews were expelled. (Reading The History of Medieval Spain again... but covering Visigoth era now.) Jinettes actually probably come from Visigothic horse warriors. They used "darts" and preferred to fight horsed.


I'm just playing on in my game, but sort of thrashing now. Not resolving any conflicts. The Mongols are still avoiding fights (unless I flat out attack them). Fending off lots of sieges on several fronts. But starting to build up a couple of stacks to finish Egypt and PS. Probably Venice after that. Then Hungary. HA are holding off Hungary and Poland for now. Russia threw one stack at Caffa, but hasn't come back for more.

I'm ready for a new game. But haven't even tried cannons yet, nor guns. Have made some handgunners at Genoa. Don't really know how to use them. Need to search for some info, I guess. If it's besieged again, I can see if they work from walls.

I do want to do a couple of adjustments before starting a new game, if the patch is gonna be another week (which I suspect). Have to remember what. I think I like the agent speed okay now. Since the AI gets the speed too, it's fair. And the AI does seem to use it. A few more spies and assassins would be good, but not sure one per level is right. Maybe 1 at the first level, another spy at level 3, another assassin at level 4. And if anyone goes to level 5, one more of each. That's potentially 3 per city built up to that level, but generally speaking will mean 2 of each. So that doubles the pool until very late.

The AI is flat annoying in its use of them. But they are handy, and you need them to counter the AI (which outnumbers the player until very late). Keeps them from being too dominant, but allows effective focussed campaigns.

Is ship speed gated by the units they are transporting? I need to play with that, I guess. I'd like to see double the speed. That cuts both ways. The AI will be able to hit the player's fleets from way out in the FOW. But also allows faster movement. Waiting the 7-15 turns to make long moves, like crusades, is boring.

Hope you're licking that cold.

[vonsch]

Okay, tried the lancers again, and really needed them. Routed one of three off the map, but they did serious disruption. I was besieging Sofia with my HA stack just to tie it up until the actual siege train arrived. They sallied on me. Good stack. With the towers compressing the room I had, was dangerous. But set up in a corner on a hill, took HA off skirmish, and shot them up. Then the lancers went into wedge and ripped through the spears and pavises nicely. Did a couple of passes and they were all routed. My general threw in a couple straight charges too, but he was just icing.

They do require micromanagement, but they can be effective. They also take serious losses, but more than carry their weight. Qualified as a heroic victory, so it was stacked against me (and that's not counting those towers on a citadel!) I took probably half of my losses just getting set up since those towers were plugging away at me while I scrambled.

So, of course, I walked into the citadel after that. Always nice. That leaves Iasi and Zagreb. Think I'll see if I can force the Hungarians to become vassals.

Still beating back PS. But their stack count is dropping and mine is increasing there. Still chasing the Mongols in circles.

I may start buying lands. Up to a quarter mil now.

Heh, pulled 3 part stacks of Mongols that time. Hairy. Lost 250, but they lost 700. My general lost his whole bodyguard. Ransom amount is 20088. New record. Caught the Khan himself. They ransomed him, wow! Time for replacements again. That was a lot of losses for me. Had one unit rout, but it rallied. These guys are getting tough! I really should have these two generals going for dread. Seems in character fighting Mongols to a standstill.

Sicily decided they want Ajaccio. They may get it, but it will cost them Palermo, I think. Italy is getting pretty black from all the devastation.

Ajaccio held with some reinforcements. Zagreb fell to another seaborne invasion. Budapest and Ragusa are serially sieged. Rome was last turn, but PS is a bit short of troops. I see one full stack left and it hasn't moved from in front of Rome where it's sat since I took Rome. Bologne is begging capture, but don't have the troops quite ready since I can't strip garrisons. Milan, where the Pope is sitting, has a light garrison too. Just a matter of troops again. Same for Venice, though it's about 1/3 stack. Venice keeps sending the garrison to Ragusa.

Palermo will be mine in two turns, I think. Three fleets converging. Not much garrison though, just my cat is on one fleet, troops on anther, and a third is coming to run off the Sicilian fleet.

Preparing a massaive move into Iasi to see if Hungary begs peace and will become a vassal. If not, I'll just take it. That will leave Durazzo and Napoli behind my lines. Russia tried Tbilisi a couple turns ago. Not even close.

And the Mongols still roam. Almost ready to take another bite of them. HA army heading back to Yerevan to pick up a couple units that got replacements there, then angling NW to pick a fight. The chickens won't attack my infantry army that I leave on river crossings and bridges going. "Nyah, nyah, you Mongols are little boy bullies, afraid of a standup fight!" They are south of Trebizond, and maybe heading towards Tbilisi. Wish they'd go annoy the Russians. I bet they could wreak some havoc to the NW.

Have some gunners waiting a chance to try them in Italy. Genoa hasn't been besieged in a while, so no chance to see how they work on the walls.


This time Venice using one and a half stacks to tackle Ragusa, it appears. Assuming I'm reading the ZOC right.

Another battle with Mongols, two part stacks but I got 2:1 odds. They are pretty battered. Night battle or it would have been 1:1 odds with three part stacks. One more set of replacements and if no third wave turns up, the Mongols have fizzled. They never sieged a city. There's one stack with about 350 left, the other 3 are about 50 each.

The Poles actually just bypassed Budapest to try to hit Zagreb. Nice move. But it met my HA army before it got there.

[Carl]

The AI seems to stop building ships once the seas are cleared. Or maybe it's because they are prioritizing land units since they are in wars. Hurts them in that they aren't contesting my sea movements though, and the Med is the spoke on the world's wheel, pretty much.

I noticed a similar thing, the trouble is that ships have a very high price for their strength value so they aren't high on the AI's recruitment list, i'm gonna try changing that by lowering base prices and fiddling with upkeep/pool size/replenish rates till we hit a happy medium.

How about make the pool for those buildings 1. That way they aren't a source in the army sense, but they are a replacement source. And I'm saying make them lower end, but not THA level. Turkomen, desert Cav, etc. Arab Cav is OK for Moors, I think, since they are lightweight in general. But desert Cav there too is fine. Just having handy replacements would help Portugal. As it stands, Lisbon needs replacements shipped in from Pamplona unless they wipe out Spain.

Give a reasonable replacement rate, but keep the cap at 1. Maybe 1 per 2 turns. It's more to "top off" units than actually build them. This will give them a bit more of a role early. I think the merchant guild pool is too large anyway. The same theory applies there. It's garrison horse. Not a lot is needed, but need replacements if it gets battered a bit.

Ahh, right, that helps, you just want something that gives them a way of replacing losses on the fly, your castle remain the main source of output, but the cities can retrain/replace the odd loss here and there, a definite boost to the AI I'd say. I was thinking you anted a bit more than that with cities taking over some of the main production burden instead.

The merchant Cav idea isn't bad, either, but it gets away from the idea of these factions. Merchants were not all that important in Iberia. The whole merchant class was wiped out in 1492 when the Moors and Jews were expelled. (Reading The History of Medieval Spain again... but covering Visigoth era now.) Jinettes actually probably come from Visigothic horse warriors. They used "darts" and preferred to fight horsed.

Remember, Merchant Cav simply represents anyone with the money to buy the same equipment as a knight, but who is not actually part of the knight class, (i.e. the nobility), so their would be more than merchants and bankers involved in it. A Plaza De Torro would probably only be present in the wealthy cities so it's not as if their aren't likely to be plenty of individuals that fit the job description.

On the other hand a small Jienites pool for replenish purposes on top isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I'm just playing on in my game, but sort of thrashing now. Not resolving any conflicts. The Mongols are still avoiding fights (unless I flat out attack them). Fending off lots of sieges on several fronts. But starting to build up a couple of stacks to finish Egypt and PS. Probably Venice after that. Then Hungary. HA are holding off Hungary and Poland for now. Russia threw one stack at Caffa, but hasn't come back for more.

I'm ready for a new game. But haven't even tried cannons yet, nor guns. Have made some hand-gunners at Genoa. Don't really know how to use them. Need to search for some info, I guess. If it's besieged again, I can see if they work from walls.

Hand-gunners are pretty poor TBH, their fairly similar to Javelin infantry but with a shorter range and they can't fire over other peoples heads. The wall bug hits all Gunpowder troops though. Janissary Musketeers are best for Turks if you can get them.

I shouldn't be too much longer on the next version. Probably a day or two more as I need to check a few things.

I do want to do a couple of adjustments before starting a new game, if the patch is gonna be another week (which I suspect). Have to remember what. I think I like the agent speed Okay now. Since the AI gets the speed too, it's fair. And the AI does seem to use it. A few more spies and assassins would be good, but not sure one per level is right. Maybe 1 at the first level, another spy at level 3, another assassin at level 4. And if anyone goes to level 5, one more of each. That's potentially 3 per city built up to that level, but generally speaking will mean 2 of each. So that doubles the pool until very late.

Thats fairly similar to what I was trying out myself prior to getting cold LOL.

Is ship speed gated by the units they are transporting? I need to play with that, I guess. I'd like to see double the speed. That cuts both ways. The AI will be able to hit the player's fleets from way out in the FOW. But also allows faster movement. Waiting the 7-15 turns to make long moves, like crusades, is boring.

I think so and i'm not sure why. Wit increased agent speeds it doesn't effect the shipping of agents, but thats about it.

Okay, tried the lancers again, and really needed them. Routed one of three off the map, but they did serious disruption. I was besieging Sofia with my HA stack just to tie it up until the actual siege train arrived. They sallied on me. Good stack. With the towers compressing the room I had, was dangerous. But set up in a corner on a hill, took HA off skirmish, and shot them up. Then the lancers went into wedge and ripped through the spears and pavises nicely. Did a couple of passes and they were all routed. My general threw in a couple straight charges too, but he was just icing.

They do require micromanagement, but they can be effective. They also take serious losses, but more than carry their weight. Qualified as a heroic victory, so it was stacked against me (and that's not counting those towers on a citadel!) I took probably half of my losses just getting set up since those towers were plugging away at me while I scrambled.

Glad you found a use for them. Cav dos require a lot of care and attention in use post shield fix, but if used right is probably one of the most destructive options available to you.

Another battle with Mongols, two part stacks but I got 2:1 odds. They are pretty battered. Night battle or it would have been 1:1 odds with three part stacks. One more set of replacements and if no third wave turns up, the Mongols have fizzled. They never sieged a city. There's one stack with about 350 left, the other 3 are about 50 each.

The Third wave turns up 30-40 years after the second, and the second 20-30 years after the 1st. I've played with stack compositions as we talked about for the next version so you should find them an even tougher challenge.

Hope you're licking that cold.

I'm getting their, headaches are gone and medicine is keeping the worst of the cough, blocked nose and sore throat's at bay. Thanks for asking.

[vonsch]

On the bandit issue I brought up earlier. I am seeing bandits, but not a lot. And pirates are rare after the initial bunch. But I like it that they are not constant issues, bandits especially. So it's definitely a balancing act. Bandits are nice for training generals and troups while turtling, but they impede a push to expand considerably, if they are common. They affect the AI and player about equally, I'd say. The AI is pretty good about killing them if they are not way out of the way.

Pirates, on the other hand, are a greater impediment for the player than the AI. That's due to the player using naval transport strategically more. Pirates are also crusade killers/botherers if they move by ship. I think double the current pirates, at least, would be good. But bandits may just need a very slick tweak up.

I think messing with the stats on ships, including the price, may be risky. We might end up with the siege engine situation except with more sleets than land units. But the answer there might be limiting ship production more too. Since ports are valuable for economic reasons, players will always have lots of ports. It will make building a fleet of 3-4 a 3-4 turn operation, instead of 2 turns. That's fine. Do like I suggested with the racetracks and bullrings, make the pool 1 but allow it to replenish fast in this case. Let 1 per turn happen steadily.

Ships are a larger building enterprise than recruiting, equipping and training a unit so it should feel right too. You will have to back off the current admiral thing though. Otherwise the AI will have mostly 1 ship fleets, and the player will have fleets of several, so it may need more thought. I like the admiral thing.

[vonsch]

Milan is annoying me. Three assassins camped outside Genoa and they just brought in two stacks to besiege it, though that will probably be next turn. And their fleets woke up and are all over (though they will run out soon). I may have to take Marseille for paybacks. It looks ripe.

I'm at 40 regions, with two armies outside Iasi. Another is aboard ship to invade Kiev (Polish). The Poles are still pressuring Budapest and Zagreb from Vienna, but if they keep it up much longer, that will drop troop levels there and let me take it. Vienna still after Ragusa. Stack and a half besieging but no storm yet. It has 8 more turns. If they haven't stormed in 4, I'll send in HA to break up that party. Preparing to move on Naples to secure southern Italy. That will let me free up some garrison troops to pressure Milan and Venice in the north. And taking those will get me to 25, I suspect, unless there are some suprises.

Hoping to try hand gunners in the storming of Genoa. I'll set them up as flankers at the gate and let the invaders in a bit. I can put stakes there to break them up, and back my spears away a bit. Hand Gunners are as good as JA at melee, so no real risk to me, If it works, should be instant routs. Not that that's much different from normal! The naffatun usually have their morale beaten down by the time they enter the gate... if they even dare. Half the time they peek in, see the spears waiting, and rout.

I have a 10-skill spy in there now, so hopefully no more gate tricks.

Heh, Mongols retreating before my attacks. They usually don't do that. 2:1 odds, then 4:1 if I night attack. I think I'll night attack. Fewer losses. Maybe I can finish them. Only pull the front part stack. Have killed off a lot of their generals. Then should have the movement points to hit the next stack and pull in the tiny 3rd stack. Hmm, full moon please! There we go. Bit foggy though.

Very foggy. Darn, 3 got away in the fog! General got away. Should have continued the battle to finish him. I can see him way off where he retreated with 2 in his unit. It was a massive downhill charge into the bowl. They were all cav that time. Killed off the foot in other battles.

Took me three tries to force battle with the last two stacks there (not counting the retreated remnants). 400 left in these two stacks. 5:4 ratio. Probably heavy lancers and heavy archers too, their more survivable troops. Ugh, terrains against me, uphill this time. Uphill into the mists. THat leaves three generals and one unit, in three widely scattered stacks. Bandits!

One more wave, you say? At least now I'll have a stack that can go toe-to-toe with one of theirs, I think. All silver and gold HA. General is 51 though, hope they hurry!

Oh, in the far off cities racetracks begin to have use. Can pay for order, and at this stage I can afford to. And running low on things to build too.

I offered Hungary 300000 to become my vassal, no luck. So two stacks will try to convince them. Oops, big stack retreated. Oh well, I tried diplomacy. That leaves Iasi open to storming. 15:2 odds. I think I might pull it off.

On to Kiev and the Poles!

Milan or PS or someone is bribing my stacks of buildup outside more Italian cities. So... I'll just put them into fleets. Assuming they last the turn after being built!

I offered the Pope Rome and 300000 to become my vassal, still very demanding of me. He has not yet heard demanding! I think he wants to follow in John the Baptist's shoes.

Genoa has cannon towers. I am hoping to see them in action (assuming they work!) There we go, Genoa is besieged by the Milanese. They brought no siege train though. Even with 1.5 stacks, not likely to succeed with towers and rams.

Aha, here's the third wave of Mongols. Four full strength stacks. Maybe I can get these HA all to 3 golds. Let's see how they like boom-o-phants. Just found two merc units for hire.

Kiev is Turk. That's #42. Interesting, Venice backed off of Ragusa. For once they had a chance with 1.5 stacks.

Heh, paying England to attack Milan's rear. Let's see if they do it. They were are war anyway, 500 a turn will help their recruiting though.

Venitians are strange. They lifted siege, walked one turn towards Zagreb, then came back and besieged it again. Oops, heh, Russia married their general away or something, siege lifted, Russian general standing there.

The Sultan has lost patience with these infidels. He's executing all prisoners.

[chickenhawk]

Carl I have actually gotten some playing done the last day or two and will write some today or tomorrow but there is one issue that I want to get out there.

The AI is killing itself on sieges. It miscalculates the forces needed with the new walls and just destroys itself assaulting them. I am playing as the english on VH/VH. Three separate stacks of enemies, 1 rench and two Milanese have completely smashed themselves against Caen's and Angers' walls. They attack with one ram, one tower and one ladder. The ram and the tower burn. The AI then tries to feed all of its troops up one ladder in the face of the tower fire and good heavy infantry. I am getting kill ratios of 1500 to 10, literally. Is there any way to teach it when to quit?

[Carl]

The AI is killing itself on sieges. It miscalculates the forces needed with the new walls and just destroys itself assaulting them. I am playing as the english on VH/VH. Three separate stacks of enemies, 1 rench and two Milanese have completely smashed themselves against Caen's and Angers' walls. They attack with one ram, one tower and one ladder. The ram and the tower burn. The AI then tries to feed all of its troops up one ladder in the face of the tower fire and good heavy infantry. I am getting kill ratios of 1500 to 10, literally. Is there any way to teach it when to quit?

I haven't really looked too hard at the battle AI, I may be able to help the AI though in other ways. Give me a few minutes to reply to vonsch and then I'll outline some ideas of mine.

Hoping to try hand gunners in the storming of Genoa. I'll set them up as flankers at the gate and let the invaders in a bit. I can put stakes there to break them up, and back my spears away a bit. Hand Gunners are as good as JA at melee, so no real risk to me, If it works, should be instant routs. Not that that's much different from normal! The naffatun usually have their morale beaten down by the time they enter the gate... if they even dare. Half the time they peek in, see the spears waiting, and rout.

Should work if they get that far. The Combined Morale Penalties of both Flanking Fire and Gunpowder weapons plus the mass losses should see them really suffer.

However, since you have cannon towers their going to need a good solid 2 stacks to get through the gates. Those towers really ARE nasty, try t get some cheap peasants in so that you activate as many as possible, if you can go all the way from the front gate round to both side gates with them all activated. Some of those on the side walls can reach too.

One more wave, you say? At least now I'll have a stack that can go toe-to-toe with one of theirs, I think. All silver and gold HA. General is 51 though, hope they hurry!

They've had big buffs for next time in terms of composition, force balance and the change of all 48 man spear units to 60 has buffed their dismounted Lancers. I've also toyed with their Heavy Lancers/Khan's Guard stats to differentiate the two as they where identical previously. In particular the 2 full invasions make use only of Heavy Dismounted Archers, Dismounted Light Lancers, Dismounted Heavy Lancers, Mongol Heavy Horse Archers, Light Lancers, Heavy Lancers, and Khan's Guard. The mixed stacks, (that aren't Pure Cav), also include more/better Anti-Personnel Artillery, alongside the existing anti-building artillery. Each wave has an extra 5th pure infantry Siege stack that is composed of considerable quantities of High Quality anti-personnel and anti-wall artillery. The mounted Components from the mixed stacks are replaced by Dismounted Lancers, both types), and some extra siege gear. I've also changed Dismounted Light Lancers from full Spears to Light Spears, this makes them less effective vs. Cav, but means they suffer non of the infantry penalties of full spears, thus giving them a Sword and Shield equivalent unit, great for assaulting walls.

In other words expect some much more serious challenges next time around LOL.


Alright, time to cover the siege point a bit more. I think part of the issue is that the AI fro all reports isn't recruiting as many Sword and Shield Units as it does spear units, this leaves the AI very weak in sieges as Spears are several times worse off.

Whilst looking at the situation, one point stood out to me. Both Spears and Sword and Shield units represent your main battle line units who are part counter to a specific unit type, and part general purpose Infantry. Spears counter Cav. Swords Counter Spears, 2-Handers Counter Sword. Right now the Spears are beating equal price Cav about 2-1 and can hold their own with Cav Upton about 1.5 times the spear units own value. Swords on the other hand are often equal, or more expensive than the spears they counter, and as a result are only slightly better than Spears overall in the recruitment importance calculator.

Now i'm not suggesting we alter the Sword prices so drastically as to put spears at 1.5 times the price of Swordsmen. But a slight lowering of Sword prices, (I'd say somwhere around 15-25% off), would encourage the AI to recruit more of them without leaving spears too under recruited. Better yet, by doing this it raises the overall capability in sieges. It does also raise the power value of a given size army, but I can just raise the minimum needed for an attack and the AI will then be sending similar sized stacks of better quality troops at you. If Raised the power level required now the AI would spend forever building p before attacking. Money script or not.

The other issue is AM their are a number of units in the Swords category at least that are for their price much more attractive to the AI in spite of their weaker abilities, my reduction in the avalibility of these units doubtless helps, but still...

[vonsch]

Ok, here come the Milanese at Genoa. Says I have 2:1, but troops are equal, so my quality must be better again. Mainly want to see what the cannon towers do, if anything. Okay, this is getting annoying, with a 10 skill spy in the city protecting it I can't keep their spy(s) from opening my gates. That's just wrong. I have home field advantage. I have a general with good stats, and 3/4 stack of good troops. That should not be a spy-friendly situation. But this is 4 times in a row, I think. WITH my good spy there. Cities need to be a bit harsher on spies. In both directions. I also find it too easy to get into a city safely.

Wow. Cannon towers are deadly. Killed one tower, but killed about 4 units of troops too. The second tower made it to the wall. But gonna be short on troops to storm it. Lost 18 men, mostly to the cannon towers shooting onto the top of the wall! But they killed more of the enemy there than mine.

Yes, it's going to take a significant siege train to deal with those. Good thing the enemy doesn't have any cannon towers so far that I've seen.

Playing Atilla at the bridge in a blizzard. One Sipahi HA against a whole stack of Poles. Leading them in a merry chase while using up my ammo. Time to clear out, Knights Hospitalier catching up. Only 5:1 kills due to that charge that caught my Sipahi cornered. I should have checked which way was out earlier. That's a fairly serious stack. Hehe, it got cocky though, came around and attacked my main HA army on the other bridge, and that is a full stack and has a 1/3 stack more reinforcing it. This time the odds are my way, and I have a bridge. Let the slaughter commence!

Total and complete slaughter. Screenshots can't do it justice. I need to learn to make movies of these. I love the yo-yo motion of the HA as they charge in, spin and swirl back out as they skirmish away. Who needs Cantabrian circle? It's beautiful death in motion. Reminds me of the swirl of blood going down a drain...

I think I've been fighting Mongols too much.

Aw, Atilla the Saint, my governor of Constantinople, died. I loved that name. He was a good governor too.

Darn it! Those Milanese spies are good. About 6 fleets turned up off Corsica to impede the invasion fleet. But my admiral is better, he knows when to sail around. Can't drop invasion in place this turn though. May end up driven off. Drove off the largest threats. The invasion fleet can probably stand off the others.

Landed at Napoli, but not enough mps to do immediate siege. Wait... may be a way. Nope. Siege train slowed it down too much.

Milan hired a bunch of mercs and looks ready to besiege Genoa again. Now I have an 8-skill spy in with the 10-skill one. Hmm, maybe one more 10 skill to try really hard to root them out. Screw it, make it 3 10-skill and 1 8-skill spies. Let's really test it.

Heh, these phants are phantasic at killing off these loose Mongol generals.

Sheesh, another dumb Ai trick. I have Napoli under siege and they have a full stack, decent one, next to it. So they moved it off to kill a small rebel stack! Now they will end up rebels themselves.

Mongols are still wall shy. They need to go north. They'll get no joy from my cities. I am building a second HA army to deal with them, but will see if I can't herd them north first.


Got A spy at Genoa.

Elephants aren't mountain goats like Mongol generals. This one is way up where the elephants refuse to go. Have to get lucky with some arrows. Got him. Cost me in friendly fire though.

Marseilles is Turk. Exterminated the infidels. Saves on garrison troops. Naples is Turk. That's 44. Sicily taken out.

[holycow]

Ive been thinking re the towers and their effectivness? or over-effectiveness as some would suggest, to give them some balance how about giving towers a limit on ammunition if possible?

[Carl]

Ive been thinking re the towers and their effectivness? or over-effectiveness as some would suggest, to give them some balance how about giving towers a limit on ammunition if possible?

Can't be done, according to their stat line they only have 10 ammo now anyway LOL. Good idea though.

[holycow]

10!? they must be magic arrows.

[vonsch]

Hmm, Venetian cats hit wall segment a bit, down to 60%, then stopped. Two towers, ram and ladders charged. Would have been better to make a breach first. Hard to believe it ran out of ammo. None of it reached the walls that time. Ballista towers did the job with a lot of archer support.

I'm wondering if the limited ammo (the 10 that you mention) isn't working right for the advanced towers. The arrow towers may be unlimited, but the others seem to stop.

Hmm, this time they haven't. Odd.

Okay, turn 125 I grabbed Vienna with two stacks for the "victory."

Milan is building ships, so the logic isn't totally off. I think they have to upgrade to bigger port before the power-ratio is right to build them. I see carracks in Milan's port that weren't built last turn. (And just cleared the old ships out of the western Med.)

Time for food. Then I decide whether to tweak before I start another, or wait for 1.23. I guess I could play RTW a bit. Or AD.

[holycow]

what's in v1.23? honestly i've stopped playing till the 2nd patch comes out and see what it does to vanilla. right now just tinkering around w/files.

hey carl, from last week as byzantines, the byz spears were not getting the experience bonus from castle barrack? honestly this bug is what made me quit playing vanilla, started searching for mods that fixed the experience flaw from guilds.

[Carl]

Just thought i'd give you guys an update, i've just got Ballista Towers and the Papal Standing changes to do and i think V1.23 will be done. SO somtime later today with any luck.

[vonsch]

Cool. No rush. I haven't decided what faction to try.

You have a list of changes you've made?

[Carl]

Alright I'll try to give a comprehensive list but it's hard as V1.23 has included more taking compare to the previous version than any version since V1.20.


. Altered Faction Standing so that non-catholics suffer a steady deterioration in standing with the pope.

. Altered Ballista and Arrow Towers so as to make Ballista Towers Genuinely more powerful, and also so as to reduce the degree to which arrow towers destroy all incoming siege equipment.

. Altered recruitment rates and availability of ships and siege gear so as to encourage more of it.

. Played with tech trees, adding and removing various units from various buildings.

. Altered Mongol and Timurid Invasions so as to increase difficulty. Also tweaked a number of Mongol/Timurid units so as to provide a better level of balance, prevent duplication, and to increase the challenge.

. A number of other units have also had their stats or abilities tweaked to make them once more useful when compared to other equivalents.

. Some re-distribution of regions has taken place to aid the AI. However this is still WIP and some further re-distribution has yet to take place.

. The power of a number of garrisons has either been increased or decreased so as to increase challenge to the player whilst hopefully encourage previously passive factions to attack.

. Castle vs. City Income adjusted and the Tax effects on growth have been tweaked. Based on experiences Castle MAY now require some growth tweaking due to the Tax Growth tweak.

. Sword and Shield Units have received a price reduction to encourage their use by the AI factions.

I'm sure I've missed a couple, but thats all I can think of of the top of my head.

[vonsch]

I'm not sure the castle income versus city needed tweaking. In the early stages they are closer, but mid to late they diverge rapidly. My cities were pulling is 4 to 5 times what my same level castles were. The difference in trade is rather large, and city populations grow faster which boosts tax income (and the tax slider will move for cities). If you think there's too much money, specifically in the player's hands, cut the merchant income in half. The income there was huge. And it was not necessary. I was dumping cash into silly bribes by the end (bribing rebels just to avoid the need to battle them, since I was fighting 5-10 battles per turn).

Did you adjust spies? (and assassins, though I didn't build a single one)

What did you do with growth versus taxes? I thought the straightline 0.5% drop per level of tax in vanilla is fine. Just be sure castles grow with it set on normal until they are large enough to make last tier. You could boost the governor bonus for chivalry back up a hair to allow them to play a role, without being overpowering. It looks like it was 0.5 growth per 4-5 levels of chivalry in 1.22. I'd say make it 0.5 per 3 levels. So a 9-10 chiv general adds 1.5% growth. Running with taxes at normal, that would net to 1% growth with a good governor (before other effects).

Siege engineer and architect (latter may not need any) adjusted?

Bandit/pirate rates?

Those are the additional thoughts that occur to me, based on previous discussion.

[Carl]

Did you adjust spies? (and assassins, though I didn't build a single one)

I'm not sure the castle income versus city needed tweaking. In the early stages they are closer, but mid to late they diverge rapidly. My cities were pulling is 4 to 5 times what my same level castles were. The difference in trade is rather large, and city populations grow faster which boosts tax income (and the tax slider will move for cities). If you think there's too much money, specifically in the player's hands, cut the merchant income in half. The income there was huge. And it was not necessary. I was dumping cash into silly bribes by the end (bribing rebels just to avoid the need to battle them, since I was fighting 5-10 battles per turn).

It wasn't player income, it was more the fact that I had cities with Merchants wharfs that where only manging 30% or so more income than a castle. Now maybe I just had some rich castles, i'm not sure. But whilst it's true that late on the cities out-perform the castles. It's early on where the difference actually matters as later cities are starting to take more of the military burden. Hence the period in which Castle vs. City income is important is actually the period during which they are very close to one-another. Later on I don't mind castles taking some of the economic Burden as Cities take Some of the Military Burden.

TBH a lot of it is down to Farms, you tend to put them up sooner in castles and they account for a lot of castle income.

What did you do with growth versus taxes? I thought the straight-line 0.5% drop per level of tax in vanilla is fine. Just be sure castles grow with it set on normal until they are large enough to make last tier. You could boost the governor bonus for chivalry back up a hair to allow them to play a role, without being overpowering. It looks like it was 0.5 growth per 4-5 levels of chivalry in 1.22. I'd say make it 0.5 per 3 levels. So a 9-10 chiv general adds 1.5% growth. Running with taxes at normal, that would net to 1% growth with a good governor (before other effects).

I've actually increased it compared to Vanilla as it makes he decision to use Very High Tax rates quite a considered one. It shouldn't hurt the AI too much I don't think as the AI tends to prioritize farms. What it does mean is that Castle average growth rate has dropped 0.5%. Add to that the farming changes, (I'm already thinking I was over Draconian before you mention it, it seemed a good idea at the time, but now...), and low fertility regions may give issues, I haven't seen any yet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

If it does let me know.

Bandit/pirate rates?

Increased

Siege engineer and architect (latter may not need any) adjusted?

[Carl]

How's it going vonsch? Any obvious thoughts?

[vonsch]

Those look reasonable on the surface. Have to test the economic changes by playing them a while to see.

I'm thinking of trying the Moors or the Russians. Either should have some poor regions in their early mix, I think.

Oh. didn't notice the PM.

[Carl]

Oh. didn't notice the PM.

Ahh, right. Don't worry about it. Should have said somwhere.

Up to you which you do, but I'd definitely appreciate your opinion of the Moors at some point as I'd like to hear what the play differences are for you. You've played them before and have an idea how they should feel.

But I'd be just as interested in Russia to see how that plays out vs. Poland and Hungary, they tend to expand west and south a lot so Russia theoretically has a good run at things.

Either way it would be interesting.

Right, just so everyone knows.

V1.23 has now been sent out, therefore all discussion unless stated otherwise in the relevant post/s will be with regards V1.23.