MTW Pocket Mod: Units, Buildings and Unit Stats

[caravel]

Thinking of it, Huscarles could also be renamed as Hirdmen. A hird was simply a small unit of bodyguards, although these were becoming outdated by the 12th century. In the end, Tegn is perhaps the most accurate term since we're talking about the 11th and 12th century.
And after a second thought, I think that Thralls should simply be renamed Vikings since:
1. Thralls were not intended to fight. They were slaves, often taken as loot on a previous raid.
2. They fit in with the description of the traditional viking: armed with a spear, no armour.

I'm quite happy to make those changes. I always though that "Viking" was just a loose term for the scandinavian raiders that attacked Britain?

One possible reason why Orthodox factions can build the Royal Court is that if they conquer a catholic or muslim province, it doesn't get razed (of course royal estates or baronial courts still would be)

Possibly but yes the later upgrades, that take all the time and money, still get razed when an othodox faction moves in. I suppose the muslim factions have to live with their grand mosque's destruction when the catholics and orthodox invade also.

(interesting name btw, could you explain it to me? Is it an actual person)

The first Inca. I was testing out the new name change feature. I'll probably change back to Caravel so don't get used to this one yet!

Manco Capac: maybe you could have different mounted sergeants for the different eras. The vanilla mounted sergeants would be early only, after that you can retrain them into the high version wich would use the model and skin of Feudal Knights (perhaps with some changes)

That's a good idea, the problem is retraining them into a different unit, which I'll explain below...

Hmm. I see what you're saying now; yeah, that could work. You'd almost have to give it stats similar to that of Feudal Knights, though. Otherwise they wouldn't really be worth training.

Then no one would bother with the Feudal Knights. I was thinking, a bit faster, and with lower defense and armour and not elite? I'll have to see how I can slot them into the unit roster. I haven't even started this unit yet, so there's alot to do.

Excellent! So what's left now?

I've done all of the startpos files now, all of the unit positions are fixed:

• Some ships added for the Moors (formerly the "Almohads") and the English.
  
• The Sicilian barques are replaced with galleys
  
• The round shield/square shield spearmen mix ups are corrected
  
• All peasants removed
  
• Old Feudal and Chivalric Knights removed and replaced with the new ones
  
• Georgia and Lesser Armenia units placed and provinces removed from Byzantine control.

A problem has arisen however. The new Knights don't upgrade from one to the next and I have a few ideas as to why. This is a hardcoded fix that CA implimented in a particular patch IIRC, so it may be very restricted.

The EarlyRoyalKnights, HighRoyalKnights and LateRoyalKnights must be somehow hardcode linked to the Royal_Court building, and it's upgrades, if there are other dependencies, such as a spearmaker or horse breeder the RK per era upgrades don't function.

It is also possible that EarlyRoyalKnights, HighRoyalKnights and LateRoyalKnights can only be upgraded if they always have the same dependency or dependencies whatever the era, and regardless of what the dependency is.

Another possibility is that the Royal_Court, and it's upgrades, is a unique building (a hardcoded 'feature') that supports the upgrading of any unit that depends exclusively on this building, not units that have multiple dependencies such as the old (Feudal/Chivalric Knights), to the next unit in line (early/high/late specific units).

All of this needs to be tested later. If 'e' is true then things could get rather interesting, but somehow I doubt it is. The way to test all of this is as follows:

Remove all other dependencies, affectively causing all of the RK units to depend on the Royal_Court only (not any additional spearmakers, armourers or horse breeders), this effectively gives us what we had before in a scalable unit with some name changes, and see if that works, if it doesn't then the whole thing could depend on every unit using the same campaign battle map name "Royal Knights". This would be a bit of cheap and dirty, but not impossible.

If it did work then, as another test, other units e.g. peasants, urban militia and militia sergeants could be era restricted (early, high and late respectively) and changing their dependency to the Royal_Court. If they can be upgraded from era to era, then that explains it. The Royal_Court itself is the key and not the units.

A test for the "cheap and dirty" approach would be renaming e.g. "Peasants", "Urban Militia" and "Militia Sergeants" to "Royal Knights" (note: their english language file names and not the internal names) making them era restricted (early, high and late respectively) and changing their dependency to the Royal_Court. If they can be upgraded from era to era, then that explains it. (The cheap and dirty approach. I really doubt this is the case)

Also rename Fyrdmen, Ceorls.

Well Ceorls were the lower class peasants and smaller land owners as opposed to the Thegns (Thanes) who were the upper class landed freemen. Fyrdmen means basically "Army Men" (warriors), the Fyrd being the army. I wouldn't agree with renaming the Fyrdmen as Ceorls because there were roughly three types of Ceorls: Fyrdmen, Gebedmen and Weorcmen (soldiers, priests and workers). Fyrdmen seems to fit the bill.