The Complete EDU Guide - Discussion

[Aradan]

A new guide analysing the EDU has just been posted at:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88859

This thread has been created to discuss this Guide. If you have anything to add, correct, suggest etc. then please do so. Please help make this the best, most complete and most comprehensive source of "everything EDU" so that all information regarding this is gaterred at a single place, easily accessible and found by all.

The Guide does not seek to define ways in which the information can be used, only to provide that information. So, although we might use certain aspects of it to create a counter-elephant specialisist unit (for example) or a unit of demi-gods, those applications are beyond the scope of this Guide. This file provides only the raw data (and some very quick and simple advice).

Your input is much appreciated and anticipated.

[Makanyane]

That's a great document, thank you.

DLF is the difficulty lever factor. It's 0.7 for Easy, 1 for Medium, 1.5 for Hard and 2 for Very Hard. This factor is what produces the AI combat bonuses for Hard/Very Hard and the AI combat penalty for Easy.

That's an interesting find, I knew there was a difference but never realised it was that large.

Would it be at all possible to do an even more idiot proof explanation of the two useful formula at the end? This particular idiot isn't sure how the two constant values fit in.

And thank you, thank you, thank you, for coming up with that before I have to try and balance units for EoDII

[Aradan]

You're very welcome Mak!

Well the melee formula gives a number, which in turn is presumably compared to random generated number that's up to 100, to see if the hit is going to kill. Without the constant, the max number one can get is 2*1.1^63, assuming Very Hard difficulty, which roughly equals 810. So you need to multiply that with a constant to make it smaller than 100, but still close to it, to make sure that the chances of spilling blood remain big. A number that could well do that is 0.095 (=0.19/2), which gives max chance to kill 77%. On the other hand, there might be no constant and the number generated is directly compared to number up to 1000, which would give a max chance to kill of 81%. Not much difference and common sense says that the second way is better, but we're talking about CA coding here and they have used the constant before in the formula for MTW.
A similar thing applies for the missile formula, but since the two are different, it's only reasonable to assume that another constant is used there, hence const2.

EDIT: Since const1, const2 are fixed, direct multiplieres and unmoddable, it really doesn't matter what their value is, they are just there to make the formula accurate.

[Dol Guldur]

Can you see why I left it to Aradan and Xerex now, Mak? :)

But, seriously, I hope this does help out EOD II and many other mods too.


Aradan, not the most important info in the world, but we should note that the category and class entries also affect the order in which the unit appears in the custom-battle unit-selection screen. Generally it is infantry followed by cavalry category, then declining as light-spearmen-heavy-missile class, then edu order in the case of same category/class units. This is probably not only not important but pretty useless - but it is the *complete* guide ;)

[Arakorn-eir]

Yes, it's the completely WIP guide! :P

As I said in the dev forums...

OK; enough kidding, great work Aradan and Xerex! (I'm used to say Xerex & Aradan, most times it's just something that you get used to, the order you say the names in for example. Who ever says dad & mom, it's always mom & dad!)

[xerex]

So I am mom....great...:)

[pdemon]

Any chance some information regarding the ship line, which appears if category is ship, could be added to the guide? I'm interested in weather or not it is a defined list of possible ship types, and what all of them are as well as their effect on the game.

[Aradan]

The ship line uses info from descr_ship.txt, and the header of that file has quite a bit of info on various ship types. It seems that CA was trying to make naval battles a litlle more complicated than they are, but they abandoned the effort. I will try to find time to get some testing done on naval battles, but I don't know how soon - I'll update the Guide when the info is enough and adequately tested.

And welcome on the forums!

[Bardo]

SINGLE SOLDIER UNITS

-------------------------------------------------------------
EDITED
Note it only works for campaign, only for mount-type units, and only when they are used as general bodyguards. You just need:
1- to change the number of soldiers of the unit to 20, 1, 1
2- to give to the unit the attribute "general_unit"
3- to give to the general a trait with a big penalty to personal security (I use -100)
-------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, some years after I tried to achieve it the first time... I have been able to make a unit with a single character that do not appear duplicated when you increase the unit size settings.
Since it is possible to do it mainly modding the EDU file, I think this is the better place to explain it so you can add it to this wonderful guide, if you want.

First, I'll explain a secondary effect of the attribute "general_unit" that I recently discovered and that makes it all possible.

If you use an standard unit (no general_unit) as a bodyguard unit for a named character, the starting number of soldiers will depend on the number of soldier defined in the EDU entry:

soldier unit_model, soldiers, extras, mass (,radius,height)

The final number will also depend on the graphical settings you choose to play:
-large unit size: soldiers x2
-huge unit size: soldiers x4

The minimum number of soldiers that you can define is 6. If you write less than six, anyway they will appear 6 at normal settings, so the minimum is 12 at large settings, and 24 with huge settings. (I'll write it as 6/12/24 in the future)

The other thing you should know is how the "soldiers" and "extras" numbers work when the unit is a mounted unit (not cavalry, but elephant like).
-"soldiers" is the number of soldiers per unit
-"extras" is the number of mounts per unit
And so the ratio soldiers/extras defines the number of soldiers per mount. For example, this ratio is used to know how many mounts will appear in the battle map when the unit has lost soldiers in a previous battle.

In the case of mount units, the minimum number of mounts in each unit is 1, that will appear as 1 on normal settings, 2 on large, and 4 on huge. (1/2/4)

Example:

soldier norider, 20, 1, 1
mount sauron
;no attributes

This unit will start with 20/40/80 soldiers, and so 1/2/4 mounts.


Well, it seems the attribute "general_unit" changes the behavior of these minimum ammounts of soldiers (only when you attach it to a general). The minimum starting soldiers for a general_unit is 4 on normal settings, 8 on large and 16 on huge, BUT it does not depend on the number defined in the entry "soldiers" (this is the important thing).

Example:

soldier norider, 20, 1, 1
mount sauron
attributes general_unit

This unit will start with 4/8/16 soldiers, and since we have defined 20 soldiers per mount: they will appear 1/1/1 mounts on all unit size settings!!!


There is just another issue if you really want to see only one single soldier along all the game. The size of the bodyguard rise with the "influence" and the "personal security" of the character. You need to give him a trait with a -100 or so to "personal security" if you do not want to see more than one mount.

In the same topic, to finish sharing all the info I know, there is a parameter in the file descr_mount.txt named "riders" that defines the max numbers of soldiers per mount in the battle map. If the ratio soldiers/extras defined in EDU is mayor than the parameter "riders" defined in DM, the diference of soldiers are automatically killed when the battle is loaded.

In the same example, if riders=2:

type sauron
class elephant
...
riders 2

Then, if there are 20 soldiers when you enter battle, it will appear 1 mount, and the soldiers will be reduced to 2 at the start of the battle.
I used it to automatically reduce the bodyguard size of these special characters when they enter battle. (but it is not needed if you reduce their personal security).

That's all, I hope someone has understood something...

[Dol Guldur]

This is very interesting. I was not aware that the general_unit attribute had any such affect upon the minimums.

Good work - I think this could be very useful to many mods!

[Aradan]

Indeed, very very interetsing! Gonna test it asap - thx for sharing!!