MTW Pocket Mod: Units, Buildings and Unit Stats

[caravel]

My main thought/hope was that adding a smith as a dependency for Knights might help the AI financially without seriously impeding its ability to tech up to them. Ah well.

Indeed that was my original idea and is how V1.7 is structured. There are more dependency buildings and the buildings produce an income. Sadly it's too complex for the AI to use.

Gah! Well I wasn't thinking *that* much (100 florins) -- rather something more like 25-30 florins for the base level smiths, and then working up from there.

Added together though for all buildings at the base level, the player could have all 8 smith buildings constructed and be raking in a large sum per province.

I digress, however. If you've made the smith upgrades that cheap, then it hopefully shouldn't matter, especially if you tweak them so they bestow a (somewhat) larger income at higher levels.

Indeed, though if I am to go with having the smith buildings as not being required to train units then I will probably re-think the costs and incomes of the upgrades anyway. Especially if they are to depend on resources in the province.

We'd definitely want to edit the descriptions, yes. As for renaming, perhaps something as simple as adding "Shoppe" (Armourer's Shoppe, Bowyer's Shoppe, etc.)?

Well "Shoppe" is equated to old english (e.g. "ye olde shoppe") but is in fact a fanciful term and not really old or middle english. The other factor is that we're not only dealing with the english but many european catholic kingdoms, eastern kingdom's and muslim sultanates. I'm thinking that for, now leave the names as they are and edit the descriptions. Anyone who is wondering why these buildings don't train any units can check these. Plus them not being available in every province - with none at all available in some provinces, this should clarify that they're not a necessity.

To expand on this, I already have another building of this type in existence, namely the forester. I have looked through the available review panel icons and have found many move unused buildings of the "Workshop, Guild, Master" types including:

Glassmaker
Leatherworker
Mason
Potter
Salter
Vintner
Weaver

I may include some of these also (dependent on resources).

Hmm. I confess I'm currently stuck as to what else would be proper names for subsequent structures. Presumably upgraded butts (whatever they'd be called) would be primarily devoted to recruiting crossbowmen and arbalesters?

...perhaps upgrades could go: Muster Field --> Levy Field --> Shire Grounds?

I'm thinking that the Muster field line should be short, only two buildings. It is only for low level levies and some special province specific units anyway.

...we should probably rename them to avoid confusing players.

Here's my crack at the building names:

Stables, Knight's Stables, Ducal Stables, Royal Stables
Militia Barracks, Infantry Barracks, Guard Barracks, Palace Barracks
Butts, Yeomenry Range, Guard Range, Master Range

I could go with all of those except the stables line. You see I'm thinking that the stables will not be required for Knights, but Knights will depend on the Royal Court line of buildings and not the Horse Farmer line. Perhaps something less related to nobility?

It's the sentence I highlighted in bold that concerns me most. I could all too easily see the AI being critically -- if not fatally -- hampered with the system proposed. So long as elite/royal units can be restricted to homelands, I'd just as soon not mess with the setup (at least for now). We can always tinker and tweak later if it seems desirable and/or necessary.

Perhaps then units should not depend on the smith buildings, this would remove the problem.