Sub-Mod: Sicilian Combat

[Konstantin Alexander]

Sicilian Combat
Beta Version 1.3
(Offical Patch 1.2 necessary)

Download:
http://www.wt-in-berlin.de/notger/Si...Combat_1-3.zip

Last Update:

22.07.07

Installation:
1.) You need an installed version of Sicilian Vespers.
2.) Copy the contents of "...data\unit_models" to Sicilian Vespers "...data\unit_models" directory.
3.) The file "descr_mercenaries.txt", "campaign_script.txt" and "descr_strat.txt" should be copied into the subfolder "...data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign" of Sicilian Vespers.
4.) Copy the rest of the files files into your "data" folder of Sicilian Vespers.

Intention of this Sub-Mod:
Sicilian Combat is essentially a combination of the Sicilian Vespers campaigns and the battle mechanics of Real Combat including some minor tweaks. Notger and i wanted to profit from the historical research that went into the creation of Sicilian Vespers as well as from the battle mechanics of Real Combat. They underline the differences between high-quality units and less valuable ones. Additionally they try to represent the characteristics of the medieval armament in a realistic way, like the penetration power of medieval weapons, the protection value of armour, their weight and maneuverability, as well as a cohesive system for the quality of training and equipment the troops received and their costs.

Expect combats to last longer than you are used to. High-quality, well armed units will be able to defeat multiple poor units and are less prone to die from pitchfork attacks, when wearing platemail. Given the increased value of high-end units, this can alter your campaign strategy. It would be prudent to form a core of crack troops, which are constantly in the kingdom´s pay and accumulate experience and supplement them with militia, support units and freelancers for specific campaigns, like it was done in most armies of that period.

Note:
This is a beta version. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to post them. The Sub-Mod is fully playable but does need some balancing tweaks, which are most easily found by playtesting. Minor bugs and inconsistencies will probably appear. If you think this Sub-Mod is crap, that is allright too, but please tell us why. Any feedback will be appreciated.

Updates:
As we do our best to keep up-to-date with the newest versions of Real Combat and Sicilian Vespers, make sure to have a look at the date of the latest update. We expect to do some minor updates weekly.

01.07.07:
- Added PointBlank´s "Unit Creation Guide" to make the Mod´s changes transparent to the users.
- We now differentiate between light, one handed maces/axes and heavy one handed battleaxes/warhammers.
- Lance wielding armenian cavalry now comes in two quality levels. Minor and major nobles.
- Infantry and mounted archers of the balkan factions now are better in melee and worse in ranged combat in comparison to their russian counterparts.

08.07.07:
- New categorization of the charge bonus of lance wielding cavalry according to their mounts and equipment.
- Billmen got a longer weapon and therefore a spear bonus, to make them the anti-cavalry weapons, as which they were reknown.
- Two handed weapons were given new animations and decreased stats to avoid them being overpowered in AI vs AI and autocalculated battles.
- Reduced availability of artillery and elite units.
- Money penalties for huge empires.
- Units with two hitpoints rebalanced to fit into the RC-system.

22.07.07:
- Rebalanced the starting armies of France, England, Mamluks and the HRE to get them started properly.
- We will start to update Sicilian Combat to the new Real Combat version 1.2 soon

Compability:
So far the implementation of Sicilian Combat into ongoing campaigns did not result in any CTDs. But as everyone plays this game according to his own style, we cannot guarantee it. Better backup your files.

Bugs/Known issues:
- The starting positions of most factions in Sicilian Vespers include small armies of high quality troops, while infrastructure is mostly underdeveloped. This is a known issue in Sicilian Vespers and will be handled with in version 2.1.Especially the bigger factions will come under economic pressure at the beginning of the campaign, as the upkeep-costs for high-quality units increased significantly.
- Some angevin units have minor graphical bugs. These will be cared for with SV 2.1 as well.
- Some new factions still have a limited unit roster. Expect some additions, as soon as we managed to implement some units which are yet too buggy to include them or when the new version of SV is released.


Credits and thanks:

- Sicilian Vespers and Point Blank. Not only for the permission to use their Mods, but also for the constant help with technical problems and the encouragement we received. In fact this Sub-Mod is almost completely due to them.
- The major and minor modders whose work enhanced the gaming experience of Sicilian Vespers. GrandViz for the excellent UAI, Burrek&White Wolf for the new generation of textures, Dearmaid&Pnutmaster for BB&B, Salty for his beautiful italian shields and many more which i cannot list here for the sake of brevity.
- Special thanks to the guys of the Real Combat thread for their hours of testing and the constructive critizism. The same applies to the people contributing to the Bug-threads of SV.

For an outlook on the future of this Sub-Mod, you can have a look at the RC-discussion here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=111093.
If you are interested in the development history of Real Combat and have a few days of spare time you can also have a look at the 55-page discussion for RC 1.0 here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82671
We recommend to use the Ultimate Battle AI mod in conjunction with Sicilian Combat. Copy all it´s files into the "data" folder of Sicilian Vespers, except the export_descr_unit.txt. Use the one provided in the Sicilian Combat download above. UBAI is found here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=104932

You can contact us both via PM too, if you like.

~Notger~Duke of Find and Replace~
~Konstantin Alexander~Constable of Fiddling with Details~



Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam vident.

[Drtad]

Very nice work! DLing now!

[|Lorre|]

WOW this could be really interesting!!! I will certainly have a look!

[SicilianVespers]

Great work I'll try it as soon as I can.

[Battlehawk]

Will the Kingdom of Naples finally get gunpowder?

[SicilianVespers]

Will the Kingdom of Naples finally get gunpowder?

They will have it in SV 2.1

[notger]

Dear community:

We uploaded a new iteration of Sicilian Combat: Version 1.1. The changes are listed in the original post.
We hope that you enjoy the RC-system.

Furthermore, there is good news for the fans of the RealisticBuildingTree: We plan on incorporating that into one of the next releases.
That will mean: No more wall-recruited units, certain units have multiple requirements (time plus barracks plus armorer) and other tweaks. (Since SV is reworking the faction starting conditions and we are highly dependend on these, the RBT-system will not be implemented until SV2.1 is out.)

Regards
Notger.

[notger]

Bugfixes:
Normans, Saxons, Serbians and Bulgarians can now recruit ships. Current free-of-known-bugs version downloadable.

[Butcher]

It looks great, but attack/defense values for units with pikes,halberds and voulges aren´t respoding to values presented in "RealCombat 1.2.txt" document.
At example scots Heavy pike militia - Attack 1, Defense 9, Charge 3. But pike should have attack 4 (-1, becouse unit is militia).

[notger]

It is possible, that the document is not up-to-date. Are you referring to the guide that comes with the files? This guide is definitely not up-to-date, I fear.

Attack values for pikes had to be lowered to balance them, due to their animations and several internal aspects of the battle engine. Pikes should not be supposed to beat everything that comes from the front. Pikes should be vulnerable to units like Zweihanders (which were designed to break pike formations.) That is why the values are inconsistent: for balancing reason.

If you want to follow the ongoing discussion about balancing, there is a 52-page-thread: ;-) http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=82671&page=52 .

[Konstantin Alexander]

The Unit Creation Guide is indeed outdated one release version of RC. As you might have guessed the documentation is always trying to catch up with the matter at hand. And as the pike units, like those with two-handed weapons are currently still in a testing phase, we did not update the Guide as those preliminary changes would have to be changed again very soon, when the tests result in more demand for balancing.

At this point the Unit Creation Guide is mainly serving the purpose of describing the concept, that is behind the modification, listing the different factors, which play a role in it and to make the reader understand the implications of the system. When the balancing is done, Point Blank will get rid of inconsistencies in the Guide as well.

Note that mental attributes, like being impetous, can also alter values.

[Butcher]

Thanks both for response, now it is all clear. It is good that you are still balancing your mod, but even now is it very good.

[notger]

Credits go to SV, DaVinci, PointBlank and all the other renowned modders whose work went into this mod.

Please note, that there is a new iteration online. (Link as above)

Changes made:
* Balancing pikes and 2H-axes finally more or less complete. Byzzies and Danes are not longer steam-rolling through Europe.
* Reduced starting armies for all factions to make up for the fact of more expensive units. Previously, some factions would have had trouble to get starting economically (HRE, France, Egypt sometimes).
* No more 2hp-units. Costs and size accordingly adjusted.
* Reduced availabilty of some elite unit and catapults to reduce Varangian-catapult-armies.
* Fixed missing money scripts for SV2.0
* Introduced money script to penalize empires that grew too big. Kicks in between 15-20 provinces.


What is planned next:
* Introducing a proper version naming.
* Reworking the building tree

[Butcher]

I am trying that new version just now. And I am asking : How can Norse Axemen
have the same attack number(4) as a Dismounted Huscarl(both units have effective against armor trait)? Norse axemen have two handed axe.

[notger]

That is the same thing as with the pike units: We had to become inconsistent due to different animation speeds and for balancing reason.

The performance in combat is closely linked to animation speeds but the performance in auto-calc-battles isn't. That led to skewed results. By lowering their attack ratio and giving the 2H-axe-units a faster animation. If you check the EDU, you will find that the Norse Axemen and the Varangian Guard now use the Dismounted Gothic Knight animation. That sometimes looks weird, but it is the best way to balance things, we found.

Do you have the impression, that they are underpowered?

Suggestions are welcome!

[Butcher]

You're right. They are not underpowered(they are still better then Provencal Men-at-arms at example).
It looks that this whole thing with different animations is good idea for balancing.

[Butcher]

I have one question about that Ultimate Battle Al mod.
This mod contains another files with same names as your mod, not even export_descr_unit.txt, but also descr_projectile.txt, descr_mount.txt and descr_battle_map_movement.txt . These files contains different values then files from your mod.
I suppose that we should use files from your mod, aren't we?

[Konstantin Alexander]

I should have made that clear, sorry. Overwrite all files except the export_descr_unit. The changes in the battlefield movement file and the mount file are slight changes anyway, but as UBAI uses different values for the damage of siege engines and the stability of city walls, i would definately use the export_descr_projectiles of GrandViz or some weird things could happen during a siege. When we have a bit time at our hands, we might check if there is a need of balancing and/or will include UBAI from the beginning in our download. Some people prefer other mods for battlefield AI, but so far i found UBAi to be the best, especially as it was made with the Real Combat (Sicilian Combat) system in mind.

If you should find any inconsistencies, please post them in the Sicilian Combat thread.

[Point Blank]

I am trying that new version just now. And I am asking : How can Norse Axemen
have the same attack number(4) as a Dismounted Huscarl(both units have effective against armor trait)? Norse axemen have two handed axe.

Norse axemen should have attack 5. Also, dismounted huscarls are a 'quality' unit, whereas norse axemen are just 'average'.

[notger]

Please note that I just uploaded a fix for version 1.3. Due to K.A. not being able to post since his HD crashed, there is no new version number.

This fix was necessary because certain factions never seemed to get starting properly, namely the Mameluks, France, England and the Reich. This was due to their oversized starting armies that cost them so much money that they could not invest, had to raise taxes, experienced rebellions ... in short, they were in a trap.

This was fixed by reducing and restructuring their starting armies. They now each are able to make a profit of 4000-6000 florins per turn and thus can invest and develop.

Please note also, that the current EDU is not compliant to PointBlanks EDU, since we are a little bit behind. The changes aren't so big anyways, so you have a 98% RealCombat experience with version 1.3. ;-)

Have fun,
N.