Hi guys,
While I have already raised the "costs" of heavily armoured knights and other units to more sensible levels in this mod. Upkeep has so far remained unchanged from the stats in vanilla. However some of the vanilla upkeep costs do not make much sense to me, so its time improvements were made to them. For example there is little difference in the upkeep costs between mounted knights and dismounted knights? Not only does this not reflect what the real upkeep costs would be like, but this also seems unbalanced to me. As a heavy cavalry unit is more mobile and devastating than a heavy infantry unit. Anyway I have decided to make increases to the upkeep cost of all cavalry units in the EDU, with the more expensive armoured horses getting a slightly higher increase than the rest of course. Also elite crossbowmen got a small increase to their upkeep. I have attached the changes in the EDU to the bottom of this thread. Take a look and you may use them with patch 3.2 if you start a new campaign.
Below is an image posted by MrChris from another thread which I will use to explain the effects of my new changes.
In the picture above you can see an elite army slaughtering the Aztecs. But how much did this army cost in patch 3.2? and how much was it to maintain each turn? Here are the old costs coloured in blue, and the new costs coloured in red.
Yeoman Archers: cost 560, upkeep 150, Yeoman Archers: cost 650, upkeep 150,
English Knights: cost 1020, upkeep 185, English Knights: cost 1020, upkeep 325,
Armored Swordsmen: cost 610, upkeep 150, Armored Swordsmen: cost 710, upkeep 225,
Dismounted English Knights: cost 690, upkeep 225, Dismounted English Knights: cost 790, upkeep 225,
If you add this all up to make the army in the picture above you will get the following results:
Cost of training this army in patch 3.2 = 13990
Cost of upkeep for this army in patch 3.2 = 3285
New cost of training this army = 15170
New cost to maintain this army each turn = 4425
So the overall cost has gone up by a bit, but crucially the cost of maintaining such an army for a long duration will cost much more. Which is what I want, instead of recruiting all of the best units when they become available. I want you to think more about your armies, can you afford to mass produce elite units and keep them in the field? It could be argued that my upkeep changes do not go far enough, and heavily armoured knights should cost even more to maintain. But I do not think I should make increases to upkeep much larger than this. What do you think?
The EDU attached below is probably what I will use in the next update. Its worth mentioning that I have not made changes to unit attack or defense. The only changes are slightly cheaper gunpowder units with the fire by rank removed. Heavy Dismounted units cost a little more. Increased costs of elite crossbowmen by quite a bit. And as already mentioned upkeep costs. If you would like to leave me feedback here, feel free to do so.
Attachment removed, see post 17 for a more recently moddified EDU.
Dave