Taiji's Enhanced DLV5.74 - Updated 24/12/08

[Taiji]

First I would like to say that DLV is the best mod I have ever played for M2TW and that I think the work of Repman as nothing short of genius! If this mod had come out as a commercial product I would have bought it.

Unfortunately as I have been playing with this release (5.74) I found many discrepancies with the units performance on the battlefield, overpowered/underpowered/broken units. I am spending many many hours trying to improve the situation. In the end I hope to provide a more challenging, more realistic and more consistant battlefield experience.

I have many more adjustments to make but I am satisfied that it's already well worth trying out

In making this I have had the advantage of much being done already, I don't deserve all the credit (or blame). I have had a lot help from the modding forums and the various people who have contributed feedback on this thread. The idea to do a double upgrade at partial plate is from Point Blank's excellent RRRC mod for stainless steel.

EDIT: Warning this next paragraph is wrong; the weapon upgrade is only about +1 attack in reality.

There is one major point where I have had trouble and that is the weapon upgrade. A single weapon upgrade adds +6 attack and this causes problems. It's hard to work with but the simple alternative at present would be to lose the weapon upgrade and the nicer graphics that come with it. It has meant having to keep melee weapons values quite high which in turn has reduced the effectiveness of armor. Some units have their attack doubled by the upgrade and for some it's only +50%. The solution would be to edit the meshes to allow use of nicer weapons without the upgrade and then the removal of the upgrade altogether.

What it does:

1, Attack and Defence
Attack is now a result of troop quality (9 levels), weapon (13 weapons) and primary/secondary role (missile units often recieve a -2 handicap to their attack and -1 to defense, those intended to do melee recieve -1 to attack). The exception to this revision is cavalry lance/spear which I have used as a reference point.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Troop Quality - base attack/defence
peasant - 1/1
militia - 2/1
adv militia - 3/2
regular - 5/2
better - 6/3
superior - 7/4
elite - 8/5
special - 9/6
super special - 10/8

Weapon - attack/defence modifier
knife +1/-2
falchion +6/0
sword +5/+1
2h sword +8/+5
light spear +2/+3
heavy spear +3/+2
pike +1/+1
axe ap+3/0
2h axe - ap+6/+4
halberd - ap+6/+2
mace - ap+3/0
2h mace - ap+6/+3
warhammer - ap+4/+1
poleaxe/2h warhammer - ap+6/+5
1h weapon and no shield 0/+2

2, Armor and Shield
Armor goes from 0 to 14 with a double upgrade between heavy mail and partial plate. Armor is reduced by 1 point for cavalry whose armor is better than their mount with the exception of leather armor. Eastern troops do not get a double upgrade at partial plate (level 4).

All units for whom the final upgrade is heavy mail or lamellar and that have space for another armor upgrade get an extra upgrade at advanced plate, they take advantage of improvements in armor manufacture but this does not affect their looks.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Horse Armor
barding - 1
mailed - 3
eastern mailed 4, -1 defence
plate 5, -1 defence

With shields I have tried to ensure that the shield value matches my impression of defensive capability of the shield. For cavalry the shield value is reduced by 1.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Shield Type - shieldvalue/defence/attack
buckler - 3/+2/+1
larger buckler - 4/+2
round shield - 5
heater - 5/+1
kite - 6
pavise - 8/-2

3, Missile Units
3 levels of accuracy for bowmen, crossbowmen and gunmen. Militia/peasant, regular and elite. Missile damage and accuracy is reduced slightly overall and many nations now have top tier bowmen with ap bows. Conventional archers will have some problems killing those in partial plate and above. Due to a reduction in armor for heavy mail and below they should still prove very useful, especially versus cavalry.

Gunpowder infantry have increased range, their reduction in accuracy should mitigate this. It makes them much more interesting plus they have cheaper upkeep. I would have slowed their rate of fire but this is impossible without learning animation.

The exception to this attack reduction is javelins. They were underpowered, now they are not.

4, 2h Swords
2h swordsmen lose their ap bonus and gain some attack. It helps to mark them as different from axemen but more importantly it helps them prevail over lighter armored foes. Their attack is high enough to threaten those in full plate though axes and maces will shine here.

5, Norse
I have spent many hours getting Norse Swordsmen to upgrade properly. I've reverted them back to their previous skins and models and they now get 2 upgrades instead of 1. This has had the unexpected side effect of making the Russian versions look cooler! Flemish Badelaar now get appropriate starting armor and an extra upgrade as a result of this.

Reverted Dismounted Huscarls back to axe and shield as denmark and norway already have plenty of 2handed axe units.

Norway can no longer produce scouts(they didn't have a rider on the battle screen).

Axemen are recruitable from the same barracks level as raiders.

Huscarls now look like they are riding the horse and not walking on it from the sprite distance.

Norse Axemen get a buckler.
Attachment 23717

6, Byzantine
Varangian guard get a buckler.
Attachment 21823
Byzantine heavy spearmen now have sword and shield secondary. They don't have long enough spears to be pikemen, I keep them using the pike animation but they have shorter range than normal pikes and no phalanx. You can use alt+attack to force them to swords.

7, 2H Axe Vs Cavalry Fix
2h axes weren't working vs cavalry except when the axes charged and when charged (due to spear_bonus). They just stood around, they were broken. I have replaced their animations with 2h sword animations so sometimes they do silly looking things (like stabbing an opponent clean through the side) but at least they work now. Also I rebalanced their attack delay and skeleton compensation to make them slightly slower than 2hswordsmen instead of much faster. There is a further distinction for poleaxe (2h warhammer) units, they are slightly faster than normal axes now.

8, Halberd Conversion
All halberds now have the same fighting style as militia halberds. This affects jhi, armored billmen, middle eastern halberds and transilvanian peasants. It makes them more powerful. I have also fixed a bug with them that made them able to attack enemies outside the range of their weapon. They have been balanced to offer excellent offensive capabilities vs almost anything but guard their flanks.

9, Dismounted Order Sprites Fix
Dismounted order knights' sprites previously made them into dwarfs if you zoomed out, fixed this. I ignored Teutonics, they have the same model and textures as dismounted feudal knights and use a mace animation when I have a btter solution I'll look at them again.

10, Fixed many units' stats.

11, Added upgrades
Gothic upgrade for dismounted imperial knights.
Attachment 21825
Partial plate for dismounted huscarls.
Attachment 21824


Attachment 23723 Updated 23/11/08
Made compatible with 5.74
Integrated troop quality/missile accuracy differentiation.

Unzip the contents of this file into your "c:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\" folder (or where ever you installed M2TW+DLV).

11/12/08 again I fixed some mistakes I made and some others, just unzip the contents of this file to ...\dlv_ext\data
Attachment 24999
It adds Mangonels!!!

29/12/08 Sorry to everyone who downloaded the previous projectiles file I uploaded. I've been really too busy having fun to fix it until now:
Attachment 26188

It is savegame compatible.

You can backup the files it overwrites if you like, you can also just reinstall DLV and all will be back to normal.

Also if you'd like things to look a little more realistic on the battlefield use Harry Lime's "No Blood Clouds" http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=188771

Total Rawr is an excellent minimod, if you are using it then install my mod after Total Rawr.

Please give me some feedback! Even if you just say "It's crap" or "It's good". I'm fairly happy with where I've got to considering where I've come from but it will give me much more enthusiasm to think that I am satisfying (or not) other people.

Suggestions are always welcomed.

*****This post always has the most up to date information about changes I have made*****

<<<<<I'm working on 5.8 now so no more updates to my minimod will appear for 5.74>>>>>

[Taiji]

Oops! Should I have stuck this post in the mini-mods section??

Sorry if I have messed up!

[Harry Lime]

No worries man, moved to DLV Mini-Mods & good work on this

[Taiji]

Thanks for sorting that Harry!

[ivanhoex]

what logic did you use for armor sorting?

are you using my old calculator for that or just calcullating each on the fly?

as i said before, i am working on a huge new calc so i am very interested in any armor level corrections you may have made and which shield use which unit

if i am asking too much just tell me.

[Taiji]

The more you ask the more I think, you're helping me a lot - thanks!!

Basically I stick with old armor values except where the model appears to have better or worse armor. I also check the final upgrade and use that as the decider for the starting level, if it appears to be full plate or eastern equivalent then that determines the previous upgrade levels and starting point. Looking at the model tells me what type of armor and the info at the start of the EDU tells me what value to assign to it.

With shields I categorized them by size from small buckler to pavise - 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. where this causes me to reduce a units overall defense level I compensate by raising defence skill by an equal amount.

Cavalry get a -1 except for bucklers (in many cases they already had this). I'm really not sure why I left bucklers out and probably I will reduce them too. Cavalry seemed to have generally been given -1 defense compared to their dismounted equivalents, I have already done most of them to match. I haven't thought enough yet about cavalry armor, I've already adjusted many but I need to standardise them better and go through it again.

Some research and thought needs to go into modifying the defence values. If I have no opinion about the unit I leave it alone for now. If it just looks wrong I will adjust it e.g. dism hasham had a shield value of 8 instead of 4 this would have meant giving it 4 extra defence skill which seemed wrong, if I remember right I gave it +2 as if it had previously been assigned a +6 shield. (On the bright side for hasham their starting armor is now heavy mail as their final upgrade looks like the eastern equivalent of partial plate).

In the long run I think I will be trying to standardise defence skill because I am not sure how the new sword and shield units will ballance against the old 2 units. I may need to raise armor piercing units attack as generally my changes cause at least a -1 drop in many units armor which reduces the effectiveness of the ap weapon. Not sure about this as perhaps the difference will be negligible.

I have not used your old calculator... forgive me please but I don't know what it is! If you could summarize it for me I am interested.

You asked in the other thread about which archers have a big shield:
ottoman infantry 4
dvor archers 6
norse archers 5
ruthenian archers 4
bosnian archers 4
dismounted lithuanian cavalry 5
(you can search the EDU for arrow_2 and composite_arrow_2 to check, although some of these are not edited yet in the edu i've uploaded)

... just noticed I can't actually recruit dismounted lithuanian cavalry for a custom battle.

[ivanhoex]

i am glad you are so into it =)

althought that info i mentioned before is quite priceless =)

have you even downloaded my old calc? there you have all the formulas ready to be played with and all units already categorized by many factors, if you need any help with that just add me to msn (juanypinchame @@@ hotmail.com). sumarized it is, on the thread at my sig. basically, it allows you to change 1 number and it re-calculates all unit values related to it.
the new one i am working on will also allow you to export a complete EDU, but it is not finished (thats why i ask so often for help nowadays)


about not having a unit at custom battle make a search for "no_custom" attribute, that should solve it. (not in the case of factions not showing, that can be edited elsewhere)



anyway, last time i repeat myself, i promise: in my old calc there are values set for starting armor according to 5.6 skins. if any of those have changed or units been added in between 5.6 and 5.73 then that units are probably wrongly set.

to find this troops i need help. i have found one great extra hand in Elvallie, another active member of this forums, who is actually screenshotting all DLV units to make this comparison easier.

as you point to have already done it, we will be mmm extremely appreciated if you share that knowledge with us, as to wich units should be granted more/less armor skin wise. (not related to your shield based changes but exclusively on unit looks)

also we are looking to categorize all shields on all units of dlv, not just 6 archers (wich is a start anyway)

feel free to pm me/msn me.

[Taiji]

I haven't finnished appraising all units, I've checked visually around 50+ units. I'm sorry but i can't remember much of what I've done. Having screen shots of all would be useful as a resource, many I know already from playing. I am just loading a custom battle with all the units i don't already know from a particular faction with a token opponent. checking my troops unit cards against their appearance in the deployment phase and then alt+tabbing to the edu to ammend (a great deal of alt+tabbing). i'm really not keeping track as that in itself would be a task.

sorry I am not of much help!

not sure what do with ritterbruder and halbrudder, annoying units to decide the armor value as they seem to go from heavy mail to advanced plate! if i start them at mail when upgraded they look fantastic but aren't, but giving them more than heavy mail to begin with makes them too tough early on.

I will check out your calculator when I have time!

[ivanhoex]

^^

i know, i did the same back then..

sorry to hear you are not keeping track of them... maybe the next units? just the units you find annoying on armor at least =)

[Taiji]

Have updated my EDU. A great many changes and fixes and still more to do.

I will edit the first post if i can to include it.

Examples:

Fixed many but not all units that seem broken e.g. stats for wrong unit, outlandish stats, comparable units much better or worse.

Berdiche, hasham, saracen, arab cav and very many other eastern troops got armor boosted to match apearance.

barded horses get +1 armor and mailed get +2

shields scale in defensive value in relation to their size
3 - buckler
4 - large buckler
5 - heater/round shield
6 - most larger shields
7 - pavise

In future I am thinking of lowering armor by -1 for all cavalry just like they get shield lowered by -1, what do you think??

I still have plenty of work to do with my own ideas but I welcome... no really I crave some feedback or suggestions on what I have done and what I should do.

[ivanhoex]

why do barded horses have extra armor? its not protection but a colourful dress

how much do you add to armoured cav? seen the way you progress it should be +4 i think.

substracting armor from horses may work ok or may not... i am not really sure about it.
(so far there is no chance for soldiers to fight on foot after horse is down... scattering hits them more than enough i think)

can you please post pics of armor level comparison for eastern troops vs italian like i did in this pic? (for more info about it check page 5 of my thread):
(hint: italy has all variety of armor levels on its roster)






i do have one suggestion: wait approximately a week, when my calc is out you will find most of this work already done or at least a weapon to do it in a harmless (for you) way.
you will find more categories to imput than you have dream off, and it is shapeable on users taste so..

anyway, when i started i did exactly like you, couldnt wait a second for an answer, spent hours finding it instead.. so i can understand pretty well your hurry-mode, but if you want to start working as a team, i d be glad.

one last suggestion is to publish work only when it is fully overworked, in any case with a "beta" label in order for people to quickly understand that they are actually testers.

[Taiji]

I give barded horse extra armor mainly because I like the look of it, also I think it might have some value as armor. But I appreciate that you disagree that it may offer some protection and I'll think about it. Close up it looks like quilted material that would offer a little protection, I'll check again

Armored horse I found to be more complex and I'm not satisfied with my approach so far. Eastern armored I think got a statutory 12 value regardless of rider and I will change that to better reflect the armor of the rider. With the plate looking ones I checked first the highest - gothic knights. Should anything else be better? I thought not so I modified slightly those beneath so they could only rise to the same level if they could be upgraded to advanced plate. Lancers are already advanced plate and so 16. Basically any unit that can rise to advanced plate on an armored horse gets 16 at full upgrade. Though on checking this just now I find I missed some

About reducing armor I found with original edu that they are maybe too effective. I don't find spread to be enough of a weakness to mitigate being able to massacre close to 500 units per unit per battle when using huge unit settings. Spread sometime seems to serve them very well as they keep moving, making them harder to hit.

Your pictures are very nice, I know how useful they could be. The berdiche one is wrong, it shows only 2 pictures when there are 3 upgrades and the second one should be level 4 not 3 according to the original edu. Another thing, you can't see the dvor's shield or check what melee weapon it uses.

I think maybe spending hours finding the right way is the right way for me to be starting with this. Having to look at all values at once, contemplating the compexity, making mistakes, etc.

Also while I am so focused getting done what I want done I am being quite selfish. Maybe after I've got this idea I have put into action I'll be willing to come and help you but for now I will just plow on!

I did check out your calculator a little and I think what you are doing is awesome!!! I can't wait a week though, I might be finnished in a week!

My first sentence in my first post says this work is incomplete, do I need to make that clearer?

Thanks again for your help!

[ivanhoex]

i think you misunderstood me in one point:

i said that you should post screens comparing units as i did, but for the eastern units that you claim to have wrong armor values, so that way i can see why you support that idea.
you seem to have understood that those were the pics i was basing my data on.



berdiches right pic is obviously exactly same level of armor than venetian archer lvl 3 and they even look worst than merchant cav lvl 3. (both on left side pic)
i dont know why you call that a lvl 4 but that gives me an idea of why you may have found easterners to have too low armor.


i call myself out. cya and good luck.

[Taiji]

We have a misunderstanding here... I don't call that berdiche level 4 the original EDU calls it level 4, if your label is supposed to match the original EDU then your picture has it labelled wrong, not in my opinion but as a matter of fact.

From the looks I call the first picture heavy mail so I give 7, the next picture (which you left out) has a better chest area and plate on arms and legs, The third and final picture has mysteriously lost it's cooler chest piece but the plate on its arms and legs seems of better quality.

So I don't call that lvl 4 I call it level 5, they will need a level 5 smith to get that armor, this still only leaves them with 9 armor. Unless +1 from a smith actually gives an invisible +2 in which case they finnish up with 11 and I'm not really happy and may give them 6 to start, I need to find this out. I'm confident that I have done justice to this unit with what I know so far and if you check the progression of the 3 upgrades you might actually agree with me.

I think the cavalry militia you point out for comparison needs some adjustment. It starts with 1/2-3/4 plate, plate arms, plate legs and helm which should be better than mere heavy mail, it finnishes with partial plate or full plate. Thanks for pointing this unit out, I decided to adjust it's starting armor to 8 and it's upgrade to level 5.

As for those venetians... they seem to have dropped their plate pants to reveal their tights and yet they consider this an upgrade. Annoying.

I wish you the best of luck with your project!

[ivanhoex]

berdiche - ok ok, no prob, no, my label is all about categorizing troops. DLV is using an older version of my calc, some of the improvements have not been implemented afterwards, and many others have not ever been incorporated and others have been changed on time.

in this case, i have checked most rus units and they are.. bad. probably someone added an upgrade level in between and that upgrade actually is better dressed (but with less shine) than later upgrade...

no good skin modding there XD

i will try to fix that sooner or later.


ones lose helmet others lose chest others lose pants.. its a bizarre way of upgrading really. some skinners should be hanged.. starting with the original DLV template creators..

[Taiji]

updated again and summarised most of the changes I have been making.

@ Ivanhoex - I took your advice and removed the bonus for barding, thanks for that! One point about upgrades is that it should be possible to downgrade and upgrade units armor. Armor upgrades should have an impact on a units speed, initial cost and upkeep. When a unit is produced you should be able to decide what armor it will use rather than being forced to use the heaviest available. Ah well, all hardcoded I'm sure.

[A_B]

I think barding would add some protection. It would often be quilted. At the very least, the folds of cloth - in the crush of melee - could wrap up around a spear point and reduce its effectiveness.

Quilted armor on people is the same as leather (3), so, if it is quilted at all, it should give some protection.

[Taiji]

Thanks for your input A_B, I looked around and found an example of barding for horses that are used in bullfighting. Some other source said it made reins hard to cut. I will consider it again. We have space for it with mailed being +2. What do you think on the idea of lowering all cavalry armor by 1 point including unarmored horses?

I found something cool that might interest people, I will implement it in the next update. I can now make ritterbruder go from heavy mail to advanced plate. No more early superpowered Ritterbruder trouncing the pagans!

[ivanhoex]

Thanks for your input A_B, I looked around and found an example of barding for horses that are used in bullfighting. Some other source said it made reins hard to cut. I will consider it again. We have space for it with mailed being +2. What do you think on the idea of lowering all cavalry armor by 1 point including unarmored horses?

I found something cool that might interest people, I will implement it in the next update. I can now make ritterbruder go from heavy mail to advanced plate. No more early superpowered Ritterbruder trouncing the pagans!

are you setting starting armor upg level to 4, then 6 right?

can you please compare that unit with anyone (maybe stat changed ex-profeso) that has actually three upgrades? i am most curious about that double upgrade, how much armor it really adds.

[A_B]

Some other source said it made reins hard to cut. I will consider it again. We have space for it with mailed being +2. What do you think on the idea of lowering all cavalry armor by 1 point including unarmored horses?

How much armor are you adding for mailed and plate horse, 2 and 3? If so, i'd think barding as +1, mailed horse +3, plate horse = 4 or 5.

You could offset this by reducing all horse armor across the board by 1 armor (because the horse itself is a very vulnerable. Perhaps offset this near accross the board reduction of cavalry effectiveness by increasing all charges by one. This is perhaps the scope of what you're trying to do.

FYI, something that is confusing me is the stats of the AP units (axe mostly). There hit speed and delay is all over the board, and not very consistent. The Lithuanian axemen are an example - armed with a one handed axe, but given stats as if they were Berdiche or Woodsman type two handed axe.