Empire Realism | Feedback + General Discussion (until incl. 3.7, defunct thread)

[jacksoran]

is there a chance of getting a version of this released with normal unit sizes, my computor can handle it but the maps can't, so i prefer to use the smaller units if possible

[JaM]

finally cracked that text issue... oh boy...


i have one question, what would you say if I replace Brig with carronade frigate model, so instead of Brig we will have a proper 6-rate Frigate with 24 guns?

that way we could have stronger 32 gun 18pdr Frigate and faster 24 gun 12 pdr Frigate. I Also changed Admiral Flagship 5.rate into Commodore's Frigate.

[JaM]

DaVinci: I have few suggestions regarding naval unit recruitment:

Lets remove Fluyt and Large Galleon /Warship from Pirates. They shouldnt have those ships at all. Instead, they should have access to Xebecs, Sloops, new 6-rate 24 gun Frigate, 32 Gun Frigate.

What about making SOL's also recruitable from trade ports? Right now some countries like Dutch are stuck ed with only trade port so they cant build any SOL. Of course only one building slot should be available for trade port, so shipyards will still have importance.

I would also suggest to remove Fishing ports from game, because AI prefers to build them over shipyards and trade ports. It is the reason why AI spams all those sloops and Brigs right now...


France should have same tier of shipyard as Great Britain - France thanks to mr. Colbert had pretty advanced shipbuilding base in late 17.century and they came with some interesting new designs (74 and 80 gun doubleheaders SOL was their design, UK used 70 Gun SOL instead)

Spain should have same level of shipyard like Great Britain in Cuba - 70% of all Spanish ships were built there. (even Santissima Trinidad was built there) Btw, Cuba should be pretty advanced Spanish colony with strong forts and lots of troops. It shouldn't be so easy to take it like it is now...

Give Galleon ship to France and Great Britain. I changed that ship completely and now it should represent late 17.century Warship instead. (i would even suggest to give a few to GB and France as a starting fleet - lets replace those double-decker 48 gun ships with them)

Oh, and we should definitly remove steam ships from the game... its just too early for such ship. game ends 1799, and first steam ships appeared not sooner than 1830



(btw, i just bought great book about naval warfare of 1600-1850, there is a lot of interesting stuff... so i will have a lot of new ideas soon )

[DaVinci]

Sounds all good, and of course i agree.

All the things you have listed, which will need to change the start situation should wait until we make a quasi final version 1.0, in my opinion.
With the file base we have now, we cannot do that. And i personally haven't any experience with the change of the start situation as of yet. Anyway, here we could do a lot more for the realism and balance for the game ... a bigger task, i think.

And yes, the available steam boat bugged me as well a lot

You have sent me today some naval changes.

I suggest that you make the above listed changes, which are easy/quick to change, and that you send me this then again, before i implement.

The fishing port thing: Here i suggest that we simply remove the ability to build ships from there, it's easier as to remove the port entirely or something similar ( and anyway the AI won't have joy to build those ports anymore to spam sloops ).
If we will change the start situation, ie. as for Cuba etc., then we can think about to adjust the fishing port thing as well, if still needed, but i believe the removal of the recruit-ability will do the trick already.

So i will work for now not on those concerning files above, and will fiddle only a bit with land unit combat/condition changes and eventually other which have no interacting.

Is that senseful and feasable for you?

[DaVinci]

is there a chance of getting a version of this released with normal unit sizes, my computor can handle it but the maps can't, so i prefer to use the smaller units if possible

Hello, but if you choose normal or large unit size it is good for the battle-maps. I play it on large size as of yet.

I started this project with a non-commander edition 2 weeks ago ( http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=274197 ), but decided then to go solely with the default (commander) Darthmod Empire version since this thread here, also as it is a big realism component to have just bigger regiments (troop numbers) on the field.
And also, this mod project here has another approach than before, it becomes a major change-approach to Empire TW in the whole.

[JaM]

all sounds good, only thing i didnt touched yet is recruitment files - how to make a faction to recruit certain type of unit, or how to remove that unit from list.. it was quite easy in M2TW, but here.... i hate it..

[DaVinci]

all sounds good, only thing i didnt touched yet is recruitment files - how to make a faction to recruit certain type of unit, or how to remove that unit from list.. it was quite easy in M2TW, but here.... i hate it..

I'll do it then, send me the other changes solely with a short-list of the changes that i know what's going on.

[JaM]

btw, did you tested that text file in your game? it should change lots of ship types (but if you have german version game, it will probably switch you to english)


btw, i probably forgot to mention, i will be on vacation for 2 weeks starting next Monday, i plan to go to Croatia, but i'm taking my laptop with me, ( i had strict requirement for accommodation - Internet access ), so i should be online...

[DaVinci]

btw, did you tested that text file in your game? it should change lots of ship types (but if you have german version game, it will probably switch you to english)


btw, i probably forgot to mention, i will be on vacation for 2 weeks starting next Monday, i plan to go to Croatia, but i'm taking my laptop with me, ( i had strict requirement for accommodation - Internet access ), so i should be online...

Alright, and wish much fun in Croatia.

As for the english language switch, no problem, i anyway would have changed it via Steam soon, if the text file wouldn't fire properly ... so if it changes all to english via your last text file change (from today), then i'm even more satisfied as i don't need to switch via Steam (haven't looked as of yet, but will soon, but i count with a mix of languages eventually, so i would have to switch via Steam though, eventually, will see).

[Thorn]

The fishing port thing: Here i suggest that we simply remove the ability to build ships from there, it's easier as to remove the port entirely or something similar ( and anyway the AI won't have joy to build those ports anymore to spam sloops ).

But, that wont hurt the AI's ability to build ships as it has less ports to do so? and what happens if the AI starts with only a fishery port?

I will see how hard is to get rid of that useless port and add its bonus to the other ones, it's quite silly you can only go fish from them.

[DaVinci]

But, that wont hurt the AI's ability to build ships as it has less ports to do so? and what happens if the AI starts with only a fishery port?

I will see how hard is to get rid of that useless port and add its bonus to the other ones, it's quite silly you can only go fish from them.

Reasonable point, yes

But what i see with ETW 1.3 is, that some former fishing ports (in 1.2) were replaced by trade ports. There aren't a lot fishing ports at all at the start, afaik.
And, if a faction has only that, then it might underline historical backgrounds that they weren't a naval power.
Plus, i consider it even more realistic to have no ships available in fishing ports, which have a naval battle ability. It'll help also the AI to decide to contruct naval ports and trade ports, if a port-settlement is ready to contruct.

Important is indeed though, that we'll enable a warship-recruitment for trade ports, far less than for war-ports, but just to enable them in limited number.

[JaM]

what about making fisher port a first level of trade port?

trade ports should at least be able to build ships up to 4-rate SOLs - that was the biggest vessel small nations around Baltic and also Netherlands built in 18.century. They just didnt had resources, or any need for bigger vessels, especially because those ships required deeper waters, and Baltics was quite shallow for them.

[JaM]

just found an interesting numbers in my new book - approximate build price for english war ships -

1-rate 100 guns 41160 pounds
2-rate 90 guns 35678 pounds
3-rate 80 guns 30176 pounds
3-rate 70 guns 25175 pounds
4-rate 60 guns 21350 pounds
4-rate 50 guns 17181 pounds
5-rate 40 guns 10557 pounds
6-rate 20 guns 6399 pounds

so as you can see, 1-rate 100 gun ship is 4x more costly than 5-rate Frigate....


DaVinci:

what do you thing about changing ships costs to:

120 gun SOL 4500-5000/1000-1250 (building price/ upkeep)
100 gun SOL 4000-4200/cca 1000
86 Gun SOL 3500-4000/900-1000
74 Gun SOL 2500-3000/650-750
60 gun SOL 2000-2200/500-550
50 gun SOL 1700-2000/450-500
32 Gun Frig 1000-1200/250-300
24 gun Frig 650-750/160-200

that together with different campaign movement speed could provide some hard questions for player's economy - build a 5K SOL with upkeep 1K that will be only usable against other SOLs, or build 4 fast Frigates that could patrol seas and intercept enemy trade ships/pirates etc...?

[DaVinci]

Hello (i was pretty busy with RL).

Yes, sounds reasonable while i believe 1000 or more upkeep is very hard (especially for the quite retarded AI), but as we have the 1st rate class very much limited in recruitable numbers, it can be made i guess.

As for fishing ports: We have three levels (tiers) iirc. I made it now so that the last level enables the low level ship recruitment (major fishery).

[DaVinci]

Info

A DER+ Dev forum has been added here (17th of July 2009): DER+ on ModRealms (MR) with a public DER+ forum as well.
The public forum on MR is a backup forum, just mainly used as a dev platform (hidden forum).
Eventually, for the ones who wanna follow the mod in all situations, in example TWC goes offline for days, it is recommended that you bookmark the thread link.

[DaVinci]

From Patch Update thread, 16th of July 09

Quote:
It's time to start talking about the contents of the next Empire patch, which we're aware many of you are curious about.

Without wishing to hype it, this one will be a big one and it will predominantly focus on the Campaign AI.

Our priorities with the next release are to:

- Significantly increase the rate of naval invasions. Including those across theatres.
- Increase AI aggression and improve use of armies.
- Increase the creation and retention of strong mixed higher level unit armies by the CAI.

Some of these are big changes and will take time, so I'm not in a position to confirm a release date for the patch yet.

For those of you wondering how we're progressing, let's just say I've now seen a Marathan eastern seaboard of the United States with both as AI factions.


Naturally we'll update more regularly as the patch develops.

Kind regards,
Kieran

CA's revenge has come.

Due to the call of the TOTAL war fans for massive naval invasions, now we get an entirely ahistorical game with ETW 1.4 ... I saw this coming btw., thank you all TWC, TW.com kiddies and other non-historical educated/interested people. I'm pretty sure CA actually heard on the fans in the forums to calm them down as for the other issues in the past.

Playing ETW vanilla for me becomes obsolete with this patch 1.4. No, letting this patch onto my pc is forbidden for me.

That's the end for me to ever going online with the ETW game via Steam, means i won't apply the ETW 1.4 version (offline-play is the only solution!).

There won't be an update of DER+ based on ETW 1.4, unless CA changes its arcade plans, and steers the AI for theater-crossing naval invasion into historical direction, or they offer the option to mod this part in historical direction.

[JaM]

DaVInci: its not that big issue - we can still restrict factions who never had any reasonable navy to actually never had it in game, or we could add few additional tech requirements for them so building certain buildings will be not that easy... during last few days i learned that it doesnt matter what they do with vanila, unless they hardcode the changes - we can easilly change it back - plus, crappy vanila game, means more people looking for historically correct mods...

[ZaPPPa]

Most of the 'patch' is nothing more than tweaked db files, so everything can be changed back. I'm sure Darth will take care of the CAI. I'd be surprised if CA has more than one or two people working on these 'patches'. Judging from the direction they're taking, I'd not be surprised if they have an intern making these tweaks.

Anyway, not making a DER for 1.4 will mean you'll lose 90% of your target audience. Most people probably don't know how to keep Steam from automatically updating ETW to 1.4. I will update to 1.4, because the inevitable 1.5 might have some good stuff in it and devs often sneak stuff in patches without updating the readme. I'd hate to lose the ability to play DER.

[JaM]

btw, i'm testing some changes to ship hitpoints/ resistance / gun damage and i love it. Fights are now much less WW2 like long range gunnery duels, and instead, if you want to do some damage, you have to sail close.... really close.... (I added a 1.5x damage bonus for shots fired at distance closer than 60, and 1.5x damage reduction for any hits at distance greater than 250)

[DaVinci]

... thanks guys, you both calm me down ... i was actually angry the first time above CA, as for the proud announcement "maratha builds ports in america" (i don't wanna blame the CA reporter, it is just his job to give patch update info).

Let's hope you are right and it is indeed only db editing or something else that can be adressed via data stuff modding

I will update to 1.4, because the inevitable 1.5 might have some good stuff in it and devs often sneak stuff in patches without updating the readme.

Patch 1.3 was good, really good at least for me. As we see 1.4 will be content-wise a bad step for realism/history fans/friends. And you can never know if they don't include again real bugs as pre-1.3 patches did (for me at least, i got instant and consistent ctd bugs with one of the patches, while 1.0 worked quite properly).