TROM3 - Feedback and Suggestions

[Chrysantheme]

The Shogun always had a gardener with the title "Oniwaban". This gardener was a ninja himself with connections to other ninjas - if the Shogun needs the service of a ninja, he just walks in his garden and talks to the gardener about it (to the Oniwaban).

I think Oniwaban could be a better fitting name for the "Kisho Ninja Master".

[Edax]

That's somewhat correct, becoming a Ronin wasn't a popular avenue either, Seppuku was the choice of the Majority of beaten Samurai. But yes most samurai would not serve a conquering Daimyo unless their Daimyo was subjegated as well, then they would have no choice in the matter. This tactic was done frequently in the Sengoku Jidai period. Vassals would be one label you could throw on it but the situations were far more diverse then is represented ingame.

Also for the sake of game balance: Ikko-Ikki can't recruit Samurai units for obvious historical reasons, so Ronin are their best and only option. So if Yarkis was to make Ronin available to all, then for fairness sake he must all make samurai available to Ikko-Ikki. Also why a Faction that can build Samurai would want Ronin, besides for flavour is beyond me?

Maybe Ronin would have a lower upkeep cost, but Samurai would have higher moral? A Ronin could be a discount Samurai, or be a means to bolster your elite infantry strength beyond the unit cap, but by not being true Samurai, would not have the same pride as being one and thus more likely to break in battle.

[Chrysantheme]

i think it doesn't have to be unbalanced to ad ronins to all clans. for example, there could be different unit caps for ikko and the other clans (you just need to copy the ronins, give them a uniqe id and other unit caps - ingame they would look the same, but all clans exept ikko could get lower unit caps then ikko).

but then they should be recruitable in logicial buildings - maybe high level economic buildings (merchant guild for example) - and they should get a penality (lower morale is a good idea i think).

[crunchyfrog]

Ikko Ikkis's Katana ashigaru are pretty weak compared to yari ashigaru.

Katana ashigaru:
Attack: 4
Charge: 5
Defense: 5

Ikko Ikki yari ashigaru:
Attack: 3
Charge: 8
Defense: 6

Regular yari ashigaru:
Attack: 4
Charge: 8
Defense: 7

Oh, and killing anything in melee in the (only this new version?) apparently takes forever, and archers are complete killing machines. The AI is pretty smart about this, and just spams daisho samurais, backed up by archer spam.

My whole army was practically gone before it could even get engaged in melee. It's pretty ridiculous too see that, and then see two units fight each other for 10 minutes in melee.

Ps. What's the point of having ranked-by-fire when all your ranks can fire?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Melee hasn't changed in v1.5. Ikko katana ashigaru will win against the ikko yari ashigaru despite those stats, because katana have hidden advantages (probably related to their animation). Ranked fire lets fire all men with no line of sight problems and the unit gets a reload bonus.

[crunchyfrog]

Hmm, sorry... I had a other .pack file to alter the missile damage.

Funny, it was DMS_Projectile boost pack, which changes the damage multiplier to 0.85, and you haven't altered it from the vanilla 1.0. But it caused the missile damage to go through the roof.

The melee thing is apparently simply because units get to the exhausted state in no time.

Great mod, I've done some tweaks to my likings, like slighty less combat exhaustion and slight regeneration when walking. Spear infantry stronger in auto resolve(look at swords and missile troops kill amounts against these in auto resolved battle reports) and removed of the "unique" level 1 markets, sake dens and temples (Why is this on? Why shouldn't i be able to upgrade one in a region to level 1 before i've upgraded the other one?).

[bydlo]

Maybe recruitment priority and limits should be tweaked a bit? Because the late game is very boring. I can just stomp armies like this with cavalry zerg, and castles sieges a big cheat for a player. Because poor teppo ashigaru can't do much on the walls.

[The_Nord]

I just have a suggestion that could increase the realism to the mod. The Oda long yari ashigaru have the type of Yari I believe is the correct one Nagae-yari and pike and shot yari should use. It's a long straight edged yari. The yari samurai should have the trident looking yari in my opinion, and the great guard should be the only cavalry unit whom have the trident spear.

[Loger]

Hey! I love the mod, it's really brilliant. One of the only things I'm miffed about is (as with crunchy and bydlo) the recruitment priority of the AI. They make far too many shooty units compared to how many melees they got. Makes some fights quite boring, sadly. I don't think archer damage should be nerfed but maybe giving them less ammo would balance them out?

In any case, if you could somehow change the AI so they build more melee troops that would be awesome.

Also agree with The_Nord on the long yari ashi. Give late ashigaru pikes!

[Kruik]

In the realm of playable minor factions, I'd like to see Yamana and Ouchi added to the list. I've found that region of the map to be rather lacking in playable factions (with only Mori to be played), and I think there is more than enough historical information that might allow for some uniqueness and differentiation.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Hey! I love the mod, it's really brilliant. One of the only things I'm miffed about is (as with crunchy and bydlo) the recruitment priority of the AI. They make far too many shooty units compared to how many melees they got. Makes some fights quite boring, sadly. I don't think archer damage should be nerfed but maybe giving them less ammo would balance them out?

In any case, if you could somehow change the AI so they build more melee troops that would be awesome.

Also agree with The_Nord on the long yari ashi. Give late ashigaru pikes!

The AI is set to recruit between 10-30% ranged units. This should be the norm. Don't know why it doesn't follow these settings.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

This mod looks interesting. When I get back to my gaming PC I will definitely try it out...

I have one question - how exactly do the pike&shot ashigaru work? Is that some kind of new breakthrough in unit making - by allowing modders to create composite units?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Not really. Soldiers can have two weapons. In pike & shot units they have muskets and pikes. At range the frontline of the unit shoots while the lines behind wield pikes. In close combat all soldiers switch to pikes. To do this I had to rearrange the animation files. There is a small glitch (before aiming the soldier will shortly switch to his pike) but other then that it works fine. Pike & shot units also have square formation available. It is not a dense square, but the open one from NTW. You have to make compromises.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Not really. Soldiers can have two weapons. In pike & shot units they have muskets and pikes. At range the frontline of the unit shoots while the lines behind wield pikes. In close combat all soldiers switch to pikes. To do this I had to rearrange the animation files. There is a small glitch (before aiming the soldier will shortly switch to his pike) but other then that it works fine. Pike & shot units also have square formation available. It is not a dense square, but the open one from NTW. You have to make compromises.

That's fine! A really smart idea if you ask me.

[RexJayden]

I just have to say that the AI and its abilities are much more manageable now based on the AI programming you have done. For once its as though they are in my shoes and I feel as though we are on an even playing field now. I destroy an army of theirs and then they have to rebuild (over time not immediately) just like the player has to do. Thanks for the great work!!

[ninja51]

Im loving the mod so far but I have a few quick suggestions


The unit taking the place of the katana samurai was given a bow, which I suppose is pretty alright, maybe even historicly accurate for all I know, but the problem is they dont really function as katana samurai anymore. The unit buildable by the bow dojo is actually better in every single stat, and the cost isnt so much higher that there's a reason to actually buy the katana samurai.

This is more personal preferance, but on the whole I feel that samurai are pretty weak. Battles zoom by for the most part, and samurai dont really act as the professional soldiers/master warriors they are supposed to be. Moral is the deciding factor in this battle system, that leads to huge routes pretty quick along in battles instead of large hard fought battles.

I cant seem to build any more markets or ninja dens than my first ones. I remember reading somthing about it on a page here, but I recall it saying thats not an issue and ill be able to make more later. I havnt been able to so far, but hopefully time will proove me wrong.

Finally I suggest making the general's bodyguard stat upgrades much better than their vanilla values. Its kinda pointless to loose a superior general and technology boost for +4 attack.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Thanks for the feedback!

The daisho samurai (former katana samurai) is the basic samurai unit you get at the start of the game. They can deal with the ashigaru. Next in the line are the yari samurai. The daikyu household samurai is an elite unit (as all household units) with better stats but smaller. They also have a tighter cap.

I kept battles more dynamic on purpose. Later in the campaign battles will last longer with more experienced units and all the bonuses they get from buildings and tech. I will also increase the moral bonus units get from experience in the next version (+1 moral per level instead of +1 moral every other level).

In TROM3 you can only have one second level market and sake den (same with buddhist temple and zen temple). As soon as you upgrade your market or sake den to 3rd level you can build another 2nd level one. That way the player can not spam markets and the AI is forced to build more diverse.

RotS has a much better general skill tree I agree. I will look into it when I find the time.

[ninja51]

And so I am silenced Thanks for the responces, now im off to play more TROM!

EDIT: Mostly silenced After playing the crap out of the mod I've come across two more issues that were a bit less personal preferance.

The AI tends to create huge amounts of arrow units, a problem I understand is from vanilla.Im talking about full stacks with 4 yari ashigaru and 15 yumi ahigaru, almost making up every factions armies.

Also, after finally getting far enough to recruit some heroes, the issue of elites not really being so elite showed up big time again. So much so that i'm going to go in with PFM and tweak the defence stats of everything in hopes that that will help. My unit of ninja masters kinda got their asses handed to them by a single unit of yari ashigaru. Im talking about like 50% losses here and only 30 or so % of the the ashigaru dead.



Also I went through and lowered the research times of most techs pretty substantially, and it works out so much better for me. With all your new techs, after half the whole game time is done I had maybe half of the civic tree done and the first 3 military techs. Even in vanilla one only starts getting the full experiance near the end of the game, with the new techs one wont ever even reach the point where they can recruit heroes and have large castles. Having the research times even lower than vanilla is perfect for me, makes it so much better.

[Loger]

Would it be possible to create more realistic sieges? F/e greatly increased climbing times with bigger fatigue penalties? Or perhaps alltogether removing climbing for all but special ninja units?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

@Ninja51

Thanks again for your valuable feedback!

The recruitment imbalance in favour of ranged units shouldn't happen. I have an idea what could cause this and can hopefully fix it. What version of TROM3 are you playing? Could you attach a zippped savegame for me to check?

TROM3 has no superunits, that is true. But a more expensive unit should always beat a cheaper unit with similar weapons, so Ninja masters should not loose against yari ashigaru of same experience. Will check that. However, Ninja masters are not really a frontline unit. Their usefullness lies in their special abilities like beeing able to setup anywhere and stay hidden.

Lowering the research costs is a good idea.

EDIT: Some quick single tests:

Nimja masters vs yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 100 dead ashigaru and 5 dead ninjas; ninjas win
Nimja masters vs tae-yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 150 dead ashigaru and 20 dead ninjas; ninjas win
Nimja masters vs nagae-yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 130 dead ashigaru and 9 dead ninjas; ninjas win

@Loger

The sieges would be realistic if the CAI would starve out castles instead of sacrificing all it's units in fruitless assaults. Making these assaults even more difficult only hurts the AI more. Hopefully we see further AI improvements with the next patch.