Samurai Retainers w/Bow capability

[Charsi]

Inspiration for this mod came from here.

I know i've asked for this in the past myself, so I figure, why not simply figure out how to do it. This is going to be my next miniproject; a tiny mod that adds ranged capability to Samurai Retainers, nothing more.

Here is what i'm thinking in terms of unit stats. If you look at Katana Samurai, and then look at Samurai Retainers, it becomes apparent that Samurai Retainers are actually slightly better, but numerically far smaller. So in order to calculate what a balanced guideline for bow stats for this unit would be, I need to find the guideline for their sword statistics.

I found the guideline for Samurai Retainers in Shimazu Katana Samurai.

Shimazu Katana Samurai:
attack 14
charge 15
cavalry bonus 0
defense 5
armor 5
morale 10
speed 4

Samurai Retainers:
attack 14
charge 15
cavalry bonus 0
defense 5
armor 5
morale 10
speed 4

Evidently Samurai Retainers are modelled on the clan specialty unit, not the vanilla unit everyone else can build. So it follows that we should use, as a baseline, the stats from the clan who specializes in Bow Samurai as a base for the ranged side of the new Samurai Retainer.

Chosokabe Bow Samurai:
attack 7
charge 9
cavalry bonus 0
range 150
accuracy 50
reloading 70
ammunition 20
defense 3
armor 4
morale 8
speed 4

Therefore....

New Samurai Retainer Proposal: (merger of Shimazu and Chosokabe units)
attack 14
charge 15
cavalry bonus 0
range 150
accuracy 50
reloading 70
ammunition 20
defense 5
armory 5
morale 10
speed 4

I expect to be working on this in the next few days. These new Retainers will be able to defend their fortress so you can't just cheese your way in with one unit or pick them off trivially with bow ashigaru. They may not put up an epic fight but they will do better than stand there and die, I hope.

Note: this mod will not make them recruitable. If it did I would nerf them

If this does work out I am tempted to alter garrisons such that they are 1x Retainers, 2x Retainers, and so on... this would be a separate pack.

[Charsi]

Version 1 released. Unfortunately the ranged stats dont display in game, not sure how to fix that yet.

This mod gives Samurai Retainers the ranged capability of (Chosokabe) Bow Samurai. They retain the melee capability and armor of (Shimazu) Katana Samurai - one unit of Retainers can now easily withstand a Bow Ashigaru squad.

I would change the garrisons but it doesn't seem trivial to edit with PFM.

(attachment removed)

[Confucius]

Version 1 released. Unfortunately the ranged stats dont display in game, not sure how to fix that yet.

This mod gives Samurai Retainers the ranged capability of Bow Samurai. They retain the melee capability and armor of Katana Samurai - one unit of Retainers can now easily withstand a Bow Ashigaru squad.

I would change the garrisons but it doesn't seem trivial to edit with PFM.

Sounds interesting. This makes it a bit harder for the attacker during a siege.

[Charsi]

A good way to test the impact of this mod is to start a new Oda campaign. Immediately attack Saito with just a General. Move the rest of your army northeast, away from Owari so you are besieged by Rebels on the same turn and only have Retainers for defense.

Note: the battle AI is still pretty dumb about repositioning ranged units if you simply run around their field of fire... can't do anything about that I guess

[Jace11]

The missing ranged stats cropped up with my bow general mod for the campaign too. No idea why it doesn't show up, if you find out, let us know please.

[Charsi]

I suspect/think/hope that units are classified as melee or ranged someplace, and that by changing said classification I can change the tooltip. However, if you haven't found out where, i'm not very likely to either. I'll take a peek in a few db files but i'm not hopeful.

I'm also concerned changing said classification might cause the AI to behave differently towards the unit, ie, if it thinks Retainers are ranged, it will just charge them with melee, which might be a dumb idea. They are quite good melee fighters too.

I didn't realise how powerful that armor stat was; a squad of Bow Ashigaru (Rebels) sat there and shot a couple of volleys at the Retainers who I left standing in the open, and it took me a bit to realize it. When I did, I went to move them, and noticed none of them had died. If you go toe to toe with a squad camped outside, you will basically pick off the Ashigaru and take virtually no losses due to a combination of fortification and high armor values. They do steady, consistent damage and their balancing factor is small numbers (and inability to be recruited; they'd dominate the campaign otherwise).

In Radious' garrison mod he details how he made alterations to the garrisons and this was very helpful. It just requires an extra step converting the files from db -> text and back. My next miniproject will be to change all of the garrisoned units over to a quantity of Samurai Retainers equal to the total number of vanilla garrisoned units. So a Fort will be 1 retainer, Stronghold 2 retainers instead of 1 retainer 1 yari garrison, Fortress 3, etc.. Castle will be something like 5, and Citadel might be as high as 8 or even 10. I forget the exact amounts. Can probably expect that minimod to take a bit longer because I have other priorities eating away at my time.

Note: the imba "have fun" urge in me really wants to up retainer squad size or give them some special abilities, like Hold Firm. But I think increasing the squad size of a super unit will just discourage players from putting real armies in castles to defend; if the auto-spawned guys do a better job of it than your own army, why bother, right?

[AnimaMea]

I think a multi purpose defence unit would be perfect, reflects the fact that any castle has ample stores of weapons for use...maybe not stand and fight, as defending units tend to stand too long anyway, but how about grenades (I've heard ninjas have them?)

[Charsi]

I think I can only give a unit one ranged attack. One thing I did contemplate is giving the Retainers a massive amount of ammunition (significantly more than any other unit) to reflect the stockpiling of arms of a fortress under siege. Or possibly giving them a replenishment aura similar to that building on the campaign map that replenishes ammo.

Problem is either option becomes unrealistic when you are besieged and take the Retainers out of the castle and into the field.

Hold Firm isn't the same as Stand and Fight. Stand and Fight increases General's aura radius and increases attack rate and rate of fire of units in it. Hold Firm is a hero ability; it freezes morale (preventing morale shocks) for themselves and 3 nearby units and increases defensive capabilities. It's a defensive buff, which makes sense for the defenders of a fortress.

Edit: The more I think about it the more I think the safest move is to leave everything as is for now.

[spicykorean]

I think that increasing their ammo would be consistent since they only spawn as garrison and can't be recruited.

[Charsi]

After a bit more playtesting I definately dont want to buff them further. They already make the Shimazu start quite hard (as the province next to Shimazu spawns with a Bow + Retainers in the fort, and reinforcements on top of that). Instead of facerolling my way to victory I had to storm the fort and take significant losses.

Anything above basic Fort level spawns with Retainers, Yari Ashigaru and towers. The addition of ranged capability to the Retainers, and Yari in strongholds and above, make taking these rather unpleasant. On the flip side if you happen to have a Stronghold, you can defend very adequately with just the garrison.

[Charsi]

Battle report!

I was mucking around as Otomo and decided to leave a city undefended to test if the Retainer_Bow mod was compatible, which it is. In the process, I achieved the most astounding victory:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/55...AA4296A65FCC9/

Shoni (AI) - 720 deployed, 569 lost, 151 remaining, 130 kills
Otomo (me) - 195 deployed, 137 lost, 58 remaining, 418 kills

That's right.. the garrison under my command held off an AI assault of 720 men. That's defeating 3:1 odds. This was a level 2 Stronghold so the garrison is 1 Retainer + 1 Yari Ashigaru and the fort comes with two archery tower emplacements. I must say, I never expected this to happen.

A quick recap of the battle: they attacked from one direction, hoping to storm the wall. My retainers picked off a good number of the Yari units before they reached the wall and only suffered minor losses from enemy Bow Ashigaru (approx 5 deaths out of 45). I pulled my retainers back behind a YA spearwall set up within the control circle of a tower.

Basically from then on it was murder. Most of my losses were the enemy raining arrows on my defensive spearwall, which took massive casualties given it's tight formation. Essentially it was just turtle and hold the towers, and grind them down. They died on my spears, or were picked off by my towers and my retainers.

I hadn't researched extra ammunition so my Retainers ran out of ammo after at most 2-3 volleys after the enemy came over the walls, whereupon they simply joined the melee. Combined the two forces plus the defensive emplacements (which are unaltered from vanilla) routed four Shoni Yari Ashigaru squads in succession, and then I pulled back and away from the incoming arrows, forming my Yari up behind the Tenshu and waited for the enemy Bow Ashigaru to scale. As soon as they climbed I rushed my men out from behind the Tenshu and set up a spearwall at the base of the tower again.

Finally it was a simple matter of waiting for the AI general to do his usual stupid "my army's routed? I think i'll take on the whole castle myself!" routine. Which he did, and he died to my Yari with Retainers sweeping in to take his honor guard from behind.

And this is without improving Samurai Retainers any further (no ammo buff, no Hold Firm ability). They may be simply okay in the smallest scale fort, but once you move up just one tier, being able to whittle an approaching army down and huddle around defensive emplacements can see a massively outnumbered force thrown back.

[Charsi]

I have now checked and can confirm that this mod is compatible with the RotS patch. Better late than never, I suppose. Please find attached an update which was loaded + saved under PFM 1.7.5.

[wilber6150]

Does this just get downloaded into the data file?

[Charsi]

Yes, place the pack in your /data folder.