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Thread: improved pikemen modification, reduced radius.

  1. #1
    Valiant Champion's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default improved pikemen modification, reduced radius.

    EDU for version 1.5.1

    This contains all the changes for pikemen to have the reduced radius which makes them keep formation much better.

    EDU for version 1.5.1


    give alex gold rep for rediscovering the hidden radius and height values carried over from rtw

    You must get past some of the posts before you get to the main part of the thread dealing with radius and height values in the soldier line of EDU entries.

    after reading this first post and reveiwing the sample EDU you can skip on down to post 32 and check from there on what this thead is about.

    I will on a regular basis update the example of a pike edu entry for the republican guard pikemen as a model to go by to mod the other pike units in the call of warhammer mod or for that matter any total war mod.

    The ignorantly overlooked Radius and height values may have the potential to open an entirely new dimension to balancing units in the game. Even if the reality only improves things a little to me its worth exploring.


    type Republican Guard Pikeman
    dictionary Republican_Guard_Pikeman
    category infantry
    class spearmen
    voice_type light
    banner faction banner_Ricco
    banner holy crusade
    soldier Republican_Guard_Pikeman, 50, 0, 4, 0.25, 2
    mount_effect horse +4, camel +4
    attributes sea_faring, can_withdraw, pike, mercenary_unit
    move_speed_mod 0.9
    formation 0.4, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square, phalanx
    stat_health 1, 0
    stat_pri 13, 5, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, spear, 0, 0.6
    stat_pri_attr spear, long_pike, spear_bonus_8
    stat_sec 7, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 0, 1
    stat_sec_attr no
    stat_pri_armour 10, 4, 0, metal
    stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
    stat_heat 2
    stat_ground 0, -2, -5, -2
    stat_mental 11, disciplined, trained
    stat_charge_dist 40
    stat_fire_delay 0
    stat_food 60, 300
    stat_cost 1, 1500, 300, 100, 100, 1500, 1, 550
    armour_ug_levels 5
    armour_ug_models Republican_Guard_Pikeman
    ownership slave, hre, papal_states, portugal, spain, scotland, sicily, milan, venice, saxons, byzantium, france, kalmar_union
    recruit_priority_offset 30

    orange is the hidden radius value

    , blue is the hidden height value

    , green is spacing width,

    1.8 spacing depth is kept to maintain second rank standoff solution.

    increased attack (green too )to swiss pikemen, aventuros value of 13

    increase mass (yellow) to 4 to protect against enemy charge bonus kills (a bug where an enemy charge is transferred through the pike and kills the pikemen even though the enemy is still at the end of the pike)
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; January 25, 2013 at 04:08 PM. Reason: simpler title

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  2. #2
    The Holy Pilgrim's Avatar In Memory of Blackomur
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    What's this?

    A tighter formation for pikemen? Do they use a secondary weapon more efficiently now?


  3. #3
    paradamed's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    Im curious too. What is it supposed to do?

  4. #4
    Valiant Champion's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    try it. It must have all the settings exactly like it shows including the extra soldier behind the ;

    or just add............ ; name of soldier........... next to the soldier and mass line

    modify spacing ................0.5, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 3.................. on your formation line

    of the pike unit you want to give the modification to

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    or just check out the tutorial

    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=519849
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; January 29, 2012 at 07:34 PM.

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  5. #5
    Reiksfart's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    This is great info, thanks for sharing.

    Will run more tests later but so far looks as though we now have fixed pikes. Huge improvement, anyway.

  6. #6
    Valiant Champion's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    the descr_projectiles will need at least a radius of 0.1 on all projectiles cause the pikemen dont have a radius themselves. That was the only way to crack the 0.8 minimum. I don't see a problem with this although I may be corrected at a later date. who knows.

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  7. #7
    Reiksfart's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    The only problem with the fix is it makes pikes supremely powerful, even when they switch to secondary weapon. Watching them all pile up and swing their weapons through each other is quite a sight, but is way overpowered. I just watched nuln pikes slaughter khorne chosen in this way.

    Going to take a lot of testing and balancing, but pikes are certainly fixed now.

    Damn it, I already can't keep myself working on one part of my campaign, keep switching between models, EDU, other coding, splash screens and main screens. Now this!

    Thanks though.

  8. #8
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    I just now realized what you are talking about. I have been testing alcatani using swords only against graveguards and they utterly slaughtered them. I am thinking two things. One is that they are harder to hit. The other is that they do not have the radius of their comrade to hold them back so they can literally pile up on the enemy while the enemy cannot. I tried reducing the attack on secondary to 2 but they are still killer. I tried the melee delay at 1.85 , 3 and 4 but I don't think it is working. I wonder what the hard code setting for melee stat is. It could be I am using a too high number and its going back to 1 as a default.

    If this can't be resolved than I guess it will be a uber mod for pike lovers only.

    out of spearwall as the enemy numbers decrease the pike unit continually piles on more and more til its the entire regiment making hits on one enemy soldier.

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  9. #9
    Reiksfart's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    I've balanced nuln pikemen down so they lose to chaos warriors of khorne. If anyone looked at their new stats they would not want to take them....but they are still overpowered because they can be totally surrounded and still fight as effectively as if they were just fighting from the front. So I've had to lower morale and discipline down to low. It's one of those units which no stat formula can work with. A few of those units in CoW because of differing animations.

    This is all testing with guard mode off, even though in my submod spears start with guard mode on, I need to test with off since the player can disable that.

    Will test against chaos knights in a while. Fingers crossed the result is good enough or it's back to square one.

  10. #10
    Kolwen's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    I have been testing it and it's seems not effective for me with the guard mode enabled. They just stand not attacking until they lose the formation. Strange :\

  11. #11

    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    Valiant Champion, can you upload video with radiusless units?

  12. #12
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    one thing a person can do is drop their defence significantly. I haven't tried this yet but it may help.

    the more you weaken the swords and the defense the more easily the spearwall falls apart until you are left with a spearwall that breaks down as fast as vanilla.

    I suppose that resistance to death and the ability to attack well in the secondary animation helps to keep the pike wielding men to hold on to their pikes longer.
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; January 30, 2012 at 11:24 AM.

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  13. #13
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    HA HA. Now I am getting somewhere!

    you can still have a radius but you can make it smaller, the possiblities are endless.

    try this

    DO NOT NEED to modify descr_projectiles (you wont need to)cause as the unit now has a radius a bullet without mass can hit it.

    -----------------------------------------------------------

    modify these two lines in your edu entry for republican guard

    tab space not included just a place holder as I can't create proper format in my post

    soldier (tab space)Republican_Guard_Pikeman, 50, 0, 1.5, 0.25


    formation (tab space)0.5, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square, phalanx

    or even smaller such as

    0.2 on the soldier line

    and 0.4 on the file space
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; January 30, 2012 at 04:13 PM.

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  14. #14
    Reiksfart's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    Very nice Champ.

    No time to test fully right now but looks like you have found the solution.

  15. #15
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    Default Cat in the Hat musket and pike trick

    was not topic related
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; February 02, 2012 at 09:26 PM.

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  16. #16

    Default Re: Cat in the Hat musket and pike trick

    You amaze me as always!
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    Oct 9 '09 Quote:
    "I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws."
    Mike Simpson, Creative Director at The Creative Assembly

  17. #17

    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    How could i disable secondary weapon of pikeman?
    What changes in edu must be done for that?
    CoW (Rage of the Dark Gods)team
    From Russia with love.

  18. #18
    Valiant Champion's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    Quote Originally Posted by Timorfeys View Post
    How could i disable secondary weapon of pikeman?
    What changes in edu must be done for that?


    and ruin your teams work on the swords they use? Plus you would never be forgiven for removing the great swords from the nuln pikemen.

    For a moment don't think of the pikemen. Can you imagine units like ogres and bestigors that don't bunch up when fighting? adjusting the radius to make them remain almost as spread out as their formation setting?. Of course you would have to rebalance them.

    There is also a height setting after the radius value. It is set at 1.7 by default.

    Timorfey may already know about the radius and height values in the soldier line. It is mentioned on the EDU tutorial of Rome total war and Barbarian invasion. However it is never mentioned in the tutorial for mtw2.

    http://mjollnir.twcenter.net/forums/...1344#Breakdown

    soldier unit_model, soldiers, extras, mass (,radius,height)Details of unit models.
    [unit_model] : Unit's model type as referenced in descr_model_battle.txt. Note that the skeleton scale and its associated animations in the DMB file both significantly affect the combat effectiveness and thus value of the unit. This is done mainly in three ways:
    the unit model's scale improves combat effectiveness as it gets bigger. A way to balance this (though not perfectly safe) is through the hidden parametre 'height' that lies in the soldier line. [see below]
    the unit skeleton attack animations also improve unit effectiveness as they get faster. The way to counter this effect is the min_delay_between_attacks stat, which lies in the stat_pri line [see below]
    the unit skeleton animations also help combat effectiveness, when they have big(ger) impact deltas. The way to counter this is through lethality [see related information]
    [soldiers] : Number of unit's soldiers in medium unit-size settings. Can't be lower than 6 or higher than 60. General units have a max of 31 men.
    [extras] : Number of animals attached to unit again in medium unit-size settings.
    [mass] : Collision mass of the unit. Units with big mass values can "push" their enemies harder and break through enemy lines easier and also hold against enemy pushing better. The mass ratio is not fixed, in that a 1-mass soldier will push a 0.1-mass enemy much easier than a 10-mass soldier would push a 1-mass enemy. In the case of mounted units this stat is of no importance, as it is the mount's mass that's taken into account (see descr_mount.txt).
    [radius](may not be visible) : Hidden attribute radius of the unit. The default value is 0.4. It's the area surrounding each single soldier that he "occupies" as the engine perceives it (not visually that is). Small radius makes a unit fight better, in that it allows soldiers to fight more closely to each other, resulting in more men of the small-radius unit fighting against fewer of the enemy one's.
    [height](may not be visible) : Hidden attribute height of the unit. The default value is 1.7. It represents the height of the unit's soldiers (again not visually). Little is known concerning the exact way that height functions, but it is known that the higher it's value, the weaker the unit.
    The radius can also be set basically to match the apparent size of a soldier. ... and The height to match the models height (both radius and height will affect balancing though)

    goblins would be more dangerous despite low attack/defence. Ogres and big orcs would be less dangerous despite high attack/defence. You would need to rebalance many units if you introduce the radius value.

    Maybe you may not want to mess with radius at all , Timorfey, but you have to admit it is an interesting subject.
    Last edited by Valiant Champion; February 01, 2012 at 08:11 AM.

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  19. #19
    Reiksfart's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: something very VERY interesting, on pikes.

    This is outstanding. Why was this not common knowledge before?

    I don't know if you remember in another thread I said orc spears were completely useless and had to triple their attack for them to be effective (and overpowered vs some). They are now fixed using this without adding any extras to the stat formula I use. Same goes with all the other orcs, which needed extra tweaking to reach the correct performance levels. There are many others also which this should work for.

    I scrapped the auto guard mode on for spears and instead changed animations to remove the formation spread. Too hard to balance for both guard mode on and off. With the new tweaks to formation, I think you are right when you say the possibilities are endless. How about auto shield wall for some units without using the ability. AI doesn't use these abilities, but now they can be given a very tight formation with lower radius to enhance their formation and staying power.

    Increased workload and more dev time, but the end result is going to be very nice. Thanks for sharing, and more reps if I can rep you again.

  20. #20

    Default Re: Cat in the Hat musket and pike trick

    Interesting. I've tried tricks like this, but never thought to take them -out- of phalanx mode.

    What happens if infantry charges the line, though? Do the pikes get massacred or...

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