RR/RC for Broken Crescent - RELEASED

[Rex Inanimatus]

That did the trick for me. I was looking for it in Imperial campaign and could not find it, so I did a cleaan install, but it is actually in base map Thanksalot!

[k/t]

Crap, I bungled the instructions there. I'll change them.

[Rex Inanimatus]

Started a new campaign and I must say it feels like an mayor upgrade. Found some minor issues for perfecting this mod.

1] Rajputs the Elephant Archer Prince (with the long name which I forgot to write down) can throw javelins before charge at least description say so.
2] towers on the walls are equiped with submachine guns, they fire with an insane rate, I experienced this with tall wooden wall don't know if this is also the case with other types of walls
3] poor Iranian archers have bow with missile value 1

[k/t]

1) They're throwing javelins and you don't want them to or they're not throwing javelins and you want them to?

2) Go to D:\SEGA\Medieval 2 Total War\mods\Broken_Crescent_kingdoms\data -> descr_walls.txt

Find the entries like this

level
{
stat 4, 0, average_war_arrow, 140, 70, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 0, 1
stat_attr area
shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING
fire_angle 90

; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms
fire_rate small 1250 2500
fire_rate normal 1000 2000
fire_rate large 750 1500
fire_rate huge 500 1000


Increase the numbers in red until you get the fire-rate you want. It looks like they're in milliseconds, so you should be able to get your desired fire-rate without too much trial and error.

3)

NOTE TO ALL PLAYERS:
If you find anything wrong or strange, let me know. However, before asking anything about unit stats or such, check the EDU, because I have written a detailed explanation of why the stats are what they are.

D:\SEGA\Medieval 2 Total War\mods\Broken_Crescent_kingdoms\data -> export_descr_unit.txt

The RC 2.0 MEDIEVAL.txt file in the first post explains all the stats of weapons and their modifiers, which will help you understand my calculations in the EDU.

[lamekupo]

Hi there, I had a question.

But first of all, I must commend you for having made such a great submod. Army compositions, both mine and the AIs, are a lot more realistic. Whereas in "vanilla" BC, I would be monotonously fighting with armies of elite units vs several weak spam armies from the AI, we're now fighting on more or less equal terms. Mercenaries also now figure heavily into my armies, whereas I would previously just consider them a waste of resources.

That said, what happened to AOR Nobles? I've read through the OP a few times, but couldn't find anything about it. As the ERE, I made a march on Kiev, as I usually do, in the hopes I could secure some Karakalpak Nobles for my wars in Anatolia. But upon taking, Kiev, they weren't in the recruitment menu.

What gives? Was this intentional or am I missing something? Supposing it is intentional, could you point me to which file I could change this in?

[Tankbustaz]

Is there any reason why the Chauhan Rajputs are unable to recruit anything in half of the Indian provinces?

[k/t]

I am glad you like it.

Karakalpak Nobles are Local units, thus recruitable from the Town Hall line of buildings. Did you have the proper level of Town Hall building?

This must be the cause, since you said "upon taking Kiev", and Kiev starts with a Council Chambers. Karakalpak Nobles are Elite, so they require City Hall.

###############################

An incomplete installation might do that. Or you didn't delete map.rwm. Or you didn't build the proper infrastructure.

[Tankbustaz]

Actually I did all three. I build barracks in all my big cities. Half of them only allow me to recruit militia while the others allow me to recruit the elite infantry.

[k/t]

the first time you said "are unable to recruit anything", now you say you can recruit Militia units. Which is it?

If you installed everything properly, then it's because you can only recruit your factional units in your homelands. The Chauhans and the Paramaras may be Indians, but that doesn't mean they get to recruit all their units in all of India. This was in Vanilla BC as well. Also,

Give me a list of which regions you can train all your good units in and which provide only Locals and I'll check the AOR hidden_resources.

[lekseus]

k/t, do slashing, piercing or blunt parameters in stat_pri line have any sense?
It seems, 90 as a basic minimum hit delay for twohanded axe is too small. This kind of axemen is too strong. In order to use such weapon soldiers, in addition to the weight and length of the axe, have to stay in wide formation. But this is a game (not an exact medieval warfare simulator), so if they use usual formation it should be compensate by something else.

[k/t]

"k/t, do slashing, piercing or blunt parameters in stat_pri line have any sense?"

Maybe, but I don't know for sure. I put them in because they might.

I intend to remove AP altogether at some point, and I will likely add 15 or 30 to attack delays of weapons that currently have it. However, weapons are made to be nimble and easily controlled, since taking too long to swing can get you killed, so even axes and maces and halberds are capable of more than 3 attacks a minute. You can watch some YouTube videos of re-enactors to see how quick they can be.

I modified the formations in my current EDU, but I haven't released the latest files because I haven't gotten them to work yet.

[napoleonic]

hey k/t is it possible to push RR/RC to be integrated with future Broken Crescent version? or at least as an optional feature like it was in SS? what does the team say about this matter?

[k/t]

I don't think they're interested. They have gamegeek doing stats according to their liking.

If I can get the stupid BMDB and animations to work, I'll be playing my version until 3.0 comes out, at which point I'll definitely make a submod for it.

[mAIOR]

hey there. Tried downloading the files but a blank page appears.

[Sanfran42]

mine too

[k/t]

Check post 156. I will add the links in the first post now.

[MIKE GOLF]

Try right clicking on the link and then then clicking, "save link as", that is what I had to do for the game updates so maybe it will work for you as well.

[mAIOR]

Another question and a suggestion, I like the mod a lot but I would like to get Castles back. Is there an easy way to do it? Also, Ports should give a larger trading bonus imho.

My suggestion is to tone arrows down. They are too big a killer against armoured targets in formation they should damage morale and fatigue not kill a lot of soldiers. Also, units should break faster than they do with this amount of casualties. Usually casualties on the loosing side amounted to 15%. 30% if it was a catastrophic defeat. They should rout and reorganise several times. This would make combat much more realistic. Also, fatigue should increase fast when running or in battle and decrease fast while stopped. I tend to look at fatigue as unit cohesion. This makes more sense to me

I will probably do some of these changes to my files over the time but overall lethality should be lowered overall.


Just my 5cts. Nice job.

[k/t]

There are some problems with attack and armour values, yes. Missiles do too much damage at close range and they are too accurate at long range. Casualties are too high, but that's because not enough of them recover at the end of the battle to represent the wounded who got patched up. The wounded should outnumber the dead significantly, but in the game it's the other way around. I don't know if the value of the modifier that controls how many "dead" recover after the battle can be changed other than by the general's traits and ancillaries. I will ask in the Mod Workshop. One way to stop the complete destruction of an army through the capture of routing units would be through adding a feature of Germanicu5's Really Bad AI - the ending of the battle as soon as all enemy units are routing. Pursuits didn't occur very often (not on a large scale, anyway), and battles in which an army was annihilated were very rare.

Yes, your suggestions would make battles more realistic, but there is no way to get the engine to do the things you want. Missiles can't damage stamina, I doubt they damage morale unless flaming, and I took flaming missiles out, and we can't change the rate at which stamina is lost and regained without giving the unit stamina traits, which will still not do what you want.

We could lower the morale for some units, but then it would be easier for the player to start a chain rout in the AI's army.

Keep me informed of other suggestions you have, because maybe we'll be able to simulate some of them even with the current engine. And tell me what changes you end up making and what effect they have on the game, in case you stumble on something that would make a good addition to RR/RC.

[mAIOR]

hmmm. My suggestions were more to lower the fatigue threshold all around (especially cavalry) making running extremely costly in terms of cohesion making them vulnerable to charges or attacks. It should recover quite fast as well when troops are standing still as to represent them reorganizing. Which stamina traits make units regain stamina faster? The idea is basically to force you to walk your armies to the battle location.

As for missiles, their effect should be more on the morale then. Casualties are way too high especially for cavalry. Wounded men is not a good approximation imho since they recover instantly which is not correct either. combat is too deadly as it is. Especially missile combat. The melee, especially when troops were armoured, would be a series of brawls with pauses in the middle for reorganization (hence the need for reserves) with not so many casualties. Most casualties were in the running away part instead of actual combat.

In game, troops should rout and then reform and not flee the battle permanently (at least the first time) so that this back and forward flow and the commitment of fresh reserves is all important.

If you are asking for my opinion, take a sit. This could take a while...

I would give all units a mix of swords, axes, maces and other weapons (except to those that were famous for using one specific kind of weapon) to represent general melee weapons. Then I would reduced their attack value by half in order to reduce their lethality to acceptable levels. This change to general melee weapons is especially true among knights whose personal kit was, well, personal and varied greatly. Also, in the grand tactical scheme of things, there was no difference between a sword or an axe. Next, I would really tone arrows down so that they damage morale especially but would be quite noneffective against armoured soldiers carrying shields. I don't believe the Varingian guards with their heavy mail and scale mail overcoat would die to arrows easily (or at all unless a weak spot was hit) even at close range. Especially with the leather or linen vest underneath. Also, the felt that latin knights used to cover the armour was in itself a very good protection vs arrows and certainly took the brunt of the force instead of the double chain-mail hauberks. making a penetration very hard indeed.

So, missile troops, should kill unarmoured troops easily (albeit, they should have a bigger dispersion pattern) with lower casualties than they have now but lower their morale. Armoured troops in formation should be nigh-invulnerable to arrows with some morale effects as well. Crossbows should have more penetrating power (since they were shot in a direct LOS and not used to bombard like archery) and cause more damage but their low reload makes them more vulnerable vs cavalry and other heavy troops.

Horses so far die to quickly to arrows. Even unarmoured horses have tough meat and arrows would have trouble killing them quickly. Sure, large hails of arrows would kill horses but as it is, it's overkill.


For the other more interesting part:

right now, I'm trying to figure out the crusaders estate army organization but so far i found nothing. It appears that they organized themselves battle by battle. I would like to find the number of men in a company and how they divided command in battle. This way proper scaling could be introduced (1:4 is quite popular 1:2 might work here) and armies would have an actual meaning (25 knights would represent 100 since KoJ could muster 1,200 mounted knights at the mod start, that means KoJ should be able to maintain 12 25 men units of knights). Also, using a scale would mean that archery range and movement speed would be slowed down which would by itself make battles longer and make the map larger.

So far the only organizational figures I could find were from the East Roman Empire who were more professional in their troop organization than their fellow latin kingdom. I haven't even begun to look at the arab states as that will probably be even tougher to find english sources on.

I'm also interested in finding what each city in the middle east supplied in terms of knights and men at arms to the grand army.
For example, if we take the numbers from the movie Kingdom of heaven to be right, Ibelin would be able to supply 50 knights and 150 men at arms to the KoJ armies (roughly 4.2% of the knights and 1.3% of the men at arms of the kingdom).

So, all in all, it's just a small complete overall ^^

If this were to be implemented, keeping the army composition of the crusader army at hattin:

at a scale of 1:4 one could use 30 men unit for knights (groups of 120), 75 men unit for mounted sargents (300), 50 for light cavalry, 150 men for regular infantry (600 men) , 75 men unit for archers (300 men unit) and 50 men for dismounted knights (lower nobility and rich merchants) or elite infantry (200), in a 20 unit army you could use:

3 units of knights 90 (360) 5.2%
2 units of mounted sargents 150 (600) 8.5%
1 unit of light cav 50 (200) 2.8%
4 units of elite infantry 200 (800) 11.3%
7 units of regular infantry 1050 (4200) 59.5%
3 units of archers 225 (900) 12.7%

So, you'd get an army 1,765 strong which actually represented a 7,060 men army. Pretty cool. The crusader nation should be able to field 3 such full armies in their real economy which should also indicate how the economy holds vs it's real life counterpart

Still, this is just my nerdgasm and sadly, I lack the time to properly implement these changes myself on the short term. But since you seem to be a fellow open minded person, I decided to present my ideas for realistic combat here since two people are faster than one

So, as a big crunch on the post:
realistic scaling
fickle morale and fatigue levels
lower arrow lethality (by a lot!)
lower overall lethality especially when dealing with armoured troops.

With a 4:1 scale, one needs to consider that each soldier that dies means that 4 soldiers have actually died. Also, it means that each in game meter corresponds to 4 real life meters.

Mind you if you decide to take this up, it'll change your perception on how certain things work.

Realistic combat is fun. This is basically bringing tabletop rules to M2TW.


Ah, a small error in the stats, The Eastern Roman Empire Eugeneis unit has higher armour when compared to the latin knights. It should be the other way around since they were a lightish cavalry. Also, Mercenary Latin knights have 18 armour instead of the 16 of their faction counterpart.

Also, Hospitalier knights, Knights of St John and Teutonic knights have 18 armour while the similarly equiped templar knights and knights of Jerusalem have 24.


Well, enough for now I think ^^ Sorry for the long post.