Detailed Changelog For STIM

[Silven]

-----Version 3.3 Has Been Released!!-----
(May 23 2014)

This release is save game compatible, but some changes won't be seen until a new campaign is started.


-Tweaked Major Faction Autobattle Script.

The bonuses applied during Major Attacker vs. Minor Defender were reduced.

The bonuses applied during Minor Attacker vs. Major Defender were increased.

The bonuses applied during Rome vs. Major Defender were reduced.

The bonuses applied during Major Attacker vs. Rome were increased.

Overall, these changes serve to make Major Factions hold any territories they already have much more reliably, while making their rate of expansion through acquiring new territories occur slightly slower compared to 3.2.

-Series of Unit Balance Adjustments to make the differences between low quality units and high quality units not such a huge gap.

These changes will help to prevent the issue of a single unit unrealistically decimating several lower quality units. The intended logic behind these changes is to enforce the idea that at a certain point, skill stops meaning anything when you're simply outnumbered.

-Standardized Unit Health by slightly increasing HP of units with low health and slightly decreasing HP of units with high health.

-Reduced Melee Defense Stat of all Hoplite-Classed Units. These guys had really high defense values, especially in phalanx formation, and below average attack values leading to fights taking longer than intended.

-Reduced Melee Attack stat of all cavalry with values above 60. The highest value was 79, it is now 60.
-Reduced Melee Attack stat of all infantry with values above 50. The highest value was 76, it is now 60.

-Reduced Melee Attack stat of high quality Elephants. The highest value was 64, it is now 56.

-Reduced Morale of Elephants rated at 65 down to 60.

-Very small buff to Praetorian Guard so their stats are no longer identical to Praetorians.

-Slight buff to Egyptian Infantry so they are no longer just as useless as garrison mobs. Slight cost increase to match.

-Added "Bonus vs. Large" and "Bonus vs. Infantry" stat to all unit card info panels so their strengths and weaknesses are now more transparent to the player.

In vanilla there are an insane amount of units with a bonus in one area that isn't listed on the info card.
This could have potentially led the player to believe that if a bonus wasn't listed, then no bonus exists.
Now you'll know exactly how effective that cavalry unit with spears is going to be against that cavalry unit with swords

-Minor Tweak to Kill Rates.

Charge damage slightly reduced and melee combat hit chance slightly increased.

-Reduced all Champion Unit Training XP Bonus Traits by half.

The base effect was already cut in half, but I forgot to reduce these modifiers as well.

-Removed Greek Slingers from the unit roster of The Seleucids.

Vanilla gave them access to both Greek and Eastern Slingers, resulting in redundant recruitment lists and oversized garrisons.

-Minor reduction to run speed of ranged cavalry.
-Slight increase to run speed of very heavy infantry.
-Increased spacing of all infantry units to reduce blobbing.
-Added small food production to Macedon Horse Pens.
-Slight Increase to Naval Replenishment Rates.
-Increased the cooldown period of random disasters (flood, fire, earthquake) from 12 turns to 20 turns.

[Silven]

-----Version 3.4 Has Been Released!!-----
(May 28 2014)


This release is fully compatible with the new Getae Free LC released by CA, and the Pirates and Raiders DLC should you decide to purchase it.


-All of the additions made by the FLC and DLC have been modded to follow the same rules as the rest of the mod.

(Build Times, Research Times, Faction Income, Unit Stat Balances, etc etc.)

-Several Kill Rate Tweaks.

Managed to finally figure out how to increase the rate at which "Formation Attack" units kill each other without significantly increasing the rate at which units without the "Formation Attack" kill each other.
This was something I've tried to figure out for quite some time, and I finally found the edits I needed to make.
Note that Formed Attack vs. Formed Attack will still take longer than Formed Attack vs. Free Attack, which will in turn take longer than Free Attack vs. Free Attack.
But the difference in kill rate won't be so large now. Instead of something like 20 minutes vs 12 minutes, it will be more like 18 minutes vs 15 minutes.

Given this breakthrough, Hoplite Shield Armor values returned to their previous values.

Slight decrease to charge damage.

Slight increase to flank damage.

-Very Minor reduction to high quality arrow damage.
-Very Minor reduction to high quality javelin damage.
-Standardized low quality javelin damage.
-Moderate increase to Artillery Error% and Miss Rates.
-Slight reduction to very high armor values.

Values above 60 reduced by 5 and values above 100 reduced by 15.

-Slight increase to time required to move through all the fatigue levels.
-Increased Defense Penalty and Reduced Attack Penalty from being fatigued to prevent fights taking longer and longer as units tire.
-Reduced Agent Action Success Percentages.

The likelihood of a hostile action against you being successful will still increase as you increase the campaign difficulty, and
the likelihood of actions that you make against the AI being successful will still decrease as you increase the campaign difficulty.
So be cognizant of this when you choose your difficulty.

-Changed all of the Season Effects to values that make more sense.

People mad that it's Spring and indifferent to a dry scorching Summer? No more!
Dry summers improving agriculture and Temperate Springs decreasing agriculture? Not any more!

-Significant Reduction to "Not Quite Right" trait popping up in Roman generals and agents.

[Silven]

-----Version 3.41 Hotfix-----
(May 28 2014)

I finally managed to track down and fix the bug that would sometimes cause Legionaries to no longer be able to be recruited, even if you had the required tech and buildings.

This bug was also responsible for Garrison Sizes sometimes becoming much smaller as a result of Legionaries and Vigiles no longer being included in the Garrison list.

This was a really tricky bug to hunt down because it would only show up after closing the game and then attempting to load a save that was made after researching the tech you needed to upgrade to Legionaries. A huge thank you to everyone who reported this bug, I almost gave up looking for it after trying to recreate it for the past week.

STIM 3.41 is a hotfix that everyone should download immediately to correct the bug, as it will effect the AI as well and therefore Rome's performance on the campaign map.
Unfortunately the hotfix will not correct the problem if you're attempting to load a save that has been made after the tech has already been researched, so you will need to either roll back to a save that was made before researching the tech, or start a new campaign.


Sincerest apologies!

-----Version 3.42 Hotfix-----

Second hotfix posted to correct the inability to play as any of the new Balkan Culture factions.

[Silven]

-----Version 3.5 Has Been Released!!-----
(Aug 2 2014)


This release is fully compatible with CA Patch Live14, and I see no reason it shouldn't be save-game compatible if you are upgrading from Version 3.42.

-Updated To Work Perfectly With CA Patch Live14.

This is pretty much all this update does. Thankfully, it would seem most of the updates provided by CA in this patch were all hardcoded changes. So there wasn't too much that needed to be done in the DB or with scripts. There were a couple bugfixes that CA implemented, but in classic CA fashion, some of their "fixes" inadvertently broke other stuff without them realizing it, I'm sure.
Just one example: They corrected a couple cases of being able to recruit a certain unit from tier 2 and 4 buildings, but not tier 3 buildings. But in fixing one unit, they forgot to give them new freakin keys, and gave the same problem to a different unit. Stuff like this only occurred a few times, but not to worry, I went ahead and fixed it.

-Copied Over A Few Minor Unit Balance Changes Made By Patch14.

All this stuff really was minor. Just copied the changes over for consistency.

-Reduced Cavalry Ability To Disengage A Unit Without Suffering Casualties.

Patch 14 makes it so you're guaranteed to get slaughtered if you even think about disengaging. STIM 3.42 was really forgiving.
So STIM 3.5 is now somewhere in the middle.

-Reduced New Buffs to Balkan Sword/Falx/Rhomphaia Introduced By Patch14.

Apparently CA thought these weapons weren't already overpowered enough, and gave them insane bonuses Vs. Cav and Elephants.
STIM 3.5 reduces these buffs to more reasonable numbers.

-Reimported The New Startpos For Redundancy.

[Silven]

-----Version 4.0 Has Been Released!!-----
(Sep 28 2014)

This release is fully compatible with CA Patch Live15, also known as The Emperor Edition. STEP has also been updated to Version 1.4 for equal compatibility.

-Updated For Perfect Compatibility with EE.

STIM 4.0 will now work with all 4 major campaigns and DLC.
This includes Grand Campaign, Caesar In Gaul, Hannibal At The Gates, and Imperator Augustus.

---Battle Behavior
-Fatigue Thresholds increased by roughly 10%.

This will increase the amount of time required to progress to each stage of fatigue, for both becoming more tired and recovering.

-Morale Formula reworked to be more fluid, dynamic, and responsive.

This part is honestly too complicated to explain in detail. Just know that morale performance should behave more intuitively.

-Transport Ship ramming damage reduced even further.

Original STIM ranges were between 94 and 129. They now range between 30 and 60.

-Slight Reduction to Charge Kill Rates, particularly in Cavalry.

Cavalry charges were a little too effective. This change in combination with the melee hit chance change should help prevent hammer and anvil tactics becoming tedious.

-Slight Increase in Melee Hit Chances.
-Reduced Falx_Inf spacings by 0.1.

---Unit Adjustments
-Global Reduction to Elephant Hitpoints by 200.

Part of the long-requested Elephant nerf. Looking for feedback on this.

-Changed all Melee Infantry rank depths from values ranging from 6 to 8, to a global 6.

Specialty units like Ambushers and Mobs remain at wider values like 5 and 4.

-Changed all Cavalry rank depths from values ranging from 2 to 6, to a global 4.

Will make Cavalry performance more uniform and Charge impact wider.

-Ignored EE patch unit ability changes, as it got crazy with ability removals.

Classic CA knee-jerk reaction.
STIM will maintain its removal of magic abilities, while continuing to make standard formations available to a larger range of units that make sense to have them.
(Shield Screen, Shield Wall, Testudo, Cantabrian Circle, Flying Wedge, etc.)

-Global Increase to Melee Defence by 10 for every unit in the game.
-Increased Ammo Pool for Cheiroballistra, Scorpion Artillery, and Polybolos Artillery.
-Global Decrease to Charge Value by 10 for all Cavalry units.
-Global Decrease to Charge Value by 5 for all Elephant units.

---Weapon Adjustments
-Added 2 new bow types introduced by EE.

Updated these new bow types to follow the same rules in damage models, flaming arrow damage models, and effective ranges.

-Removed Balkan Sword Bonus Vs Cav, Elephants, and Infantry.
-Removed Falx and Rhomphaia Bonus Vs Infantry.
-Increased Falx and Rhomphais Bonus Vs Cav and Elephants by 5.
-Increased all Pike standard damage by 4.
-Decreased all Pike Bonus Vs Cav and Elephants to 5, as the Pike Wall formation carries its own large bonus.
-Increased Mounted Heavy Shot effective range from 100 to 105.
-Artillery damage and AP damage values shuffled according to EE changes.
-Artillery reload times adjusted according to EE changes. (times either remained the same or were made faster.)
-Precursor Javelins reload times reduced (made faster) from 40 to 15.
-Increased Javelin Bonus Vs Cav and Elephants from 0 to 5 for all except _light and _wooden javelins.
-All Shields Defense Value reduced by 5.

---Campaign Behavior
-Small adjustments to several seasonal effects.

Some effects that altered movement range changed to instead affect unit morale.
Public Order penalties and agriculture bonuses and penalties received small tweaks.

-All agent "Manipulate" action success rates reduced.

Levels 1, 2, and 3 down from 10, 20, and 30 percent chance, to 3, 6, and 9 percent chance.

-Reapplied hidden faction income bonus to include new factions and reduced effects to STIM values.

Original Vanilla values ranged from 250 to 2000. STIM values now range from 200 to 600.

-Added 19 New Major Factions to Major Faction Survival Script, across 3 different campaigns.

CiG has 4 new factions in this list, HatG has 5 new factions in this list, and EE has 10 new factions in this list.

-Removed rom_roxolani, rom_massagetae, and rom_scythia from Scripts Major Faction Array.
-Increased Script bonuses during the circumstance of Major Attacker Vs Minor Defender.
-Increased Script bonuses during the circumstance of Rome Vs Major Defender.
-Improved Campaign AI budget spending and allocation policies.
-Very small reduction to land replenishment rate.

---Mod Patching
-Several redundant tables that no longer serve a purpose removed.

Includes building effect tables that referenced old building chains and keys.
Includes building unlock order of units.
Includes trigger_effects table that adjusted Roman Mad trait probability.
In most cases, these tables were removed as CA implemented their own fix with the new building chains or adjustments.

-Reimported scripting.lua and startpos.esf to adjust zoom limits and Turns Per Year.
-Army Cap increase carried over to EE campaign.
-All Daughters of Mars FLC units (20 in total) updated and now included.
-Matched Technology Research Times to EE changes, carrying over STIM time increases. (35 techs in total).
-Updated over 100 units armour, weapons, animations, and shields to match EE.