RR/RC 2.0 Ultimate Edition, Patch #2 Released

[Jurand of Cracow]

I think the facex are the same as in 6.4, but I downloaded a set of six hi-res faces designed for use with vanilla units, they are really nice but have to figure out how to implement them.
Unit cards etc are all fixed.
Yeah forts are pretty broken, will remove the permanent ones. Maybe leave the buildable ones but BGR makes them insanely expensive, like 15000 or something, which is just silly, more than a damn citadel! That can be cut way back, any suggestions on price? Expensive enough to prevent general use anyway.

Hmm, I've checked SS6.4 and the faces are quite different - they're in the helmets, or just with hair. Very nice in comparison. This makes me wonder which version of the SS have you used... I also have a feeling the map is different in your version, but nicer in this case.

Prices of the forts - you may read my entry (I've provided the link just for this reason...), there's a proposal.

From the gameplay perspective, a fort should be more expensive than a citadel imho: you're building it in the place you need it, not just in a castle. It serves a strategic purpose.

[Point Blank]

Will check the faces.

I like the idea of island forts, but otherwise 20000 seems too high, you could recruit three full stacks of decent quality infantry for that, got to keep in mind the opportunity cost of each purchase.

[FFJean]

Dear Point Blank,
Thanks for your work and happy to see you back! I’ll try this latest mod as soon as I have finished my current EB2 campaign (Qart Hadast lol).
But I have one question, shouldn’t your mod be announced on first page? I just noticed it because MTW2K is still my fav TW, and I come to SS from times to times.
All the best anyway, and thanks for your work!
FFJean

[Point Blank]

Hi mate, yes it will be announced on page 1 after the next small patch is released in this thread today or tomorrow, and some people play it for a little while to catch anything else that needs attention. Then there are 4 mini-campaigns to complete for it and a Late Era campaign, followed by a historical Crusades campaign version.

[shadowtwinz]

what is Rex sicilicae trait ?
In my HRE playthrough i get this trait on nearly every general.

I found that this trait is related to Sicily faction but is obtainable randomly.

[Point Blank]

No idea, it might be from the KER submod.

[Jurand of Cracow]

what is Rex sicilicae trait ?
In my HRE playthrough i get this trait on nearly every general.

I found that this trait is related to Sicily faction but is obtainable randomly.

It's perhaps from the base SS as I have it in the SSHIP. As in many of the traits in the SS (or maybe SSHIP, I'm taking it from the SSHIP) - the description doesn't match the real in-game effect. However, at least in the SSHIP it seems to be reserved only for the Faction Leader

{RulerOfSicily_desc}Caesars and Caliphs once called this isle their own. Rule firmly and your people will be immortalized in Sicilian tradition as well.{RulerOfSicily_effects_desc}+1 Command for the ruler, for his admirals: +2 to movement points
{RulerOfSicily_gain_desc}He controls the realm of the Norman kings of Sicily.
{RulerOfSicily}Rex Siciliae

;------------------------------------------
Trait RulerOfSicily
 Characters family


 Level RulerOfSicily
   Description RulerOfSicily_desc
   EffectsDescription RulerOfSicily_effects_desc
   GainMessage RulerOfSicily_gain_desc
   Threshold 1 
 
   Effect Command 1 

;---------------------------------------------------------------
Trigger RulerOfSicily_venice_add
 WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd


 Condition FactionType venice
and IsFactionLeader
and I_SettlementOwner Palermo = venice
and I_SettlementOwner Naples = venice


 Affects RulerOfSicily 1 Chance 100

I think there's a moder in the SS team interested very much in Sicily. It's not logical though. I have my own idea how to use this trait in the future - you may see that in my project for the Crowns I've already think about "Maritime ambitions" ;-)

[Point Blank]

Wow your Crowns project looks amazing

[Jurand of Cracow]

Wow your Crowns project looks amazing

Thanks, PB.
Actually, the other projects - especially that on the Generals' Traits - are several times more work-intense, and also require much more analyses.

[Steward Denethor II]

This is from the vanilla game and not exactly what you are focusing on but it's an easy fix. The English family tree is wrong, Henry III is 42 and Edward Longshanks is 21, while in 1220 when the high campaign starts Henry was 13 and Edward wasn't born till 1239. I would not get rid of Longshanks even though he shouldn't be around because he is cool but if you made Henry a teenager and Edward a newborn and the current heir at the start that would be a lot closer to the reality.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I think the facex are the same as in 6.4, but I downloaded a set of six hi-res faces designed for use with vanilla units, they are really nice but have to figure out how to implement them.
Unit cards etc are all fixed.

Hi PB,
just to give you know and ask about Hungarian roster:
- both Hungarian Nobles and Hungarian Cavalry have awful pics (the latter look like scarecrows to me - just some rags on two poles (spine and hand) with this funny hat on)
- both units have also not really nice pics on the unit cards, especially the Nobles - the bows are somewhere in the air, not in the hands.
- building for the castles doesn't work for me (!?)
- Bosnian archers have pics almost indistinguishable from the Levy Archers.

Besides: Swabian Swordsmen wield two-handed swords - while wearing just padded armour or cloths (on the pic). Is it historical?

[Point Blank]

The Hungarian cav is a horrible model yes, and pics for that and the Nobles not great. There might be replacements in the Anatolian Principalities mod, will look.

I can’t get the castle building browser to work. Following advice from Gigantus I enabled it in one of the campaign files but no luck. It’s pretty much the only thing left on the list for the next patch/update.

I set the Swabians to have brigandine from memory, they are just a medium unit. Doppelsoldners wear heavier armor.

Some more updates:
- terrain penalties have been doubled so units like heavy cavalry will be at a greater disadvantage in forests for example
- some ME and Muslim units have -1 attack penalty to bladed weapons due to poorer quality metallurgy in factions from those regions
- Added 4 of karaislams very nice units to flesh out the Turkish High Era roster:
Medium javelin and mace
Medium missile archer with mace
Medium sword and shield
Medium 2H axe

Just remembered I have permission to.use some of the Magyar Mod units, so hopefully there will be replacements for some of ththe current cav units in there.

Also went through the EDU and made sure all units are available for Cuustom Battles in the correct era(s); many were incorrect or not available at all.

[Point Blank]

Think I’ll aim to get this patch/update out today or tomorrow, its done except for the Hungarian cavalry above, and make the focus of the next one the mini-campaigns plus new unit models. Actually the Turks are looking pretty good now, not many vanilla units left at all.

Finally fixed the issue of the Building Browser not working for Castles.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I set the Swabians to have brigandine from memory, they are just a medium unit. Doppelsoldners wear heavier armor.

Yes, but my question is: how historical it is for early and high eras? Doppelsoldners should be available only in the lat 15 century, or I am wrong?

Some more updates:
- terrain penalties have been doubled so units like heavy cavalry will be at a greater disadvantage in forests for example

This is a great news! What parameter is to be changed? (it's EDB or elsewhere?)

[Point Blank]

This is from the vanilla game and not exactly what you are focusing on but it's an easy fix. The English family tree is wrong, Henry III is 42 and Edward Longshanks is 21, while in 1220 when the high campaign starts Henry was 13 and Edward wasn't born till 1239. I would not get rid of Longshanks even though he shouldn't be around because he is cool but if you made Henry a teenager and Edward a newborn and the current heir at the start that would be a lot closer to the reality.

Thanks mate

[Point Blank]

Yes, but my question is: how historical it is for early and high eras? Doppelsoldners should be available only in the lat 15 century, or I am wrong?

This is a great news! What parameter is to be changed? (it's EDB or elsewhere?)

Yes they are late c15th. You are right, the Swabians certainly should not be available in Early Era, will fix. Doppelsoldners have an altered animation set (‘aggressive’, ie they push forward into the enemy formation more strongly, less large swings), stats, formation, x-radii etc to make them more targeted toward combating pike units.

Terrain penalties chaanged in the EDU, its defined for each unit depending on unit type and category, eg heavy cavalry, terrain type and unit origin. You can see the details at the end of the RC2.0 Ultimate guide, its systematic; you can double all the negative values but the positive bonuses are unchanged. As usual the goal is to make gameplay more tactical. Actually I updated them after noticing that in Vanilla some units like Mailed Knights had as much as a -10 penalty, so Vanilla can still be good for something haha.

I think you guys will like the next patch, it has all sorts of tweaks.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Yes they are late c15th. You are right, the Swabians certainly should not be available in Early Era, will fix. Doppelsoldners have an altered animation set (‘aggressive’, ie they push forward into the enemy formation more strongly, less large swings), stats, formation, x-radii etc to make them more targeted toward combating pike units.

Terrain penalties chaanged in the EDU, its defined for each unit depending on unit type and category, eg heavy cavalry, terrain type and unit origin. You can see the details at the end of the RC2.0 Ultimate guide, its systematic; you can double all the negative values but the positive bonuses are unchanged. As usual the goal is to make gameplay more tactical. Actually I updated them after noticing that in Vanilla some units like Mailed Knights had as much as a -10 penalty, so Vanilla can still be good for something haha.

I think you guys will like the next patch, it has all sorts of tweaks.

Swabians - yeah, but I recall that it was an important heavy unit for Poland and Hungary, iirc, as they didn't have access to heavy ones (in the SSHIP it's much better as there's access to heavy feudal infantry from the beginning). So think also about the gameplay...
BTW, it means that the Swabians should be gotten rid of also in the SSHIP.

Terrain penalties - so this will be significant? Those -3 for forest as we've got it in the SSHIP is too low?



BTW - what do you think about parameters "lock_morale" (you've described the effects, but what's your assessment?) and more-than-one health point?

[Point Blank]

Swabians - yeah, but I recall that it was an important heavy unit for Poland and Hungary, iirc, as they didn't have access to heavy ones (in the SSHIP it's much better as there's access to heavy feudal infantry from the beginning). So think also about the gameplay...
BTW, it means that the Swabians should be gotten rid of also in the SSHIP.

Terrain penalties - so this will be significant? Those -3 for forest as we've got it in the SSHIP is too low?



BTW - what do you think about parameters "lock_morale" (you've described the effects, but what's your assessment?) and more-than-one health point?

’Access to heavy feudal infantry from the beginning’ is ahistorical, unless you are talking about units with light mail and a padded jack underneath such as Norman or Mailed foot knights (which are available for some factions from the start), because heavier mail did not see general use until the early c13th. Light MAA/Swordsmen are also available from the start.

All Feudals in RR are recruited at the castle (an unusual approach in M2TW), not any kind of training building, because feudal vassals were granted a fief in return for service. Hence they are free upkeep at the castle and you only have to pay their (very high) upkeep when they are away from it for more than one turn. This is correct because they were only obligated for one season, and this depiction of feudals is a core concept in RR. Their low replacement rates, which are further altered by castle tier and individually by faction and year, help ensure reasonably historical army compositions, as do the AI recruit_priority_offset values in the EDU. These increase both for better-quality units and as time goes on, helping ensure the AI biases towards heavier and later (more advanced) units in later years. For example, it will choose Chivalric over Feudal Knights if available, but it will also choose FKs over Armored Sergeants etc.

Feudal replacement rates can be as low as 1/20 years in exceptional circumstances, depicting sons of the next generation. These fall further as the feudal age passes and professional armies become more prevelant, though this also varies by faction.

I think the terrain values I had in RC were able to be improved upon so I’m going to test the new ones. As I said look at the RC Guide, its more sophisticated than just -3.

Not sure what you mean by what’s my assessment of lock_morale, its useful for depicting units that historically (mostly) fought to the death such as Templars, Swiss and Forlorn Hope. The implementation of that via lock_morale is pretty decent.

I would never use >1 health point except for Elephants because it doesn’t really make sense. Does it mean that cavalry can take multiple hiits from pikes, halberds and muskets? Did it hit the horse or the rider? Also in the charge the damage tends to be distributed over the cav in the front rank roughly evenly, so the front rows of infantry get crushed and until the cav start incurring further damage in melee they will rampage on; if they pull back from the charge immediately they may not have any of their number killed at all. It looks a bit silly when a bunch of knights charge each other with lances ouched and at the impact not one rider is killed too.

We had all these discussions back in 2008

IMHO the new RC cavalry system with the altered stats for preferred role along with the new animations is decent.

I see you have designated some cavalry as ‘Shock’ above, what does that actually mean? Sounds like a Warscape thing That they prefer not to remain in melee? Ideally no cav does really though sure some are better at it than others. Calling Hobilars Shock Cavalry seems bit odd; these are not really labels as applied historically. Forgive me but I don’t really understand your pricing structure either. Ok Feudals being a relatively low recruitment price with a high upkeep makes sense, but I’m a bit lost after that, especially with the Mercenary Frankish Knights.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi PB,

first - this is not my pricing and stats, these are just notes form SSHIP - they're all creations of MWY (who I hold in great respect for many things he'd done in the SSHIP), who never disclosed his file with formulas, despite dozens of promises. I'm making similar files for each game I play - in the spoiler are from IB-SAI and TLK

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"heavy feudal infantry" - you've indeed misunderstood me. I just meant "Piast Foot Nobles" that have mail but are comparatively light early heavy infantry. My point is that in the base SS for some factions (Poland for sure) you theoretically have access to those guys, but in practice - no. This is because you don't have any higher-level castle for 100-200 turns which means effectively you cannot recruit them (and this is my big issue with many modders: they make a unit available, but then through the engine requirements there's not access to them; in this respect MWY in SSHIP has seen the problem and through the "Local guard" building provided access to feudal heavy (for you: just mailed) infantry.

"All Feudals in RR are recruited at the castle (an unusual approach in M2TW), not any kind of training building, because feudal vassals were granted a fief in return for service." - ok, I actually agree with it, but why to limit it only to the castle, and not link with walls of a city? I mean: what's the link between castles and the feudal knights. In the huge provinces with "cities" there're no feudal nobles?! That's unrealistic, the nobles and their fiefs were everywhere and should be possible to be recruited everywhere, not only in the castles. It's why the One-Settlement-Type system is implemented in the mods like HURB.

"lock_morale" and health - thank's, that's what I wanted to know: "decent". :-)
shock - it's just what I've seen in the unit card in-game: Powerful Charge. Now I understand that it's just after a certain threshold the game shows this info, so it should probably be gotten rid of from my file.

Again, it's not my pricing structure, it's MWY from the SSHIP. Have you got a somehow similar list form RRRC to compare the stat structures?

[Point Blank]

Actually I just found my old spreadsheet containing the price calculation info, but I used it in conjunction with a bunch of medieval prices I found researching that sort of thing when putting RR together; could probably find them again. It’s not a functional spreadsheet but just a list of calculations though it’s pretty straightforward.

Agreed on the screw-ups many modders make when assigning the availability of heavy infantry. In RR they typically become available at just the Castle settlement size, while their mounted counterparts at the previous tier.

OST is sort of ok after 1453, the fall of Constantinople, but castles didn’t just disappear, they morphed into Star Forts etc. Which is why when you hear historians go on about how castles became obsolete and nobody built them anymore, you can raise your hand and “Well yes, but...”

Any reasonable medieval game/simulation should draw a clear distinction between towns/cities (York, Jerusalem) and castles (Stirling, Acre). This distinction was simply a fact. After William took over England in 1066, he didn’t build a bunch of towns to monitor and defend the Scottish border or to keep the internal population under control. Neither did the Crusaders, they build castles like Krak des Chevaliers. It’s pretty basic, I mean just look at one definition ‘castle (from Latin: castellum) is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages by predominantly the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...Usage of the term has varied over time and has been applied to structures as diverse as hill forts and country houses. Over the approximately 900 years that castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls and arrowslits, were commonplace.’

As I said above, castles were the residences of feudal vassals, who generally didn’t live in towns and cities. Removing the distinction between them and towns/cities is not only ahistorical, it makes for bad gameplay, because it removes yet another decision that the player has to make - what is the right settlement type for this location at this time, given the overall strategic situation? Do I want to build a castle and sacrifice taxable income but have a much more defensible position, or do I want the opposite? In Europe alone literally thousands of various sizes were constructed.

Anyway, I sent my CV to CA Games today to see if they have any positions open for testing or consulting; I was invited to work for them in 2008 before Empire came out but was too busy. Probably would have been fired anyway for ragging on the Warcrap engine I have a company to run here but have a lot of spare time so it would just be for fun, I can do any era and theater of operations for the last 2000 years with as much detail as the medieval one