Developers' Discussion

[justme]

Finished the editing of the EDU, got 3 versions:
Pike spacing change.
Pike spacing change and Pikefix.
Pike spacing change, Pikefix and Halberd change (makes Halberd units into a shock unit, they can kill cavalry but not defend against it, removes Spearwall capability).

Serious samurai, can you please send me the edited EDUs (do "send an email" to me, from this forum)? I think that pike spacing and halberd change are absolutely a must for our mod

On the other hand, what is the pikefix again? I think I missed this one...

[Serious Spamurai]

Pikefix removes the sword from all pike units, It's the only way of stopping them dropping their pikes when the enemy gets past the first row of points. I don't know if RTR fan wants to include it yet, but without it the there's really no point in the extra spacing, the main reason behind the spacing is so that when two lines of pikemen clash you can send your Halberd/
Zweihander/Sword and Buckler troops in to help tip the scales in your favour.

Pike men could do with decreased attack values to make their fights last longer, but extra anti-cav bonus so they are still formidable against cavalry. Then they need larger unit sizes in relation to the other units so you can get a nice solid block of them at the moment they end up fighting man on man with many of the "Shock" type units.

Removing Fire by Rank from Muskets and Arquebuses would be nice as it would stop them creeping backwards into the middle of your pike formation when you line them up infront of it. One final note, could we include the musket and artillery smoke mod? Look at the picture with the french Lancers to see what it does.

I'll change the font, and see what it looks like. The reason I used the other one is because it was there, looked old fashioned, and was already selected.

[justme]

Pikefix removes the sword from all pike units, It's the only way of stopping them dropping their pikes when the enemy gets past the first row of points. I don't know if RTR fan wants to include it yet, but without it the there's really no point in the extra spacing, the main reason behind the spacing is so that when two lines of pikemen clash you can send your Halberd/Zweihander/Sword and Buckler troops in to help tip the scales in your favour.

I need to test how this works, but it sounds historically correct - pikemen didn't break formation so easily and yes, swordsmen troops did scurry through the ranks to fight under the pikes (ie not exactly spacing, but for lack of a better way to represent it it's ok so long as it's not excessive).

This concept is also nicely compatible with introducing a new Landsknecht swordsman unit, which I had proposed some time ago (actually I wanted a double handed sword, but since we can't edit the model, I'll implement a plain single-handed swordsman unit)

So to conclude: I propose we go ahead an include the changes on a test basis and if it works well, we'll incorporate them in the next version (Serious samurai, pass the files around to all team members)

Pike men could do with decreased attack values to make their fights last longer, but extra anti-cav bonus so they are still formidable against cavalry. Then they need larger unit sizes in relation to the other units so you can get a nice solid block of them at the moment they end up fighting man on man with many of the "Shock" type units.

Agreed... I suppose that's also in the EDU file, right?

Removing Fire by Rank from Muskets and Arquebuses would be nice as it would stop them creeping backwards into the middle of your pike formation when you line them up infront of it. One final note, could we include the musket and artillery smoke mod? Look at the picture with the french Lancers to see what it does.

Hmmm... :hmmm: historically, arquebusiers used to run through the ranks of the pikemen and fire their guns before retreating to reload in safety (the Spanish tercio was actually not a single pike unit but a combination of pikemen and arquebusiers, the latter usually posted near the flanks). So, speaking strictly from a realism/historicity point of view, removing fire by rank is not advisable... however, if it unbalances things we may consider removing it completely

Also the smoke mod is a nice addition, but not all of us have the processing power to support it - so I'd say make it strictly optional


PS: nice pic, nice font

[justme]

please add the shields reskins, they look very good!

Oops... missed this one

answer: it was on my personal todo list, but at the time there wasnt a "late period" pack and I don't know if there is one now

I'll check and see...


EDIT: my top priority at the moment is to get feedback (esp. about the recruitment ) from the latest beta and to balance/tweak the campaign, so those extra things will prolly have to wait in any case

[Serious Spamurai]

Most of my editing is in the EDU. The good thing with the pike fix is that although pike formations are harder to break, once they are they can be absolutly slaughtered, It takes them too long to bring their pikes to bear once the enemy is amongst them, which is both realiatic, and adds balance. Shall I send people the full one, with stakes for Artillery, Halberds, Weakended pikes, Pikefix and Pike spacing, or just the one with Halberds, Pike spacing and Pikefix.

The spacing is barely noticeable. It's only 0.1 further apart than Halberd Militia whose spacing is 1.2. The formations look the same but that little extra space is just enough to make movement so much smoother.

You could use the Verlorne Haufe unit's model for it, it may have armour on but shock troops tended to have more armour on, mainly a breast plate, greaves and Helmet, and they have a Zweihander sword and can be upgraded with a Flamberge. You just need to give them the Merc's half plate skin. When we can edit models the fun can really begin, we can make fancy looking landsknechts like shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht

Maybe we should make a Landsknecht series of unit for the HRE, making them recruitable in military Academies, there could be Pikemen, Arquebusiers, and Doppelsöldners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppels%C3%B6ldner). They'd be a small, elite zweihander unit, low armour but would have 2hp, low collision mass. This means that they'd be able to get through the line of pikes without suffering heavily, but guns and cavalry would be able to destroy them. Of course they'd need high upkeep, because they were paid double for serving in the front lines.

[justme]

Most of my editing is in the EDU. The good thing with the pike fix is that although pike formations are harder to break, once they are they can be absolutly slaughtered, It takes them too long to bring their pikes to bear once the enemy is amongst them, which is both realiatic, and adds balance. Shall I send people the full one, with stakes for Artillery, Halberds, Weakended pikes, Pikefix and Pike spacing, or just the one with Halberds, Pike spacing and Pikefix.

the full one please... playtesting will show what's useful and what's not

You could use the Verlorne Haufe unit's model for it, it may have armour on but shock troops tended to have more armour on, mainly a breast plate, greaves and Helmet, and they have a Zweihander sword and can be upgraded with a Flamberge. You just need to give them the Merc's half plate skin. When we can edit models the fun can really begin, we can make fancy looking landsknechts like shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht

Maybe we should make a Landsknecht series of unit for the HRE, making them recruitable in military Academies, there could be Pikemen, Arquebusiers, and Doppelsöldners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppels%C3%B6ldner). They'd be a small, elite zweihander unit, low armour but would have 2hp, low collision mass. This means that they'd be able to get through the line of pikes without suffering heavily, but guns and cavalry would be able to destroy them. Of course they'd need high upkeep, because they were paid double for serving in the front lines.

Landsknechts fought with little to no armor... so the vorlorne haufe model is not useful. I thought of just taking the normal landsknecht model armed with the sword (as in their secondary weapon) and making a unit out of them. However, the doppelsoldner armed with a great-sword is what I wanted to do in the first place (until models are editable no luck though )

Oh... and you just reminded me that I forgot to increase the upkeep of mercenaries But 2hp absolutely NO (it unbalances the game too much, instead I add morale)

[Serious Spamurai]

With low armour and defense it shouldn't unbalance it too much, Gunners would kill it before it got close, cavalry would sweep it away as it has no collision mass, the Extra hp would mean that it got past the pikes. This is all theory though, I'll test it and let you know what the resuts are.

I'll upload the changes here, so people can try them out and let us know what they think.
What it changes:
-Pikemen attack reduced greatly.
-Pikefix added.
-Spearwall removed from halberdiers.
-Increased Halberd attack.
-Units move through friendly pikemen easier.
-Larger Pike units.
-Stakes for Culverins, Cannons an Basalisks.

- Fights between Pikemen units will last longer now, you'll have to deploy troops behind your Pikes and when the two lines of Pikemen engage you'll need to decide where to send your reserves to break the enemy line.
- Artillery gets extra protection from stakes as in the renaissance
artillery was higly valued and defended well (like in the Pavia Historical Battle).


I've been looking into the descr_formations file, I think I'll be able to edit one of the formations to be more Renaissance. The one where archers are deployed infront of infantry will be changed so that missiles are spread thinly directly infront of your pikes, then they'll be protected from cavalry. I do this formation a lot but it takes time to set up a quick way of doing it would help greatly.

[justme]

A question: did you implement your changes over the 3.0 beta EDU file? Because I had made some other changes since 2.75

As for the formation, it sounds cool... though historically there were variations from country to country

[justme]

@Serious samurai:

I just tried to the EDU you posted and got the following error

20:45:57.875 [script.err] [error] Script Error in Renaissance/data/export_descr_unit.txt, at line 5946, column 36
Invalid number of soldiers 120 for combatant unit type 'Highland Pikemen'.
20:45:57.875 [data.invalid] [error] DATABASE_TABLE error found : error reading record from file Renaissance/data/export_descr_unit.txt.

I have to lower the value to half (60) to get the game to run...

any ideas as to why this happens?

[Serious Spamurai]

Must've uploaded the wrong one. It was my early attempt at making pike units larger, the game doesn't accept sizes larger than 60. I must have left it in. Instead I now have reduced the size of all non pike units and then set unit sizes to huge but at the moment pikes still butcher each other, they need much slower attacks. I'd advise checking the other pike units entries in the EDU too, there might be more errors still in there, system log only shows the first one.

[DrIstvaan]

OK guys, please discuss EDU, pikemen and everything related to current activities around Renaissance either here or in the progress thread, to keep the suggestions preserved truly for suggestions. Thanks!

[Serious Spamurai]

Yay, a thread almost solely for my ramblings. As most people know the current battle mechanics don't fit properly into the Renaissance style of war. I feel that combat needs to be changed to revolve more around breaking and routing your enemies pike blocks. I want to hear people's opinions on this to see whether they agree on this approach to battles.

Proposed changes to make battle mechanics reflect renaissance warfare:
-Pikefix, pikemen will no longer revert to swords as their main weapon, they will hold frontal attacks better. They will also be more vulnerable to attacks from "Shock" units like zweihanders once these types of unit are amongst them.
-Pike units will be a lot larger than non pike units.
-Pike units will have increased morale, to make them harder to rout.
-Pike units will have slightly larger spacings in order to allow Halberdiers etc. ro move through them with ease.
-Pikemen will have lower damage attacks, slower attacks, more armour.
-Artillery will gain stakes as a special ability.
-Halberd/polearm indantry will lose spearwall, get slightly higher attack and get reduced collision mass. Pikes were replacing Halberds as the main anti-cavalry weapon. Halberds started being used by shock troops to help lift the stalemate when two pike blocks clashed.
-New AI formations, to help the AI use this new style of war
-New player formations, helping the player get complex, time consuming Renaissance formations at the touch of a button e.g. pike squares.

The main idea is that european armies will be mostly comprised of pikemen, other units will help break the opposition's pike blocks, but it will be difficult to win without plenty of pikemen as they will provide much larger groups of infantry in one go that the other units, they will be cheap and, if used well, very powerful. Any army that goes into the field without a sizeable contingent of pikemen will be at a disadvantage numerically, this will stop historically inaccurate "Cavalry and Shot" armies, hopefully replacing them with "Pike and Shot" ones.

So any thoughts, objections etc?

[DrIstvaan]

Not only for your ramblings, more for your and Justme's discussion over EDU and such.
As for the ideas, I like them. Pikemen were the main units of rinascimental armies, so it would fit the mod very well.

[Serious Spamurai]

How european battles will be fought with these changes:

As said before, the main aim in the european battles will be to break and rout the enemy's pike formations, once this part of their army is gone the rest will soon follow. The pikemen will be a tough opponent to face, although not very capable of dishing out damage they will be able to take lots of it. In composing your armies you'll need to find a balance between pike units (the anvil), and those which wil be can break pike formations e.g artillery (these will be the hammer) overdoing hammer units will leave you hopelessly outnumbered (pike units weighing in at 150 men compared to the 50 men of halberd,sword and buckler, zweihander etc. units), Over-doing pikes will leave you nothing to break the enemy which is important as I'll describe next.

Clashes between Pike units are now very bloody and chaotic, in a 1v1 fight one unit needs to take about 85% casualties before they rout, with their Pike stats quite simmilar the winning side will suffer casulaties of the same magnitude, unless you put extra pressure on them that is. You'll need to decide,where you want to put this pressure in order to create a breach in their line, and how you will do this, will you wait for the enemy to attack your line and then commit your reserves, use artillery to smash a hole in it, sweep cavalry around the flanks and rear or perhaps break the enemy's morale with gunpowder weapons as they advance.

The germans use Arquebuses to deadly effect in their attemps to rout part of the french line.


Two blocks of pikemen engage each other, many good men will be lost before one side emerges the winner

[justme]

Yay, a thread almost solely for my ramblings. As most people know the current battle mechanics don't fit properly into the Renaissance style of war. I feel that combat needs to be changed to revolve more around breaking and routing your enemies pike blocks. I want to hear people's opinions on this to see whether they agree on this approach to battles.

Proposed changes to make battle mechanics reflect renaissance warfare:
-Pikefix, pikemen will no longer revert to swords as their main weapon, they will hold frontal attacks better. They will also be more vulnerable to attacks from "Shock" units like zweihanders once these types of unit are amongst them.
-Pike units will be a lot larger than non pike units.
-Pike units will have increased morale, to make them harder to rout.
-Pike units will have slightly larger spacings in order to allow Halberdiers etc. ro move through them with ease.
-Pikemen will have lower damage attacks, slower attacks, more armour.
-Artillery will gain stakes as a special ability.
-Halberd/polearm indantry will lose spearwall, get slightly higher attack and get reduced collision mass. Pikes were replacing Halberds as the main anti-cavalry weapon. Halberds started being used by shock troops to help lift the stalemate when two pike blocks clashed.
-New AI formations, to help the AI use this new style of war
-New player formations, helping the player get complex, time consuming Renaissance formations at the touch of a button e.g. pike squares.

The main idea is that european armies will be mostly comprised of pikemen, other units will help break the opposition's pike blocks, but it will be difficult to win without plenty of pikemen as they will provide much larger groups of infantry in one go that the other units, they will be cheap and, if used well, very powerful. Any army that goes into the field without a sizeable contingent of pikemen will be at a disadvantage numerically, this will stop historically inaccurate "Cavalry and Shot" armies, hopefully replacing them with "Pike and Shot" ones.

So any thoughts, objections etc?

The proposals are good - consider them approved by the team historian

have you implemented them already? if yes please post the correct file... if not, take your time (but not too long )

[Serious Spamurai]

They've only been implemented on Halberd+Pike Militia, Voulgiers & French Pikemen. Progress might be a bit slow today as it's my birthday, my ears are still recovering after playing a battle with arquebuses on full volume with my new headphones . I'll try to get them fully implemented as soon as possible. The AI seems to adopt the changes quite well, it skirmishes parts of your line with missile troops, weakening them, It sometimes stretches it's pikemen in an attemp to envelop you and it also flanks you with cavalry and shock troops, hammering into the vulnerable reaar of your pikemen. I don't know about being able to do the formations, we might need to find someone to do that for us.

[justme]

today as it's my birthday

hey... happy birthday dude

The AI seems to adopt the changes quite well, it skirmishes parts of your line with missile troops, weakening them, It sometimes stretches it's pikemen in an attemp to envelop you and it also flanks you with cavalry and shock troops, hammering into the vulnerable reaar of your pikemen.

it sounds cool... can't wait to get my hands on the updated EDU file (honestly, I need it to add more stuff )

don't know about being able to do the formations, we might need to find someone to do that for us.

@Dristvaan: maybe we could ask Darth to do a "Renaissance" version of his formations. what do you think?

[Serious Spamurai]

Thanks, might be a while, I need to adjust the all the pike units, making some better than others, but not too good otherwise battles will be one sided. Also need to reduce the unit sizes of most non-european nations, In order to make pike blocks larger than other unit the game needs to be played on huge, all other units need less men, so that on these settings the units are normal size. Various tweaks need to be made to Arquebuses and artillery too, they need higher morale impact and less damage, at the moment 3 units can take a 150 man pike block down to 30-40 men before they reach your line, although the number of hits is good as it slows the enemy's advance. Then the changes need testing by other people other than me, we might have to wait until after v3.0 in order to make this work fully. The updated EDU should be up by the 17-18th at the latest.

I was thinking darth could do it, perhaps if we got together a list of formations and what they looked like, diagrams etc then we could get him to make them for us.

[DrIstvaan]

@Justme
Hmmm, maybe. He seems to be a busy man, I don't hink he could spare enough time to do it. But it's surely woth a try. Just tell me what you mean with "Renaissance vesion" (I know, that pikes are more efficient in battles, but what does that have to do with formations?), and I'll PM him about it. Also, is it only the battle mechanics to be tweaked in this regard?

[Serious Spamurai]

Right, I've been working on sword and buckler men, and have got them to work quite realisticly. They can now kill pikemen but are incapable of killing heavy line-breaker troops in close combat. They also get killed very easily by cavalry, which is realistic, the reason they were abandoned is that there was no real need for them, guns and pikes could kill opposing pike troops just as easily as sword and bucklers, guns and pikes were also safe from cavalry charges. I did this by editing their EDU entry to reduce their attack value (still enough to kill pikemen) but increasing their attack rate (0.6), I also changed their collision mass to 0 the same as archers, so any cavalry charges will wipe them out.
Initial trests show that they are a good unit to weaken part of the enemy's line, although when reinforcements show up they're in trouble. They may hit armoured troops alot but most of those will not produce a kill, they are after all only armed with a Rapier, not the best choice of anti-armour weapon.