Byz Scn for TLR

[Hanny]

On Friday ill make available a Scn for TLR, its designed for VH, VH, huge scale representation of unit size, unlimited men on battlefield only, nothing else will work as intended.

[tornnight]

Neat. Looking forward to seeing it.

[Hanny]

Scn for TLR, play As Byz faction only, on huge, VH, VH, unlimited men on battlefield enabled only as nothing else is intended.

Basic changes from stock:

Most, if not all, buildings provide income, while at the same time producing access to mil units, (each entry is added up by the computer to arrive at a time to produce, so a settlement might have 40 turns for a unit because of its (the settlements size)size, 30 for a barracks, 20 for a smith, 25 for a guild, and so on, all these are totaled for a final time to produce and each entry from a building adds to the number able to be held in stock, ie 4 single 0.25 entries means one unit every 10 turns, one such entry the same unit takes 40 turns))commerical buildings produce less advance in time to produce a unity than do mil buildings, ( but some provide the only access to certain units, Latinikon come only from naval advancement buildings, all units have mounted or dismounted as the same number of men in the unit, but are rare)like Barrack/smiths for instance who advance the time to produce of units quicker, particulary a smith for heavy armoured units, similary a building that has its focus on adminstartion, like the Town hall produces income, and a healthy bounus in time to produce large units, since all Byz units come in 2 sizes, 30 or 60, you will find that getting the larger units produced quicker can provide more staying power to your field forces, the smaller the unit however the quicker you gain expeierience, and experience only comes through combat.

Combat is longer, and more frequent, because the Byz faction has 2 hps per man, while the cpu factions all have 3, this means to effect a kill takes effectly 3 times as many kills as your probaly used to, the first thing you will notice is that missile fire unless of prolonged duration rarely produces kills in the early game by your units, this is because not only do you lack numbers of missle troops, ( and no short term prosect of getting really good archer units) but each hit on a target is logged, and you need 3 kills to produce an actual fatality, so missile fire prepares or shapes the combat outcome by inflicting a range of partial kills on unist brought under fire, of course the cpu is not so handicapped, its units sizes are vastly larger than your own, with the expected result of you haveing to operate on missile inequality, which brings me to the last point about combat, everyone wins, you rarely lose a battle but it can happen, but thats not the point, its the rate of exchange in your wins that settles your games outcome, because a win in which you lose 300 men and kill 600, is a battlefield succes and strartegic defeat, because to win such victorys means the AI will reduce your capacity to field forces quicker than you can replace them, as it produce larger units, and more often than you can untill you devolpe your settlements, and create the ability to replace large numbers of losses quickly. To get the best from the tactical engine, you must end the battle when asked by the cpu, this means to run down the enemy you must do so during the battle, not when its unable to resist any longer.

Combat is also focused on multi stacked armies operating together, (because of the high unit density in game, AI units are typicaly 3-5 times your own size in numbers.) you will soon realise than inferior numbers can hold and engage while another filed force moves in from the flank/rear to effect a successful outcome, co operating with your own stacks is actualy a whole lot of fun. As you may guess, expect to see lots of units in play, there is no garison script, but each faction will quickly run up a huge number of units in play, and they are all doing something, each well devolped settlemet will routinly produce units each turn, even the AI independts start witha basic set of units it can produce.

The Byz army comes in a range of units,Psiloi, which are 30 or 60 strong and are multi role missile and close combat units, and usfull as the front line to absorb the enemy attention and fix it in place, and hold the initial attack, then you have Thematic or Tagmatic troops as and when they become availble who are generaly more heavily armoured, and again come in 30 or 60 strong Bandon, which is around 300 men, the cav comes in 20 man units and your generals slightly smaller but grow by age, the mercs become availble through buildings and are 65 strong but cost vastly more to raise and maintain. You are not expected to recruit from the regions merc pool, they are for the AI only and allow it to produce large numbers of troops on the hoof as it passes through regions.


Instalation, replace existing TLR files after saveing those to be overwritten so as to make restoring to TLR easy.

First problem will be a sicilian landing at the bay of Arta, followed very likly by a Crusade against your Capital, all the while the turks are crossing your land, your not going to put up with that you?.

[Hanny]

http://files.filefront.com//;7860835;;/

link to Byz Scn.

[Xeno_cws]

Looks interesting I'll give it a try, though personally I like playing Catholic factions since I have to juggle the papacy in all my desicions

[Hanny]

Looks interesting I'll give it a try, though personally I like playing Catholic factions since I have to juggle the papacy in all my desicions

Well it is possible to make it for all factions, there are just enough unit slots, but im puting off doing the work on that till i test a few more things i want it to do.

just played through to 1107, since im famiar with my own system i double the AI kings purse to get things kick started, and had my first Jihad against constatinople with over 100 units in 5 muslim main armies hammering to wards me, with turks not yet joined in and with another 80 already causing havoc, things are looking bleak, as ive yet to obtain enough quality troops, still loads of fun tho, fought and won my first major cav only skirmish and avoid contact battle, used 8 bandons on a Sicilian force and inflicted 200 losses without loss, and lost the battle, three more such defeats and ill be happy to see them go away, but not as happy as they will be at winning such victories.

[henyourface]

whats a scn?

[tornnight]

Scenario I presume.

[henyourface]

oh ok. hard core scn, then.

[Hanny]

scn =Scenario, becuae i dont add anything new to TLR, but rearrange it to produce more units in play, and increase the battlefield variety/length, and that meerly requires extending existing concepts to provide income, lower unit costs, so its not a mod as such, but a theme on existing TLR.

Im doping this as a test run to work out if its worth the effort to do a LOTR Mod when the next add on comes out later this year, so i need to work out how a high quality, low number faction can realistcly cope with massive numbers of opponents and still make it fun to play, so that 160 man orc units can be broken by 30 man Gondorian units in realistic manner, but a co operating 2 stack of 20 each orc units will cause problems for a 15 stack Gondorian and so on, also if i want to have an entire Age being represented, so its more Civilization empire building, or compress it to a shorter temporal period.

[henyourface]

scn =Scenario, becuae i dont add anything new to TLR, but rearrange it to produce more units in play, and increase the battlefield variety/length, and that meerly requires extending existing concepts to provide income, lower unit costs, so its not a mod as such, but a theme on existing TLR.

Im doping this as a test run to work out if its worth the effort to do a LOTR Mod when the next add on comes out later this year, so i need to work out how a high quality, low number faction can realistcly cope with massive numbers of opponents and still make it fun to play, so that 160 man orc units can be broken by 30 man Gondorian units in realistic manner, but a co operating 2 stack of 20 each orc units will cause problems for a 15 stack Gondorian and so on, also if i want to have an entire Age being represented, so its more Civilization empire building, or compress it to a shorter temporal period.

yup, hardcore scn indeed. i admire how you all think.

[Hanny]

One usful observation, concering the opitmal defense of settlements.

the AI when it descides on oportunist attacks, looks at front line garrison strengths, i take that to be the provincves adjacent and teh garrison in them, if it can overmatch them its likly to make an opotunistic attack, so to get the AI to attack you, have the place under defended, this means you leave the gov in witha minimal garrison, and have adjacent the field force to defends it.

i can prove this works by replaying the same save posistion in my Scn, if i have a 2 unit garrison, the sicilan turn up at Arta with a larger force than if i have a full garrison, now in my scheme units are oddly sized compared to stock, so the ai looks at my 2 Bandon of 30 men and arrives with what it considers enough men (sicily unit sizes start at 90+ to 160) to defeat that, in stock, where unit sizes are more uniform you wont easily see it in operation unless you go to extremes, so what does this mean?, this is where it gets good!.

when the full force turns up, it sieges, peels off a secondry force to engage the force covering the city, so you can evade away and pull theis force away from the city, allowing in your turn you to sally out and combine against the siege stack, or whatever other combi you like.

talking of combi, ill add a sve posistion ive been re using for a few days, 1100 or so and its the Jihad season, and Byz capital is threatened by 4-6 Syrian Jihadist forces, plus Khwaz + Turks, so there are many multi stack battles set up in the following years from this save posistion, what becomes intresting is finding the best ground to sit on and be attacked as they come up from Abydus region, and win defensivly, or combinations of attacks by standing a enemy stack up frontaly by your ai controlled main infantry force, while overwhlem the flank/rear by picking the best hex to get a muti stack battle to you favour, on top of that there are the all the apples in one barrle option, the capital is sieged and you have enough troopps onhand to fight and win a battle against the 2 stacks, at the same time your other main force is ending the mission siege at adrinople and giving you 2 Varinfarian at you capital, so if you dont feel off and stay there, and then next turn head back for the capital and avoid lifting the siege this turn, you will be in a posistion to intercept the upcomming fatamids stacks you dont see on the map.

in the nest years you will fight armies of massed ghaxis, fully multi roled configured armies, massive cav archer armies and so on. its a whole lot of fun, and very informative on how the AI uses armies in conjunction with each other, it often splits and recombines to get a killer stack for whats its goal is.

Last night a lost 96% of 38 units in a mistimed battle against 2 syriana and a Khwaz stack, the other stacks failed to come to my aid, and stood on on hills, etc for theri sythians who came out to pl;ay, i stood up the enemy untill ovewrmatched and lost the lot, then the Ai took down the rest one by one, most fun loseing if ever had.

ill post this tommorow with some screens shot.

[Hanny]

http://hosted.filefront.com/HannyIOW/

latest version.30/6/07