Version 1.4
1. Fixed some spelling mistakes and some description mixups for Iron mines.
2. Fixed arab cavalry shield, should have been 0.
3. Afghan javelinmen upkeep set to 185, kurd javelingmen cost raised to 450 and upkeep set to 155. Desert archers improved to 9 missile attack, 20 reload, morale raised to 7, cost set to 450 and 135 upkeep.
4. Removed minimum settlment size requirement for markets. Fairground requires a town, Great market requires a large town. Merchant quarters etc still require a city. And merchant banks require merchant quarters...god knows why this was not the default option.
5. All agents now have substantial bonuses from the best buildings. The best building will provide +3 experience for the agent. This is true to diplomats, assassins, spies etc. Thus a huge cathedral will now give a 3 point experience boost to priests. A Huge jama will provide the same bonus. + religious buildings tweaked for population happiness etc to make the largest and most expensive worth building.
(Seeing as though building walls is much harder, some might prefer to create religious buildings to keep the masses at bay.)
6. Alchemy buildings now require a gunsmith to be produced FIRST. Alchemy building effects now doubles. Give +2 to gun powder units & siege weapons. To increase the vlaue of creating them.
7. Bimaristan now has double effect for retraining. which shoudl justify its cost and construction time.
8. Siege buildings now require timber as a resource. Should also reduce A.I.'s spamming of siege units. + contruction time for siege works building changed to ballista range 2, catapul 3 & siege works 4.
9. Added timber to sarkel region.
10. Removed/reduce health ponus provided by some city hall buildings. Mayor's palace provides two, then 1 & the first two provide 0.
11. Artist studio first building builds in 1 turn & costs 1500, second 2 turns & costs 3000. Else no one will ever build them.
12. Theologians guild religious bonus set to 1, 2, & 4 respectively.
13. University now provides an additional bonus of 30 for stone construction.
14. Printing press now requires the timber resource to be built OR a great_market. Printing house needs timber and cannot be built without it, market level irrelevant. I cannot imagine the amounts of wood needed for this...they defenitely did not make paper from sea weed, tough luck.
15. Added global melee blade bonus of 1 to swordsmiths HQ.
16. Creating a cathedral, orthodox cathedral or great jama will now have a +5% happiness global effect.
17. Pope approval/disapproval for creating/destroying churches now follows this ladder: for the best build (E.G. Huge cathedral) approval will be 3 & disapproval will be 5. Every prior building have both stats reduced by 1 until they reach 0.
An abbey has 1 approval & 3 disapproval, for instance.
This way if you create a huge cathedral or two you can get away with being a really bad christian
18. Squashed a bug that allowed anyone with a great market to build printing press.
19. Rebalanced egypt...garrison quarters no longer gives kurd javelinmen, Thye are only received at Barracks level (two levels later, because they got too much too fast).
Egyptian cities no longer produce Arrow militia first, now they produce spear militia and then arrow.
Since both Army barracks & Militia barracks give NOTHING (until gun powder) to egyptian cities other than +5% (each) order I have added a relatively high experience bonus to egyptian troops priduced. Specifically the Spear & archer militia. In militia barracks they get +2 XP & army gives saracens +2xp and archer & spear +4
(next version might feature a better solution, a new unit maybe)
-Marksmen range increased unit pool maximum of peasant archers to 3, decrease desert archers to 2 & nubian to 3.
-Naffatun unit pool maximum reduced by 1.
-Desert archers changes to elite archer unit over nubian. -Nubian has less armour & less missile attack. Desert now has 12 missile, 7 melee and 2 charge. Nubian has 9 missile, 6 melee and 1 charge, armour 1 & def skill 4.
-Cost rebalance to make Desert archer slightly more expensive.
-Archery range decreased maximum unit pool for desret archers and nubian. In order to give the now elite archer unit desert archers a re-balance.
-Moved timber resource from just between Gaza and Alexandria (was in gaza region) to Alexandria region. so Alexandria can have a proper port later on.
=================================================================
Version 1.3
1. The creation of Iron Mines is now required for armourer (smith) or better. If the region DOES NOT have iron it cannot create that type of armouer or any better.
2. Removed conquistadors from Knights templar build pools
3. Have re-distributed Iron resources across the map. Allowing Almost every faction to either start wiht Iron resource or quickly conquer a rebel settlement with Iron.
4. Changed all charge values for horses according to these guidelines:
Pony 4, Fast pony 5, Mailed horse 7, Heavy horse 8, Eastern Armoured horse 7, Barded horse 8 and armoured horse 9, camel 6, Elephant 13. If they had a primary missile attack they charge bonus is dropped by 3 points.
5. All ports now require markets or timber resource to be built. Shipwrights or better require wood & cannot be build anywhere that does not have timber. A city may expant & eventually reach a state that it has a great market, in which case shipwright will be allowed, but no larger port may be built without timber.
=================================================================
Version 1.2
1. All missiles reload times tweaked. All crossbow minimum reload time set to 50 (they were notoriously slow) More experienced/elite archer units have minimum reload time reduced (base is 25) To compensate for slow reload all crossbows have Armour piercing & higher attack value.
2. All missile ranges tweaked. Cross bow set to 150, steel crossbow 180, Arrows set 170, Composite arrows 200 & bodkin set to 250. (longbows could reach some 275 meters!) cavalry variations have -30 range as their bows needed to be smaller. cav crossbow remains as infantry.
Javelin unit ranges increased to from 55 to 70 (world record javelin is 105 30 meters less should be fine)
3. Some cavalry missile accuracy reduced. It is much easier to be steady on foot!
4. All missile units rebalanced in the idea of arrow attack minimum 7, crossbow min 9, javelin 12 gun powder 16
better units will have better values, these are the minimums. All named missile have +1 E.G. Armenian archers have 8 attack value, to distinguish from peasnts.
5. All arrow missile unit reload times tweaked. The more proficient, the faster it reloads. Sherwood archers are fastest, peasnt archers slowest.
6. Fixed billmen and other polearm units to have bonus fighting cavalry.
7. Removed shiled defense bonus as it does not work. Added half of the original value to armour and skill rounded down. If a unit had 6 armour, 5 skill 5 shield, it now has 8 & 7 respectively.
This issue was causing havoc with segeant spearmen that had NO ARMOUR AT ALL. Peasant archers were making minced meat out of them. Not anymore.
8. Sherwood archers, hashashin & battle field assassins now have 1 HP but have 50% more men.
Khan's guard now has 2 HP (was 1), templar guard unit reduced by 50% and given 2 HP.
9. All Two handed units have more mass in order to 'cut into' an enemy unit + increased charge bonus.
10. Added basic mines ONLY, to iron resource.
11. Building tree has certain requirement, such as not being able to buil a tanner (first smith) without stables. Admiralty requires a shipwright for the last upgrade.
=================================================================
Version 1.1
1. Tweaked unit costs, pony units +50 upkeep, fast pony +75, heavy horse +125, Barded horse +125, armoured horse +150
To name but a few.
2. Added cost to feudal knights and d. feudal knights. The idea is that these are lords given money, lands and grants, they are not cheap. There are too many of these for too little money making other units pointless. Now you will appreciate other unique faction units with LOWER costs. (professional armies replaced the feudal system for a reason)
3. All flaming projectiles (including arrows) now inflict damage to siege engines. If you fire at a ram/tower it will take damage.
4. All siege machines tweaked to allow realistic flammability & enhanced hit points in order to deal with new damage by archers.
5. Rebalanced gun powder units to have much higher attack value and much lower damage in descr_projectile.txt
this is due to an unforseen problem that the gun powder units would destroy siege equipment much too quickly and easily.
They now still do serious damage, bu siege equipment will most likely reach walls.
6. All siege weapons tweaked. All explosive round capable units now have better radius to inflict more damage.
7. All siege units now have double artillery pieces, E.G. 4 in any unit. Despite strengthening siege units by a factor of two
I have strengthened walls by as much as 2.5. This simply gives the game a nice 'epic' feeling when multiple siege units fire.
8. All siege weapon ranges & angles tweaked.
9. Building tree build times tweaked as several buildings still took too long to complete.
(no changes to size upgrades as in walls/castles)
10. Ram damage cut down by two thirds & gate strength increased (especially the later gates which are Iron)
This is to illustrate reaslim. All gates are breachable, just some take a VERY LONG time to breach.
(make sure you have at least two rams for any siege assult, the math is simple, two rams per gate. If you are going after a citadel, 6 rams. Think its crazy? try ramming your way into a citadel! :-P
This ensures that after the large investment of upgrading walls your settlement will not fall to a measly ram. thats what siege engines are for.
=================================================================
Version 1.0
1. Several balance changes for knights, making feudal slightly weaker than order knights.
2. All mounted knights are onw balanced according to assumed strength from weak to strong:
Scouts ,Cav Militia, M. segeants, M. knights, Italian Men at Arms, F. Knights and Chiv. Knights.
3. Elite and late cavalry units tweaks to be useful (made cheaper or stronger). original version had units like the
Stradiots & Famiglia Ducale completely outclassed by the relatively same strength F. knights (which were much cheaper too)
4. Several changes to the building tree to be more realistic in its building times (1 year per turn!)
5. Castle/city size upgrades are now extremely costly & time consuming, making sure no one develops at an exponential rate.
For huge stone walls 25000 gold & 15 turns & for citadel 20000 gold & 13 turns etc.
6. Tweaked all gun powder units to be more effective, especially the musketeers which now practically shred unarmoured units.
7. Morale tweaks to elite/professional units that seemed to suffer from poor morale (V. guard for instance)
8. All arrow/javelin/crossbow units tweaked, ranges & angles. This is based on historical knowledge of which weapon had which range & how fast it could reload.
Keep in mind that this is not 100% true to historical realism as gameplay would suffer tremedously.
9. Tweaked javelins to have more mass to add impact and slow enemies down.