The Complete EDU Guide

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

Another question Is there a way to prevent a unit which has 2 weapons in the model to only use the secondary one? When trying to remove the first attack I've so far just gotten the result that primary attack got 0 attack, but its still there and they still walk around with their primary weapon in hand.

[modesty_blaise]

If i want to increase the lethality of the units but keep it balanced, what do i do? Can i double the values in the guide (1.0 for swordsmen and 0.82 for spearmen, and maybe double it further) or will that screw things up? What hapends if i just keep it .41 for example and increase to 1.41 then 2.41 and so on. Please help me.

[Vitez]

How can I have more than 220 units???
Please tell me !!!!

[Squid]

500 units (i.e. entries in EDU) and 255 models (i.e. entries in DMB) are the hardcoded limits. Search for hardcoded limits and you'll see all known limits.

[Aradan]

Hmm, I think Vitez is referring to the number of men in each unit.

Well, the max number of soldiers that the EDU can take for a unit is 60. When you play on Huge unit-size settings though the soldier numbers are quadrupled, so that gives you 240 men maximum. You can change this setting in the Video Options screen of your game.

[Monkwarrior]

Hmm, I think Vitez is referring to the number of men in each unit.

Well, the max number of soldiers that the EDU can take for a unit is 60. When you play on Huge unit-size settings though the soldier numbers are quadrupled, so that gives you 240 men maximum. You can change this setting in the Video Options screen of your game.

And considering you are able to add 3 officers (we have one officer, one musician and one standard) the final size in huge size is 243 men in most of infantry units.

[Aradan]

*MAJOR UPDATE: The Guide has received a major update, regarding info on how to improve the balance of auto-resolve.

It has been known that the second value of the stat_health attribute is not taken into account during battle for non-animal units, hence it was set to 0. However it has been discovered that this value *IS* taken into account during auto-resolve, despite making no difference on battle-map mode. This applies to ALL units (bar elephants, chariots, wardogs and pigs of course, that already make use of it) and essentially means that units can be given specific bonuses or penalties during auto-calc that will not affect their behaviour on battle-map at all; which means we may have at last found a way to partially balance auto-resolve. Research and community feedback has shown that certain unit types are overpowered / underpowered, so here are some rough suggestions on how to make things more even for everybody:

• Animal units stay as they are.
• All other units are given 5 secondary hps.
• If a unit has 2 or more prim hps, it gets -1 sec hp for each extra prim hp.
• If a unit is ranged with low-medium missile attack, it gets 1 extra sec hp.
• If a unit is ranged with medium-high missile attack, it gets 2 extra sec hps.
• If a unit is mounted with low-medium charge, it gets 1 extra sec hp.
• If a unit is mounted with medium-strong charge, it gets 2 extra sec hps.

So a horse archer with 1 primary hp, strong charge and strong missile attack gets 9 sec hps, while a foot archer with 1 hp and low missile attack gets 6 hps and an infantry unit with 2 hps gets 4 sec hps and so on…

Thx to DimeBagHo for spurring me to look in that direction and to Lgk for making the first step.

[Arthum]

First of all, thanks for this guide, it's absolutely great.

I still have two questions though, do you perchance also know what the effect of the screeching women in 1.5 is ?
And the second:I read -imo in the SPQR-forum- that the charge-bonus is only applied to cavalry units, can you verify ?

Anyway I'm really greatful for this helpful guide.

[Aradan]

Thx

Testing mainly on FATW and BI 1.6, so I have not yet had a chance to take a look at screeching women. Will do however, as soon as I get the time. Regarding the charge bonus, I am sure it has less impact with infantry, mainly because animation speed, infantry being generally slower than cavalry and also having significantly less mass 9which means it won't penetrate lines and will only deal damage to the front lines of the enemy) and battlefield speed modifiers can cause the charge effect to wear off before inflicting significant damage or even before the units collide, but I think the bonus itself is present. Can you please give me a link to the SPQR forum thread, where this is being discussed? Perhaps that's sth that needs further investigation.

[Arthum]

Thank you for your reply !

Here's the comment of Lt1956:

Charge doesnt work for Infantry units only cavalry. its a carry over that I never bothered to change since it doesnt work anyway. atleast nothing noticeable. Please dont try to change stats thinking you found the Grail of editing. We all here are TWC and .Org have been modding RTW for a LONG time and we have done and learned just about everything that can be done with the current engine. You'll just be travelling over old ground already learned and forgotten by alot of us. lol Save your time and look at OLD threads on the .Org site for modding.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121046

And thanks again for your hard work.

[Aradan]

Thanks for un-burying this thread, I'll ask lt1956. There are lots of things that modders thought they knew some time ago, that have been proved wrong recently.

It's nice to see your work being appreciated

[Lusted]

It'd be good to know for certain about the charge value as I'm rebalancing TE using a stat calculator that factors the charge value into cost.

[Aradan]

Will be looking into it promptly, as I also factor it for my balancing currently, so I need to know...

[Aradan]

Infantry charge bonus seems to be working perfectly fine. Good to go, Lusted!

[Arthum]

Thanks for the update.

[Banjeeboy]

Great thread and guide... too bad I didn't find it earlier
Well... I'm off modding... thanks alot!

[Demokritos]

Thanks for this guide, Aradan, it's a great help. Just the spear bonus/penalty thing is a critical piece of information, since it effectively narrows down the range within which attack values for spear-armed units could be set in a meaningful way. I mean, if the attack value for such an unit is set at 4, the soldiers in question would become completely useless against infantry, if I have understood it correctly, due to that penalty. So the attack values for spears must be chosen according to one's idea of how much worse off such units are against other types of infantry, and how much better off they are against cavalry (by determining how large percentage of the normal attack value the +8 bonus and -4 penalty should be). And from these attack values follow a limited range of meaningful defence values that could be set for all units, etc. So, thanks to your intiative, Aradan, all EDU modding projects have been given a greater chance to turn out successful. Much oblige!

Looking close at the statements in the guide and this thread, a few questions have arisen:
1. Are the exact bonuses and penalties for the different formations known? When determining the right attack value for an unit with the ability to form a phalanx, for instance, it would good to know how big or what kind of bonus (attack, charge or defence) the phalanx gets against infantry, if the spear penalty is to be taken into account.

2. I thought the total defence value for an unit could not be higher than 63, but this guide seems to suggest it could be accumulated to 157 (63 in armour + 63 in defence skill + 31 in shield factor). Not that it would be sensible to set the values here that high, if the meaningful range of attack values is restricted to far lower values, according to the reflections above, and if upgrades in experience, weapons and armour should be worthwhile. Just wondered how the game engine works here.

3. So you can confirm that the charge bonus for infantry works, after all (and that lt1956 is mistaken on this score)?

4. What does the "const1" and "const2" in your chance-to-kill formulae stand for?

5. What does the small lambda-like symbol between the number 1.1 and the parenthesis in the melee formulae stand for?

6. In these formulae, where and how are the hit-points embedded?

[Squid]

Note: Those calculations are calculations as done by the engine for calculating kills

4. Those are just constants used by the engine in calculation
5. That an exponent symbol 2^3 = 2*2*2 = 8, since you can't do superscript
6. They aren't from how I read it, those forumlae are used to determine if a particular attack kills (i.e. one hit kill), which means HP is irrelevent.

[Aradan]

1. Nope, I have no idea what the exact bonuses of phalanxes are. I have been mostly testing on BI, so have not had time to do screeching or phalanx. It is aso very tricky to pin down an exact value, because it all depends on the way the battle is played out. If a couple of the enemy soldiers manage to come around the phalanx's flank, then they could kill 10 phalangites and thus allow more men to overcome the flank, which will result in a great defeat for the phalanx. While if these two men had died before outflanking, the phalanx unit could have decimated the enemy easily... Same thing goes for shield-wall. That said, I hope I can find time soon to do some testing on RTW.

2. Best way to test it out: Take two identical units. Make one have 63 armour and the other one have 63 armour and 63 def skill. Play a custom battle. If defense goes beyond a total of 63, then the first unit should lose BIG time. If not, you'll see a roughly equal match.

3. I did make some tests and noticed a difference in the kills on charge when I increased the charge bonus. A difference of 1-2 won't show much, but the difference is there. Plus, against heavily armoured opponents with multiple hps, you won't realise any difference at all even if you increase charge by a good deal, because the defenders just lose hps (if the attacker manages to hit them) and they don't die.

[Demokritos]

@SquidK and @Aradan - OK. Thanks for answering. I take it that a lot is still to be determined by experiments, and only roughly so (despite the fact that the game engine must work with precise values, which means that somebody over at CA must know these figures).