The Complete EDU Guide

[beatoangelico]

Hi Aradan, is it 100% confirmed that charge values must be the same for missile units? I've done some test with bow/lance cavalry, and if in the stat_pri line I put, for example, 1 while in the stat_sec I put 30 the charge seems to work fine. In the in-game unit card the charge value displayed is always the one in stat_pri, but when charging it seems that the engine takes the one associated with the primary melee weapon anyway.

[Aradan]

Right, I meant that it should be the same so that players don't get confused, watching a unit delivering a devastating, uber-charge, while the card reads "Charge: 1". I see the way I put it can be confusing, so I'll edit that part a bit. Thx for pointing that out.

[beatoangelico]

Right, I meant that it should be the same so that players don't get confused, watching a unit delivering a devastating, uber-charge, while the card reads "Charge: 1". I see the way I put it can be confusing, so I'll edit that part a bit. Thx for pointing that out.

thanks

[florin80]

Very minor issue. You`ve written shield-wall instead of shield_wall. I kept missing it with find until I wrote wall.

And a question. When you say that it gives a melee bonus you mean both attack and defence or just the latter?

[florin80]

How would you distribute the hide attributes?
By type of troops(i.e. skirmishers get hide_improved_forest no matter where they come from because they`re light troops) or based on the unit`s home region(gauls and dacians for example getting hide_improved_forest and a persian javelineer only getting hide_forest)? I`m interested on how you see it. And is there any point for the hide_anywhere in a history based game? What fighting unit could - and would - hide on a dirt plain or on a beach?

And what did you mean by this:

Also, units with secondary weapons will use that to charge, and once in proper melee will switch back to their primary (units classified as spearmen will keep using their sec if enemy gets very close).

For example I`ve never seen cavalry using their secondary weapon(sword) for the charge if they`re not missile units. They use the first weapon, the spear.

And speaking of which. What`s the importance of the spearmen class? Does it have any hardcoded bonus/penalty independent of the weapon attributes, or what is its purpose?

[Aradan]

Corrected, thanks.

I'm pretty sure it's only defence, but there is no completely safe way to test it.

[Halie Satanus]

[height](may not be visible) : Hidden attribute height of the unit. The default value is 1.7. It represents the height of the unit's soldiers (again not visually). Little is known concerning the exact way that height functions, but it is known that the higher it's value, the weaker the unit.

Just a guess and probably way off the mark, ''height'' may well refer to the interaction point (in this case attack) with an opposing unit, if you raise the value your unit might be aiming high when attacking a foot unit (even if only in mechanics rather than visually), missing the target reducing effectiveness. That sounds perfectly plausible to me anyway.

Oh and something I've always wondered (and will be testing once I get time) can a unit have handlers as with war dogs?.. Anyone ever tried something along those lines, changing the animal line for a unit..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

type barb wardogs briton
dictionary barb_wardogs_briton ; Warhounds
category handler
class heavy
voice_type Light_1
soldier barb_handler, 12, 36, 1.2
animal wardogs
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest
formation 2.2, 2.2, 3, 3, 3, horde
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 6, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 12, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, other, piercing, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 1, 2, leather
stat_sec_armour 2, 1, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 2, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 4, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 40
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 610, 40, 60, 80, 510
ownership britons

[Aradan]

Yes, height will affect the interaction pint of units. For example, when I was tampering with our Mumakil in order to get them to behave flawlessly I raised their height by quite a bit and archers would fire way above their heads.

Haven't tried the horse-handler thing, but it doesn't sound very probable to me. If you test, let us know.

[Halie Satanus]

Ah, there you go, wasn't as silly as I thought it was..

[AqD]

The min_delay seems useless. I set it to 2000 (20 seconds!) for archer but their rate-of-fire is almost as same as in 0
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[Aradan]

That's for min_delay (stat_pri line) or stat_fire_delay? I'm just asking because people (including me) always mix the two up when we type in hurry...

min_delay definitely works for melee combat, I am perfectly sure about it. Not thoroughly tested for missile units... I seem to recall reading some hints somewhere that it actually does nothing for missile attacks, so perhaps you're right. There's also the chance that it has a limit (at 50 for example) and everything higher is considered 50, so you won't see much difference anyway, unless you count veeery carefully. The word "almost" in your posts implies that, at least.

stat_fire_delay doesn't work as it is supposed, but it effects in a very weird way cavalry charges (perhaps all charges, but it is noticeable with cavalry). At first we had set our cav units with Darth's fire_delay settings, but sometimes the riders didn't lower their spears for a charge etc. But once I set all fire_delay values to 0, all units charge with lowered spears every time. I didn't change anything else, so I'm sure the change is because of that.

Any feedback is always appreciated.

[florin80]

What about ships? I know they`re mentioned in EDU too. So I was wondering which of their stats actually matter? There is also a file named descr_ship but I don`t know what if anything from it is actually used in the autoresolve battle rtw offers. As for the EDU:
1. does the morale counts for ships?
2. can they have a charge?
3. how do the defence stats act with ships? I see both the armor and the defence skills are used, but how is this important? For regular units it matters.
Any ideas?

[AqD]

stat_fire_delay doesn't work as it is supposed, but it effects in a very weird way cavalry charges (perhaps all charges, but it is noticeable with cavalry). At first we had set our cav units with Darth's fire_delay settings, but sometimes the riders didn't lower their spears for a charge etc. But once I set all fire_delay values to 0, all units charge with lowered spears every time. I didn't change anything else, so I'm sure the change is because of that.

I just tried it, set to 0, 10000, or 100000 just make no difference on the rate of fire
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[Aradan]

Very little testing in that regard from my part. If anyone cares to shed some light, it'd be appreciated.

[florin80]

Maybe we should start a thread in the workshop and see what happens? People might come and help... hopefully.

[Aradan]

People tend to get bored after a while testing stuff... Be my guest though in creating that research thread, by all means. *tips hat*

I'll try to test some things regarding ships myself soon.

[AqD]

I tried the stat_health tweak with BI and ALX; the result is better but still far from satisfying.

I give the Sarmatian HAs in RTR 1,5 health, as oppsed to 1,1 for enemy infantry (half are cheap hoplites and the other half are peltast), and the numbers are 3:5 (unit number is 4:5). I tested it several times and the result is usually average victory with 1/3 loss on my side. If I play the battle myself, I'd win a crushing victory with no casuality inflicited by the enemy, since they completely lack archers and their heavy-armoued units are few - the peltasts don't really matter because they'd be wiped out in a few seconds.

But sometimes I can get good result from cavalry vs cavalry in Alex. I sent one unit of Sarmatian Noble Cavalry to meet one unit of rebel horse archer (with 1 experience), and the result is a crushing defeat - half loss on my side and 0 on the enemy. It's as same as the result you can get from a real battle, but it fails to work as long as I have more than one heavy cavalry.
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[Aradan]

The idea was to give your HAs 7-9 HPs (depending on their stats) and the infantry would get 5. Though I don't know what the results would be if you tried the above.

Though, getting a perfect result is just impossible, as the auto-resolve is heavily flawed AND a good player or a player that knows how to exploit the weakness of the AI will unbalance things even more. Theoretically if the AI formed a square with shields at all sides and used the terrain to its advantage (or anything else a player would do) the result would be different. The idea when testing is to behave not very cleverly, so that the battle isn't very unfair towards the poor cripple the AI is.

[Korinthos Hoplites]

Is there a way to make spearmen effective against cavalry charges without nerfing them against infantry?

My spearmen are balanced with other infantry without the light_spear or spear attributes, but if I add them in, they will be weakened beyond what I want.

I tried adding mount_effect angainst horses and camels, but while the result in melee is satisfactory, they are still weak at receiving a cavalry charge...

[Aradan]

Hmm, I don't think so. The only way to improve them against charge is (light_)spear or short_pike, but these will also mess up the rest of your balance. mount_effect is your best bet, unless you want to go through the hassle of modifying masses. If you increase the spearmen's mass/decrease cavalry's mass, cavalry won't be able to penetrate through their lines and the charge will wear off on the first ranks, thus causing less damage.