LTC & Kingdoms

[Black Francis]

Dear Lusted,

Kingdoms is almost upon us and I therefore thought it a timely point at which to ask a few pertinent questions;

If I install Kingdoms will it change much of LTC or mess it up in any way?

Do you have any plans for an updated LTC based upon Kingdoms, e.g. a general rebalancing of units and your own unique "workover"?

Another linked question could of course be = will a workover and balancing of Kingdoms be necessary now you in the employ of Saga and how much input did you put into Kingdoms?

Your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated!

BF.

[citizendash]

I imagine a lot of people have been wondering that very same thing...

[Lance2]

Well sinces hes been modding since Rome(maybe earlier??). I hope and assume he will MOD Kingdoms

[Lusted]

LTC will work with Kingdoms, i've got it installed on my work PC which has Kingdoms and it works fine.

Whether i mod Kingdoms or not is unknown as i have less and less time for modding.

[pajomife]

You have kingdoms? Well ,I hope the game come to this corner of Europe soon.

[Queen Annes Revenge]

this is kind of off topic, but can you tell me if the feature to control multiple armies is in the grand campaign?

[Queen Annes Revenge]

no, but this fact alone will determine if i buy kingdoms. well, i'll likely buy it eventually... but i won't be in a hurry.

[Lance2]

sad news for us all Lusted. LTC is the only MoD I play. I hope that things go well and your able to MoD Kingdoms for us

[Lusted]

Well with the retrofit mod being released i will likely incorporate it into the next version of LTC, so that people with Kingdoms get LTC with some of the new Kingdoms features.

This means there will likely be 2 versions of LTC out soon: one for people with just M2TW, but this version will feature some tweaks i've been working on.

And one for Kingdoms, that will use the Kingdoms.exe to add in some of the new Kingdoms features to LTC, i will also use some of the new Kingdoms variables to tweak the campaign and battles. These values are more specifically a recruitment priority for all units so i can make the ai biased towards recruiting certain units, and a speed modifier, so i can increase the speed of units like Halberds, and vary speed more from unit to unit.

[DrJambo]

A speed modifier! Wow. Totally amazing. No more halberd and pike units being left behind.

So, being able to tweak unit priority and speed. Are there any other little unknown modding goodies in there?

[Lusted]

Yes, new variables in the campaign script file that allows you to modify the kings purse for faction so you can have money scripts which change that. Of course the hero abilities if you wanted to add them in, probably other stuff as well.

EDIT: oh, and the possibility for different models for faction leaders in the campaign and on the battlemap.

[DrJambo]

Regarding AI unit priority, could one, for instance, enable bodyguard units as a recruitable unit and then make them a top priority for the AI to recruit? Thereby enabling the AI to have more generals leading their armies say?

[Lusted]

Regarding AI unit priority, could one, for instance, enable bodyguard units as a recruitable unit and then make them a top priority for the AI to recruit? Thereby enabling the AI to have more generals leading their armies say?

Possibly it will be something to investigate. I was mainly going to use it to make the ai produce more balanced armies with less artillery, and have factions like England recruit more longbows, Byzantine recruit Kataphraktoi more etc.

[DrJambo]

Do you know if the armour and weapon upgrades will show the correct stats on the unit scrolls in Kingdoms?

I've heard the weapon upgrade will now be +3, instead of +6. However, to date, I've never really known what the armour upgrades have imparted....

[Lusted]

The armour upgrades gave +2/2.5, i think they still give the same in Kingdoms. Haven't checked to see if they are displayed correctly or not, or about the weapon upgrades.

[DrJambo]

On a side note, I was toying with some of the variables in config_ai_battle the other day as I was having constant issues with the AI reforming its missile troops during a missile shoot out while defending. Tweaking this variable helped a lot:

<defend-line>
<formed-percentage>80</formed-percentage>
</defend-line>

The fact this is a high percentage seems to mean that when the AI's missile troops try to rearrange themselves to pick their desirable targets, i.e. most likely my mercenary crossbows, the disorder they create in the process results in a perpetual 'reforming' action, during which they won't be shooting..

Anyway, I lowered this to 20 to coincide with the attack battlegroup formed percentage value, and bingo, they no longer spend most of their time reforming during a missile shoot out on defence.

[Lusted]

Thanks for the tip Jambo, i'm also looking into improving the siege ai, as well as continued improvements to the campaign ai. I will have to see if Kingdoms adds in any new ones.

[DrJambo]

I should say that because this is a percentage, it's more likely to go wrong when the AI has a rather lopsided army composition. In the battle that was frustrating me, the AI had ~6 to 8 peasant archers and only around 3 spear units. A proper, balanced army, shouldn't infringe upon this as much, since the % of missile troops would be smaller..

[Lusted]

Yeah. Do you have any other suggestions relating to the siege ai settings?

[DrJambo]

Siege - is this in terms of AI siege defence or attack?

Here's a brief resumé of ideas for attack:

1. I increased this value to 2:

<commit>
<!-- commit sufficient forces to outnumber the enemy by this ratio -->
<strength-ratio>1.6</strength-ratio>
</commit>

2. I increased this value to 1.5:
<artillery-times>
<!-- successful assaults performed for at least 1 minute -->
<minimum>1.0</minimum>
If the advance timer is set to 1.0 (see next comment) and these work as I think they do, then there should still be some artillery bombardment when the AI starts to advance.

3. You could try lowering this siege advance timer value to speed up the process of the AI advancing its artillery (I presume that's what it's for?)? As you can see, it's 6 x the standard advance timer and my thoughts are that the AI can take too long to do this:
<advance-timer>1.0</advance-timer>
<siege-equipment-advance-timer>6.0</siege-equipment-advance-timer>

If you do, you might need to tinker with this so that the times match:
<!-- successful assaults performed for at least 1 minute -->
<minimum>1.0</minimum>

<!-- don't prolong the bombardment longer than 6 minutes if we have no targets left -->
<maximum>6.0</maximum>

I tend to delve into testing when I encounter a battle that doesn't work or the AI is poor for whatever reason. When this happens I save just before the battle in question and make some educated guesses at variables I need to tinker with. Then I reload the battle and see how it's affected the AI, if at all. If it does, as it did with the defend line reform %, then I keep it. However, a change might fix one battle, but subsequently break others. I've found this particular problematic with descr_formations_ai. Changes I've made which enhanced some battles subsequently caused problems in others. For instance, I widened unit interspacing for the main AI formation only to find that when the AI is up a cliffside and surrounded by impassible terrain, the extra wide formation caused all sorts of pathfinding issues (possibly again related to the high defend formed percentage value of 80).

Anyway, I digress. Here's some ideas for AI siege defence. The main theme was to prolong fighting at the walls and particularly the breaches since they seem the easiest areas to defend (for myself) and where the AI is most proficient. When the AI moved to defending streets or the plaza I found it tended to set up its retreating units facing the wrong way, which meant they had their backs to my units!!

1. I changed the setup of breach defending:
<manning-requirements>
<!-- destroyed wall, gate or spy unlocked gate -->
<ground-incursion>
<siege-engine>0</siege-engine>
<cavalry>2</cavalry>
<melee-infantry>2</melee-infantry>
<missile-infantry>0</missile-infantry>
</ground-incursion>

to include one more infantry and one less cavalry. Less face it, cav defending breaches isn't clever. Better to have cav at the plaza.

2. I changed this progression criteria to 50 %, although I'm even thinking of making it 66%.
<!-- enemy got 25% of their force into the settlement -->
<enemy-penetration>0.25</enemy-penetration>

3. Modifying these two depends on whether you think the AI is better at defending the streets than defending the plaza (I'm undecided):

<!-- if the enemy outnumbers us by this proportion (in the perimeter) then fall back -->
<force-ratio>1.6</force-ratio>

<!-- have our forces depleted too much in this stage? -->
<loss-ratio>0.7</loss-ratio>

Obviously this is only relevant for cities and the first two levels of castles.

4. Siege equipment can be surprisingly useful on defence, particularly a well placed ballista defending a breach. Larger projectile artillery can be ok when firing from the plaza too, especially as approaching units will be tired and easier to rout. I only have ballista, scorpion and mortar labelled for defending breaches, and I wish I knew more about the placement parameters to get the AI setting up and using the other artillery from the plaza...

Other things to consider:

1. Whether you want one or two units setup on the wall and then defending the wall. By default both are set to two.

2. You could also try reducing the threat for the siege tower and increasing the threat of the ram. This should coincide with number of wall defenders and the setup you decide for defending breaches. Siege towers are slower and the broken gates are the easiest way to win for human under default. Of course this may change with boiling oil (I don't have Kingdoms yet)!

Most of these AI defending parameters rather pale into insignificance if the AI is only defending with 1 or 2 units. The AI really needs a full garrison to fully make use of these, and we all know that proper garrisons are rare in vanilla. Are they any better in Kingdoms?

Lastly, regarding unit spread on the walls, I've seen some who've increased the value to 3 (like yourself) and others who've decreased the value. Any ideas what this does?

Hope this helps

Cheers