WiP: Real Recruitment for SS

[Echad]

Its not automatic, its designed into the EDU.

Weapon charge values are chosen based on whether the weapon would receive an additional effect from being used in a charge, ie a mace or axe, which are swung in a rotary fashion only only, and which the user cannot put his full weight behind, receive less of a bonus than a sword, which can also be thrust (ie maximising the effect from a linear charging motion), with a boost for 2H weapons.

There are probably 80-100 pages of RC threads going back a year which cover stuff like this

Ok, I C, thanx for your answers, I'll go for the RC thread, when I'll need some more info. =) Bye, GL with RR!

[Point Blank]

Will do so tonight or tomorrow.

[Goffredo]

@Point Blank:
ok you managed to convince me...i think i just miss the good old spearmen from my beloved MTW.
Anyway i'm eagerly awaiting for you next release!
Ps:any chance to see shield wall ability for some units?

[Quark]

Shieldwall
I have tested this out and the issue is that the Ai does not use it, so you are going to get into the whole 'should we have stakes' argument again about what is an exploit.

[Point Blank]

Shieldwall
I have tested this out and the issue is that the Ai does not use it, so you are going to get into the whole 'should we have stakes' argument again about what is an exploit.

Good, in that case, lets not.

[Point Blank]

Considering boosting spear defense by 1. That will help a little bit.

Will do some testing of shield wall. It used to be bugged such that for units that had shield wall capability, Guard Mode had no effect, ie the formation would not stay together like it should.

UglySori: Did some testing with new Kata's in latest RC versus Mamluk archers. Used 1 Kata (armor upgraded) vs 2xMA on grass field. Kata's charged closest MA, which skirmished away but not fast enough (which is an AI issue), so was caught by Kata charge. Charge killed about 25 MA and 1 Kata, melee immediately following reduced MA to about 11. Second MA joined the melee, were doing OK for a while since it was into the Kata flank but once the Kata's re-aligned they quickly gained the edge. End result was 101 MA killed to 31 Kata. Better?

[Echad]

Then test it and stop talking what if! It would be much faster if you just see what it will do, than guessing for a week!

About shieldwall... Great! Now you will remove anything AI won't use just not to have some players shouting about exploits? Due to some random guy raising a topic for a few pages? Men, let's not talk about exploits - I'd better give AI a bigger army and defeat it with tactics, than reduce the exploits (AI doesn't use any tactics that I employ) and fight just with uber-intesting frontal charge... =\ I am sure the new formation will be good. Just... Stop listening to the guys who have a "house rules' for not employing any exploits, including the sole presence of human brain!

AI uses schiltron? =\ Maybe just set the spearwall as the basic formation, as the pikemen' Spear Wall?

Point Blank, please, test the Shield Wall and if Archers' bonus against cav 'll affect only their primary weapon! =\

[UglySori]

PB - I play with a small unit size so maybe that is affecting my gameplay btw. as my cavalry are only in units of 30. The Kata changes sound good. Your explanations of the changes in my version of RC make sense and I can see why in melee they were suddenly very equal esp after looking through the edu stats on my own. My only worry now is that many players who are crusading are in for a rude awakening if they send any cav less than say chivalric knight quality at mamluk archers.

If the Mamluk skirmish then it should be ok since the AI tends to allow this to happen: You charge at them in double row formation. They skirmish too slowly allowing you to catch 3-7 horse archers running away from you with their backs exposed = instakills. The rest of the Mamluk formation slow turns around and engages you formation piecemeal allowing you to kill around 10 more HA before the bulk meets your line. Battle ends quickly but you start to incur losses.

IF the AI for some reason decides to meet you head on though or you only kill like 1 or 2 HA when your charge catches them skirmishing its a different story. I did tests controlling the two mamluk archers vs respectively a single Feudal, Crusader. Hospitaller, and Chivarlic knights. I moved the mamluk archer general out of the picture and charged headlong with the other mamluk. As long as I kept the mamluk archer formation 3 rows deep or more, meaning less front for the western knights to impact against with their countercharge, the Mamluks would cause severe casualties in the ensuing melee all the way up to Chivalric quality knights. The mamluks wouldn't usually win but they would kill at least 3/5 to 2/3 of the enemy. Now is this a huge problem? I dunno /shrug. Its just the combination of decent def, high morale, most importantly the mace factor that's causing this. You could say keep the same armor, shield value, but lower their defense skill to tone them down a bit but maybe its not warranted. I mean technically if the player remembers to just wedge against them or if the AI chooses to try to skirmish with the Mamluk archers you probably won't see this problem very much. A note on the Kata changes, will that make them too similar to Archontopoulai especially if Kats get the advantages of maces?

Another thing i wanted to ask about ever since RC 1.3 is why are Varangian guard to achingly slow? Not a huge deal its just tires my brain to watch them crawl across the map at pikeman speed lol. They can't even kill anything when chasing routers while dismounted latinkon who wear as much armor sort of speed along.

Echad - In regards to adding the effective against mount attribute to missile troops, though I am not a modder, I am pretty sure PB is correct in that it would affect both primary and secondary attack. Actually I am not even sure it would work on missiles actually the way CA has coded the last few games but it would affect the secondary attack.

Which wouldn't mean much to missile infantry since a cav unit's charge would decimate too much of the unit to have too much of a noticeable effect unless you have really stubborn ones like mongol dismounted heavy archers. PBs pt on HA though is valid.

The AI likes to melee with HA and the bonus to cav in secondary attack will have the Mamluk situation I've been talking about all over again. Players will sit there scratching their heads wondering where their heavy cav went. You'd have to , I suspect, increase HA secondary attack swing time, lower defense skill slightly, lower secondary attack ratings slightly, and raise charges for all HA to compensate. Which would equate to HA being less effective in melee but still having enough charge to beat missile troops or put a dent into heavier troops in an exposed flank. Worth testing anyway but probably not worth implementing if it does affect the secondary attack.

Implementation of the shield wall would simply be a nice tactical option for the player even if the AI doesn't use it but for me I'm not sure if I would care very much. Spears since the days of Shoggie have always been throw away units for me. Cheap to recruit and used only to hold the enemy in place so something nasty can hit them from the flanks. Currently they do that job fine against heavy cav until I get pikes or halberds. Though in multiplayer, 6 chevron ashigari with weapon upgrades could beat vanilla monks for less koku! Those were the days of super peasant spearmen!

[Echad]

Implementation of the shield wall would simply be a nice tactical option for the player even if the AI doesn't use it but for me I'm not sure if I would care very much. Spears since the days of Shoggie have always been throw away units for me. Cheap to recruit and used only to hold the enemy in place so something nasty can hit them from the flanks.

Yes, this is exactly why we need Shield Wall - they are boring enought, and only used as meatshields, lockers, or the defence against cavalry, esp. for those factions, which do not have pikes or halberds. =\ And they would be both better meatshields and tight lockers with shieldwall, as schiltron is utterly useless, due to it being slower than other spearmen and weaker than pikes.

[Goffredo]

@Point Blank:can you check this?Dave Scarface is trying to improve AI's recruitment sistem.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=143109
is this compatible with RR?and most important will this mess up RR balance?or maybe it won't work correctly since the different recruitment sistem of RR?

[Point Blank]

@Point Blank:can you check this?Dave Scarface is trying to improve AI's recruitment sistem.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=143109
is this compatible with RR?and most important will this mess up RR balance?or maybe it won't work correctly since the different recruitment sistem of RR?

Looks like main changes he has made are by adding recruit_priority_offset into EDU. RR/RC has done that already.

You can use his EDU but its an older RC version and the unit costs won't be optimised to be compatible with RR, which alters them based on category (eg Late Pro, Local etc) and also uses a relatively complex method to calculate the cost.

UglySori: Have increased the Horse Armor effect by 1, which will help most knights etc vs HA's in melee. Like you say, with the Mumluks having maces, versus knights they can do some decent damage.
I don't know why the Varagians are so slow? Haven't changed anything there.

[Goffredo]

thanks for the quick reply...anyway i was just curious,in fact thanks to the great job you are doing with RR i think that AI's recruitment is as good as it can be.
and...how far is your next release?

[UglySori]

Looks like main changes he has made are by adding recruit_priority_offset into EDU. RR/RC has done that already.

You can use his EDU but its an older RC version and the unit costs won't be optimised to be compatible with RR, which alters them based on category (eg Late Pro, Local etc) and also uses a relatively complex method to calculate the cost.

UglySori: Have increased the Horse Armor effect by 1, which will help most knights etc vs HA's in melee. Like you say, with the Mumluks having maces, versus knights they can do some decent damage.
I don't know why the Varagians are so slow? Haven't changed anything there.

Sounds like it will be interesting. Oh I am truly sorry I thought you had made the changes for some reason. I could be goin crazy but ever since I loaded SS 5.1 infantry speeds between unit types have changed drastically. I had saw some mention of speed changes for units like pikemen I thought in the RC 1.3 changes so I assumed the changes to 2h axemen speed fell privy to RC 1.3 changes and beyond too. Currently the speed hierarchy seems to be this:
(I've done a few speed tests but nothing super thorough)

Fastest to slowest
1. Halberd type polearms w/ spearwall ability off
2. Skirmishing type units (Arqs, Javelinmen etc.)
3. Hvy infantry carrying a shield and 1h weapon and oddly alot of archer units
4. 2h Sword units
5. 2h Axe units/Halberds units that do not have the spearwall ability
6. Pike units

I mean speed differentials make sense and there are some obvious ones you just spot between loading Vanilla and SS 5.1. Pikemen obviously run alot slower. Axemen speed change is a fairly dramatic difference. Maybe it has to do something formation integrity changes or something. Halberds also run dramatically too imo fast. The middle ground is a little bit more subtle but for instance Arqs in the end do end up running faster than sword and board infantry.

I am all for some infantry being faster than others but the speed hierarchy seems inconsistent. No reason why a knight in partial plate or layers of heavy mail should run just as fast as say an armored swordsman in light mail or even just a plain ole archer in leather. But that is how it works currently. Obudshaer in plate outrun everything even arqs currently. Dismounted Chivarlic knights keep pace with lighter inf like Norse archers and Viking raiders despite the heavier armor and bulkier shields. Those all visibly outpace 2H axe like Norse axemen and 2H sword types to a lesser degree. I apologize if ppl have already noticed this and I've been ignorant but I've been feeling like I've been taking crazy pills watching infantry run around at odd speeds especially when chasing routers lol.

-EDIT Seems that halberds that have no spearwall ability run just as slow as 2h axemen... very confusing.

[Point Blank]

Sounds like it will be interesting. Oh I am truly sorry I thought you had made the changes for some reason. I could be goin crazy but ever since I loaded SS 5.1 infantry speeds between unit types have changed drastically. I had saw some mention of speed changes for units like pikemen I thought in the RC 1.3 changes so I assumed the changes to 2h axemen speed fell privy to RC 1.3 changes and beyond too. Currently the speed hierarchy seems to be this:
(I've done a few speed tests but nothing super thorough)

Fastest to slowest
1. Halberd type polearms w/ spearwall ability off
2. Skirmishing type units (Arqs, Javelinmen etc.)
3. Hvy infantry carrying a shield and 1h weapon and oddly alot of archer units
4. 2h Sword units
5. 2h Axe units/Halberds units that do not have the spearwall ability
6. Pike units

I mean speed differentials make sense and there are some obvious ones you just spot between loading Vanilla and SS 5.1. Pikemen obviously run alot slower. Axemen speed change is a fairly dramatic difference. Maybe it has to do something formation integrity changes or something. Halberds also run dramatically too imo fast. The middle ground is a little bit more subtle but for instance Arqs in the end do end up running faster than sword and board infantry.

I am all for some infantry being faster than others but the speed hierarchy seems inconsistent. No reason why a knight in partial plate or layers of heavy mail should run just as fast as say an armored swordsman in light mail or even just a plain ole archer in leather. But that is how it works currently. Obudshaer in plate outrun everything even arqs currently. Dismounted Chivarlic knights keep pace with lighter inf like Norse archers and Viking raiders despite the heavier armor and bulkier shields. Those all visibly outpace 2H axe like Norse axemen and 2H sword types to a lesser degree. I apologize if ppl have already noticed this and I've been ignorant but I've been feeling like I've been taking crazy pills watching infantry run around at odd speeds especially when chasing routers lol.

-EDIT Seems that halberds that have no spearwall ability run just as slow as 2h axemen... very confusing.

RC has only set pike unit speed to 0.70, that's the only speed change.

Otherwise the speed being dependent only on unit category makes sense because each category has its own running animation. Its only with Kingdoms that we can alter move speeds. Well, to do that for all units so its consistent, that's a big job, and it also doesn't take account of armor upgrades, though I guess that isn't so important.

It would require a move_speed_mod value for each category so that its speed is the same as all other categories, then reduced from there depending primarily upon armor value and (perhaps) secondarily weapon. Heavy infantry is still able to run way too far in this game.

It would actually be a worthwhile project, care to do the basic research?

[Echad]

Point Blank, have you made some needed updates to _just RC_ (without RR), compared to the one in SS 5.1b? And maybe I should take something and merge to my EDU, since I'll be working on it with merging recruit priority by Dave Scarface anyway?

[chanw4]

Point Blank, have you made some needed updates to _just RC_ (without RR), compared to the one in SS 5.1b? And maybe I should take something and merge to my EDU, since I'll be working on it with merging recruit priority by Dave Scarface anyway?

I think not using the EDB file PB provided would lift all the recruitment restriction that is hooked by the date.

[Point Blank]

Point Blank, have you made some needed updates to _just RC_ (without RR), compared to the one in SS 5.1b? And maybe I should take something and merge to my EDU, since I'll be working on it with merging recruit priority by Dave Scarface anyway?

The RC EDU can be used OK without the RR EDB, but the unit costs are designed to fit in with RR, though they would be quite OK if used with another EDB.

[Echad]

The RC EDU can be used OK without the RR EDB, but the unit costs are designed to fit in with RR, though they would be quite OK if used with another EDB.

Ok, I actually thought of merging it, not just copy-pasting... And are there many unit balance changes compared to RC in SS 5.1? And, won't the unit balance be screwed, if I just kept the old costs, and added updated stats?

Anyway, thanks for your answers!

[Banzai!]

In your 6.0 release can you make Camel Gunners recruitable by all factions? Camel Gunners are my fave unit.

[Echad]

I was asking about changes mainly in EDB...