My (upcoming) unit tweaking mod

[mlc82]

I'm planning to make some basic changes to the units in the game mainly for my own enjoyment, and will upload it as well for anyone else who might be interested. Here's what I want to do so far (and pretty well know how to do):

- Reduce attack and defense of plain peasant units to "1", make them nothing but a nuisance incapable of doing any more damage than holding up an attack while they get killed. The peasant stats are just too high for my liking- In fact, if there's a way to remove them entirely, I'd like to, they just don't feel right when they could be (and the AI could be producing) town militias instead.

- Reduce unarmored archers (from peasant/militia archers to unarmored longbowmen) to a primary defense of 1. They can no longer hold their own for long in any kind of melee, you must PROTECT them now if you'd like to keep them alive. DLV already did this pretty well (in the vanilla game, Longbowmen made better melee fighters than spearmen IIRC), I just want to make it more dramatic. They might can hold out for a little while against town/spear militia, anything more powerful is going to slaughter them mericlessly.

- Reduce archer attack (from arrows) power. Just because I'm tired of seeing peasant archers able to mow down troops decked out in chainmail. If armor (not to mention shields) was really all that ineffective, why would anyone have even paid for it? I'm under the impression that a basic arrow (not any sort of specialized one, ie the Bodkin) would not have been likely at all to penetrate chain armor. I want basic archers to be a real threat to unarmored units such as basic town militia, but for padded leather to start providing a little noticeable defense against them, and chain and heavier to prevent much of any losses. Please though someone correct me if this is horribly inaccurate on my part.

I've also reduced the power of Longbows and Composite Bows back to a rating of 6 (instead of 12). Someone please correct me again if they SHOULD seem overpowered! I know both were much more effective against armored soldiers (and with the 6 attack rating instead of basic archers' 2 they should still be able to do some damage to armored units), but don't think that one Longbowman unit should be able to massacre 2-3 (light chain and up) armored units in one battle.

-What would be the opinions of you guys on lowering just slightly the hitting power of peasant crossbowmen- Obviously a well aimed crossbow shot will hit just as hard whether a 10 yr old girl or Conan the Barbarian is pulling the trigger, so I don't really like the idea of lowering the shot power, however maybe this could reflect that a unit of conscripted peasants would likely be shaking and terrified, and therefore unable to fire as accurately as trained regualr crossbowmen, most of whom have the same attack rating? I can't decide if this would be a good or bad idea, so please give me your input.


- Way down the line, I'd like to also tweak in larger differences between militias and regular soldiers. Change up the attack values, and slightly defensive values, to make spear militia much less effective against armored swordsmen for example. This is going to take a lot of time and trial and error though.

I also have a couple of questions:

What are the in game advantages/disadvantages of the "Shield Wall"? It sure does look neat when given to spear militia, and seems much more fitting than the schiltrom, but if it's turning them some enormous, balance breaking defense/attack advantage then I don't want to use it after all.

-Is there a way to tweak the armor values easily? IE Padded Leather raises a unit's armor value by 1, Light Chain by 2 or 3, Heavy Chain by 5, Heavy Plate really dramtically, etc instead of just 1 point each?

I'm sure I'll have more later but I have to get going for now. Like I said this is just some basic tweaking in the "export_desc_units" file so not a big mod or anything, but just for my own enjoyment and I'll upload it when I'm finished in case anyone else wants to try it.

[Aszrayel]

Lumberjack (aka Pinko) had this type of mod up and going until he hit a version that had a constant CTD for some reason. It looks like he's through with the mod and said anyone was able to pick up his work and use it from where he left off. This mod was one that I always used as it added a bit more realism to battles. The mod was called Lumberjack's ++Realism Mod.

[mlc82]

That's the one I like as well

I have no idea how to expand on his though as it goes WAY beyond the scale of what I'm trying to do- mine is just going to be tweaking in the unit text file, not trying to enhance battlefield AI or anything like that (I wouldn't even know where to start).

I already used to nerf the peasants and militia archers since I learned how with vanilla M2, I really like how he did the same- and I'd like to increase the armor protection a little more dramatically than Lumberjack did. I'd also like to create a larger difference between classes of soldiers- Really make spear militia unable to do much good against anything other than enemy spear militia, otherwise mainly just being there to hold your line and add bulk to your army. IMO conscripted farmers who have been dragged into a battle by their Lord (who they'd likely want to stab at least as much as whoever they're facing) really shouldn't be anywhere close to as effective as something like Dismounted Feudal Knights- I'd like to make them able to simply HOLD the swordsmen in place for a little while without dying in droves, but also to where they hardly kill any of the swordsmen- even with Lumberjack's mod, spear militia can still fare pretty well against other much more powerful units due to their bulk, but IMO conscripted farmers wouldn't be killing machines on a battlefield, more likely probably just standing there behind their shields trying to not die instead of actively doing much fighting. This might make militia vs militia battles an exercise in sheer boredom though, so I'm not sure how to go about it. I would think that if they both had lowered attack AND defense rates, it should balance out in that regard.

Being able to tweak unit morale would be nice as well although I don't know how to do it yet. Obviously my conscripted farmer used as an example above who goes terrified into battle wondering how his wife, children and harvest will survive if he's killed, will probably be a lot more likely to throw down his weapons and run like hell than the Viking 2 handed Axeman going into battle praying "Let me die with an axe in my hand, and my enemy's blood on my blade!" who thinks that being surrounded from all sides and fighting to the death would be fun.

[mlc82]

I should add that as of right now, what I'm doing is only for the older 4.0.3 DLV- I don't want to go with 5.2 yet because I like the "Alternative Garrison Script" for 4 too much (dramatically increases my "end turn" times while still garrisoning capitals), and also don't like the new requirement of converting 30% of your population to Judaism before being able to use merchants- this doesn't seem historical OR fun to me!

I'll probably do the same thing for v5 eventually as well since I have Kingdoms collecting dust on my shelf for now.

[mlc82]

Alright, I'm coming into my first problem here- The armor bonuses given by blacksmiths of all levels are completely inconsistent with armor ratings of units having a type of armor to begin with. For example, "Armored Sergeants" wearing apparently Light Chain have an armor rating of 5. A Sergeant Spearman initially recruited is unarmored, and therefore has an armor rating of 0. Put in a light chain blacksmith and upgrade his armor to light chain, which should theoretically make him an armored spearman, and his armor rating is... 2?? AARRGGHH!!

Is there an easy way to allow tanneries/blacksmiths to give a higher upgrade to armor ratings to make it consistent? IE all leather = 2, light chain = 5, heavy chain= 6, and so on instead of simple and inconsistent 1 point bonuses? Of course this would require tweaking units beginning with such armor to have the same values but that wouldn't be hard to do... I'll start searching for/playing with this idea, if anyone could help I'd appreciate it.

[Aszrayel]

If you want to change armor values from smiths you would have to look into the export_desc_buildings file and scroll down until you get to those types of buildings. The way it is now each building upgrade gives an increase of one to armor like you said so if the unit starts out with zero armor skill then a tanner will make it one, then the next level 2, and so forth. Just remember this is only one part of the defense stat of each unit as there is also skill and shield (if applicable to the unit).

[Rozerick]

The MG-42 comment might not be that far off if you mean a unit of longbowmen. Average l/b men could fire 2 or 3 arrows before the first had even hit the groud, so a unit of 120 lbmen would have 360 arrows in the air at any one time. Bear in mind that the game abstracts this to a far lower rate of fire but (probably) a much higher chance of killing, and you can see how it works.

[mlc82]

The MG-42 comment might not be that far off if you mean a unit of longbowmen. Average l/b men could fire 2 or 3 arrows before the first had even hit the groud, so a unit of 120 lbmen would have 360 arrows in the air at any one time. Bear in mind that the game abstracts this to a far lower rate of fire but (probably) a much higher chance of killing, and you can see how it works.

That's interesting!

It's mainly the militia archers being able to shoot down plate-armored soldiers that's bothering me though. I've reduced their arrow attack to 1 and it's still happening.

I had no idea doing something like this could become such an obsession! I'm going to make the combat very similar to the RealCombat battles, slower paced but with the potential to become really bloody. I've tweaked swordsmen to where opposing 1-handed swordsmen armored in chain, and especially plate, spend more time banging their swords on each other than killing one another. Send in a unit armed with "Armor Piercing" bonus maces or axes from the flank, and it turns into a massacre- pretty interesting and a big difference from the vanilla game!

Re-working the armor is probably going to be the hardest part, I don't want to make it as complex as RealCombat but do want to up the values some, and also figure out once and for all what's going on with the strange looking armor upgrade system.

[mlc82]

Alright, I'm working now on porting RealCombat 1.3 over to DLV 4.0.3. The armor thing is just too much of a pain to figure out, and RC 1.3 is pretty close to what I wanted to do anyway. I'm at least going to port the unit stats/costs over, and hopefully can get PointBlank's armor system working in DLV as well.