Spears vs. Cav.

[Caspand]

Recently i had my entire BG unit scredded to pieces by a unit of spear militia.

Ive seen this sort of stuff before, i get angry every time it happen.

I know Repman dont want us to use BG as elite forces and lowered their hp to 1.

But is it only me that think spears are a bit to strong vs cav ? Im fine vs light cav, horses have no protection. But i tested the heavy byz cav ( forgot the name ) vs 1 unit spear militia, and in normal combat none charge i still win vs the militia but with way way to many casulties.

Is there any way to perhaps lower the spear effectivenes vs horses ? Perhaps lower their attack by 4 so the bonus aint that great ?

[mlc82]

Go to your DLV_ext folder in the Medieval 2 main folder, then go to the "data" folder, and the open up "export_descr_unit". The easy way to do this once the text file is open is to hit control-f, do a search for "spear_bonus", skip over the first occurences of it at the very beginning in the instructional section, and once you get into the units, you can change them however you like. Most spear militia and etc are set to a Spear Bonus of "8", I'd cut them down to 4 or even 2.

I agree with you, some spearmen, especially crappy spear militia, are WAY too strong vs cavalry! I'm editing the unit file to my own liking, toned down spear militia to where they aren't much use against anything other than opposing militia (or holding a line and mainly dying while you flank them)- now swordsmen will generally slaughter them, but my new wimpier spear militia still managed to annhilate a whole unit of CATAPHRACTS without many losses at all- the Spear Bonus of "8" is way too high IMO!

Edit- you may not want to mess with the spear_bonus setting for halberds, pikes, and etc, as those are supposed to be high. Make sure you check which units you're changing, it should be pretty self-explanatory but I've also spent the last several days stuck in that file so it might not be so self-explanatory to others. If the above didn't make sense just let me know

[mlc82]

Er, on second thought, DON'T do what I said, it's causing my game to crash.

I'm using an already heavily modified unit file which is fine until I change the spear bonus attribute, then crashes (this is what I had planned to do on it first thing today). Make sure you make a backup of that file before trying this out if you do (thank goodness I did)!

[mlc82]

Alright, I figured my mistake out- DON'T set the spear bonus number below 4! The unit file claims you can use a 2 as well, but that's what causes the crashes. Just go through that file and set the spear_bonus for most spearmen to 4. If you'd like, you can send me your "export_desc_unit" file and I'll change it for you- I'm getting to know that thing like the back of my hand now.

[Caspand]

So if a spear militia have a attack rating of say 6 and a bonus at +8 vs cav they get 14 attack vs cav ? So i can lower both but cant move bonus below 4 vs cav and i should be safe ?

Thanks i'll give it a try, also play around some with moral values.

[Stinkfloyd]

To make it more realistic the spear militia should have slightly lowered vs cav. stats but a way lower morale. The thing with heavy cav in general is that they are freakn scary when bearing down, especially against untrained militia. They should almost rout instantly. The same with all other untrained units. In the middle ages heavy cav ruled the battlefield just for that reason, they are way scary.

[roy34543]

I was murdered by Toureg camel spearmen ( the guys that can be recruited at the caraven building) Nearly forty bodyguards died to those 80 riders within 10 seconds with them losing less then 30 . It was a slaughter

[Caspand]

Been playing around with their stats a bit, and im actualy happy with the combat result, sort off.

Lowered Spear militia attack bonus vs cav to 4 reduced their attack to 5 and reduced their natural defence skill to 2 and lowered their moral to 5.

I think i need to move their moral down a bit more to make them how i want, flee after a charge of heavy cav.

Militia should not be used for fighting imo, but keeping the population happy in a settlement and being a last very weak stance against an invade force.

[mlc82]

Also change their morale setting (under mental_stat) from normal to low, that should help.

You'll probably like the new unit data I'll be posting soon once I've played with it some, it's mainly RealCombat values with some differences of my own- Militia aren't really threatening to anything besides other militia now, and it makes the game quite a bit different.

[Caspand]

Ahh sounds good, the unit file is easy to change and find your way around in, but its very big, and tiresom to edit all units )

[mlc82]

Ahh sounds good, the unit file is easy to change and find your way around in, but its very big, and tiresom to edit all units )

Tell me about it, I just spent the last 3-4 days editing that file in any spare time I had, almost non-stop. I never, ever want to look at it again right now

[mlc82]

Ahh sounds good, the unit file is easy to change and find your way around in, but its very big, and tiresom to edit all units )

I've uploaded it, although forgot to tell you this is for 4.0.3 only right now- I'll start playing 5.3 when someone makes an updated Alternate Garrison Script like the one out for 4.0.3

It shouldn't be hard to port this over to 5.3 if that's what you need, and I'll probably do it myself eventually. I always need a new project but want my next one to be away from the computer- after the time spent just working on this one file I thought my eyes were going to bleed even though I enjoyed it! I don't know how Repman and the rest of the DLV crew do it, but I'm glad they do