A new mod proposal

[NoahShepherd]

Stainless Steel Evolution

The plan for SSE is to provide SS fans with more unit options in the campaign, no matter what faction your playing or what the current year is. To accomplish this, I will be making several key changes to the current unit rosters and will completely re-script the EDB for each faction. I also intend to script an AOR system to more realistically simulate the growth of an empire. Below are some of the main goals of the mod.

1. Add "missing" units to the existing factions. I find it hard to believe that the English never handed peasants crossbows, and know for a fact that they used muskets and pike men. This should serve to encourage more unit variety in both your armies and the ai's while also preventing the classic "spear militia and peasant archer" armies that describe the first several turns.

2. By using the Era system, I plan to script the EDB to phase old units out of the recruitment pool when new ones become available.

3. Make the late game more interesting by doing the best I can to bring the Renaissance into the game head on. The goal here will be to make muskets, pikes, sword and buckler men, and lancers/demi-lancers available to most of the catholic factions.

4. Remove some of the useless units (such as peasants, highland rabble, etc.) to create more room for a variety of levy/peasant quality units that will make the early turns much more enjoyable.

5. Provide an AOR recruitment system that makes that empire grind a little more fun and a lot more challenging than just steamrolling your opponents for the last several regions.

7. Last but certainly not least - Keep each faction as unique as they are in vanilla even though they share units with most factions. This will probably be the hardest goal to keep in mind. The idea for the mod is to make things more interesting, not remove everything that makes each faction unique. The Scotts will still have the best pike men and the English will still have the best archers.

If anyone has any comments they would like to make, please feel free to post. Any ideas will be helpful as well. Everything I've mentioned hasn't been set in stone yet, they are just preliminary ideas that I wanted to put out there to see what everyone thought about them. I plan to start on the catholic factions first as I no more about them. I recognize that the eastern and middle eastern factions really need some love, but I'm unsure of where to even begin. I'll just continue on with the catholic factions until you guys convince me otherwise.

Keep in mind that I wouldn't mind help with this as well. I'm beginning to grow quite comfortable with the models file, the EDB, and the EDU but don't know the first thing about graphics and modeling, and I definitely won't turn down any historical researchers or scripters who wouldn't mind showing me some pointers when I get stuck.

And as a final note, I plan to stay true to history and realism when it makes since but give way to fun and what-ifs when I believe it to be more appropriate. After all, we can build the great Irish Empire or lead the Byzantines to a new era even though neither was historically correct.

[Darviathar]

If you can figure a way to phase out spear militia and force the computer to build better units, then all power to you. It is 1314 in my Byzantine campaign, and the computer is still fielding armies consisting mainly of the worst units on his roster.

[NoahShepherd]

I believe Point Blank is doing something similar in his Real Recruitment mod. Hopefully I can find out more by studying his EDB.

[Resurrection]

If you can figure a way to phase out spear militia and force the computer to build better units, then all power to you. It is 1314 in my Byzantine campaign, and the computer is still fielding armies consisting mainly of the worst units on his roster.

I believe this can be simply done, but is a bit time consuming. Simply give every single unit its timeframe, so since certain date it won't be available anymore... it's realistic also :-) But as was said, I think real recruitmnet have this already done with many low-level units.

[NoahShepherd]

I believe this can be simply done, but is a bit time consuming. Simply give every single unit its timeframe, so since certain date it won't be available anymore... it's realistic also :-) But as was said, I think real recruitmnet have this already done with many low-level units.

That makes things a might easier then. I'll just have to work on the new rosters. Course I'll have to add those to the EDB as well... which doesn't really make it any easier. Oh well

And a quick update. I've been fooling around with the EDU and the Battle_Models file to add Pike Militia and pikemen to all the catholic factions. I have succeeded in getting it to work but some factions are left with merc textures as I haven't learned much about the texturing aspect yet. I haven't added them to the EDB or given them unit cards but they do work in custom battles. So far so good

I also want to get your thoughts on early levy and militia type units. One idea I had was to replace our current "peasant" with a "levy swordsmen" or "levy infantry". Imagine a spear militia model carrying a smaller round shield and shortsword instead of a large shield and spear. That's the main idea running through my head. Feel free to post your "that's cool", "what about this idea..." or "hell no, that sucks" comments about this. After all, I plan on releasing it to you guys and I believe that any participation is good participation ... well, almost any .

[huktawnfonix]

sounds very cool man. i do find peasants to be very usefull though, since they have the large units (yes i know how that sounds). they work very good as meat shields to absorb arrows or hold off a charge on your archers. im not a huge fan of the countless spear militia everywhere though just because they all look the same with almost every faction. i would love to see some variety in the early era and ill look forward to your mod

[ignasigh]

Looks good!!!!

Militia units should be the same for all of the same regional factions. We can also be more "generous" about adding unique or semi-unique units to more factions (e.g. we can "open" the unique papal units to some catholic factions) and add the mercs to some factions by their regional proximity.

I did in MTW, RTW and RTW:BI but now I'm getting old

Another point I read somewhere else is to remove the peasants, they are useless and you can use the slot for other purposes.

Good luck with your mod! If you need any kind of help (like defining the rules of assigning) let me know!

[Bubban]

In order to free up unit slots you might want to, in addition to removing peasant units, look to removing units that are more or less duplicates of each other. For example, England has four billmen units (bill militia, heavy bill militia, billmen, heavy billmen) which could easily be cut down to two, or one. England also has three different longbow units that aren't very different from each other. It doesn't seem necessary either to have both peasant crossbowmen and militia crossbowmen/archers. One thing that would be nice to see is for bodyguard units of different cultures to have different stats to reflect the differences in equipment, as of right now they're the same.

[NoahShepherd]

Militia units should be the same for all of the same regional factions. We can also be more "generous" about adding unique or semi-unique units to more factions (e.g. we can "open" the unique papal units to some catholic factions) and add the mercs to some factions by their regional proximity.

I agree with you. I'm going to make sure each faction stands out, but I do believe the militia roster needs to be similar for factions within the same culture.

Another point I read somewhere else is to remove the peasants, they are useless and you can use the slot for other purposes.

I've actually renamed the Western European version to Levy Swordsmen and given them the Order Militia model. Works good so far.

I'm also finishing up a test version of England's roster. Here is what I have added so far...

Crossbowmen
Halberd Militia
Lancers
Mounted Crossbowmen
Mounted Longbowmen (renamed French Mounted Archers)
Mounted Sergeants
Musketeers
Peasant Crossbowmen
Pike Militia
Pikemen
Sergeant Spearmen
Sword and Buckler Men

I know I'm being pretty liberal with the roster, but I plan on doing it to all of the factions. I figure I'll leave the task of army composition to the player instead of the history books.

[ignasigh]

Now I remember! I used to add the "crusading" units available to caholic factions in MTW. My criteria was that they need to have a cathedral and the higher stables in order to get the crusader knights...

Well, if you want, you can open the pilgrims, crusaders and others to catholic factions as well as islamic jihad units to muslims....

[NoahShepherd]

Now I remember! I used to add the "crusading" units available to caholic factions in MTW. My criteria was that they need to have a cathedral and the higher stables in order to get the crusader knights...

I have a similar idea. I will allow recruitment of crusader units but only for certain regions in the Holy land. Probably increase the training time to represent the long journey as well.

Which reminds me of an idea I had for the AOR system. Each faction will be able to recruit professionals, late knights, and their unique units in the few regions that could be considered their homeland while peasant, levy, and militia could be recruited outside of it. Depending on how hard it will be to accomplish, I'd like to make the recruitment pools and replenishment rates get smaller the further you get from your homeland.

EDIT: oh and by the way, I like your mod Ignasigh. Just got a PC upgrade and it runs nicely on it.

[ignasigh]

I have a similar idea. I will allow recruitment of crusader units but only for certain regions in the Holy land. Probably increase the training time to represent the long journey as well.

Which reminds me of an idea I had for the AOR system. Each faction will be able to recruit professionals, late knights, and their unique units in the few regions that could be considered their homeland while peasant, levy, and militia could be recruited outside of it. Depending on how hard it will be to accomplish, I'd like to make the recruitment pools and replenishment rates get smaller the further you get from your homeland.

EDIT: oh and by the way, I like your mod Ignasigh. Just got a PC upgrade and it runs nicely on it.

Thanks!! but yours is more ambicious than mine

Maybe some units don't need to be recruited in a certain region, let's say pilgrims, together with the mercs (I think that mercs are a waste of slots if they cannot be recruited as part of the faction as well)

Great work!

[NoahShepherd]

I've finally decided on a way to handle the AOR system and I would like some feedback if you guys don't mind.

I'm currently working on giving all local, rural, and urban units the mercenary tag and giving every faction ownership of them. Any faction will be able to recruit them, but they only from certain areas. For example, France could recruit Magyar cavalry only if it controlled areas in Hungary.

The next step will be to add the neighboring lands early professional, and feudal units to neighboring factions but require them to hold their lands to recruit them. In this way, England could recruit the early professional and feudal units of France, Ireland, and Scotland.

And lastly, all late professional units can only be recruited in their faction homeland, and only by them.

If I do it this way, I will have to create hidden resources for each faction and each culture before I work on the EDB. Anyone believe this is doable?

Thanks in advance for the feedback

[Tsarsies]

@NoahShepard
What your suggesting is definatly doable. There is a limit to the number of hidden resources you can use though, which is 64.

[ShockBlast]

Ok England can`t horde cavalry like France or HRE so demi-lancers are all the need if you want cavalry play France or HRE don`t bring England up to their lvl.
HRE and France used mercenary Longbowmen but giving them access to the Longbowmen will ruin the uniqueness of England so please don`t run the uniqueness of France.In relaity armies weren`t so different overall i don`t want to play clone factions
England did the transition to pike and shot tactics later then mainland Europe.You gave England 3 units that can form spearwall don`t you think you exagerated .. a bit?
About the AOR factions that are very small are doomed to play with others factions units if they expand it would be good for them to have access to their units everywere BUT with a much smaller pool(to simulate renforcements)
Good luck with the project.

[Hambi]

Man this will be the greatest addition to SS for sure. I'm sure many people will only realize when playing. It just gets too boring with time, only beeing able to recruit the same "old" units of your faction, besides beeing historically not correct!

For Example: There were units from every conquered tribe and faction in the Roman legions!
A warrior stays a warrior and will also fight for a new king, as long as he gets paid.


well anyways, I'm awaiting it deserately. Any help needed, I'm ready!

[NoahShepherd]

Thanks for the replies guys. Every bit of criticism helps. I've been working on a rough draft for what units would be included in the AOR and where they can be recruited. I've yet to start on the EDB, as I'm busy with several other things at the moment, but I will probably start on it this week some time.

My goal is to definitely not take away the uniqueness of any of the factions. I've started thinking more about the retooling of the unit rosters and decided that I'd do the AOR first.

Ok England can`t horde cavalry like France or HRE so demi-lancers are all the need if you want cavalry play France or HRE don`t bring England up to their lvl.
HRE and France used mercenary Longbowmen but giving them access to the Longbowmen will ruin the uniqueness of England so please don`t run the uniqueness of France.

If anything I'm trying to bring the other factions up to par with the French (and HRE to a lesser extent). Neither one has much of a weakness in their roster. Both have units with spearwall - actually several, they each have access to some of the best cavalry in the game, France has access to longbowmen... and even horse archers. HRE is only crippled by a lack of exceptional ranged units, but they do have Reiters.

Something I could do is to increase the cavalry pools for France so that they could be larger armies of cavalry than the other factions. Let me know what you guys think of that.

@Hambi
I'm glad your excited. I've just finished making all Local, Rural, and Urban troops mercenary_units so they can be added to the AOR. I believe that is all I will allow. A faction will be able to recruit most of its own units as long as the culture in the area is similar to its own. Elite faction specific units (Retinue Longbowmen, Gothic Knights, etc.) can only be recruited within a 3-4 region area in the factions homeland. This should prevent larger factions from having an edge over the smaller ones.

If you guys have any more ideas, feel free to post.

[Hambi]

while keeping the unique-ness of each faction, how will you represent that on the system? I hope not too tough! Because as you mentioned; France should be able to build longwows after they have taken over the English...

This shoud also be like an incentive for them! You have taken over England, so they (or at least some of them) are fighting in your armies.

Or which units will you not allow to be built by the conquerers?

- Are you going to set a limit of each kind or so?
- Will you represent this idea in the mercenary-system or the actual recruitment in the cities/castles?
- Will the AI use it as well?
- in my opinion you should only be able to build unique units of other factions, when the faction is completely destroyed, what do you think? is that possible to do?

sorry for all these questions, but as you said, its an ambitious project and I'm excited about it! (-;

[BigJake]

why must you be in the enemies home land to us his technology?
maybe after he uses the longbow against you a few times you can then be able to use the longbow (not as good as he does though), like in the americas campaign.
^
i have never seen this done i just read it on the back of the cover

[Hambi]

@ big Jake;

this is somehow logic; at the end, every leader can choose what units he wants to build and what weapons to be created... but it's just not possible, as I am sure. In The Americas, its based on an event at a certain time, coming up anyways.


So it is actually totally ok to only be able to recruit Longbow-men in English regions, as there, there is the tecnologie, the specialists, the trainers...