Suggestions and questions...

[GreatOne]

Since I couldn't find a suggestion thread, I decided to start one myself

I wanted to ask, and tell some things about the mod.

In chiv data folder I found blood texture, and I was left surprised and anxious, did you plan on incorporating blood in your mod?

Next, you really should increase the pause between hits on cavalry using spears, because often times when there are more than 60 cavalry units fighting eachother, i find myself deafened when i zoom in to see the combat.I suggest putting it to 0 or more, because it's pretty difficult to use a lance into a prolonged combat.

Having said that i suggest that you increase charge bonus for lances and decrease their speed and power in prolonged melee, but when using swords you can make them faster or increase their power in prolonged combat, but reduce charge value, it is already like this, but not to such extent where it would be noticable.

That's all for now.

EDIT:I seek a serious opinion, in which you can always add a joke.Like Pompeius to torture me, but his post lacks opinion, at least explicit one.....

[Pompeius Magnus]

and what about a new faction Serbia?

[GreatOne]

That'd be good too

(hint:play vanilla roman campaign and you will hear something like this in the intro)

[Mithril]

a question
is there a tutorial on how the great DP made his gloss i would like to learn how he did it or is it a secret?

[DaVinci]

a question
is there a tutorial on how the great DP made his gloss i would like to learn how he did it or is it a secret?

TWC and TW.org offers quite a lot tutorials, plus TWC has the modding university. Just browse and find ...

[DaVinci]

Since I couldn't find a suggestion thread, I decided to start one myself

I wanted to ask, and tell some things about the mod.

In chiv data folder I found blood texture, and I was left surprised and anxious, did you plan on incorporating blood in your mod?

Next, you really should increase the pause between hits on cavalry using spears, because often times when there are more than 60 cavalry units fighting eachother, i find myself deafened when i zoom in to see the combat.I suggest putting it to 0 or more, because it's pretty difficult to use a lance into a prolonged combat.

Having said that i suggest that you increase charge bonus for lances and decrease their speed and power in prolonged melee, but when using swords you can make them faster or increase their power in prolonged combat, but reduce charge value, it is already like this, but not to such extent where it would be noticable.

That's all for now.

EDIT:I seek a serious opinion, in which you can always add a joke.Like Pompeius to torture me, but his post lacks opinion, at least explicit one.....

There were some efforts for blood textures already years ago for RTW mods, but the results have shown, that it is not worth the lagging that this causes, besides a lack of senseful graphical effects.

Regarding the little combat detail you have mentioned: Atm. i won't change anything of those combat things in Chiv (which is already pretty good balanced), as long it doesn't destroys the gameplay or soemthing like that. If all other important things with priority are provided, i might go into a few combat balancing tweaks.

[GreatOne]

I presume that the thing used for representing blood was the one that is used to create burning men? Just curious....

[Flowermasher]

I have a question, when I played the mod I ran into one issue. Time.....! The attack v. Armor is kinda ridiculous. I mean 2 attack with 18 defense. That means about each battle can take more than 10 mins for just small battles. I love a good long campaign but isn't this a little to much of a delay? Perhaps there is a change in the new versions but the time it takes to make an impact is kinda long. The only thing in most cases that make a noticeable difference in battle is cavalry. They can make a bash-a-thon go faster but not actually kill more troops.

Maybe its a strategy issue, I am very used to the old RTW and BI way of troop organization. Any suggestions? Or perhaps some insite into this problem that I see.

[DaVinci]

My suggestion: Just do a few autoresolve-battles to save time, if you don't want to fight out every battle by yourself because of time-constraints.

Anyway, in-battle, in the most cases the enemy (or you) will break sooner or later, and then the routing starts, and the battle can be quite short in those cases.
Only battles with a quite ratio 1:1, this doesn't funtion easily, there you'll need to kill their general, at least, to shorten the battle-time.

Else, the combat-model will stay in the whole this way as it is.

[Flowermasher]

I would auto-resolve but that takes the point out of the mod.

About breaking sooner or later....the game is built that way from the outside, however, by use of very old battle strategy (stuff from pre-roman era) you can win nearly every battle. The AI only needs to be surrounded even if just by weaker forces. Granted I understand that you guys have worked alot on this and I am sure you discussed alot of stuff but it doesn't stay true to how the game will need to function. It only gives the illusion of being difficult to beat when in fact every unit is so well armored that you don't have to do much building or much work at all. Cavalry would normally change this but their charge is so weak that unless all horse units regiments are made much larger then the overall effect is a big "meh". It doesn't sit well when on hard mode a group of cavalry is turned back by peasant-esque units because of number differences. In history a charge of horses would usually cause the entire rout of all enemy forces. It just seems a bit strange when so much attention to detail is made but battle seems left needing more.

I am not against the mod, I like it. I just don't think that something as important as battle balance should be ignored in favor of artificially lengthening battles. I see no reason why the attack values for all units are so low, I mean armor is way up. You cannot expect me always be in a 1:1 ratio to the enemy forces.

I really think that the people who enjoy this must do nothing with their lives because 30 mins for a battle is just over doing it. Not to say anything about them but you are assuming that everyone else WANTS to play this long. It questions why you would even put certain historically questionable units in the game but not make it user friendly enough to make progress something more than a 5 hour fight for two provinces bash-a-thon. Why use fun units if they can be beaten easily or why have them when it takes bugger all time to get them...

Yes, I understand that I sound mean and long winded but with how detailed the mod is it just seems out of line to make battle such a terrible and slow process. I mean, the animation is not the best in the world, its not like we are watching epic battles unfold before us. Most of the time is spent watching men get moved as the computer tries to make the most of the available space on a bridge. There is no blood, no body parts, no anything suspenseful. There also is no answer for why these things are like this. Its all just "we did this, hope you enjoy"..... Well it isn't going to be enjoyed for long once people find out each battle is a grueling up hill drudge concerned mostly with waiting for a good time to zerg rush cavalry.

I have played a good deal of mods with a wide range of attack/armor/charge ratios and I have to say that this one is by far the slowest, weakest, and most strategically useless of them all. As a historian it kinda makes me mad when I cant use medieval tactics in a mod designed for that task.....really, use Macedonian battle formations, instant win. The AI can't handle it based on the current attack/armor values.

[Pompeius Magnus]

As a historian it kinda makes me mad when I cant use medieval tactics in a mod designed for that task...

hear, hear... now the historian is speaking.

well, I have to tell you that I never saw a RTW/BI based mod which gives me the possibillity to make a historical medieval roman battle formation:


I don't know where the problem is to use typically medieval tactics. Is it only the speedrate or the attack values??:hmmm:
When someone read your post he could have the feeling that the battles of Chivalry are extemly bad. But obviously it isn't.

[DaVinci]

Flowermasher, your criticism is appreciated. But i agree more with Athenogoras reflection, yes, the kill-rates can get a little review in some cases to work vs. the still quite unrealistic quick speed of battle length sometimes ... lol ... so you see, probable more people have the opposite experience to yours. Indeed, with the last combat value changes the battle length is indeed a bit increased, as it was formerly too fast if ie. general units charged into infantry!

However, eventually you aren't aware of the fact that ChivTW is in place since about 1-2 years with ca. the combat-model you can find in this actual version (except a few changes to increase still more the realism in the whole: battle and recruitment/unit deployments). And you are the first one who gives this kind of a non-agreement for the battle-design/experiences. The only thing where i agree eventually is, that a few certain cavalry units can get a bit more charge-value to make up for the recently decreased unit numbers of those heavy units, whereas these heavy cav units got already at last more combat-points and also partly 2hp compared to the former version/s, and perhaps they can get 1 or 2 points more armour or shield value.

Please give me concrete examples (and screnshots) which peasant units can beat heavy cav units easily, if you charge with these cav units into them, then i'll look for those points. As said, because of lowered unit numbers it can be that heavy cav units need a bit more initial charge power.

Info for you: The ratio 2/18 (attack/defence) is present only for professionals (as ie. MAA andthelike) and higher units ... all peasant-like units have a maximum of about 1/6-8 or 1-2/8-11 (for trained peasant-like units as infantry sergeants). Info for you: Heavy MAA's were indeed able to stand their ground against knights and other heavy cavalry, because they were numerous and heavy equipped, and just if they didn't broke. Whereas, the knights etc. have mainly 5/23-25 ratio and a lot have 2hp.

Oh, and another info for you: The combat-model got a lot of attention.

[Athenogoras]

I cant quite relate to this criticism. My longest fieldbattle must have been like 10 minutes and I play huge settings and hard battles. Sieges take a lot longer though(something like 30 minutes, siege with a smaller force and beat them when they sally instead). I usually have 2 och 3 familymembers in my armies. If you want really fast battles charge your general frontal and flank and charge with your other generals. Mass charge your infanty. Kill the enemygeneral ASAP. Almost instant rout if they dont have high quality troops.
This is actually the fast killrate I have seen in any mod. And I have played IBFD, EB, RTR, XGM, TTW, LOTR-tw, Fourth age.
Have you tried RTR 1.9. Put your hoplites on guardmode, take a break, read the complete works of Hegel, come back and still see them duke it out.

If anything the killrate should be slower.

[Personified Boredom]

I actually encounter the other end of the spectrum to which Flowermasher is relating to.

My battles are two fast.

For example; I had a battle last three minutes, start to finish. Two big armies, Zirids against Moors- mostly Berber and Andalusian infantry with odd light infantry units thrown in. I charged, he charged, the armies met, and in all of seventeen seconds, the other army broke. Literally collapsed, they just turn and ran. We destroyed them utterly in the rout, but the melee itself was so pathetic it actually made me quite angry.

On both sides, casualties from the melee itself rendered at the utter most, fifty dead/wounded.

This came from two armies of roughly 1200, +/- 150 or so. The thing is though, this happens all the time. H/H or VH/VH, it makes absolutely no differance who I'm playing as, or what the armies are composed of. Playing as Denmark, bloodthirsty vikings buckle against my armies, comprised of exactly the same unit structure. The only time an army will stay and duke it out -you know, those big ugly battles where by the end more men are dead than alive?- occur solely when the other army has a general of four or more stars, or perhaps when they outnumber me 5:1 or more. It's aggravating.

I'm pretty sure I'm not that great of a general. The overwhelming victories I have are nice, but it wears thin when when I find my little Maghreb nation conquering all of western Europe with only eight battles lost- and the losses all came from autoresolved battles.

[DaVinci]

Interesting how diverse the experiences are

[Personified Boredom]

Well, it is the spice of life after all...

[Zombimode]

Hm, maybe thats just a reaction to your personal karma. After all your the Personified Boredom

Joking aside if anything my experiences lean towards Personified Boredoms, albeit less extreme. >The last 30 years in my camp I fought against the germans (and only the germans) and many of my battles were won due to fast mass routing. But this is more caused by the fact that the HRE had nummerous but crappy armies, or lacked a crucial element in ther unit selection (in most cases almost no cavalry support), and my superior army on the other side. Against armys with a strong unit selection and a general battels were challenging

As far as I could see it other nations had better rounded armies than the HRE.

[GreatOne]

Fast routing calls for morale boost right?

And btw, anyone who gets to fight cavalry vs cavalry battle, zoom in to the max...... deafened? I was.......

So like I said reduce staying power of the lances but increase charge, reverse for the swords.I know it's done, just make it more noticeable.Maybe AI will finally use cavalry swords when engaged.....

[Zombimode]

Fast routing calls for morale boost right?

Thought of that, too. But maybe that would throw away the balance.
And remember, moral boost ALWAYS benefits the player.

Maybe AI will finally use cavalry swords when engaged.....

No, thats an unfixed bug in the RTW engine. The AI never use their secondary meele weopans if their primary is a meele too.
I think the cavalry is pretty fine like it is. They dont need a boost, they are already pretty strong.

[GreatOne]

No, not a boost, a rebalance.Like I said lances charge, swords cut.As easy as that...

And how does morale boost always benefits the player?Try RS, they have pretty high morale scores, and it causes some pretty long battles, but in RS they got huge damage, so the battles could be even longer.Try boosting every units' morale, but not 1 or 2, more, and you'll notice the difference.