Deus lo Vult: Battlefield Balanced v4.36 <25/01/15>

[Taiji]

Bump. I have worked so hard to mess up DLV for you guys I hope you hate it - uploaded on first post.

Only joking of course, except about the working hard bit! A great deal of work has gone into this update (over 9 hours today alone), I expect there will be plenty of mistakes.

Please give me feedback, I don't care if you haven't got anything good to say about my work. If you tell me something is bad I'm going to assume everything else is perfect so be sure to cover all my failings

EDIT:

My own criticism so far would be that not enough people die during an infantry charge, with some units the same is true of cavalry charges. The defence is so high that at least some of the charge values need to be raised and maybe some mass adjustments need making to help cav penetrate better.

Flanking is now awesome

The difference between spearmen and other troops is marked. They hold ground and push forward very well, man for man they are performing better than they ever have as powerful defensive units. I am thinking about trying to better control who has slashing damage and who does not. I've not found any other use for these damage types yet but we could give slashing units who do not deserve a bonus vs spearmen "piercing" or "blunt" damage instead. Like those with 1h axes perhaps.

I've noticed that the 1h sword and no shield might be overperforming, this happened in vanilla where scots guard were the best fighters. Need to look into this.

[ivanhoex]

hello monsieur taiji

here is my promised feedback pile

i find strongly armored spears from templar on to be a little too powered.

cavs cant go through most units. they do kill enough enemy troops, but they´d lost mobility.
spear militia gets punk'ed by mailed knights wich is cool but even this militia holds like a wall in front of cav charge.

voulgiers have pike animation. they look AWFUL. give them halberd animation for christ sake!
ruthenian archers seem to be cheaper than hunters they shouldnt. (both lit archers)
biz heavy spears dont have neither schiltrom nor shieldwall, they count shield despite not using it (since sword being removed) and they are almost even to heavy swords (CHIVALRICS)!
varangians beat heavy swords in a 3 to 1 kill base, despite having 9 armor against 13 (their shield making them overpowered maybe?)
feudal knights can beat heavy swords. that is excelent.

hammers beat swords really bad. hammers beat cav really bad! thats not good. not at all.
hammer ultraheavy knights should be beaten by feudals.
the proportion of kills (per the under the map stats) should read:
swords vs fk(cav): 90% killed vs 30% killed (similar achieved, i recommend more power to cav still)
hammers vs fk(cav):90% killed vs 45% killed (right now you have this stat inversed.)
swords vs hammers: 80% killed vs 50% killed (right now its more like 80% to 20%)
swords vs spear militia: 15% to 80% (this is achieved)
hammers vs spear militia: 15% to 80% (this is almost achieved, actual is more like 7% to 80%)

it appears to be the same situation for 2handed swords and 2handed axes
(and 2handed swords should be EVEN to sword-and-shield troops, not decimate them!)


that would be enough for tonight. havent checked missile units yet but i suppose that with many changes in mind that would be utterly pointless.. but i also havent checked pikes and that may have proven somewhat usefull.. maybe tomorrow.

[Taiji]

Thankyou Ivanhoex, I don't have time to respond right now but thankyou so much.

Check out boyar sons, they got in by accident so I have experimented with them. Probably very overpowered but I'm not sure.

Thankyou!

EDIT:

OK, I need some clarification. Hammers = what? Venetian heavy infantry?

Heavy hammers(d. english knights?) should be beaten by feudal cav or knights? With cav I gree they should lose if charged but vs dfk I think they they should win face to face. These are not flanking troops they are front line.

Byz heavy spear = overpowered, yes I agree and it's probably the shield like you point out - they're getting defence bonuses they don't need. I think they should get schiltrom too.

The balance of cav vs infantry is currently not so good, cav need more charge damage and maybe more mass - not enough initial kills on charge and not enough penetration.

About vangians and the shield, yes you're right. They get a defence bonus for using the shield that they should lose.

DFK beat DCK? I need to check that, I don't think that's right.

halberds use halberd animation which is the same as pike, you want them to use the other halberd animation which is the same as 2h sword? I don't like this idea, it makes them look rediculous - no way you could use a halberd like that.

I agree with your point about 2h swords and axes too, they seem overpowered with too much defence.

Much to think about, thanks mate :

[hotcobbler]

Seeing as hammers were designed to crush armor, I think they should be better than swords against armored units. It makes total sense. However, they should get some minor penalty against cavalry, since they are just not designed to withstand a charge. However, once the charge is over, the hammers would be just as effective at taking down armored men from the saddle.

[Taiji]

Hotcobbler, I agree mostly but I think that VHI should be about the same at taking a charge as other heavy inf, hammers are no better or worse than swords for incoming cav. With DEK they should be better than DCK at handling a charge and at attacking heavy cav. DCK should excel and beating spearmen, similar and worse troops. DEK should excel at handling spread cav and heavy armored inf. DEK should offer excellent support capabilities for spear and pike in a similar way to halberds (only slightly less powerful in this regard) and they should be able to crush DCK but it should take some time. VHI upgraded to partial plate should beat DCK and fight evenly without upgrade but with no special advantage vs cav unlike DEK.

[ivanhoex]

i didnt read more than a few lines, yes hammers are dism. english or noble knights.

feudal knights (cav) = feudal knights lol!
dismounted feudal knights = dfk

i would rather see an axe type of animation than a pike one for halberds

[Taiji]

But you can't use a halberd like that, you'd kill your friends and get yourself killed unless you kept to short jabbing moves. I suppose I could give them the secondary animation as a secondary weapon so that they start looking stupid (imo) when enemies get closer, so all the time in other words.... nope, I don't like this idea at all but I will think about it.

BTW I don't think I've changed voulgier's animations.

EDIT: Updated, check first post

[ivanhoex]

well, i am sure that halberds didnt have so much weight and a slicing axelike end just to poke things in phalanx formation...

halberds were shock troops, like shogun`s naginata. they were people carrying a "will-split-you-in-two" long reach weapon, that was noticeable by the heaviest armored guy in the field, who also laughed when people tried to stab him just by human strenght (gravity does give that extra "punch")

[Galloglaich]

This looks simply awesome. +rep for you. I will download when I get to my other computer.

[Taiji]

I agree Ivanhoex, the problem is that the pike animation is much closer to how halberds were used than the 2h sword animation. Plus we already have axes linedancing with 2h swords we don't need halberds to join the party. Still I am thinking about it but the more you mention it the more I don't like the idea....

@Galloglaich, thankyou! I really hope you are not disappointed. It's still a work in progess and your feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially if you are actually disappointed - I want to hear about it! :

EDIT:


Well?

I pratically doubled mount mass. Plate armored horses now crash into pikes, ruining their formation - I like.

They have enough mass to be able charge through your own lines again.

They utterly flatten missile units which seems a bit rough.

The extra +2 charge is helping most of them kill and penetrate too.

I'm finding a better balance between 2h weapon and sword and shield. Varangians are awesome but not too overpowered.

Spearmen can take on pikes (and anything else) and win if they outnumber them. This is kinda odd but fair in the way it works, it takes a hell of a lot of spearmen and they lose a hell of a lot of men vs good axe, sword or pike units.

Spearmen are very powerful vs cavalry when bracing.

Spearmen are very weak (-12 defence) to swords and axe.

Light spears are a bit weak (-6 defence) to everything... halberds are classed as light spears... and they still can't take a cav charge....

You can combine a spearmen unit with a shield wall unit and create rediculous pushing power. Engage the spearmen in combat with the enemy and then move the shield wall unit into your spearmen unit and click attack on the enemy.

Everyone is very weak to being flanked. Cavalry are susceptible to being caught and killed very quickly from behind, disengaging your cav from a fight with other cav can turn bad very fast. The best, most powerful, infantry take a hell of a lot of killing from the front but charges on the flanks are definately going to kill some men.

Infantry charges are not powerful enough to actually kill anything for certain - needs attention I think.

I was satisfied with the recent increase in accuracy for horse archers.

Having big numbers somehow makes the units feel more powerful

[PrivateJoh]

Hi Taiji,

I am trying to use your last file together with your weapon upgrade removal file in a clean DLV 6.1 installation. Campaign loads, but game goes to black screen while loading battle. Pressing ESC. produces a CTD now.

Vanilla DLV 6.1 works fine. Maybe I am missing some of your files?

Joh

[Taiji]

I really don't get it mate, I've just downloaded and installed the files you're talking about after reinstalling hotfix 1 and it all works for me.

Are other people affected? Please let me know!!

[hotcobbler]

I inadvertantly tested out the shieldwall push tactic you were talking about, and it made a difference. My double line formation of Hospitaller Spears and Javelin/Swordsmen in sw formation behind them pushed back a unit of mailed English DFKs, but not without a good bit of loss.

I think it felt pretty natural.

[Emerentius]

I am trying to use your last file together with your weapon upgrade removal file in a clean DLV 6.1 installation. Campaign loads, but game goes to black screen while loading battle.

Hi, same here, was playing a fine game, (6.0+hotfix) tried the "UpgradeRemoval0[1].2.zip" + the export_descr_buildings.txt + DLV BattleBallance0[1].8.zip and have the same unspecified crash....

Tried reinstalling the hotfix, everything is working again...

[Taiji]

Damn, everyone affected has my sincerest apologees. I will work on a solution.

EDIT: OK, if installing the hotfix fixes the issue then after installing the hot fix just overwrite the EDU with the one from battleballance0.8.

(install bb0.8, install hot fix, overwrite EDU)

That should work, I'll fix the files so that noone has to do this in future.

Again, my apologees for causing this issue for people - it was a silly mistake on my part

(at least I hope that's the issue since I can't seem to replicate it)

Are those affected playing as or near the crusader states? (i can't remember what they're called)

EDIT: Uploaded what I hope is a fix, I NEED to know whether it works OK for the people experiencing crashing.

EDIT: I've tried halberds with the secondary animation as a secondary weapon - it sucks big time. I cannot stand how units with a secondary weapon switch to it on the charge - it causes the charge to stall. You have to set stand ground to get the unit to behave itself at all when in combat which is a another point I don't like.

I've got to do something about blunt weapons being worse than axe and sword in general. They are in reality much better than slashing for armor piercing but the stupid game doesn't model this

[ivanhoex]

slower animation + ap + more damage will help you.

swords have to have good damage to kill at normal rate, fast.
hammers wont be killing so fast against light troops, but they will be faster against heavys (faster than swords)
just double check that spears and pikes dont have so fast an animation that will make hammers to never hit. that had happened in the past and its not cute =)



btw, i remember clearly that shield wall was the motive you first started modding. but AI dont use it.. emm.. well you know what i want to say right? XD


edit: @work, cant check, do lances have ap now? if not, i cannot reccomend it enough

[Taiji]

Hmm I doubt you would be asking for ap lances if you had tried the most recent version. If anything I think cav need toning down now.

It's a good idea to have them lose some attack and give them ap though, I'll think about that - nice one!

Heh, about shieldwall. Normally I agree that the enemy doesn't use it but recently I've seen him use it with great effect - each time they had a great general so I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

Basically the thing with shieldwall is don't use it if you don't want an advantage. Players can have fun with it and (rarely) the AI will do something cool with it - the trick I mentioned with a shieldwall inside a spearman unit is one the AI taught me! The only type of player that might miss out is the kind with no self-discipline and I'm not worried about pleasing him.

Good idea to raise the attack or speed of the blunt weapons, definately going to think about that

EDIT: Been testing skel comp and the results are inconclusive, probably more battles went in the direction of the lower value but I didn't feel any difference as I watched. So I'm thinking about normalising them all at 1 and using attack delay to differentiate different weapons and training levels (much like Point Blanks work with RC). So I have to place weapons in order of speed.

It might not make sense but I think making blunt faster than slashing is the best way to go. I don't want maces getting an attack bonus over axes because the results vs unarmored should be better with axe than blunt. So blunt gets an attack decrease but an attack speed increase.

Piercing is a more complicated story because it involves lances, pikes and spears.

We can use piercing or blunt on axe units we don't think should do so well vs spearmen and pikes. Or maybe we think some particular mace unit should excel vs spearmen and pikemen - we give them slashing. It's an interesting feature to play with. We could give pikes slashing damage... poor spearmen.

[ivanhoex]

cavs:ap means cav more efficient against all you put in front of them, not only light troops.

if you have already set different values for different lances and spears on cavs, then it will be easy to set ap only to lances (not in spears), that will make more difference between both of them, as simple spears wont be able to have same success on heavy armored troops than couched lances, just give them similar attack damage, maybe more different at charge bonus but slightly.

Good idea to raise the attack or speed of the blunt weapons, definately going to think about that

you mean to raise attack and lower speed right? or you mean raise the compensation value?

different animations have different timings, so you can only normalize that way if you have the exact same animation... if not you will have to test A LOT (love putting that on caps)


damage type should help with the scissors/rock/paper so using it according to specific units will make it a)invisible for the player till the actual fighting b)more confussing at editing time (since you cannot batch them with find and replace)

[Taiji]

I used the same animations when testing it. Maybe my testing parameters where not good enough to show the difference though, so I say it's not conclusive.

Never mind realism and what we might guess about different weapons speeds, to me it makes sense to have maces faster but not as high attack compared to axe so they aren't outperformed vs armor but they are outperformed vs low armor. Is there a better way to model this?

I'm looking at this so far for base attack delay dependant on weapon type:

hammer - hb45 1h40 2h35
mace - hb50 1h45 2h40
spear - hb50 1h45 2h40
sword - hb55 1h50 2h45
axe - hb60 1h55 2h50
halberd - 2h60
pike - 2h80
knife - 1h60

And this is the troop training level list/thing/mess, the last number is the proposed attack delay modifier.

"training level" "attack/defence" >="charge" s="spear defence bonus" 1hns="one handed weapon and no shield defence bonus" ad="attack delay"
-1 self harmer -1/8 >0 s0 1hns0 ad+25
0 layabout 0/9 >0 s0 1hns0 ad+20
1 peasant 1/9 >0 s0 1hns0 ad+15
2 militia 2/10 >0 s1 1hns1 ad+10
3 adv militia 3/10 >0 s2 1hns1 ad+5
4 regular 5/12 >1 s3 1hns2 ad-/+0
5 better 6/13 >1 s4 1hns2 ad-10
6 even better 7/14 >1 s5 1hns2 ad-20
7 elite 8/15 >2 s6 1hns3 ad-25
8 special 9/16 >2 s7 1hns3 ad-30
9 magical beings of light 10/18 >3 s8 1hns3 ad-35

It will take some balancing I suspect but it's a start

I agree about the point about the player not being able to know in advance of experience what is going on, I'm going to need to write somekind of tactical manual about the mechanics of what's happening on the battlefield at some point.

I wish someone would test this spear and light_spear thing for me. I can't do it now I'm biased - I have a lot invested in my analysis based on the previous test results being accurate. It would be nice to have some external confirmation even though it doesn't make sense to me that I would need any.

EDIT: Another nice update uploaded on first post

I'm thinking that I might need to reduce 2h axe and 2h sword defence again, they seem to kill a lot faster than they die.

Missile weapons are mostly really bad in melee now, I think we might have it about right.

Noticed JHI have their old animation - must change this or they are too weak and they look rediculous (yes they do, Ivanhoex ).

Happy with mace versus sword, DIK beat DCK.

DEK crush DCK

Varangians beat DEK somehow but I like it.

With correct animations JHI just about beat varangians.

Many things are feeling better for me on the battlefield. The relative strengths of units are much more pronounced.

I really want some feedback about units kill rates with this latest update.

2h weapons are very good but are they too good?

melee sword and axe work well vs spear - is it making sense? does it look/feel right?

do missile cav suck enough in melee now?

are the best units way too good in comparison with the worst? is the gap wide enough? too wide?

EDIT:

Thinking to standardise missile training levels like this:
level, b=bow, lb=longbow or composite bonus, cb=crossbow, scb=steel crossbow bonus, javelin, handgun, arquebus, musket
-1 b3 lb0 cb4 scb1 j10 hg8 a11 m15
0 b3 lb0 cb4 scb1 j10 hg8 a11 m15
1 b3 lb0 cb4 scb1 j10 hg8 a11 m15
2 b4 lb0 cb5 scb1 j11 hg9 a12 m16
3 b4 lb1 cb5 scb2 j11 hg9 a12 m16
4 b5 lb1 cb6 scb2 j12 hg10 a13 m17
5 b5 lb1 cb6 scb2 j12 hg10 a13 m17
6 b5 lb1 cb6 scb2 j12 hg10 a13 m17
7 b6 lb2 cb7 scb3 j13 hg11 a14 m18
8 b6 lb2 cb7 scb3 j13 hg11 a14 m18
9 b7 lb2 cb8 scb3 j14 hg12 a15 m19

Once that's done I think there's no barrier to changing prices and upkeep to reflect training+equipment.

In my testing I'm thinking that 2h sword and axe have too much defence, I want them to kill fast and die fast as a general rule, at least they are killing fast. I just watched a single unit of d. gothic knights eat their way through 3 and a half armored sergeants one unit at a time.

EDIT: Oh one big barrier to price changing - many units need to specialise in some way with bonuses in attack, armor, defence skill, shield armor, speed, morale, discipline, number of men, causes fear to inf/cav, inspires morale, unit spacing, 'highly_trained', attack delay, anti cav, missile accuracy, etc.... I guess they can be repriced after they have changed though.

About specialising, this is the point where I really don't know what to do. I could just guess everything but it would be nice if I could have some input on which units should specialise in which direction.

Just descriptions of what certain units were famous for or something like that might be useful.

[hotcobbler]

Missle cav are pretty weak in melee, but they still give a good buggering from behind. My Irish cav is all light, so I've had a lot of time to see my horsies die

I think it's at a good level though.

Also, I just had a battle CTD for me when I clicked the deploy button, just before I could take London. That's never happened before.