Unit stats tweaking

[Floppy]

Alright, as I´m not really satisfied with the current tech progress from early era to late era units (vanilla grand campaign) I´m going to rebalance the units and have a few questions.

First change I´m going to make is making later armour (and with it armour upgrades) more significant.
Like this:
Current / Planned
None: 0 / 0
Leather: 4 / 4
Chainmail: 5 / 6
Heavy Chainmail: 7 / 8
Partial Plate: 8 / 10
Plate: 9 / 12
Fullplate: 11 / 14

It´s not aimed for imba armoured units, just for a bit more noticeable effect with better armoured units. To counterweight this a bit I´m planning to reduce infantry shield values from 6 to 4 and cavalry from 4 to 3. Spearmen kite shields I´ll maybe leave at 6 or only reduce to 5.
The aim is to not to grossly change the pace of battles, while giving better armoured units a bit more significance. Basically it´s armour significance up a bit, shield significance down a bit. How do you think about it?

Also is there something I can do so the AI builds more advanced units and armour smith buildings? Don´t wanna have the game easier in the end, after all.

[Taiji]

For your armor balancing, this thread might have some useful info. It should explain how to make a double upgrade, which you can probably get away with at partial plate and advanced plate. With vanilla's models this probably only means losing one upgrade from militia halberds... Worth thinking about perhaps.

Also consider having your base level be 1 or 2, many systems get good results from this. 0 can appear to make units very susceptible to missile fire.

Once you've setup your armor the way you want it, I suggest you rebalance missiles to give the effect vs X type armor that you want. I'd suggest trying to try doing that using battle_config.xml rather than adjusting unit stats:

	<!-- global combat balancing factors -->
	<combat-balancing>
		<missile-target-accuracy>
			<infantry>1.0</infantry>
			<cavalry>1.0</cavalry>
			<elephants>1.0</elephants>
		</missile-target-accuracy>
		<melee-hit-rate>1.5</melee-hit-rate>	
	</combat-balancing>

You can do the same for melee, but I think it needs to be 1.0 or more with melee hit rate in order for the game to read it, and use it, rather than reverting to defaults. By contrast the missile accuracy controls seem to work with fractions OK.

Good luck using those settings, the alternative might turn out to be rebalancing everything else, stat by stat

Getting the AI to produce troops with armor upgrades is probably a matter for scripting.

[Floppy]

Hmm I don´t quite get that, this is my first "expedition" into modding, so that´s a little too advanced for me .
Guess I´ll just tweak around and playtest in custom battles until I like it. But thanks anyways, I appreciate it.

[Taiji]

You're welcome, and I'm sorry if I went too advanced on you. If you're interested, but I just didn't make any sense, then let me know which bits are confusing and I'll try explain it in a different way.

But it really doesn't need to a be a complicated process to get the results you want, and your suggested improvements in your original post should give a nice effect already. I guess you wouldn't need to know anything more if you're satisfied when you implement it

[Floppy]

Hmm I´ve finished editing now, well the stats, I´ll prolly fool around with unit traits later. I´ve created this batchfile like and deleted data\descr_geography_new.txt and data\descr_geography_new.db like the readme said.

Well, I get the m2tw loading screen but that´s all before I´m back at the desktop. Guess I was sloppy when editing.... Although I thought the would only crash when it has to handle a unit with a wrong entry, and not right at startup.
Modding is more exhausting than I thoght it´d be, and I´m only doing "modding light" here

[Taiji]

If you check the log for the word 'error' it should give you a clue why it's crashing. It's in the 'logs' folder.

[Floppy]

IT WORKS!! Man I can´t tell how great I feel right now. Thank you big time for all the help, +rep and all.

Done some brief custom battle testing. So far it´s looking good, have to tone down dismounted imperial knights a bit as they totally slaughtered scottish noble swordsmen, though it´s hard to tell as they had a strangely long charge animation (happs sometimes) killing many in the initial clash. On top that the AI tried to disengage and charge again which isn´t exactly adviseable in a 1v1 of heavy inf.

Venetian heavy infantry (with the AP hammers) had a close run victory vs english armoured swordsmen. Maybe too close. 11 survivors vs 5 fleeing english. But at least they aren´t ott and not nerfed into oblivion either.

And I may have accidently turned dism gothic knights into monsters of mayhem and destruction. Though their stats look similar to polearm knight´s now, so no ott high numbers, maybe changing attack speed from 1.33 to 1 did it.

But hey it works still can´t believe it.

Still gotta do some thorough testing on missile units vs the new armour and shield values though.

[Taiji]

You're welcome, and well done

A tip for testing is to always use 2 units on each side, otherwise the AI unit will behave like a general. And alternate, with the AI using the unit and then you using the unit.

About 'attack speed', by which I assume you mean 'skeleton compensation', I found it has no discernable effect on combat balancing at all.

[Floppy]

Well gotta fiddle around a bit. Sadly armour upgrades aren´t accurate in custom battle (seemingly a different entry?). Upgrading armour in customs only gives +1 defense regardless of what´s specified in the units entry.

[Taiji]

Same in campaign, it displays 1 but really it's around 2 armor.

[Floppy]

So it displays 1 and in reality it is what´s specified in the units entry? Or it displays 1 but in reality is something around 2 and the units entry is related to that but it isn´t exact number?

[Taiji]

The latter. So basically 1 armor upgrade is always worth around 2 armor. The post I linked explains how to make 1 upgrade worth 4 or 6 armor, but it's done by firing 2 or 3 upgrades at once. 3 upgrades is the maximum, bronze, silver and gold, so the maximum bonus a unit can have is +6 armor.

[Floppy]

But this doesn´t seem coherent with the descriptions in the export_descr_unit file.

There it says:
; stat_pri_armour
Details of the man's defences
; armour factor
; defensive skill factor (not used when shot at)
; shield factor (only used for attacks from the front of left)
; sound type when hit = flesh, leather, or metal
; stat_armour_ex
Details of the man's defences
; armour factor. 4 values. First for base value, then 3 upgrade levels
; defensive skill factor (not used when shot at)
; shield factors. First for melee, second for missile fire
; sound type when hit = flesh, leather, or metal

And if I´m adding the numbers in the stat_pri_armour line together, it matches the defense value shown in the game.

Dismounted men at arms for instance had the following stats:

stat_pri_armour 8, 7, 6, metal
;stat_armour_ex 8, 9, 11, 0, 7, 6, 6, metal

I´ve changed that to:

stat_pri_armour 10, 7, 4, metal
;stat_armour_ex 10, 12, 14, 0, 7, 4, 4, metal

Now I´m a bit curious how this exactly translates ingame, as I expected the numbers in the export_descr_unit file to exactly pinpoint the values they have.

[Taiji]

The description is wrong and what I have explained is correct.

stat_pri_armour 8, 7, 6, metal
;stat_armour_ex 8, 9, 11, 0, 7, 6, 6, metal

That semicolon means that the line will not be read, so you can delete all lines that start with a semicolon. It won't affect the game.

[Floppy]

That semicolon means that the line will not be read, so you can delete all lines that start with a semicolon. It won't affect the game.

So I spent hours editing textlines that won´t affect the game....

Well alright, another lesson learned. Anyhow thanks for everthing, you´ve been most informative sir.

EDIT: Oh, while reading a bit through Mythic_Commodores tutorial to the export_decr_Buildings file, I think I´ve found a way to let the AI armour upgrade its units. I simply add the capability to upgrade to other buildings. For insctance heavy chain to fortess, partial plate to citadel. Or something like that. For cities I´ll prolly add it to the barracks buildings. The smith buildings except maybe the last two versions I´ll delete then.