TROM3 - Feedback and Suggestions

[RexJayden]

I just have to say that the AI and its abilities are much more manageable now based on the AI programming you have done. For once its as though they are in my shoes and I feel as though we are on an even playing field now. I destroy an army of theirs and then they have to rebuild (over time not immediately) just like the player has to do. Thanks for the great work!!

[ninja51]

Im loving the mod so far but I have a few quick suggestions


The unit taking the place of the katana samurai was given a bow, which I suppose is pretty alright, maybe even historicly accurate for all I know, but the problem is they dont really function as katana samurai anymore. The unit buildable by the bow dojo is actually better in every single stat, and the cost isnt so much higher that there's a reason to actually buy the katana samurai.

This is more personal preferance, but on the whole I feel that samurai are pretty weak. Battles zoom by for the most part, and samurai dont really act as the professional soldiers/master warriors they are supposed to be. Moral is the deciding factor in this battle system, that leads to huge routes pretty quick along in battles instead of large hard fought battles.

I cant seem to build any more markets or ninja dens than my first ones. I remember reading somthing about it on a page here, but I recall it saying thats not an issue and ill be able to make more later. I havnt been able to so far, but hopefully time will proove me wrong.

Finally I suggest making the general's bodyguard stat upgrades much better than their vanilla values. Its kinda pointless to loose a superior general and technology boost for +4 attack.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Thanks for the feedback!

The daisho samurai (former katana samurai) is the basic samurai unit you get at the start of the game. They can deal with the ashigaru. Next in the line are the yari samurai. The daikyu household samurai is an elite unit (as all household units) with better stats but smaller. They also have a tighter cap.

I kept battles more dynamic on purpose. Later in the campaign battles will last longer with more experienced units and all the bonuses they get from buildings and tech. I will also increase the moral bonus units get from experience in the next version (+1 moral per level instead of +1 moral every other level).

In TROM3 you can only have one second level market and sake den (same with buddhist temple and zen temple). As soon as you upgrade your market or sake den to 3rd level you can build another 2nd level one. That way the player can not spam markets and the AI is forced to build more diverse.

RotS has a much better general skill tree I agree. I will look into it when I find the time.

[ninja51]

And so I am silenced Thanks for the responces, now im off to play more TROM!

EDIT: Mostly silenced After playing the crap out of the mod I've come across two more issues that were a bit less personal preferance.

The AI tends to create huge amounts of arrow units, a problem I understand is from vanilla.Im talking about full stacks with 4 yari ashigaru and 15 yumi ahigaru, almost making up every factions armies.

Also, after finally getting far enough to recruit some heroes, the issue of elites not really being so elite showed up big time again. So much so that i'm going to go in with PFM and tweak the defence stats of everything in hopes that that will help. My unit of ninja masters kinda got their asses handed to them by a single unit of yari ashigaru. Im talking about like 50% losses here and only 30 or so % of the the ashigaru dead.



Also I went through and lowered the research times of most techs pretty substantially, and it works out so much better for me. With all your new techs, after half the whole game time is done I had maybe half of the civic tree done and the first 3 military techs. Even in vanilla one only starts getting the full experiance near the end of the game, with the new techs one wont ever even reach the point where they can recruit heroes and have large castles. Having the research times even lower than vanilla is perfect for me, makes it so much better.

[Loger]

Would it be possible to create more realistic sieges? F/e greatly increased climbing times with bigger fatigue penalties? Or perhaps alltogether removing climbing for all but special ninja units?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

@Ninja51

Thanks again for your valuable feedback!

The recruitment imbalance in favour of ranged units shouldn't happen. I have an idea what could cause this and can hopefully fix it. What version of TROM3 are you playing? Could you attach a zippped savegame for me to check?

TROM3 has no superunits, that is true. But a more expensive unit should always beat a cheaper unit with similar weapons, so Ninja masters should not loose against yari ashigaru of same experience. Will check that. However, Ninja masters are not really a frontline unit. Their usefullness lies in their special abilities like beeing able to setup anywhere and stay hidden.

Lowering the research costs is a good idea.

EDIT: Some quick single tests:

Nimja masters vs yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 100 dead ashigaru and 5 dead ninjas; ninjas win
Nimja masters vs tae-yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 150 dead ashigaru and 20 dead ninjas; ninjas win
Nimja masters vs nagae-yari ashigaru (full frontal assault): more then 130 dead ashigaru and 9 dead ninjas; ninjas win

@Loger

The sieges would be realistic if the CAI would starve out castles instead of sacrificing all it's units in fruitless assaults. Making these assaults even more difficult only hurts the AI more. Hopefully we see further AI improvements with the next patch.

[ninja51]

Heres the save. Hopefully it helps

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Thanks! I will analyze it.

[Gill]

Hi,

First of all, lover the game.
Battles aren't insanely easu anymore.
Actually almost lost a 1000 men from 1800 men strong army in one battle lastt night..

I've got a question regarding economics an armies for AI clans though.

I started a Shimazu game last night.
Captured the city to the east in a few turns (form the Purple clan, can't remember the name at the moment).
Allied myself with the clan directly to the north (again, forgot the namen).

Few turns later the purple clan gets eliminated by the Otomo.

I decalre war on them, otherwise I can't expand and I'n not in the mood to break my alliance and caputre a city form the Otomo.

After that I look to my ally, which has one city at the moment, and I see they have an insanely big army for a one city clan (in my opinion).
I think althogether they have about two full stacks.

Is that normal?
I mean, I've got 3 cities, and can probably afford roughly the same amount of men...

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

The AI gets more money and has cheaper upkeep then the player according to the difficulty level in addition to some other bonuses (one more recruitment slot; higher repression; less attrition). Giving the AI more resources is the standard for every strategy game I know to compensate for the lack of real intelligence. I removed some blatant cheats CA added in addition to that, like the ability to convert ashigaru into samurai. Instead I adjusted other bonuses to keep the challange reasonably high. My basic design philosophy for the AI is that it should follow the same ruleset then the player, and bonuses should not make it immune to valid strategic moves by the player like economic warfare or inciting unrest.

Most clans in TROM3 with only one province can afford 1 1/2 stack of troops. Having more then that usually means there are a lot of cheap ashigaru.

[Protector]

The AI gets more money and has cheaper upkeep then the player according to the difficulty level in addition to some other bonuses (one more recruitment slot; higher repression; less attrition). Giving the AI more resources is the standard for every strategy game I know to compensate for the lack of real intelligence. ....
Most clans in TROM3 with only one province can afford 1 1/2 stack of troops. Having more then that usually means there are a lot of cheap ashigaru.

Its not just the more money for the AI its also the quantity.
I am currently with Chosokabe and I am owner of 16 regions but l only can maintain/recruit units for 3 full stacks due to the unit recruitment limit. When I reached now Kyoto after really long campaign gameplay I see that Ashikaga got 2 regions only but got 7 stacks !!
It doesnt matter if half is just cheap Ashigaru it is the huge number of armies that shocked me.
The other enemy factions also got 5-7 stacks each all near by Kyoto. What can I do with 2 stack vs 20 stacks ? (my 3rd stack is a backup for my home territory)

Its a pity I got a lot of regions and huge cities and a lot of money but cant recruit currently any more units (except very few more HA+ bomb thrower).

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Its not just the more money for the AI its also the quantity.
I am currently with Chosokabe and I am owner of 16 regions but l only can maintain/recruit units for 3 full stacks due to the unit recruitment limit. When I reached now Kyoto after really long campaign gameplay I see that Ashikaga got 2 regions only but got 7 stacks !!
It doesnt matter if half is just cheap Ashigaru it is the huge number of armies that shocked me.
The other enemy factions also got 5-7 stacks each all near by Kyoto. What can I do with 2 stack vs 20 stacks ? (my 3rd stack is a backup for my home territory)

Its a pity I got a lot of regions and huge cities and a lot of money but cant recruit currently any more units (except very few more HA+ bomb thrower).

Which turn/year? Also, can you post a savegame? Sounds like too many units even for the AI. In my own game as Hojo most clans have hardly more then 2 armies.

Higher level Ashigaru have no unit cap. You should research these.

[Protector]

Which turn/year? Also, can you post a savegame? Sounds like too many units even for the AI. In my own game as Hojo most clans have hardly more then 2 armies.
Higher level Ashigaru have no unit cap. You should research these.

Thx for your feedback Yarkis.

Which turn/year? about 1570
Also, can you post a savegame? Sry, I cant. I became angry when I discovered with a spy that another 5 full stacks coming to my direction, so I deleted all 42 saves to give it a new beginning later on.
Higher level Ashigaru have no unit cap. You should research these: I got about 75% of Bushido developed and every unit I wonna recruit is on its limit. To develop the rest of Bushido I need additional building contruction time plus unit recruitment time and this would take too long ...I am almost dead within the next few turns. (I am already dead because of the deleted file )

Anyhow some of my favorite features after 2 campaigns now with this mod are: the new tech tree and AOR units which I really appreciate.

[RexJayden]

Greetings Yarkis! I havent seen the amount of troops that Gill was referring to for the AI. I do like to monitor these types of things though and so I was wondering/hoping you could whip up some sort of Fog Of War Removal mod so we can monitor the activity and keep our sanity regarding the old "Does the AI spam units" question? Is this possible and does it even interest you? Thanks in advance!

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Try this file (just drop it into the data directory). Didn't test it. Only works with the TROM3 main campaign (it's the main script with a fow reveal command).

[RexJayden]

Thanks Yarkis! I will try to put this to good use and provide you some more feedback.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Odd! In my own campaign with Hojo on VH the AI has far from that many armies in 1573. Small clans with one province can not afford more then 1 1/2 - 2 stacks. Are you sure you have only TROM3 installed and not any leftover files from other mods which influence the economy/upkeep/difficulty?

[Protector]

Odd! In my own campaign with Hojo on VH the AI has far from that many armies in 1573. Small clans with one province can not afford more then 1 1/2 - 2 stacks. Are you sure you have only TROM3 installed and not any leftover files from other mods which influence the economy/upkeep/difficulty?

I play on hard difficulty.
And I am very sure my data folder is ok, have a look.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Yes, looks ok. If the AI is spamming armies again post a savegame.

[Surveyor K]

Just an observation about the pike and shot ashigaru - the AI seems to be unable to use them properly. AI recruits both pike and shot ashigaru and the ordinary teppo ashigaru, making the army composition very matchlock heavy. The battle AI seems confused how to deploy these units, and just makes them run around and fails to form a clear line of battle.