Small EDU Changes Proposal

[Prince of Judah]

I think the following modifications to the edu (and possibly dmb) would greatly improve BC. I don't know how arrow types effect missiles, and I don't recall which file controls accuracy.

1. Improve, perhaps significantly the effectiveness of all missiles.
2. Speed up 2h Axe animations
3. Minimize differentiation in unit sizes (Instead of having large disparities in some units, have marginally disparities)
4. Fix crappy arrow types for necessary units (Makurian/Sudanese Longbowmen included) (also give Makurian Longbowmen a respectable Melee value)

I think the last one is a good idea because I have found that elite units are often quite useless due to their small size. This is compounded with the slow 2h axe animation. Deus lo Vult solved this problem by speeding up the animation, rather than changing it to a different animation.

[Dago Red]

150 versus 40 men is pretty extreme, I think I agree with you on the disparity to some extent, but I'd rather tend to other factors more than that.

If I send a small force of heavily armored Ghulams against a mass of tribal warriors or a peasant rabble with no armor and poor weapons, I'd want the Ghulams to win by shock in most cases. This means 40 men shouldn't be able to kill 150, but I'd want to see those men (unless extremely skilled or for some reason very high morale) routing from the Ghulams before it's all done.

The issue with speeding up 2h axes is that if anything, swords are nerfed and need much speeding up. rusnmat has basically fixed the issue without needing new animations (workaround) by changing the weapon speed times. You will still have sword armed latin knights losing against mace armed Tawashi but it's more even and I've actually managed to make the latins win (which will only happen if you control them yourself in a test). Once all those speeds are set for realistic results, suddenly speeding up those huge 2 handed axes will unbalance it again -- I believe they are set along with halberds as the slowest, but their attack was also slightly increased -- so that may be the solution too.


I would not increase missile effectiveness any further either... I think elite archers do just fine. Lesser archers are not good against elites and heavy armor (or units with giant shields) and that's the way it should be. However, you could increase the rate of fire for professional on up archers... that way, if they can be protected or keep distance, they will inflict their casualties faster. the challenge will be chasing them down or if you're the archer commander, keeping other units from getting to your archers.

I've just played a short Turks of Rum campaign -- not using any jannisaries or unrealistic units, and had no problem crushing enemies -- basically using 90% horse archers. If the enemy was too heavily armored, I inflicted casualties best I could, withdrew (and rearmed my quivers) and fought them again the next round.

The rate of fire for ghulams and other elite trained archers is certainly too slow though.

[Prince of Judah]

Fair enough. I think the arrow types for some units need to be changed. I don't know what modelb is, but it stinks and makurian longbowmen use them. Makurian longbowmen should be some of the highest quality archers available.

[Dago Red]

That so?
They may have gotten a boost in RBBR, you should check. The missiles in my game are really powerful now. So many casualties in sieges, from towers and wall archers. I want to lower them a bit but also increase the rate of fire for elite archers. Ghulams especially above junior and some Turkish horse archer units, etc, they should fire faster I believe. There are some recorded stats I encountered on peak performance for ghulam Ha's that were quite high. (lthough I don't want to see them piercing too much heavy armor). Perhaps your Makurian longbowmen, etc.

[Prince of Judah]

i don't really want to use RBBR. I am sure it makes improvements, but I'd much rather use the official edu. RBBR over complicates things and it makes KoJ units tire faster due to heat. This is inappropriate because they aren't even from europe at this point.

[Dago Red]

I don't think it over complicates anything to the point of detriment though, and with all due respect to the mod as is, i find it unplayable balance wise with the swordsmen nerfed from the animation. This is a major issue in game play. The fixes massively outweigh any added difficulty from climate conditions. The KoJ in BC 2.3 as is, has none of the secular outremer knights which would at this point become the backbone of the entire kingdom along with the religious orders -- you can't even recruit them. And the swordsmen are all nerfed to hell, losing catastrophically to statistically inferior units with spears and maces. RBBR fixes all of this, and adds recruitment.


I'd rather have koj troops tire in heat but have swordsmen that can actually fight. This is all across the board, not just the KoJ, by the way. It was not fun losing massive casualties of my ghurid ghazi warriors (who wield swords) to spearmen and nuristani tribesmen. RBBR, fixes this through a series of tweaks. Also, and I don't agree with this, but rusnmat added shield wall and other abilities to the KoJ roster units, so some of them are actually probably over powered. For example, dismounted latin knights should not be fighting in a shield wall -- they were notoriously uncoordinated as infantry. Later units, perhaps but not them.

It also shouldn't be overly hard to edit the EDU to remove that trait if you dont' like it. I only just started my first koj campaign since 2.3 came out (with RBBR) and haven't played long enough to notice the heat factor. There is another submod which changes the animation i think, you might try that then.

[Prince of Judah]

it isn't. I'm very familiar with edu editing. I'll give rusnmats mod another shot. Shield wall doesn't really help. the m2tw engine doesn't handle it properly and it usually makes units less effective.

[Dago Red]

Doesn't it double their defense skill value though or something like that?

I noticed units not staying together very well with it, but they seemed to have better survivability -- haven't played enough to be sure.

[Prince of Judah]

I'm not quite sure. I thought it just gave a +2 shield bonus. If it does double their defense, I wouldn't know it. Shield wall generally reduces performance, sometimes significantly, which is why I am not a huge fan of using it.

[Ichon]

I don't think shield wall reduces effectiveness in all cases. I've noticed some units take greatly reduced casualties and seem to tire more slowly. However spear units and some low defense unit do worse with it. I'm guessing unit with high defense and attack do overall better while units which the more compact formation and slight defensive bonus don't really add much will do more poorly.