Real Combat/Real Recruitment 1.4.1 by Point Blank UPDATED to 3.2 Vanilla-version 1.5 RELEASED

[Aper]

2.Just increase their armor value if u must.Giving them a shield value is just wrong.

I understand it would go against the rules of the RC system, but after all rules are just a mean to an end, not commandments: on the topic of shield values for instance, I would support giving a little shield bonus to plate armor, because, historically, it didn't give a homogeneous protection like mail; on the contrary, frontal plates were thicker to oppose greater resistance to enemy attacks, a measure especially effective against piercing missile weapons.

And BTW I think it's a little odd discussing about the stats' realism... the one that should be in our opinion realistic is the units' behaviour in battle: on this topic, nonhuman units already required exceptions to the usual RC rules.
For instance, armor racial bonuses should be considered "wrong" too, following your reasoning.

[Aper]

made a mess, dp

[muller227]

No RC doesnt have cost rules since it can adapt to any mod.I mostly used/adapted the cost values RC for 1.4.1 had.

Archers have high recruitment cost to reflect that it is hard/expensive to train someone to use a bow but get lower upkeep since they have generally lower quality weapons/armor and are classed 1 or 2 levels less on melee quality.

Ideally there should be an added cost depending on how much arrows they actually use.(resupply of arrows).But thats not possible.So i think archers cost/upkeep is fine.

Anyway i would like some feedback on costs.Especially on rohan(they seem to have a unique system of lower recruitment cost/higher upkeep compared to the other human factions) and the evil non-human factions.
Dwarves should also get a small decrease on costs/upkeep because their economy is not that good...

ps.btw i increased heavy cavalry cost.
ps2.maybe the archers pick up their arrows after the battle

I would agree entirely about archers except for perhaps third tier Elven Archers in PB's system, they are very skilled infantry on top of being Archers brutally effective archers even against some heavy armored opponents, I would put their cost closer to the 2H swordsman.

[Aper]

Almost done, I've changed all creatures to have more realistic (IMO) behaviour.

On general lines, I've made Battle Trolls > Snow Trolls > Mountain Trolls > Cave Trolls, the firsts being only slightly weaker than vanilla (as far as I can remember), the latters being considerably nerfed (caves are unhealthy ).

Very important to me is to achieve good balance of all creatures, not only trolls, you'll tell me if I succeeded or not.

About trolls' vulnerability to arrows... I'm totally fine with it on a second thought: I mean, they are a big unarmored target after all! Only Battle Trolls should be resistant to missile fire IMO.

[Nemesis_GR]

@Muller elves had a unique cost/upkeep system in 1.4.1(high recruitment-low upkeep which imo is accurate) so i didnt changed it and adapted the new units to it.
A future plan is a complete cost rebalance to fit 3.1.But i have my exams coming up and waiting PB to finish RC 2.0 aswell.Tweeking the economy a bit works for me.hf

@Aper Ok post your edu here when u are finished.So you rebalanced all the creatures?
ps.i hope no shields

[Aper]

Yeah, all creatures because what bugged me most was trolls beating ents, balrogs, mumakils, sauron, etc...

It's not much polished, but I have a testable file, just to give you the idea of what I've tried to do.

I've given a small shield bonus to Battle Trolls, but it's not important and if you don't like it, fine, they have 5 HP so they are though anyway, other trolls got 4 HP (except cave trolls rebels who got 3) and no shield bonus.

I've increased the numbers of trolls according to their strenght, so cave trolls (the weakest) got 16 guys and Battle Trolls (the strongest) only 10.

I've removed again the AP bonus to Trolls because it made them OP vs. creatures, and adjusted all creatures' stats.

Apart from creatures, I did some little change to other units, which I felt underpowered: I gave AP to elven 2H swordsmen because their weapon seems more a sword-ax to me than a regular 2H sword, and I gave 2HP to the Iron Guard, because their stats are rather dull and I wanted to distinguish them from other dwarven elites: you can think them as old dwarves though as iron, or stone, or whatever.

I gave 2 HPs to elven and dwarven BG to compensate their low numbers or being footmen.

Beornings also got 2 HPs because of their ursine relative (and because they were totally useless and flavorless).

Most not-lance cavalry got power_charge, because with short weapons you can slash a few times before you lose momentum, not only one.

Creatures' masses in descr_mount got changes as well.

This is all I remember ATM, here the file, tell me what you think.

EDIT: I use version 1.3b for Baron's mod

[Nemesis_GR]

Ok i ll check it.But u seem to make of lot changes that are arbitrary and contradict RC.So no way i am including those to the submod.I ll give the rebalanced creatures a try through.hf

Edit:afaik power_charge is a relic from RTW...

[zoommooz]

Just wonder if someone can help?

I'm playing with barons mod, with expanded map, and rc, and have run into a little problem. Playing as morder, my orc body guard units are causing some problems, as when I order them to move, they just stand there, with the little move icon present. If I order them to run, they do that fine, but as soon as I tell them to slow down, they then stop again. If at any time (after initially tell them to move) I order a complete stop the game crashes. Only the orc bodyguard units are having this problem, not other footsoldiers, or the nazgul. Not sure which particular mod is causing this (so probably not rc at all). Any ideas?

[zoommooz]

I just checked the error logs and am getting:

15:30:12.371 [script.err] [error] Script Error in mods/Third_Age_3/data/export_descr_buildings.txt, at line 15124, column 3
Building DB error - culture db max settlement level differs from building db max settlement level for faction hungary (bdg large_city vs clt huge_city)

Not sure what this has to do with the bodtguard units, but ....?

[muller227]

I just checked the error logs and am getting:

15:30:12.371 [script.err] [error] Script Error in mods/Third_Age_3/data/export_descr_buildings.txt, at line 15124, column 3
Building DB error - culture db max settlement level differs from building db max settlement level for faction hungary (bdg large_city vs clt huge_city)

Not sure what this has to do with the bodyguard units, but ....?

Yeah that has nothing to do with your issue, the only thing in the EDU that might affect that I can think of is the formation or the modeldb reference, I tried to give phalanx to Elven spearmen once and it caused crashes.

@APER I am not sure about your changes, I for instance would change Iron guard to exceptional or special and reduce their numbers rather than go the route you chose. I would then battle test them against Mithlonders (Best shield and Sword Infantry) and see how they do. I do at least 5 battles to get an idea of how they perform and adjust price accordingly, using Mithlonders as the base.

Elven 2h I changed From Eldar to Noldor, reuced their numbers by 20% and raised cost and upkeep to nearly Mithlond levels, I also gave them shield wall. They have no shield so it does not benefit their defense at all and makes them very vulnerable to archers, but they can knock the crap out of trolls in that formation. but you better get out of it quick or any shield infantry especially with ap unit knocks the hell out of you for some reason. I also made them recruitable only in Eregion Imladris and Mithlond.

@Nemesis_GR

My changes in cost to the 3rd tier of Elven Archers is largely to stop me from wondering around with armies of them. I seem to need to code my personal rules or I don't follow them. Besides the LL's skins are great to watch in action so I find myself likeing to depend on those units more.

[Aper]

Ok i ll check it.But u seem to make of lot changes that are arbitrary and contradict RC.So no way i am including those to the submod.I ll give the rebalanced creatures a try through.hf

Edit:afaik power_charge is a relic from RTW...

It's true, it's not a minimod but just my EDU and like to change it often to try things out, if you are annoyed by the changes to regular unit I can clear it and repost it.
Some special units get power_charge in your RC EDU so I guessed it's still active.

@APER I am not sure about your changes, I for instance would change Iron guard to exceptional or special and reduce their numbers rather than go the route you chose. I would then battle test them against Mithlonders (Best shield and Sword Infantry) and see how they do. I do at least 5 battles to get an idea of how they perform and adjust price accordingly, using Mithlonders as the base.

Elven 2h I changed From Eldar to Noldor, reuced their numbers by 20% and raised cost and upkeep to nearly Mithlond levels, I also gave them shield wall. They have no shield so it does not benefit their defense at all and makes them very vulnerable to archers, but they can knock the crap out of trolls in that formation. but you better get out of it quick or any shield infantry especially with ap unit knocks the hell out of you for some reason. I also made them recruitable only in Eregion Imladris and Mithlond.

I can only say you are right, I just would not got trapped in the fine balancing and testing your way require, I was supposed only to try balancing the creatures after all and I may have made a mistake posting my EDU as it was without clearing it of the not-RC stuff first.
And strictly speaking, both mithlonders and eldarinwe swordsmen were not Noldor...

EDIT: here's a cleared file. I further weakened fellowship balrogs and changed a bit oathbreakers, who still need some balancing anyway. Known issues are mumakil and ents killing "elephant" sauron and "elephant" balrog, this is caused by their skeleton and animation and cannot be fixed without changing them. Sauron and balrog "elephants" have also the annoying bug they sometimes get stuck in enemies and did nothing, this can be countered by the player by telling them to attack, sorry, another animation issue.

[zoommooz]

Yeah, I reverted back to no rc and the body guard units worked. So, comparing them side by side (rc, no rc) the main difference was the added phalanx ability. Once I removed that, rc is working fine.

Cheers

[Aper]

Ok i ll check it.But u seem to make of lot changes that are arbitrary and contradict RC.

Some of them yes, but I wouldn' call all of them arbitrary: dunno about dwarves, I have little interest in them, but noldor and sindar are reported in lore to have extraordinary vitality, and it's more lore-friendly to give them 2 HP than to really arbitrary berserkers; btw I cannot think calaquendi less though than troll-men (that probably had nothing to do with trolls, JRT was just bashing black people). This said, I want noldor, sindar and dwarves bodyguards to stand their own vs. trolls, without arbitrarily raise RC changed stats.

About elven 2H sword, I defend my choice of giving them AP: their extremely long handle would give them tremendous leverage, that combined with a long, curved, thick, wide and extremely well-crafted blade, would led to an unparalled hacking power, certainly sufficient to go through lesser armor and to damage tissues under any protection. I would like to remember you the power of swords lies not only in cutting capabilities, like some nippo crap led most to believe...

[Nemesis_GR]

@zoommooz thats a known bug.I think i fixed it in ver1.3.But I dont play barons anymore so maybe i missed it in that version.So just delete the phalanx attribute and the move_mod.
I will release ver1.4 for barons soon.

@Aper
1.power_charge is a relic from RTW.In RC only mumakils have it.Afaik it doesnt do anything if added to cavalry units.
2.In RC two-handed swords get no AP.Instead they get higher attack/defence values.I think it fine.
3.I am not annoyed or anything.You can post modified RC edus.np

@Muller Yes elven archers are very powerful.Generally it is nice if u make some rules for yourself.For example use a max of 6 archer units per stack.Same goes for cavalry.Heavy archer/cavalry armies can be extremely powerfull and the AI doesnt really
have a chance against them.

[LethaL]

hi Nemesis, so following your suggestion, here i'm...so without AUM i added 13 units, 3 from LL's Extarodinary Units (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=422815), 2 from DAC christmas gift (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=413457), and the rest from Taro's mod (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=498703).

PS: i added the links and my EDU if you want to take a look

[Lacedaemonian]

Sorry if this is asked before , but why is this final version ? And will Point make his own version for 3.1 ?

[Nemesis_GR]

This is final version since i am waiting for PB to finish RC 2.0(it is mostly done) so everything will be adapted to it.But i havent heard from him in a while...
Afaik he wont make his own version for 3.1.

But as i said i will release bugfixes and ofcourse u can make suggestions.But i have exams atm so the project is paused for a while.hf all

[Lacedaemonian]

Thank you for reply

[zoommooz]

Having continued problems with my games crashing.

With three different factions (silvan, erbour, mordor), and after getting to about turn 100 (each time different), I'm constantly getting crashes with the error logs:

14:13:06.859 [script.err] [error] Script Error in mods/Third_Age_3/data/export_descr_buildings.txt, at line 15124, column 3
Building DB error - culture db max settlement level differs from building db max settlement level for faction hungary (bdg large_city vs clt huge_city). etc etc

Each time the error comes it is always on the change of turns, and always on the same factions turn (although different factions/depending on which of the three games I was playing played) seeming to indicate that the crash is related to what a particular faction is doing/happing.

I'm playing rc with baron's version, and the extended map, and have made the correction to orc bodyguard unit. Has anyone else experienced this, or played through to a completed game using this set up?

[zoommooz]

edit: had a read of the baron's subforum mod, and it 'seems' that the crash is related to that mod, when a particular faction gets down to a small number of settlement. Ah, shame.