H: TW - Quick Questions & Answers Thread

[SirMark9]

@ tf_

I think the Great Deku Tree falls in the category with "big boss units that cannot be attacked in melee". I had a similar problem with the Gohma, having slain every other soldier save for Sulkaris. As it was a siege mission and I was the attacker, it was rather unpleasant having her slaughter my army and being powerless to do anything about it. (This is why bringing along ranged units or siege weaponry is almost essential with dealing with such creatures. As Darknut, I'm practically screwed in that regard.)

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1: How does one counter Lanayru Province's Battlecrabs? I'm still playing my Darknut campaign and they slaughter even my Masters and Mighties. I would assume cheap spearmen units, but as Darknuts attempting to find any is a daunting task.

[Cameron Shutters]

1: How does one counter Lanayru Province's Battlecrabs? I'm still playing my Darknut campaign and they slaughter even my Masters and Mighties. I would assume cheap spearmen units, but as Darknuts attempting to find any is a daunting task.

Don't do that. Battlecrabs are ridiculously overpowered; even swarms of Ironclad Elites are no match for them. Trust me, I did a lot of testing with them in my sub mod because they were a pain in the ass to balance. Ranged units are your best bet, but seeing as you're playing as Darknut I have no idea what you'll do. I'm guessing a single Battlecrab unit could beat the crap out of several of your stronger units quite easily.

[Aleatorio]

SirMark9

I hope you have assimilated the Zuna, because you really need some range to get those crabs. Some Zuna merchants and chaeap mercs as distraction and then let the crossbowmen do their job. If you haven´t assimilated the Zuna you are in pinch, I guess you can hire gerudo pirates but their ranged attack is weak, i cant really think of any good rangd merc apart from the extra zuna crossbows the darknuts can get (They do that right? they have an extra pool or something). The combination of as many as you can get of those might do the trick.

Regarding the Deku tree I have experienced that, range is all that will kill it. It´s a relativey common thing in boss units.

[SirMark9]

Regarding my Battlecrab situation... (Session 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLm7X9Skvr8 // 30:39 Battle 1 //1:09:56 Battle 2)

I did absorb the Zuna and do have access to Crossbowmen on the front lines, but I still wonder of their effectiveness as I have no real "cannon fodder" units. I guess I could hire some Gerudo Pirates to accomplish that task, but even then I don't know if I can pull it off. Auto-resolve will give me a defeat, so I can't rely on that either.

So much for thinking the province was easy pickings...

[Encablossa]

Mass up a ton of range units.
Your Darknuts should be able to easily slaughter their infantry and range.

Then use cheap and numerous units to bog down battlecrabs while you bring em down with range.

[tf_]

The Daira mercenaries have a bonus fighting cavalry (despite having axes), they might be useful. I mention them because they'll be quite close to you, in the Moruge Swamp province.

I made the mistake of assuming the Great Deku Tree was just a stronger Deku Tree, and could be killed in the same way - masses of infantry, preferably spearmen, attacking from all sides.

[tedster1995]

Does anybody know how to get the ui working properly? It just tells me that I can't access the file. sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

[tf_]

Does anyone have any idea what sort of logic the AI is based on when attacking? Does it just try to take what it sees as easy to take or badly defended?

I ask because as the Lizalfos, Hyrule attacked me as soon as I had finished off the Kokiri, and had just become the largest faction. This was while they were also at war with the Gorons, Zora (who had taken Kakariko), Gerudo, Lanayru and Gohma. I would have thought they had higher priorities than attacking Bando Grove because there's one unit there, despite my army being only one province away.

[VictorAYorke]

Does anyone have any idea what sort of logic the AI is based on when attacking? Does it just try to take what it sees as easy to take or badly defended?

I ask because as the Lizalfos, Hyrule attacked me as soon as I had finished off the Kokiri, and had just become the largest faction. This was while they were also at war with the Gorons, Zora (who had taken Kakariko), Gerudo, Lanayru and Gohma. I would have thought they had higher priorities than attacking Bando Grove because there's one unit there, despite my army being only one province away.

I've noticed the AI tends to favour making opportunistic attacks on lightly defended settlements, and dropping two or three units into wherever they're loitering near will possibly send them away. Right now however the AI (especially Hyrule's AI) has a serious problem with going all Operation Barbarossa on several of its neighbours even if that faction would have problems on just the one front...

[tf_]

Bit annoying when you can't reinforce 2 settlements in one turn though, and they just end up going for the weaker one. I ended up hiding my army in the woods and baiting them into attacking me where I could easily surround them.

[mcloud]

Could anyone tell me what I need to change to get the loading screens to change the background and quotes?

[fernavliz]

Does anybody know how to get the ui working properly? It just tells me that I can't access the file. sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

I don´t know; maybe it has something to do with administrator permit to allow you to edit a file in the mod folder? (right click the folder, then properties, then security, then edit then check the box writting [I don´t have the english version of windows; same procedure but I may have misspelled])

Could anyone tell me what I need to change to get the loading screens to change the background and quotes?

I don´t know exactly, but the files that seems to have something to do with that are:
1.- For the text, look for the "quotes.txt" [backup this file AND "quotes.txt.string.bin"]. It is located in \Medieval II Total War\mods\Hyrule\data\text
2.- There are some images that are in .tga format, so you need to have a .tga editor or something. They are located in Medieval II Total War\mods\Hyrule\data\loading_screen

I hope it works

[mcloud]

Sorry fernavliz my word choice was poor. I meant I wanted the loading screens to go through the quotes and images set up for it. An example would be a quote by impa switching to a quote by ganondorf with the backgrounds swithcing with them. (hope the example helps)

[Duke Serkol]

Wouldn't that make the loading process longer?

[Teknokraatti]

To my knowledge the quotes and loading pictures aren't connected in any manner, but are independently chosen at random. Modding that may seem simple, but can actually be hard, or due to possible engine limitations, even impossible. Though it must be said, that I have never investigated these files, so I don't really know what can be done. Consider this post as semi-educated guess at best.

However, if modding these things is possible, I guess the easiest way would be to completely abandon random selection and just make it so, that everything comes in preselected order over and over again. Of course this means, that there would absolutely have to be as much quotes as there are loading pictures, or the system would begin to fail quite soon. If it could be done this way, I actually believe that it would even shorten the loading times due to less calculations to be made. The amount however is so minimal, that it could not be noticed in practice.

[Zalanum]

1.Is their a way to make the computers turn go faster in free form campaign.

2. Is auto resolve heavily biased towards some factions or units if so for what ones.

[Teknokraatti]

1: Yes, there is. Actually a couple. First, easiest and most efficient is to buy a very powerful single-core processor as the engine does not utilize additional cores at all. That however is a bit ridiculous thing to suggest. (Though more powerful computer helps without doubt, my own is not a terrible beast of a computer, but not weak either. I have never had problems with AI turn times.)

Other way is to play script surgeon. M2TW's files are nearly all modifiable. By cutting script you take away material that the computer has to process. This method however is difficult, extremely prone to cause crashes that can be hard and tedious to track, corrupts all saves currently used, and if used in wrong place, cripples both AI and human player. For example you could delete the script that enables Stalfos in their current state to gain new units. As UndyingNephalim has done quite outstanding job with this mod and scripted events and things rarely or never seen in other mods, I would be very cautious and negative to outright erase significantly great amount of code lines. Should you try, be warned that the task is enormous.

Of course, there is yet another way. Steamroll everyone so rapidly that nobody has time to build or recruit anything, which means there simply is not too much material for the computer to process. However current moving rates for units, though increased and allowing rapid campaign map movement, do not (And I'm happy that they don't) allow that. Game would be over extremely fast with no time to enjoy the campaign.

But seriously, other than upgrading or overclocking your hardware, there are no easy way to shorten your turn times.

2. Yes it is. Autoresolve basically uses a formula which gives unit some kind of, shall we say, "battle strength", based on unit class, size of the unit and unit stats, which is then compared compared to the enemy's "battle strength". Army composition should play some part too. For some reason, I don't know why, I don't even know where to look for the formula, some units of HTW are not weighted right. According to my memory (Do not rely too much on that), for example Kokiri Barricades, great Deku Tree, Gunner Barricades and some other units are heavily overweighted in the autoresolve calculations. Barricades being large units and classified as elephants might have that running for them, but that is just a guess.

There are also units that are very powerful in autoresolve, but not any less on battlefield, like Ordona horsemen, but that is another tale. I hope that helped.

[fernavliz]

About the computer turns going faster, someone (I don´t remember who) said that copying the medieval total war folder to the near c:/ will improve the performance but I have not tested it because I have the steam version of the game and I think it will cause some problems If i do that.
From [C:\Program Files (x86)\Sega\Medieval II Total War\mods\Hyrule] to [C:\Medieval II Total War\mods\Hyrule] or something like that. I don´t recommend it, it seems very risky.

have another question:
Playing as sheikah in the campaign, whats exactly the difference between shadow stand and death stand? Do it modify the alliance with hyrule? When it is convenient to change from one to another?

[VictorAYorke]

have another question:
Playing as sheikah in the campaign, whats exactly the difference between shadow stand and death stand? Do it modify the alliance with hyrule? When it is convenient to change from one to another?

the plan is for Death Stance to be playing as an active, conventional faction, with Kakariko as your capital and the ability to train not-too-shabby melee units at the first barracks level.

Shadow stance meanwhile is the stealth mode, where you own no regions but get free units every now and again out of Kakariko. In SS you have to use the free military access with Hyrule to move about the map, kill anyone who declares war on the KoH and take settlements that will default to Hyrule at the start of your next turn.

This system isn't quite working yet, though, so in SS you can capture settlements and keep them while you get no changes or advantages in DS (not even Kakariko ownership). As for Hyrule relation nothing is supposed to change, but with the AI in its current state expect the Kingdom to invade without reason, provocation or purpose sometime before turn 20...

[fernavliz]

Wow, It would be very cool to play it that way, but it is very difficult to "give" 1 settlement of your own to another faction via script; I think that´s the part that has not been possible to implement, at least for the moment. I´m going to see and try if it is possible to "fix" it (in my own way, via campaign_script). There is not a "give away that region" command or anykind near it.