UNITS ROSTERS discussion

[umbracatervae777]

Well, if I understand correctly the garrison scripts, you need your garrison units to have a specific label in export_descr_units, and use that label to disband them after the siege is finished. And the disband command is applied faction-wide, that's why you need specific units. Else you would either offer free units to the AI, or disband left and right in other armies/settlements.

Those units can be repurposed. I mean, no longer trainable by normal way. But treated as garrison unit which after a battle, those units will disappear

[Mamlaz]

Maybe the existing trash-tier units, like Junior Militia or Acontistae could be included in garrison script instead, not just a special unit replacement for peasants

Junior militia have a 3 base attack, slashing axe.

They are better than basically all low tier light spear inf.

Rather take from one of the other spear clones, and give juniors javies

If the garrison script requires specific units, the 2 or 3 slots left by the peasants will not be enough to meet the demand for new units.

You can basically get rid of all the powder arties side from the bombard and grand bombard.

1. Monster ribaults did exist but were very rare, and late 15th century.
2. + mercenary monster ribault
3. Mortars as well for this period.
4. Mercenary monster bombard - like, do we really need to meme 1453?
5. Cannon - basically the same as culverin
6. Basilisk - same
7. Serpentine - late 16th century design


You still are left with ribaults, bombards, grand bombards and culverins, which is quite enough for a mod focused on the early campaign atm imo.

[umbracatervae777]

You can basically get rid of all the powder arties side from the bombard and grand bombard.

1. Monster ribaults did exist but were very rare, and late 15th century.
2. + mercenary monster ribault
3. Mortars as well for this period.
4. Mercenary monster bombard - like, do we really need to meme 1453?
5. Cannon - basically the same as culverin
6. Basilisk - same
7. Serpentine - late 16th century design


You still are left with ribaults, bombards, grand bombards and culverins, which is quite enough for a mod focused on the early campaign atm imo.

Oh yes, judging by most screenshots, probably most player just made to finish the campaign by late 13th to around 14th century, and rarely into 15th century. So

[Mamlaz]

Done some more testings.

IMO, the horse archers are too OP as units because their cav charge in melee after ammo exhaustion still makes most of the HA units superb against most infantry.

Cav ofc is too op in general, but this is just a double whammy.

I propose a complete removal of the charge bonus entirely on all non-spear/lance wielding cav, it is silly for a light steppe pony to be able to smash through shield walls while its rider just wails his shortsword enthusiastically

[kostic]

@ Mamiaz : I'm not sure I understood your comments correctly, but removing any charge bonus from cavalry does not seem relevant to me since there are even charge bonuses for pedestrians.
The weight of a horse, even a pony, launched at a gallop on infantry has a mandatory charge bonus. The opposite would be unrealistic !

[Mamlaz]

I meant to reduce it completely, to 1.

The notion of light horse without lance smashing into infantry and destroying it is silly imo.

I tested it with charge 1 and they still do quite well, more than they should but not as superbly as they do in current state of sship and ss(and M2 in general), where even low tier horse archers utterly obliterate light infantry with a frontal charge.

[Mamlaz]

I must say that I love the mixed weaponry set on units such as these;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

this should be the norm for all such units imo.



I have been trying to change the shooting rate of the city/castle towers, in the sense of them shooting a volley of a few arrows rather than one by one, and I failed sadly.
Does anyone know of a tutorial for projectile editing for M2?

[Jurand of Cracow]

I have been trying to change the shooting rate of the city/castle towers, in the sense of them shooting a volley of a few arrows rather than one by one, and I failed sadly.
Does anyone know of a tutorial for projectile editing for M2?

I have no experience in this matter. If you find one, please share with explanations what the chages are.

[Belovèse]

I have been trying to change the shooting rate of the city/castle towers, in the sense of them shooting a volley of a few arrows rather than one by one, and I failed sadly.
Does anyone know of a tutorial for projectile editing for M2?

Mixed weaponry is nice indeed!

On projectile, I have not changed them myself, but I did a quick search for tutos and found this post, were gigantus explain how he create a grape shot for crosbowsn maybe it can be usefull to you?

[Mamlaz]

That is exactly the stuff I was looking for

[kostic]

I must say that I love the mixed weaponry set on units such as these;

Thank you Mamiaz !!!
This is indeed what I try to do for the maximum number of units. It's more visually realistic.
I have just finished the work for the armed pilgrims of the north and those of the south with a great mix of weapons.

[AlberdoBalsam]

I have noticed that right from the start of campaign, Venice militia guys have these pavise shields.


This is too early for pavise shields like this.

These are early pavise shields in art.


These are early pavises in archaeology.


Pavises in shape like this start coming around 1370.

Here is the pavise shape that is used on those italian militia units. Some artistic sources.

Here are the survivals.


In conclusion, this kind of pavise shield would not be seen in first half of 12th century. It would not be seen for centuries up until 1450 at best.

[Fishmalk]

A few things I have noticed from 0.97:

The norwegian early bodyguard, royal hirdmen, are both more expensive and weaker than the heavy cavalry bodyguards everyone else has. The royal hirdmen cost 800 gold in upkeep for a unit of 80 on max unit size, seemingly get no bonus size for the faction leader/heir, and are not only much weaker in combat but their generals are more likely to die because they cannot disengage the way cavalry bodyguards can. These factors combined make the norse start quite rough despite getting to beat up rebels for a while. If the team feels keeping their bodyguards as infantry is important for historicity, and no reasonable stats could possibly let them match cav bodyguards, I suggest at least making their upkeep very low as compensation.

Fari Lancers have quite a bit less defense than the bow-using Fari Cavalry, in particular less armor. This appears to be a mistake, since they seem to be wearing the same type and amount of armor.
Turcopole Archers have 1 armor, which seems too low given their model has chain/lamellar. Based on appearance I would expect them to have an armor stat close to dismounted faris.

This may be intended behavior: the amount of knights available after the Heavy Mail event increases drastically, since mailed knights can still be recruited in addition to the new feudal knights. Combined with the 0 recruitment cost of the knights in 0.97, this results in factions like the HRE fielding dramatically more powerful armies. It tends to work against the player because the player has to care about upkeep costs, though I'm not sure that's actually a bad thing.

[kostic]

@Alberdo : I agree. I should change these shields ... to drops or just circles ?

@Fishmalk : It is sometimes very difficult to understand how the statistics of the units were fixed. Indeed, Norwegian bodyguards are at a disadvantage in my opinion.For the Faris and the Turkopoles, I have tried to remake units better suited to their stats, but I am far from being competently satisfied with the result. Many more things will have to be reviewed ...

[AlberdoBalsam]

@Alberdo : I agree. I should change these shields ... to drops or just circles ?

I am not educated enough on pavise shields that i could provide a clear date, when they were started being used. It is said that pavise shields could have been invented in 1260, but i don't know the source. The earliest hint of a pavise shield i heard is from first hand describtion of battle of Campaldino in 1289 by bishop Guglielmino Ubertini. He saw the Guelph shield wall and was amazed, describing it in a way that pavise shield walls would be. Note the amazement, it must have been weird sight, pavise shield were not common, even to the italians themselves. Earliest depiction of that battle i know is from 1292 and there are no pavise shields in sight even then. I think at the battle of Campaldino, pavise shields are more of a militia thing, who used it in shield walls, because they did not wear lots of armor. Crossbowmen started using pavise shields way later. Even the famous genoese crossbowmen did not use pavise shields, when they became known.

As for about italian shields in general, yes, in 12th century they use both round shields and also the teardrop kite shields. It seems that kite shield replaced the round shield slowly and roughly in 1200, kite shield is the most used shield in Italy. In 13th century, somewhere maybe from 1225, heater shields start to appear.
1250-1300

They also depict heater shields in this weird triangular shape.


Italians have depicted even round, oval shields in some miniatures in 13th century. I don't know the context of those, but i can search for that knowledge or ask some people.

[Angelo_Auditore]

@AlberdoBalsam: It's an intresting topic, do you have any source or book about medieval shields?

[AlberdoBalsam]

@AlberdoBalsam: It's an intresting topic, do you have any source or book about medieval shields?

Everyone of us can go and check original sources. There are a lot of digitalized manuscripts, frescoes and various sculptures on the internet. As for books, i advice checking books that show archaeological findings or maybe even muiseum catalogues. They all act as primary sources, but often show the most interesting and expensive stuff, while leaving out the rest. You have to understand that nobody cares about this, but us, most history books are about historical politics, not about little things like arms and armor. Its good to search for various university articles. It would be nice if there was a book, which studied such articles about shields and then gave us the big picture about it, but now we have to read those articles about like 1 or 2 objects and figure it out for ourselves.

[Jurand of Cracow]

We're working a bit on the Scandinavian roster. This is to be taken into account.

[Nemesis2345]

From what i know , the Heather shields were used by well armored soldiers, particullarily the nobles (obviously) since they were already protected by the armour , a big shield would have slowed them down even more.

I know that the Kite was indeed the shield of choice for your avg. militiaman, as it was great in a shield-spearwall type of defensive type. Also , arrows were still primitive and didnt penetrate the big shield , even crossbows had a tough luck penetrating it.

Oval shields were used by militia types as well , it was similar to the Kite.

There is indeed an event for Pavises in the game , quite late if i remember, thats when imo it should either unlock gold armor upgrade for the spearmen ( the urban spearmen have pavises ingame) and maybe change their model accordingly.

Would also be cool to have 2 units of genoese mercs , early and pavise genoese to replace them later.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Yeah, heater shields are theorised to to appear because of common use of mail protection for the legs. Still, that did not stop even the nobles wearing it. That being said, even if kite shields were worn by knights, they were rather unpopular.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Interesting part is where we don't have a lot of sources of showing kite shields being used by militia, we don't have lots of lower class soldier depictions in general from 13th century. However, 14th and 15th centuries show infantry without leg armor, who use smaller heater-sized shields. Oval shields from Italy. They are not that big really, but at least in Italy. In Balkans, they are depicted being slighly bigger.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is really unclear why did footmen with no leg armor went for the smaller-sized shields, instead of big kite shields. Maybe military fashion was dictated by the nobility. This does not rule out the fact that later pavise shields were used for commoner and noble alike and that there were certain italian units made up of pavise-wielding men.