Rebalance & Armor mod, need info and Ideas

[the_mango55]

I'm planning on a semi-major mod for after the unpacker comes out, which will add a new unit for every faction, totally rebalance a few factions, and overhaul the armor system. What I need is suggestions for some factions that I'm not quite sure what the unit should be, and historical info for people who may have Osprey books on other potential units (whether it is historical, what it was called, and a brief description for the unit card.)

This is not going to be a historical accuracy mod though (although it would be nice to include some), so if I give a faction a unit that I feel it may need, even if it's not historical, I will probably keep it. Anyway, on to the changes!

Byzantines
- The Byzantines are one of the factions with the biggest overhauls. Changes are:
- The Dismounted Byzantine Lancers given spears, stats changed to be similar to Siphia Lancers
- A Pike unit added, tentatively called kontarions, the name of a type of Byzantine spear, need info about this.
- A lancer unit with stats similar to crusader knights added, called Pronoiai Allagion, but with higher upkeep than knights (350 perhaps)
- Kataphractoi - increase defense a bit, perhaps lower charge bonus.
- Switch the Kataphractoi and Vardariotai in the tech tree, Kats need to come out earlier and be great and be slowly phased out instead of already being dominated by late knights.
- Give them guns, I see no reason why they shouldn't have handguns and arqebus, just because they never got much chance. Sicily didn't get the chance either, but they get them.

Denmark
- I really have no idea what thier unit should be, but I know that something of theirs needs a nerf. They always dominate the campaign.
- Any suggestions as to a unit that Denmark used that is unrepresented?

England
- I think I'm going to remove one of the billmen paths, and replace them with more standard spear and pike units.
- Add a mounted longbowmen unit.
- Buff the elite bill unit and make it more expensive. There is no reason to have such a low quality unit so high up the tech tree.
- Add the "effective against cavalry" trigger to bills if it isn't added with the patch.

Egypt
- Thinking I will add a light horse (or camel) archer.

France
- Dismounted Gendarmes as an elite infantry milita, not sure what weapon to give them, I'm thinking a halberd.

Holy Roman Empire
- Reskin the armor upgraded Scottish Nobles to HRE colors and name it Swabian Swordsmen. Will use the description from VI.
- Make Dismounted Gothic Knights buildable

Hungary
- They need a decent foot archer unit, so thats probably what I will do, unless someone can give me some good Osprey type info.

Milan
- Increase the upkeep cost of Genoese Crossbow Militia.
- Not sure about the unit, suggestions?

Moors
- Need suggestions, leaning towards mounted urban milita I guess,
- I don't have any experince playing this faction, suggestions for balancing appreciated

Poland
- Get the dismounted polish nobles to throw javelins
- Don't know about the unit, I'm thinking dismounted Hussars, with a very high attack but light armor

Portugal
- Add Mouned handgun units, similar to Reiters but not nearly as well armored, or as good in melee.

Russia
- Novgorod city militia - Danish swordsmen reskinned to russian colors, given stats of the spanish Sword Militia
- Add Pavise Crossbow units perhaps to help deal with Mongols

Scotland
- Replace the Noble Pikemen with another weapon, perhaps 2 handed sword or axe. Nobles would never use a pike.
- Add Border Rievers, mounted crossbowmen that are also good in melee, French Aventeures on horses.
- Add guns, same deal as Byzantines
- Add Highland Musketeers a musket unit that is also good in melee, stats similar to cossacks, but ranged damage same as regular musketeers.

Sicily

- give the chain barding of Imperial and Templar Knights to the Normans, I just think it would look better.
- increase the stats and price of the dismounted Normans a bit, it says they are better knights but they are the same as feudals currently.
- add a mounted Muslim archer

Spain
- give Spanish Musketeers, a musket unit armored with a breastplate
- other suggestions?

Turks
- Make the JHI require the huge city town hall, instead of large city town hall.
- Not sure about the unit, perhaps Dismounted Qukupulu(sp?) with maces or swords?
- other suggestions?

Venice
- Thinking of putting the Venetian Archers on horses, but having a heavily armored horse archer may be overpowered. Any suggestions?

Knightly Orders
Each of the knightly orders will get 3 new units.
- In the first level building you will get the standard knight, and a spearmen unit similar to the crusader spearmen but with the colors of the order
- In the second level building you will get a specialized foot knight unit, and a pavise crossbowman.

The foot knights will be:
- Templar foot knight - Two handed sword
- Hospitallar foot knight - Mace and shield
- Teutonic foot knight - Two handed axe
- Santiago foot knight - Halberd

And the Pavise Crossbowmen will (hopefully if I figure it out) work sort of like the Ottoman infantry. They will have kite shields on their back and use them to deflect arrows when reloading, and when they go into melee they will take the shields off of their back and hold them in their off hands.

As for the armor system, It all depends on whether or not I can change the mechanics of armories. Refer to my post on another thread for changes:

I think I'm going to try something like this myself when we can get the tools.

The idea is to make it to where the armor the units are wearing gives somewhat more of an effect. I would accomplish this by making upgrades +2 armor instead of +1, if possible. Also, this would lead to crazy amounts of armor on units with 2-3 upgrades, so I would actually reduce armor on units that are wearing leather or light chain and have a lot of armor.

For example, I present this picture:

On the left is plain Italian spear militia, to the right is fully upgraded pike men.

As you can see, the pike men are wearing partial plate, and the Italian spear militia are wearing simple leather armor. If I were to create this mod, I would reduce the armor of the spear militia to 2 (they are pretty overpowered anyway). Then, with the 3 upgrades to pikes they would have an armor of 6, and a fully upgraded italian spears would also have armor of 6 (which is what their fully upgraded stats are anyway).

I will also give units a bonus to defense if I feel they are too weak with original armor downgrades.

Thoughts?

Any feedback or helpful info would be appreciated!

[Black Francis]

Sounds great but I'm not sure about the mounted longbow unit for the English. I really wouldn't imagine it to be very easy to fire a longbow when mounted.... if possible at all.

[Ahiga]

I'd like to see an armored spearman unit for the Moors, if it were possible (Stats around that of an armored sergeant, but perhaps more expensive). If not that, then something which blends European with Moorish - they have more than enough African units, and it would benefit to see the influence of their Christian subjects/neighbors more.

The turks also could use a heavy infantry with a sword or mace, as you mentioned.

Osprey images are forbidden at TWC due to copyright issues - El Cid

Something like the axe-shield wielding fellow would be a good Turkish version of the Dismounted Knight.

[Artemas Ward the XXIII, Esquire]

I would like to see a great deal more units added to all factions, not necessarily unique, but closer to generic units that were seen in MTW. Like Feudal Men-at-Arms, man I miss those guys...

As an example, I think all factions should have access to some sort of low tier sword or axe unit. As it it, the first anti-infantry unit the English (for example) get is either Armoured swordsmen, or dismounted feudal knights. Both of which are very high quality.

The easiest way to do this you've already discovered. Just change the faction colours of existing units, maybe change their stats and names, and voila! Greatly increased unit selection.

Units that could be considered universal (at least for catholic nations):
Pike Militia
Halberd Militia
Sword Militia (or a nerfed version)
Mounted Serjeants
Peasant Crossbowmen
Others which elude me.

Mounted longbowmen would be logically impossible.

On Danes:
They don't dominate campaigns because they have great armies so much as they dominate campaigns because they have a very good starting position. As well as excellent sea trade.

On Venice (and Milan):
Mounted archers aren't really the style of Italy. Maybe a more professional halberd unit? Or an additonal "heavy" militia? Or dismounted Condotierri? Preferably all of these.

On England:
Do you have to remove a bill path? Can't you just include pike and spear as additions?

On Scotland: You could have instead of noble pikemen, some other heavy pike unit (basically just change the name and description).

On Bizantium:
Make Byzantine Infantry recruitably in castles as well.

On Russia:
Instead of Pavise Crossbowmen, maybe just make a new bow unit called foresters (or hunters or something), and give them the longer range attribute. But still less power (if only slightly) than Longbowmen.


Great idea on the Knightly Orders.

[the_mango55]

Well there has been a snag so far with the armor upgrade. It seems like although the game was designed with this exact idea in mind, they seem to have hit some problems implementing it. The values for the upgraded armors are all in the text files already (they actually increased armor more dramatically than I was going to), but they are commented out with semicolons. So I can only hope that they will fix this in a patch.

After playing a bit with the Russians, I can say that they are probably the most lacking faction in the game, so they will get an extensive overhaul too.

More Russia changes
- 3rd tier city barracks, replace crossbow militia with Novgorod city guard.
- 4th tier city barracks, replace cavalry militia with pavise crossbow militia.
- 2nd tier archer, add a dismounted Kazak, called Steppe Foot Archer
- Differentiate Dismounted Boyars & Druzhina currently they are the same unit basically
- give spear milita bonus vs. cavalry.

Also, western peasants are going to receive a HUGE (comparatively) nerf. There is no reason why they should be able to beat better equipped and better trained (even if only slightly) militias as easily as they do. They have like 4 defense! A freaking peasant with a pitchfork!



@ Aghia - Great idea for the moors, I hadn't realized that all of their spearmen were unarmored until I started a game with them. And the Nubian spearmen are completely worthless right now, they are tech 2, have the same stats as
tech 1, and don't get any of tech 1's bonuses! I will probably remove tech 1, give the bonuses to Nubians (I like them better) and put an armored spearman at tech 2. Also, that's a fantastic picture for the turks, and looks almost exactly like the Qukupulu guy, so just dismounting him would look perfect! Any ideas for the name or info about him though? It says ottoman infantry, but there is already one of those. Perhaps Seljuk guard?

@ Black Francis - I don't know if it could work either, but that's all I could think of for the English, and they lack any mounted ranged units. Do you have a suggestion for a better English unit?

I would like to see a great deal more units added to all factions, not necessarily unique, but closer to generic units that were seen in MTW. Like Feudal Men-at-Arms, man I miss those guys...

As an example, I think all factions should have access to some sort of low tier sword or axe unit. As it it, the first anti-infantry unit the English (for example) get is either Armoured swordsmen, or dismounted feudal knights. Both of which are very high quality.

Well, I don't think that the feudal men at arms were very realistic at all. Most commoners for most factions fought with spears, pikes, or some other polearm. The ones that didn't are pretty well represented in the game I think (danes, spanish, etc.)

Units that could be considered universal (at least for catholic nations):
Pike Militia
Halberd Militia
Sword Militia (or a nerfed version)
Mounted Serjeants
Peasant Crossbowmen
Others which elude me.

All factions will get at least some of those, but not all of them. I don't want armies to be all the same.

On Danes:
They don't dominate campaigns because they have great armies so much as they dominate campaigns because they have a very good starting position. As well as excellent sea trade.

Well, whatever it is, something has to be done about it.

On Venice (and Milan):
Mounted archers aren't really the style of Italy. Maybe a more professional halberd unit? Or an additonal "heavy" militia? Or dismounted Condotierri? Preferably all of these.

Yeah I was thinking that too, I just really wanted to see that armored bowman on a horse . What do you think about something like a Venitian Marine, which would be a javelin armed skirmisher, also good in melee, kind of like an almguvar.

On England:
Do you have to remove a bill path? Can't you just include pike and spear as additions?

Seriously, does England need 4 bill units, the last 2 being almost exactly the same? Same deal with Scotland, except I will probably leave 3 Scottish pike units, which is plenty IMO.

On Russia:
Instead of Pavise Crossbowmen, maybe just make a new bow unit called foresters (or hunters or something), and give them the longer range attribute. But still less power (if only slightly) than Longbowmen.

The reason for the Pavise crossbowmen is the advantages they have against Mongols. The only way I possibly held back the Mongols in MTW 1 is the pavise arbalests (btw, the most fun campaign I ever had in MTW was Russia/high).

Great idea on the Knightly Orders.

Thanks, I thought so to. I just hope I can figure out the animation for getting the shield off of the back.

[Black Francis]

I don't think the English should have a mounted ranged unit. I cant even think of examples of the English ever using a mounted ranged unit. I think they should be limited in this respect as they already have superb infantry (maybe more so after patch) whereas the French are the ones with better cavalry... which is as it should be.

Cavalry should be their weak spot.

[Artemas Ward the XXIII, Esquire]

Feudal men-at-arms were just an example. I still think that most factions should have some non-spear, melee infantry though. I believe that the men-at-arms that MTW had were either very poor knights, or professional soldiers whom had looted their way to quality goods.

On bills:
Aren't the only difference name and place produced (city vs. castle)? If that's so, then I guess it is a bit redundant.

On Venice:
I was thinking dismounted condotierri, which would have the following:
Armour (as zweihanders), two handed swords, and a couple volleys of javelins. Stat wise, they would be slightly worse than zweihanders, but cost (slightly?) more. They do have javelins after all. Or a byzantine infantry-like militia unit as a stepping stone between Italian Spear Militia and Venetian Heavy Infantry.

On Danes:
Until we know why they are powerful, perhaps hold off on nerfing them. I've only seen them become powerful in one of my campaigns.

On armour:
I think the best example so far is that of halberd militia. Armour of 0 and unarmoured to start, but by the time they are fully upgraded they have plate armour, but only a armour rating of 3, equal to light mail or leather. Weird. Ideally, their armour rating should equal that of other plate armoured units (maybe a 6 or 7).

On Byz:
Maybe make Varangian Guard available earlier? Or something...

One other note:
Other than a single point of armour, what difference is their between feudal knights, and chivalric knights?

And peasants.....
well, as long as you also greatly reduce their cost. Right now they are a bit less effective than the weakest militia, and are only a bit less expensive as well. (Honestly i think their fine)

[the_mango55]

And peasants.....
well, as long as you also greatly reduce their cost. Right now they are a bit less effective than the weakest militia, and are only a bit less expensive as well. (Honestly i think their fine)

Fire up M2tw and run a custom battle, england vs france or something, give one side peasants and the other side militia.

You may be surprised at the results.

On armour:
I think the best example so far is that of halberd militia. Armour of 0 and unarmoured to start, but by the time they are fully upgraded they have plate armour, but only a armour rating of 3, equal to light mail or leather. Weird. Ideally, their armour rating should equal that of other plate armoured units (maybe a 6 or 7).

Yeah that was the main reason I wanted to do this mod, the rest was extras. But it looks as though CA had the same ideas, and couldn't get it to work or something.

I posted this in another thread:

So I have been poking around in the text files that were just released, and it looks like this is not only possible, but also this has already been done by CA for every armored unit!

It looks like, however, that the changes have been commented out at the last minute.

Here are some explanations, the first part will look familiar to anyone who has modded RTW, but the second part is brand new. Bold parts important to the to the topic.


And here is an example of a unit's armor, from the generic pike militia unit.



The bold numbers are (presumably, if my assumption is correct) what the armor values would be for a pike militia if it weren't for the semicolon in front of the line.

I'm about to test this out after I can figure out the mod switch feature, back soon!

It turned out that whenever I did that the game crashed before launching, and the crash logs always told me that it couldn't read the armor stats.

[Ahiga]

I have the osprey book on the ottomans, Mango, and I'll see if their topic of infantry covers anything useful.

Voyniks were Balkan Christians who were expected to be armored, and who played a leading role in the siege of Constantinople.

The image is of a soldier that is certainly an elite one. I would suggest (Because I am a turk whore) to have two different units - One would be an early, below-a-feudal-knight melee infantryman, and the other would be a elite, expensive, 'as good as a dismounted knight' melee infantryman (The description of the plate, or image, that guy is in says that his shield could resist primitive firearms).

For the early infantryman, you can just take the ottoman infantry excluding the bow, or the early era bodyguards, but dismounted. The name could be something simple, like dismounted Sipahis, or Ottoman Infantry (Making the Ottoman Infantry of Bow and sword into Dismounted Sipahis)

[KaerMorhen]

if it comes to Kingdom of Poland

in fact we hadn't much of "native" proper infantry as most of medieval states had. As far as I recall we used highly trained and equiped mercs(infantry) of bohemian, rus and hungarian orgin. I can make some research cause I think our archers rooster should be improved of some Golden Horde mercs:hmmm:

[lawngnome]

With reference to the armor portion:

If you have padded, your armor should be value P (regardless of starting with padded or upgrading to padded)

If you have chain, your armor should be value C... etc...

That way armor upgrades are really worth it, and make sense.


With reference to western mounted archers:

If you're going to give Western factions mounted archers, they should be less effective and cost more than their Eastern counterparts... this just wasn't a normal part of warfare in the West.

[bibbledy]

The Moors' Dismounted Arab Cavalry, with the full armor upgrace, are a nicely-armored spear unit. I would like to see horse armor and/or clothed horse for the Christian Guard, or an armor upgrade that armors the horse (possible?).

[VaeVictis]

I like the idea of adding more units to the Knightly Orders.

[Artemas Ward the XXIII, Esquire]

So you were right about peasants. I attribute their success to the fact that they have a defence skill of 3, compared to the usual 1 of other militia units, thus making them more dangerous in melee. I think just lowering their defence skill to 1 should solve the problem.

On feudal men-at-arms (I will persuade you...)
I was thinking something like armoured sergeants, but with swords. I mean, if a professional soldier (and a commoner) was able to afford chain mail, then they would be able to afford a sword.

While I understand eliminating one of the higher tier bill unit because of sameness, all of the scottish pike units are actually different, and (i think) gained at different times.

[Ahiga]

A momentary solution I suggest is to make dismounted Arab cavalry's stats the equivalent of Saracen Militia or Armored Sergeants. A longer term solution may not be necessary - just make it so dismounted arab cavalry can upgrade to the armor level of armored sergeants (or for a caveat to them - have them start with less armor, but be able to get one more point of armor).

This is to give the Moors their own heavy spearmen.

Oh, and should the urban Militia, when upgraded, look like Dismounted Christian guards? It makes sense, but for variety sake they could use the model of another dismounted unit with heavy armor.

Perhaps the Moors don't need heavy spearmen - their dismounted arab cavalry can upgrade to as much as the highest upgrades of Armored Sergeants.

What I'd like to see is a grenadine 'pavise' crossbowmen. Osprey features one of them for their Decline of Grenada (15th century) image, though it is not really a pavise so much as a wooden mantlet, but it looks very pavise-like, and the Grenadians apparently have a love of crossbows.

In another image, of Andalus and "magrib" under the Murabitun(?), late 11th to Mid-12th century, it features a Afro-saharan Archer, A murabit Cavalryman (Looks like the berber units) and what is worth considering - a Andalusian crossbowman. He's dressed pretty much entirely like the Christian guard with the little cloth headband around his head and a mail hauberk. What's worth noting is that he has a sword and a crossbow but also a shield. The problem is that it's not really a pavise-y shield (It's more Teardrop), and he has an arrow in the back from the African Archer. But he couldn't tote around the shield and the crossbow, so I think he'd sling it around his back.

The problem is that you might need to model to get a decent Islamic or even Islamic-Themed pavise unit (The current pavise guys don't cut it as an Andalusian Christian/Jew). If you know how to model - I'd say take the dismounted arab cavalry, slap a teardropped (Urban Militia) shield on his back and let him take it off when he whips out his sword (Like the Ottoman infantry).

If you don't know how to model but how to skin, take the Ottoman infantry, recolor their shields, and give them a crossbow instead of a bow.

[lawngnome]

Well, I'd like to say that your armor portion of the mod is not necessary... I tested these things and found that the points that show up for armor ('1', '2') don't mean a whole lot. If a unit has padded... it benefits from padded, regardless of whether the unit card says '1' or '4'... It's misleading, but true..... here:

My test

For your armor mod, if you would like to modify the base values of the armors themselves (make plate stronger, advanced plate stronger, etc.) that's fine, but armorers function properly right now. Don't be fooled by pikemen with a '3' for armor... they actually have heavy mail on

[the_mango55]

OK, so a new plan to make the guns a bit more balanced will be added with this mod, making various changes to them:

1. Reduce their range - Arquebus will have the range similar to normal archers, perhaps a bit shorter, muskets will have a range between normal archers and

2. Reduce the damage a bit - I wish I could reduce accuracy, but I don't believe that this engine has the ability to alter accuracy stats (if anyone knows if you can tell me about it). So

3. Reduce their cost - The main reason that nations switched to guns was because of their lower cost.

4. Increase numbers - The lowered range and damage of guns will be compensated with more guns I will change the size from archer unit sizes to spear unit sizes. This will represent the bigger "conscription" aspect that gun units took on in the late middle ages.

5. Change building requirements - With the changes I am making, it would make no sense to have to wait until the highest level army barracks to get a unit that is no longer the best. So I think I'm going to change the "alchemist/university" line of buildings into the gun producers, make the first two available at large city, with the ability to build handgunners and arquebusiers, with the third building Musketeers for the nations that have them, and requiring a huge city.

6. Change formation settings - Guns get advantages that they shouldn't have by switching to loose formation. Historically rank and file handgunners fought shoulder to shoulder, so I will change the loose formation to be much tigher than standard loose formation. Currently standard and loose formation are 1.2 and 2.4, I plan on changing this to 1.2, 1.8.

Also, since right now it seems like catapults are just about the best seige units available, I'm gonna make the following changes to siege and artillery units:

1. Double the cost of non-gunpowder artillery - mainly so that the AI doesn't pack his army with them

2. Reduce the damage vs. buildings of various artillery - It should be virtually impossible to get through the massive walls of Citadels and Huge cities with catapult units, I have seen one catapult unit break through 2 sections of huge walls and take out a tower before running out of ammo.

3. double the number of gunpowder artillery pieces in a unit - I want artillary to be a unit that can actually do some damage in field battles, but be expensive and vulnerable if unprotected. They also will have their attack versus buildings cut in half to not make them OP in sieges.

4. Triple (at least) the cost of the gunpowder artillery - these units should be good to have in battle, but they should be the most expensive units in the game.

5. reduce the attack, armor, and defense of soldiers in artillery units - these units should be completely vulnerable to attacks, currently they can actually hold their own against cavalry sent to counter them, and actually defeat them if they are light cavalry!

[rebel5555]

I would like to see the mounted longbow unit. I do know that it's easy to add as it is already in the game, you just need to make it buildable. I would like to see an English Paladin mounted & dismounted just make the English cavalry just a bit better. I would like to see musketeers for the Englsih as well as some canons.

[Jush]

GREAT idea for a mod, and I hope you carry it out. I'm about 200 years into my Poland campaign (I suggest people try them out, not a bad mix of Eastern cavalry and Western infantry/technology), and I keep wanting to slap the game because it seems all the Eastern European facitons (and Russia) just got done last second.

Poland: There's no reason the Poles shouldn't have a pike unit or a decent two-handed swordsmen -- they were a major innovator in military technology during the late period. I'm thinking, for the swordsmen, just take the model from the arquebusier and give it a Zweihander sword model, and let it get a heavy mail or partial plate armor upgrade.

As for the Ottomans: Great ideas, I like them all.

Russians: They definitely need a sword unit, and I like your Novgorod militia idea. Also, I feel they deserve a pavise crossbowmen unit as well, but if you decide to go with a bowmen (Muscovite Hunstmen...mmmmm) unit, just make sure they get some decent stats in both melee and missile. Oh and, I second you on differentiating the dismounted Boyar sons and Druzhina units.

Byzantines: Great ideas all. It's ridiculous that they don't get gunpowder units -- are we supposed to just quit when we get to the late era? So yeah, go for it. Also, I have an idea for a morale booster unit, like the Milanese and Venetian standards. Just take those models, reskin it to have it be the Blachernitisa Icon (I think that's what it's called, the icon of the Virgin Mary they loved), and keep the values the same. Oh and only one available at a time of course.

[the_mango55]

First release is out Here.