Feedback and suggestions

[Rick]

If I change the multiplier to a low value in the script will it cause a problem. I've already install the mod and find that 325 men is bit large.

[LeNordique]

Is this mod compatible with Darth Mod Empire? Is there a way to keep both and alternate between the two if I like?

[Goutlard]

If I change the multiplier to a low value in the script will it cause a problem. I've already install the mod and find that 325 men is bit large.

You can just set the unit size to "small" or "medium" in the settings and you'll have numbers close to the default ^^

Is this mod compatible with Darth Mod Empire? Is there a way to keep both and alternate between the two if I like?

No, this mod is basically just as big as Darthmod Empire.
However, it is very easy to alternate between both if you know what you're doing ! You just need to replace the user.empire_script.txt ; and move the UPC (as called by Darthmod) or LOC (as called in this mod) files.

[LeNordique]

You can just set the unit size to "small" or "medium" in the settings and you'll have numbers close to the default ^^



No, this mod is basically just as big as Darthmod Empire.
However, it is very easy to alternate between both if you know what you're doing ! You just need to replace the user.empire_script.txt ; and move the UPC (as called by Darthmod) or LOC (as called in this mod) files.

ooooh I'd definitely be interested in learning how to do that but I don't know what I'm doing. Is there an explainer or a mod-switching mod out there that can help?

[Rottmeister]

Hi! After playing with DarthMod for years (which has too easy campaign settings, especially too much income, and flawed diplomatic behaviour) I´ve tried several other mods, but unfortunately while the mod "landscape" of ETW looks promising at first glance, everything I´ve tried so far turned out to have it´s fair share of problems, which really is a shame after so many years (and I´m not talking about mere personal preferences, but about mods being simply unfinished, or fixing some problems here while introducing others there, or are complelety imbalanced)... Recently I worked my way through the whole 120 pages of BranMacBorns´s DME Settings over several days, finally tried several versions, but gave up on it after only a few turns (on "Hard Economy" I´ve found that I get even MORE income than with vanilla Darth; a "poor" city all over a sudden became "wealthy" in the 4th or 5th turn, and the loss of two sloops to some pirates at a trade node resulted in a drop of government support by 9 points, and a few other things...)
This one here however looks very promising - only discovered it yesterday. I already did come across OTO a while ago and thought that it seems to be more than just a faction overhaul and looks very interesting, and kept it in the back of my mind as possible base for a selfmade setup of smaller mods, in case I wouldn´t find a reasonably balanced overhaul without glaring flaws. Yesterday I discovered "Wind from the East" (and found out that OTO has evolved), and by the description (and also by the orderly, diligent way how everything is described, the explainations given why this and that change has been made..) I became very excited! This seems to include everything I´m expecting from a mod with a more "realistic" approach. I´ve instantly started a campaign as Sweden (Large campaign Early, N/N), using it together with the submods (including AUM 1.3 since I love those units) and "Period Music Mod" (which I can wholeheardly recommend, although I haven´t tried the battle music yet). Am ready to work as a playtester now for this interesting mod.

So far I´ve only played 1 turn. Economy looking great - finally you have to think twice what to build, and money matters! Am not sure yet of course how this will turn out..
However, it seems that AUM 1.3 is not properly integrated yet - the unit values just don´t fit in. Standard line infantry has 240 men (large settings), while the AUM units (NärkeVärmland-Regiment, Regiment of Foot, West European Infantry Mercenaries) all have only 120 men, half as many, while costing twice as much as standard line infantry. Moreover, they do not offer anything special whatsoever stat-wise; the "NärkeVärmlands" at least have slightly higher melee abilities an 1 more morale, and all of them have twice as much ammo (30 instead of 15), that´s it. They even have less abilities (for example no resistance to morale shocks.. - but they´re supposed to be a little better, not only because of much higher costs, but also because only a few of them can be recruited). So far, there´s abolutely no point whatsoever in recruiting any of the (early) AUM infantry units (pay more for much less), maybe with the exception of the skirmisher guys (just 90 men, but at least they have special abilities). I had a look in the unit tables, and apparently all of the AUM units are much smaller than the standard ones (probably it´s the same with the other stats for AUM units of other countries as well).

Same with AUM naval units (where there´s some odd values on top of that): A Brig of War costs almost twice as much as a normal brig (1500 vs 800), which is fine, I guess - but the upkeep for the "war"-version is 0 (zero). Same with the Sloop of War, no upkeep; also the standard sloop ist slightly more expensive (775) than the "war"-version (700) instead of the other way round, although here the difference is only very slight, much in contrast to the brigs. Furthermore, in both cases the "war" version has much worse hull strength than the standard version (about half), should be the other way round as well. Regarding speed, the "War version" is 1 point slower, but this makes sense...

This mod looks really interesting, and I am very glad that someone is still working on mods for ETW - especially since there´s really no abundance of really good, balanced mods for that particular TW-game. Please keep up, and thank you very much. Will continue to playtest your mod!

[Goutlard]

[...]

Thank you for your great feedback!

Exactly as you said. I wanted to create a system where you have to think about what you build.
And in which war is basically a money-sink. As Cicero said "Money is the sinews of war" ; you should be able to build big armies. But battles with signficiant losses should be a huge money drain.

I'll look into the issues with AUM ! I hadn't realise it was outdated.
I would be interested in incorporating it into the full mod actually, then it would be an amazing total overhaul of the game. But I don't have the courage to do such a project, and exams soon.

[pxfofo]

Hi I dont know if its bug or i do something wrong. I have large sugar plantation and large tobacco plantation in Hispaniola. It may produce 150 loaves of sugar and 100 barrels of tobacco. But in trade summary screen i have 0 tobacco and sugar supply.

[pxfofo]

[Goutlard]

However, it seems that AUM 1.3 is not properly integrated yet - the unit values just don´t fit in.

I have updated AUM 1.3 (Experimental version ; just to make it clear it is not perfectly balanced yet) and tried to balance it a bit better. Though I didn't have much time to work on it (less than an hour) so I couldn't get into unit prices relative to their power in detail. At least, now you should be able to play with a much better integrated AUM.

The unit sizes are now correct, and well trained units are now disciplined as they should be.

Hi I dont know if its bug or i do something wrong. I have large sugar plantation and large tobacco plantation in Hispaniola. It may produce 150 loaves of sugar and 100 barrels of tobacco. But in trade summary screen i have 0 tobacco and sugar supply.

Hmm.. That is very strange.
Do those regions have trade ports? Since such ports are required for exporting commodities.
Also, perhaps your trade fleet is saturated (if you look at the port's export capacity).

Maybe I forgot to increase the port's export capacity ; I have to look into it!

[pxfofo]

In the same province i have coffee. And coffee works fine.
Udate: I upgrade the tobbaco building to the highest level and it start working too. But the second highest building tier dont produce anything.

[Rottmeister]

Thanks a lot for providing a fix so quickly!
Unfortunately, the game crashes after about 20-30 seconds (i.e. unusually long) in the load up screen (so I don´t even get to the main menu) when the new AUM1.3 from today is also being loaded. Wind from the East itself (am using the newest update, release 9) runs fine. Just to make sure, I´ve also changed the load order, and once I´ve left out the OTO_AUM_UPC-file; I also turned off all the graphical bling bling (SSAO, HDR, AA...) off and reduced texture size to moderate values - but it´s always the same result...

[Goutlard]

Thanks a lot for providing a fix so quickly!
Unfortunately, the game crashes after about 20-30 seconds (i.e. unusually long) in the load up screen (so I don´t even get to the main menu) when the new AUM1.3 from today is also being loaded. Wind from the East itself (am using the newest update, release 9) runs fine. Just to make sure, I´ve also changed the load order, and once I´ve left out the OTO_AUM_UPC-file; I also turned off all the graphical bling bling (SSAO, HDR, AA...) off and reduced texture size to moderate values - but it´s always the same result...

I found out I made a small mistake with the version I released ! It should be fixed now.
I'm uploading the fixed AUM. It was just a silly mistake with the editor, having an empty entry in one of the lists, but the game didn't know what to do with it and crashed.

In the same province i have coffee. And coffee works fine.
Udate: I upgrade the tobbaco building to the highest level and it start working too. But the second highest building tier dont produce anything.

I'm a bit busy today, but I'll definitively look into it and experiment to try to fix that issue !

[Rottmeister]

I would be interested in incorporating it into the full mod actually, then it would be an amazing total overhaul of the game. But I don't have the courage to do such a project, and exams soon.

I found out I made a small mistake with the version I released ! It should be fixed now.
I'm uploading the fixed AUM. It was just a silly mistake with the editor, having an empty entry in one of the lists, but the game didn't know what to do with it and crashed.

Thank you for your effort, it´s working now!
Originally, I did open the AUM-file to try and (quick-)fix it myself, but I have no experience whatsoever with modding TW-games, and there´s so many values I don´t have a clue about ("WTF is a water_bail_out_factor?!?" and so on...). If some active modder already has wrapped his mind around it, then of course he already has at least some rough idea about the needed values of different units and their relation to each other so that everything fits together. But for me it would be a matter of comparing, and comparing again, switching back and forth between the AUM- and WftE-packfiles... I did (and sometimes still do) that with the likes of Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, but there I kinda know what I´m doing... So, while I would like to offer my help here, I don´t have that sort of time as I used to have, I´m afraid...
Well, but nevertheless I couldn´t keep my hands off that (stooopid) PFM and opened the updated AUM-file for a few more fixes (and comparisons to begin with), for example to rise the upkeep and some stats of some naval units, to make sloop/brig of war more sturdy than the standard versions and so on. While having a peek at AUM land units as well, I found that you gave most units the "skirmish"-ability (which the AUM units are mostly lacking as yet). AFAIK, this is also BranMacBorn´s workaround (called "volley fire" by him) for the slow-reacting infantry formations, and I assume your BAI-system is based on that workaround as well? So I guess I can (and should) give all (or most) AUM infanty units the "skirmish" ability, otherwise they would face some disadvantage in combat against standard-WftE-line infantry, because they would only start shooting when they have finished forming their formation/lines after moving?

And some more general questions:
- What CAI-/BAI- difficulty settings do you recommend for WftE, for a sort of "realistic", non-power-gaming approach? Im mean your mod is partially based on Darth (where Hard/Hard would be the standard), partially on BranMacBorn´s (where the recommended settings really depend on the version used, which can vary greatly in that respect; partially there´s also the issue that what is kinda "balanced" for land battles turns out to be too tough/unfair for naval battles/boarding, so that BAI diffiulty would need to be changed to "Normal" before entering naval battles..), and partially on your own vision on that very subjective matter of "balancing"...
- Recommended Unit Size? I somewhere read that "ultra"-settings would hamper AI-pathfinding (or was that only true years ago with older versions of ETW, or on weak computers?), yet on the other hand there´s instructions to increase unit size even further in the preferences script via multiplier... -but wouldn´t that aggravate the problem (if any)? And is it a difference in that respect if I used such a multiplier on "large" or "ultra" settings?
- seems like you´re providing updates pretty often recently; better for me to wait a few more days before I´d start a new campaign? It´s just that I would like to keep the installation "as is" once I´ve started (for at least a few days), also without touching any setting anymore, to avoid corrupted saves and the like (had enough trial and error with that game recently)...
Thank you, and good luck with your exams (and please don´t feel pressured to provide instant fixes )

[Goutlard]

Thank you for your effort, it´s working now!
Originally, I did open the AUM-file to try and (quick-)fix it myself, but I have no experience whatsoever with modding TW-games, and there´s so many values I don´t have a clue about ("WTF is a water_bail_out_factor?!?" and so on...). If some active modder already has wrapped his mind around it, then of course he already has at least some rough idea about the needed values of different units and their relation to each other so that everything fits together. But for me it would be a matter of comparing, and comparing again, switching back and forth between the AUM- and WftE-packfiles... I did (and sometimes still do) that with the likes of Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, but there I kinda know what I´m doing... So, while I would like to offer my help here, I don´t have that sort of time as I used to have, I´m afraid...
Well, but nevertheless I couldn´t keep my hands off that (stooopid) PFM and opened the updated AUM-file for a few more fixes (and comparisons to begin with), for example to rise the upkeep and some stats of some naval units, to make sloop/brig of war more sturdy than the standard versions and so on. While having a peek at AUM land units as well, I found that you gave most units the "skirmish"-ability (which the AUM units are mostly lacking as yet). AFAIK, this is also BranMacBorn´s workaround (called "volley fire" by him) for the slow-reacting infantry formations, and I assume your BAI-system is based on that workaround as well? So I guess I can (and should) give all (or most) AUM infanty units the "skirmish" ability, otherwise they would face some disadvantage in combat against standard-WftE-line infantry, because they would only start shooting when they have finished forming their formation/lines after moving?

Good luck! I really appreciate that you take the time to try to fix the AUM file.

Pack File Manager is not that difficult to use!

* Regarding "volley fire" I integrated it into the game, indeed to make the infantry formations react better, but also because it is more realistic for everyone who has a line of sight to fire.
Unfortunately as you know that made Fire by Rank and Platoon Fire obsolete, and for that reason I modified those technologies.

* Regarding "water_bail_out_factor" I'm not sure what it does either haha. I experimented with it a bit but I didn't see any effects. I really liked changing the "flood_threshold_to_sink" though. Initially it was 0.1 if I remember right, meaning the crew abandonned ship as soon as 10% was under water. I increased it to 25% which makes more sense I believe.

And some more general questions:
- What CAI-/BAI- difficulty settings do you recommend for WftE, for a sort of "realistic", non-power-gaming approach? Im mean your mod is partially based on Darth (where Hard/Hard would be the standard), partially on BranMacBorn´s (where the recommended settings really depend on the version used, which can vary greatly in that respect; partially there´s also the issue that what is kinda "balanced" for land battles turns out to be too tough/unfair for naval battles/boarding, so that BAI diffiulty would need to be changed to "Normal" before entering naval battles..), and partially on your own vision on that very subjective matter of "balancing"...

It depends - for the campaign :
- If you want to have an AI that does diplomacy correctly (rather than just hating you for being human) ; Normal is quite good. However the AI doesn't cheat on that setting, which could make it a bit easy.

- If you want the AI to provide some challenge, Hard is pretty good. It will be less intelligent diplomatically (the AI is just programmed to dislike you at higher difficulties and I can't change that). But it will seem more competent.

For the battle I personally play on Hard. It does give some bonuses to the AI to compensate it's silliness, but not too much to make Militiamen defeat Line Infantry in melee. And it will force you to outsmart the AI a bit and use your cavalry/flanking manoeuvres well rather than engage in regular line battles.

- Recommended Unit Size? I somewhere read that "ultra"-settings would hamper AI-pathfinding (or was that only true years ago with older versions of ETW, or on weak computers?), yet on the other hand there´s instructions to increase unit size even further in the preferences script via multiplier... -but wouldn´t that aggravate the problem (if any)? And is it a difference in that respect if I used such a multiplier on "large" or "ultra" settings?

I personally recommend "Large" (240 men). "Ultra" also works pretty great on my PC, but it does lag a bit during sieges if the CPU is overloaded.
Especially you need a CPU with pretty good cores, since Empire : Total War only uses 2 cores of the CPU.

On field battles, going up to 320 works well and without lag in my experience.

- seems like you´re providing updates pretty often recently; better for me to wait a few more days before I´d start a new campaign? It´s just that I would like to keep the installation "as is" once I´ve started (for at least a few days), also without touching any setting anymore, to avoid corrupted saves and the like (had enough trial and error with that game recently)...
Thank you, and good luck with your exams (and please don´t feel pressured to provide instant fixes )

I don't change anything major, so far I think all updates were save-compatible.
I tried to make the AI act more like a player, fix unit balances and small mistakes I found a bit.

So I increased how much the AI is ready to spend for diplomacy, fixed issues with Daguestan and so on.
I also limited large settlement fortifications to only capitals, because those are a nightmare for the CPU and the AI for some reason likes to fortify every single city. I don't want to disable fort battles completely but I prefer avoiding having huge and complicated forts all around the map.

[Leonardo]

Just curious.

This is the first time I read about the mod and notice a few things I want to know more about.

I haven't played this mod before, but still it intrests me to try.

- does the mod *fix* the Ottoman turn bug (I know Bran's CAI mod does that at least reduces the effect)?
- is it compatible with ETF and/or TAR (I've played 2.0 and/or 3.3)?


I also wonder why night battles was removed from the 2.6.1 version. Personally, I like night battles and a night battle make sense in desert regions as it is often cooler during night than daytime.

[Goutlard]

Just curious.

This is the first time I read about the mod and notice a few things I want to know more about.

I haven't played this mod before, but still it intrests me to try.

- does the mod *fix* the Ottoman turn bug (I know Bran's CAI mod does that at least reduces the effect)?
- is it compatible with ETF and/or TAR (I've played 2.0 and/or 3.3)?


I also wonder why night battles was removed from the 2.6.1 version. Personally, I like night battles and a night battle make sense in desert regions as it is often cooler during night than daytime.

- Regarding the Ottoman Turn Bug ; the Ottomans were made more difficult to play / keep afloat than in the base game. In Vanilla E:TW if you trade with everyone as the Ottomans and sold off a few regions you were rich.
Here, trade without enough goods doesn't bring profit, selling regions is disabled because of weird AI behavior, and the Ottomans begin with disadvantages to public order and morale that represent the problems the Ottomans faced in that era.

Though a human player is able to see this and fix it ; the AI is sometimes unable to and the Ottomans under an AI player tend to keep a low income and slowly lose territories making the Ottoman Turn Bug a rarer occurence. It is impossible to fix without editing the map (which CA didn't provide us the tools to...) ; but as you said Bran Mac Born's AI also does help.


- Regarding ETF it will work without CTD but there will be some issues :
* The unit sizes for preexisting armies will be wrong, since this mod has different unit sizes (320 - 240 - 160 - and so on depending on the scale in the settings). Newly recruited units will have the correct size though.
* The Ottomans and Safavids won't have the correct technology representng their decline activated by default.

As for TAR I'm not sure, there is a possibility that there might be conflicts.

- Regarding night battles ; you're right they definitively make sense in the desert. It was an unpopular mechanic though for which we received quite many complaints. Mostly because it was completely random, and impacted the visibility signficiantly.

[Leonardo]

Thank you for your quick reply.

- Regarding the Ottoman Turn Bug ; the Ottomans were made more difficult to play / keep afloat than in the base game. In Vanilla E:TW if you trade with everyone as the Ottomans and sold off a few regions you were rich.
Here, trade without enough goods doesn't bring profit, selling regions is disabled because of weird AI behavior, and the Ottomans begin with disadvantages to public order and morale that represent the problems the Ottomans faced in that era.

Though a human player is able to see this and fix it ; the AI is sometimes unable to and the Ottomans under an AI player tend to keep a low income and slowly lose territories making the Ottoman Turn Bug a rarer occurence. It is impossible to fix without editing the map (which CA didn't provide us the tools to...) ; but as you said Bran Mac Born's AI also does help.

I see. Doing that what you did in this mod is realistic and perhaps historical accurate.

I assume you focus on the unit roster for the Ottomans as they relied on military tradition and the Janissary in particular have had military (political?) power since 1453 when the Ottomans capture Constatinople.

- Regarding ETF it will work without CTD but there will be some issues :
* The unit sizes for preexisting armies will be wrong, since this mod has different unit sizes (320 - 240 - 160 - and so on depending on the scale in the settings). Newly recruited units will have the correct size though.
* The Ottomans and Safavids won't have the correct technology representng their decline activated by default.

As for TAR I'm not sure, there is a possibility that there might be conflicts.

I don't think different unit size would cause an issue with ETF due for being mod foldered and as far I know ETF doesn't change unit size, but who knows for sure. Maybe emergent nations though.

TAR does change unit size mostly for being based of DME's CAI and BAI. The only thing I can think of that could cause an issue are the different campaigns in TAR aside from the vanilla Road to Independence scenario.

- Regarding night battles ; you're right they definitively make sense in the desert. It was an unpopular mechanic though for which we received quite many complaints. Mostly because it was completely random, and impacted the visibility signficiantly.

Why so many complaints? I don't understand.

Fighting a battle in night also offer a challenge, because once a hidden light infantry open fire they will immediately be spotted by the enemy artillery and cavalry.

So, I wonder if you could bring back night battles into the mod and making it optional for those people who doesn't want to play night battles.

[Goutlard]

Thank you for your quick reply.


I see. Doing that what you did in this mod is realistic and perhaps historical accurate.

I assume you focus on the unit roster for the Ottomans as they relied on military tradition and the Janissary in particular have had military (political?) power since 1453 when the Ottomans capture Constatinople.

it is not that historically accurate, because historically accurate Ottomans would probably be very powerful in the early 1700s and start falling behind in the 1750s.

But rather than be perfectly historically accurate, I wanted to catch the feeling of the soon-to-begin troubles the Ottomans faced and the neccesity of reform. Though that major crisis was mostly seen in 1780 to 1850 so is a bit anachronistic.

Indeed, the Ottomans military organisation is very historically accurate in this mod. I have also focused on improving the representation of the Safavids, the Crimean Khanate, Barbary States. And slightly modified Russia, Poland.

If you're curious about the challenges faced by the Ottomans, the manual included with the mod explains it in a lot of detail.

I don't think different unit size would cause an issue with ETF due for being mod foldered and as far I know ETF doesn't change unit size, but who knows for sure. Maybe emergent nations though.

TAR does change unit size mostly for being based of DME's CAI and BAI. The only thing I can think of that could cause an issue are the different campaigns in TAR aside from the vanilla Road to Independence scenario.

Why so many complaints? I don't understand.

Fighting a battle in night also offer a challenge, because once a hidden light infantry open fire they will immediately be spotted by the enemy artillery and cavalry.

So, I wonder if you could bring back night battles into the mod and making it optional for those people who doesn't want to play night battles.

Empire : Total Factions probably won't lead to a CTD so it is worth trying out if you have a specific faction that is not included that you want to play as.

Regarding TAR, if it uses a different AI there might be conflicts, I can't be quite sure.

*

About night battles, I'll first look if it is possible to add them again (since the submods included have seen major changes since). If it is, I'll make a poll to get the opinion of the community.

I'll be quite busy this week though. I have exams coming soon.

[Leon0216]

First off, I want to thank you with all my heart Goutlard. I've been a fan of your mod (OTO) for a while now and safe to say you've made the world a better place by creating this mod. When I heard of the latest update of Wind from the East, I was eager to try it out.

I have downloaded and set up everything and all is working well with the submods too. However, I have a small problem. The roads on the campaign map seem to have completely disappeared. The trade caravans are still there and are rolling on the terrain, but the roads aren't there at all. This isn't the case in vanilla as it happens when I install WftE. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many times but can't seem to fix the issue. Am I doing something wrong with the installation or is this a known bug?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Goutlard]

First off, I want to thank you with all my heart Goutlard. I've been a fan of your mod (OTO) for a while now and safe to say you've made the world a better place by creating this mod. When I heard of the latest update of Wind from the East, I was eager to try it out.

I have downloaded and set up everything and all is working well with the submods too. However, I have a small problem. The roads on the campaign map seem to have completely disappeared. The trade caravans are still there and are rolling on the terrain, but the roads aren't there at all. This isn't the case in vanilla as it happens when I install WftE. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many times but can't seem to fix the issue. Am I doing something wrong with the installation or is this a known bug?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you for your kind words

Actually, I hadn't realised roads were invisible!! Thank you for pointing that out.
It's a bug I also have, I'll look into it!