-Unit Charge Project with EDU-

[HorseArcher]

I have been reading into the EDU file deeper, I printed out one version, and tested the game numerous times with many types of values.

Beside that, we have many mods running different versions and using different values to reach something realistic, I have been changing things on my own way and starting out from the unmodified units and un-changed animations.

The research I'm conducting is to improve the units behavior on the field.

More specifically going into this:

- Infantry looses charge bonuses, due to hesitation and sudden stopping before charge
-Cavalry not finishing the charge right and 50/50 chance of having them charge or choose the appropriate action.

- Animations sometimes speed up the units, usually more noticeable during the cavalry units entering meele (chop-machines)

- Only the front lines of the infantry charging , while the rest stays back.

- Fights are too quick and too furious, units rout too easy.

Right now, i only modified the export_descr_unit.txt and made several tests in custom battles and on the campaign. I am trying to do this without raising any unit's given charge points or making any units superior to another. I also won't modify the animations and I am using vanilla animations currently. I actually have been playing my campaign game for the last 20 turns with my own EDU file, because I find the battles much more enjoyable.

I have an EDU file ready , and I would like to know if any of you would do a test run on with my file.

Again, I did not replace any soldier with another, neither changed animations in my own game.

With this modified file, this is my observation:

Positive:

-Cavalry charge 100% right with the charge bonus applied (watch how quickly they earn their ranks)
-Infantry will not hesitate most of the time (I would say 75% of the time they charge right)
-More infantry units fight at once, less "bystanders" in the battle
-Spearmen feel much improved against cavalry, compared to vanilla spearmen
-Units fight with realistic speed, or at least there is less time they speed up during battle
-Chasing down routing units feel a bit improved (I might be imagining things though)

Negative:

-Battles are still too quick, units rout too fast.
-Light cavalry feel too powerful, even though I did not change their stat points.
-2-handed guys are still a problem, but on the positive side, they feel more powerful, but still slow compare to others


Now, I don't want to state any of those, without having some tests done by others, so I know I'm not imagining things. I also want to hear others what they observe and how they feel about the units, because once I have feedback, I will change the values again and we can test again with new values.


I will need some motivated volunteers who know how to implement the EDU file, with either replacing yours in your mod folder or doing the -io switch.


-I need the following tests done:

In both campaigns and custom battles, compare the following

- Infantry versus Infantry charging each other
-Infantry versus Cavalry
-Cavalry versus Infantry
-Spearmen versus Cavalry
-Cavalry versus Spearmen
-Spearmen versus heavy infantry (1 handed heavy infantry)
-heavy infantry (1 handed) versus spearmen
-2 handed versus 1 handed infantry
-2 handed versus spearmen
-2 handed versus cavalry
-cavalry versus 2 handed
-missile units in meele against all types of other meele units
-missile units in meele against cavalry units and vice versa.
-All different types of units against routing units

This might look a lot, but you can do many of those in one battle.

So who wants to participate to test my EDU file?

Soon as I have at least 3 commited tester, I will release my EDU to them.

Please, only apply if you know how to implement this file on your own correctly.

Thank you!

[HorseArcher]

hmm, nobody? or people just won't beleive that my units fight better? :hmmm:

edit / 2hrs later lol...I posted in the wrong forum...

[Rammstein]

yes I beleive you, how did you do it?

[Remo]

Send me the file Horsearcher, i'll check it out.

[dvk901]

I would like to see it also. PM me please and send the file...

[GODzilla]

I have been reading into the EDU file deeper, I printed out one version, and tested the game numerous times with many types of values.

Beside that, we have many mods running different versions and using different values to reach something realistic, I have been changing things on my own way and starting out from the unmodified units and un-changed animations.

The research I'm conducting is to improve the units behavior on the field.

More specifically going into this:

- Infantry looses charge bonuses, due to hesitation and sudden stopping before charge
-Cavalry not finishing the charge right and 50/50 chance of having them charge or choose the appropriate action.

- Animations sometimes speed up the units, usually more noticeable during the cavalry units entering meele (chop-machines)

- Only the front lines of the infantry charging , while the rest stays back.

- Fights are too quick and too furious, units rout too easy.

Right now, i only modified the export_descr_unit.txt and made several tests in custom battles and on the campaign. I am trying to do this without raising any unit's given charge points or making any units superior to another. I also won't modify the animations and I am using vanilla animations currently. I actually have been playing my campaign game for the last 20 turns with my own EDU file, because I find the battles much more enjoyable.

I have an EDU file ready , and I would like to know if any of you would do a test run on with my file.

Again, I did not replace any soldier with another, neither changed animations in my own game.

With this modified file, this is my observation:

Positive:

-Cavalry charge 100% right with the charge bonus applied (watch how quickly they earn their ranks)
-Infantry will not hesitate most of the time (I would say 75% of the time they charge right)
-More infantry units fight at once, less "bystanders" in the battle
-Spearmen feel much improved against cavalry, compared to vanilla spearmen
-Units fight with realistic speed, or at least there is less time they speed up during battle
-Chasing down routing units feel a bit improved (I might be imagining things though)

Negative:

-Battles are still too quick, units rout too fast.
-Light cavalry feel too powerful, even though I did not change their stat points.
-2-handed guys are still a problem, but on the positive side, they feel more powerful, but still slow compare to others


Now, I don't want to state any of those, without having some tests done by others, so I know I'm not imagining things. I also want to hear others what they observe and how they feel about the units, because once I have feedback, I will change the values again and we can test again with new values.


I will need some motivated volunteers who know how to implement the EDU file, with either replacing yours in your mod folder or doing the -io switch.


-I need the following tests done:

In both campaigns and custom battles, compare the following

- Infantry versus Infantry charging each other
-Infantry versus Cavalry
-Cavalry versus Infantry
-Spearmen versus Cavalry
-Cavalry versus Spearmen
-Spearmen versus heavy infantry (1 handed heavy infantry)
-heavy infantry (1 handed) versus spearmen
-2 handed versus 1 handed infantry
-2 handed versus spearmen
-2 handed versus cavalry
-cavalry versus 2 handed
-missile units in meele against all types of other meele units
-missile units in meele against cavalry units and vice versa.
-All different types of units against routing units

This might look a lot, but you can do many of those in one battle.

So who wants to participate to test my EDU file?

Soon as I have at least 3 commited tester, I will release my EDU to them.

Please, only apply if you know how to implement this file on your own correctly.

Thank you!

I would really like to see some of your changes, for instance what you did to make spearmen better against cavalry (today I saw that scottish merchant miliz cavalry totally owns fully equipped armored sergeants even thought this cavalry has NO spears, just swords ).

I'll send you my mail adress via PM.

Thanks in advance.

[HorseArcher]

I'm just gonna release it globally.

So please, if you do not know how to install this, I would suggest to wait for results from people who do know.

Use it on your own risk.

It's best if you are not using a mod-animation, but the vanilla animations that came with the full game.

Test the following:

Charge with cavalries
charge with infantry
charge with the 'famous" english troops against both - infantry and cavalry. (you know which troops I'm talking about)

Charge multiple times, that means, if your troops already engaged and seem to stalled on something, charge them again against the enemy or another nearby enemy (see what happens ;-). Same with the cavalry, charge over and over and even charge at the routing units !

Fight with the one handed swordsmen (gothic knights, zwheihander etc)

use your spearman against cavalries, use your english billmen against cavalries.

let me know what is good or what is bad,

and make sure you test it with both- ranked soldiers and no-rank soldiers too and on the campaign map!

[Kye]

will this work with saved games? im bingeing m2tw at the moment so ill notice anything better or worse

Kye.

[Mr_Breeze]

If changes are exclusive to the EDU it should be vanillia save game safe. I don't know otherwise.

I would test it but im too busy with my own testing/learning atm. Ill test it first chance I get though.

[Mandro.]

Wow what a difference in my battle testing. After about 2 hours of testing using your vanilla EDU in custom battles I've seen a great difference compared to my modded edu with power_charge and longer charge distances.

I've tried cav vs inf, cav vs cav, inf vs inf etc and what really stood out was that cavalry now really charge routers, lance down and all
Every single time, and thats with your vanilla charge distance of 22.

Also infantry seemed much more responsive, at first I thought I was imagining this until i re-booted the game with my modded edu and the difference was very apparent.
You mentioned spearman seemed more capable vs cav, but in my testing using same period units (armoured sergeants vs mailed knights) the spearman still get slaughtered. Have you considered adding a new line ( used in RTW) "mount_effect" horse+10 to get better results?

Nice job in sorting out the file by unit type, finding units much more efficient now. I was hoping you could let us know what changes you made to your edu as I noticed all the stats are identical and I couldnt pinpoint your changes, as I'd rather not re-modify my entire edu over again for each individual unit...

Great work on the blood-weather mod too btw.

[HorseArcher]

Wow what a difference in my battle testing. After about 2 hours of testing using your vanilla EDU in custom battles I've seen a great difference compared to my modded edu with power_charge and longer charge distances.

I've tried cav vs inf, cav vs cav, inf vs inf etc and what really stood out was that cavalry now really charge routers, lance down and all
Every single time, and thats with your vanilla charge distance of 22.

Also infantry seemed much more responsive, at first I thought I was imagining this until i re-booted the game with my modded edu and the difference was very apparent.
You mentioned spearman seemed more capable vs cav, but in my testing using same period units (armoured sergeants vs mailed knights) the spearman still get slaughtered. Have you considered adding a new line ( used in RTW) "mount_effect" horse+10 to get better results?

Nice job in sorting out the file by unit type, finding units much more efficient now. I was hoping you could let us know what changes you made to your edu as I noticed all the stats are identical and I couldnt pinpoint your changes, as I'd rather not re-modify my entire edu over again for each individual unit...

Great work on the blood-weather mod too btw.

Hey, first post! good!

Yeah, You know, the problem is, lol, I gave the wrong file. I have several versions I tested, and the one I posted (I just looked) is one of the earlier one I was testing.
It's still good but I got a better one.

Yes, the cavalry charge a lot now, but in that version, they are still chopping machines. Also, the spearmen and the halberd units aren't adjusted in that one.

And no, the vanilla charge distance value is 30 and 45.


In the version I wanted to post, the charge distance was down to 19.

On the other hand, I made other changes to the numbers regading the animation (the last 2 numbers of the (pri attrr)

Beleive it or not, I was using RTW as a reference to many things, but still I am not fully satified with the results. You might also notice, that I gave the "command" attribute to all generals, which makes the rest of the units more "motivated". I don't know why they left that one out of the game.

About the billmen and the rest of the 2 handed guys, really the only thing helps them fully is to give them the janissary heavy infantry model, because, I just can't get them right with these codes, even though I gave them the spear_4 - attribute to fight cavalry better.

Right now, my main focus are the spearmen, halberd guys (they aren't too bad)
and adjusting the rest of the units, as well as (since this EDU file derived from the clean vanilla one) fixing up the rest of the units to be properly balanced.

For example, the HRE imperial knight suppose to be stronger and more armored than a feudal knight? right?

Or for example, I'm have like 20 turns left in my HRE campaign, and yet, I can't upgrade my generals to full-plate armor. Maybe I'm missing something, but they suppose to be upgraded now, since most of my generals come from places where I build gothic knights. I'll check that too.

Right now, I can't post the the newer EDU because the forum is taking a crap, so I'll post and replace the file with another one, hopefully an even better one.

(in the new one, everyone should fight a bit slower, but makes the fight more interesting ;-)

[bobulus]

Horsearcher! Thanks for your help. This file is the most important file what needed to be redone in MTW2 i don´t understand how people play the game the old way. It´s unplayable. The main focus of the MTW2 is the battle and the battle sucks vanilla. I´m interested in your file and I would like to test it for the sake of gameplay. The only problem is that I am a lil dumb about computers and modding, but on the other side I´m an accanite player who loves MTW2. So I´ll give it a try. Please just say how to install it. Thanks

[metalguy24]

Hey, first post! good!

Yeah, You know, the problem is, lol, I gave the wrong file. I have several versions I tested, and the one I posted (I just looked) is one of the earlier one I was testing.
It's still good but I got a better one.

Yes, the cavalry charge a lot now, but in that version, they are still chopping machines. Also, the spearmen and the halberd units aren't adjusted in that one.

And no, the vanilla charge distance value is 30 and 45.


In the version I wanted to post, the charge distance was down to 19.

On the other hand, I made other changes to the numbers regading the animation (the last 2 numbers of the (pri attrr)

Beleive it or not, I was using RTW as a reference to many things, but still I am not fully satified with the results. You might also notice, that I gave the "command" attribute to all generals, which makes the rest of the units more "motivated". I don't know why they left that one out of the game.

About the billmen and the rest of the 2 handed guys, really the only thing helps them fully is to give them the janissary heavy infantry model, because, I just can't get them right with these codes, even though I gave them the spear_4 - attribute to fight cavalry better.

Right now, my main focus are the spearmen, halberd guys (they aren't too bad)
and adjusting the rest of the units, as well as (since this EDU file derived from the clean vanilla one) fixing up the rest of the units to be properly balanced.

For example, the HRE imperial knight suppose to be stronger and more armored than a feudal knight? right?

Or for example, I'm have like 20 turns left in my HRE campaign, and yet, I can't upgrade my generals to full-plate armor. Maybe I'm missing something, but they suppose to be upgraded now, since most of my generals come from places where I build gothic knights. I'll check that too.

Right now, I can't post the the newer EDU because the forum is taking a crap, so I'll post and replace the file with another one, hopefully an even better one.

(in the new one, everyone should fight a bit slower, but makes the fight more interesting ;-)

Did you make Late Bodyguard recruitable in the campaign? That is the only way I was able to get the full plate generals.

[HorseArcher]

Did you make Late Bodyguard recruitable in the campaign? That is the only way I was able to get the full plate generals.

so you're saying that my codeline in the EDB worked?

[severdhope]

Would anyone be up for multiplayer testing this? It would be a little more thorough then a single player custom battle. If anyone is up to it, we can set up a time to test all of these in one or two battles tops.

[Lusted]

Hey Archer, im gonna try and implement some of your changes into LTC and see what the results are like. Its interesting that low charge distances seem to fix cavalry charges.

[Turbo]

Wow, what a difference. I am playing as Byzantines and I got to experience first hand a charge by the Kataphoi (spelling?). They actually used their lances and charged! Excellent catch!

Do you think that this approach will help the infantry with their charge problem?

(edit) Yes it does. This thread definately needs to be stickied!

[HorseArcher]

Wow, what a difference. I am playing as Byzantines and I got to experience first hand a charge by the Kataphoi (spelling?). They actually used their lances and charged! Excellent catch!

Do you think that this approach will help the infantry with their charge problem?

(edit) Yes it does. This thread definately needs to be stickied!

Hi turbo!

I came to the conclusion that the charge distances are waaay to large, after I got frustrated with the cavalry and the infantry doing their hesitation and I said myself "These guys ran out of breath" or "these guys have a ticker that runs out". Something like that.

The other thing is, that if your unit is engaged, they will not charge another unit, if they are inside their charge-distance radius and neither not "re"-charge if the enemy they charges still falls within the radius of their charge distance.

Knowing, that RTW had the same problem with many units, I figured, everybody is raising the charge distance and nothing happens. What if we lower it so they don't have the comfort to stop?

I also beleive that different units should have different charge distances, like spearmen, versus swordsman or heavy infantry (like halberds) versus lighter infantry and missile troops versus non-missile.
Those things have to be experimented to find the good medium.

I'll post a new EDU soon, that makes the cavalry (and some other units) fight a bit slower with the sword , soon!

[Mandro.]

Lol! Right on, that explains alot HorseArcher. Well, I'll be damned, it seems I'll have to redo my entire modded edu file now

I did see the command attribute in the general unit stats, but had thought they were vanilla. I wonder if thats combined with disciplined- highly-trained it would create a good cohesive unit? I'll add it to a few late period infantry units and give it a go. I think I'll also try your "spear" +4 and "mount_effect horse" +10 on some pikes.

Everyone give this man some rep, lol, I think this is the battelfield gameplay we were all missing from Rtw.
Gonna lower my charge distances on the infantry i test as well as some cav.

By the way, also using Zxiang's animations in my testing now. Will see how that turns out, and what numbers did you tweak for your anims?

[HorseArcher]

Ok, test this new version if you dare!

Slowed down the cavalry meele

Assigned the janissary skeleton for the billmen and english noble dismounted

Assigned shield wall to the heavy spearman

Assigned Schiltrom formation for light spearman

Gave better points for the billmen against cavalry

Increased the charge distance of light cavalry (they need it to chase down routing units)
Decreased the charge distance of heavy cavalry (I think they even work better now, but test it and you tell if it's worse or better)

Decreased the charge distance of all infantry

phalanx units have even smaller charge distance (they seem to work better this way)

Now here is some screens how the shield wall works with spearmen.

There is no icon assigned for the shield wall in M2TW, so the game uses the "pick up equipment"-icon, but just go ahead an click on that and they will be in a shield wall. Also for disabling the shield wall the "horn" icon is used, for whatever reason the game decided to use that.

Hints:

-Charge with both cavalry types

-Charge with the spearmen in shield wall formation (it's an awesome charge) or just watch them to hold up the cavalry in the formation.

-lesser spearmen survive a lot better in schiltrom, even though I don't like to use schiltrom for heavy spearmen, that's why i rather have them a shield wall formation.

-select multiple units with shield-wall capability (drag them out, just like in barb invasion) and put them into a long line of defense (see the screen)

My changes does not make them uber-soldiers in anyway, but now they are more effective to hold the line and hold up cavalry. Note my screen, my army still routed, even though if you look at the stats, at least the spearmen had a somewhat decent killrate.


shieldwall with english spearmen:


schiltrom with town militia (light spearmen)


select the shield wall capable guys and drag them out into a long wall formation:


you get this:


they held up "ok" against cavalry, not as good as pikemen(which is just great) and they get slaughtered easier than pike or halberd units (which is great also, and balanced)


kill rates and stats with the new EDU and the implementation of shield wall (I still got defeated by the AI)