Realistic Building Tree 3.0

[mongolwarrior]

Realistic Building Tree 3.0

Version History:
3.0
-new historic events and text corresponding to the eras
-slight modification of eras
-English and German release (big thanks to Godzilla)
-event pictures for eras (thanks again to Godzilla)

2.0
-restored vanilla building capabilities for flexibility
-fixed a few errors in the building tree

1.0
-first release

Description:
I have looked into every building and unit in the game and changed many prerequisates as well as added eras for these buildings/units.

There are now 8 eras in the game where buildings or units may appear and correspond to historical events within the game and the dates that these events happened in real life.

1) Pavise Shield 1100: pavise shields and mounted crossbows
2) Knights Orders 1175: Teutonic and Santiago Knights
3) Mongols Invasion 1208-1224: new knights, early polearms
4) Gundpowder Discovered 1240-1250: some new buildings - however does not allow immediate building of gunpowder units
5) A New Era 1300: longbows, late polearms, first cannons, early pikes
6) Timurids Invasion 1368-1384: Plate armor, better pikes, more cannons
7) End of Ages 1400-1408: Gothic armor, arquebus, hand guns
8) World is Round (true time) 1446-1453: Carracks, muskets

And of course, era 0, which are the units available from the start.

Units can be recruited from buildings that match their unit type, relative strength, armor level, training, skill, ability, and specialization. For example, Quapukulu, an elite Turkish cavalry unit with armor level 4 (heavy armorer) is only available at a King's Stables, which requires a heavy armorer. Also this unit is available after the Timurids invasion.
Example 2: Lancers (era 7) have armor level 6 (armor factory) so they can be built in a armor factory building which requires a barracks and earl's stables.
Example 3: Mamluk Archers (Egypt) are recruitable in Baron's Stables but building a Racing Track or better (specialized middle eastern building) will give them more experience.

In other words, you won't be pumping out Gothic Knights with only a leather tanner in 1100 AD.

Recruitment pools are also slightly smaller and slower especially for artillery and mounted units, which, in theory, should help the AI recruit better armies.

While I edited the building tree for realism, I also balanced the tree so that no faction gets left behind with this system. Each faction has new available units according to the eras. Creative Assembly did a great job with unit balancing in vanilla M2TW and I have sought to keep that dynamic while improving the realism to create a truely immersive feel to this epic game.

Main Features:
-balance of realism and gameplay
-completely new building tech tree
-units correspond to realistic eras
-units are built in buildings that correspond to their armor, training, skill, and specialization
-more building dependencies (prerequesites making buildings important, especially smiths)
-faction specific buildings tweaked
-Horsebreeder's Guild now built in castles (by looking at the triggers, I'm convinced that this guild was meant to be in castles)
-added in the "realistic" missing units for balance
-compatible with Norman Prologue campaign
-strengthens AI army composition

I encourage all modders to give this mod a try and add their own tweaks to it. The reason this is a "vanilla" version is so modders can add their own ideas to it.

Castle building tree example:


Download here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1123

German version: http://files.filefront.com/6726022

[Black Francis]

Excellent. I'm going to add this to my copy of LTC 2.0 and see what happens.

[mongolwarrior]

Excellent. I'm going to add this to my copy of LTC 2.0 and see what happens.

It should work if you overwrite the LTC buildings file, however, you will lose some changes that LTC has made to their buildings (happiness bonus, growth bonus, etc).

But my mod also has growth and population factors tweaked since it balances out very well for 1 year/turn or 1/2 year/turn campaigns.

[tornnight]

Hmm these seem like good ideas. They would be perfect for a mod like
The Long Road.

Don't forget to add general's bodyguard recruitment.

Have you taken to account the fact that some units (Pavise Crossbowmen) are the only crossbowmen for certain factions? Have you allowed them to have regular crossbowmen?

[mongolwarrior]

Hmm these seem like good ideas. They would be perfect for a mod like
The Long Road.

Don't forget to add general's bodyguard recruitment.

Have you taken to account the fact that some units (Pavise Crossbowmen) are the only crossbowmen for certain factions? Have you allowed them to have regular crossbowmen?

Well I feel that General's bodyguard units really should stay within the family tree. In my campaigns, I usually get a good number of generals. But with that said, I could add them in the next version if recruitable generals is a popular idea.

About crossbowmen: going by the vanilla EDU file, some factions actually don't get them at all (england) while some only get regular crossbows (france) and some get elite pavise crossbows (milan). Sicily is the only faction that has only pavise crossbows, not couting mounted crossbows. But the wait for pavise crossbows is really short (50 yrs) compared to how long it takes to get other units. During that time, sicily would have to recruit archers and other militia units just like the factions that don't have crossbows.

Realistically, pavises were available in 1080 AD but I felt it would be more balanced to build them later so factions with non-pavise crossbows would build those and then switch over to pavises. Otherwise some factions would just get a lot of crossbow units at the start.

Oh, and I've checked out your mod, I like it. Personally, I play with my own mod made with many of the same features as yours (darthmod, ultimateai, vices and virtues, etc) with a few changes here and there for my own tastes.

mkk: yeah, I'll add a 2 year/turn version soon.

[Remo]

Hmm these seem like good ideas. They would be perfect for a mod like
The Long Road.

Don't forget to add general's bodyguard recruitment.

Have you taken to account the fact that some units (Pavise Crossbowmen) are the only crossbowmen for certain factions? Have you allowed them to have regular crossbowmen?

Tornight, allot of people enjoy the way your mod is set up. That includes your perfectly set buildtimes/costs...

So dont be so quick to jump on this. I'm testing this through 100 turns as i type this.

[tornnight]

Tornight, allot of people enjoy the way your mod is set up. That includes your perfectly set buildtimes/costs...

So dont be so quick to jump on this. I'm testing this through 100 turns as i type this.

The most interesting thing about this mod is the more structured build tree and eras. Nice ideas, but I'm worried about how unbalancing it may be for some nations.
For example, 50 years is 100 turns without crossbows in the above situation.
It throws another wrench in balancing each faction's units. Still, I love the idea of eras if each era has enough unit variety to keep it interesting. I'm not sure thats the case yet.

[mongolwarrior]

Gen_Lee: Actually the export_buildings file really isn't neccessary, just a few spelling corrections. I had originally planned to give some faction specific buildings to other factions, but decided against it to keep the balance of the game. But to answer your question, I don't think what your doing works, you'll need to add a modswitch folder and "--io.file_first" command to your shortcut for the mod. If that sounds complicated then don't worry about it. The most important thing is the EDB file.

tornnight: I see where your coming from. I agree 50 years might be too long but that was the first event in the game. I'm thinking about allowing pavises to be built from the start and the first era to be for mounted crossbows. From there the build structure should be a "balance" between balanced gameplay and realism. Thanks for the suggestions.

Gungalley: yes, the missing units have been included. I've also included a few more units that weren't in the campaign before but should have been such as Condottieri, Alan Light Cavalry, etc. Also Kwarizmian cavalry can be recruited by the Turks, Mongols, and Timurids, but not Egypt for balance. They can still be recruited as mercenaries though. As for the tower fix, I think that someone made a separate file, descr_walls.txt, which can be found in the downloads section.

natan13: It should work, but I can't verify this because unfortunately I deleted my save games from before. Can someone else test this?

Orientis: glad you like it, I can't wait for the next version of your mod.

[Kruniac]

The most interesting thing about this mod is the more structured build tree and eras. Nice ideas, but I'm worried about how unbalancing it may be for some nations.
For example, 50 years is 100 turns without crossbows in the above situation.
It throws another wrench in balancing each faction's units. Still, I love the idea of eras if each era has enough unit variety to keep it interesting. I'm not sure thats the case yet.

Balance is for people who cant accept a small peice of reality.

Great mod, thanks a lot. Ill throw this in with Darth and UltimateAI. Werd.

[mkk]

Looks very promising as long as the dependencies are clear to the player. I've always disliked the way too early appearance of full plate armor. I haven't begun trying this out yet but an optional version with standard build times would be best for 2Y/T players.

[Gungalley]

Excellent mod. Reminds me of MTW1 where eras seperated units. Did you aslo include the cannon tower/ballista tower fix and also the missing units?

[Gen_Lee]

I'll try it asap with Portvcale mod v1.1b
As that mod does not touch vanilla Desc_building.txt will be just a copy/past install

[natan13]

Is it good for an old campaign?
Thanks.

[Gen_Lee]

Quoting:
which you need to put in your M2TW/data/text folder and delete the export_buildings.txt.strings.bin file.
Unquote.

1 q, I cant find export_buildings.txt.strings.bin file on My mtw2 data/text file?
I assume causei dont have the game unpacked so i just placed export_buildings.txt file on mymod data/text instead.
Is there any pbl with that?

[Orientis]

Nice idea, will be using this for my next campaign. Thanks Mongol!

[Gen_Lee]

Tks, I'm already using it on 3 of the mods I got instaled that didnt change the vanilla 1 (I use the modswitch for all, but textures replacers and Archer time/weather mod).

About the new units ( Condottieri, Alan Light Cavalry, etc.), it is possible to know wich ones You added (Im assuming they are all already avaiable on vanilla Edu) to the building tree?

[mongolwarrior]

About the new units ( Condottieri, Alan Light Cavalry, etc.), it is possible to know wich ones You added (Im assuming they are all already avaiable on vanilla Edu) to the building tree?

Here is a full list:
-Dismounted Gothic Knights
-English Armoured Sergeants
-Venetian Dismounted Broken Lances
-Condottieri
-Alan Light Cavalry
-Cuman Horse Archers
-AS Monster Bombard
-Dismounted Lithuanian Cavalry
-Dismounted Tuareg
-Dismounted Heavy Archers
-Dismounted Heavy Lancers
-Kwarizmian Cavalry
-Armenian Cavalry
-Bedouin Camel Cavalry
-Dismounted French Archers
-removed Elephant Artillery

a few of these units are recruitable as mercenaries but I added them to some factions for better balance.

[mongolwarrior]

One more thing, the EDU file (not included in my mod) was causing a CTD. The unit Condottieri is available to sicily and papal states in custom battles (vanilla M2TW), but the papal states don't "own" it. To fix this, go to your export_descr_unit. txt file, search for Condottieri, and add "papal_states" to the line "ownership".

[GrandViZ]

Sounds very nice. I will try it out!

[JaM]

It is one of the best building mods out there.