XXZit Tweaks (for 096)

[XXZit]

Hey folks!


I’ve decided to release some of my personal tweaks and modifications in hopes some of you find them useful. SSHIP is a wonderful mod but there are certain things that need some tweaking, many of which are SS original issues. Some of these I’ve already posted before, but the ones I’m posting here contain my latest changes and fixes.

All of these files and any I've posted before are free for everyone to use, modify and re-upload as they please.

Without further ado:


English Faction Names: expanded.txt
One of the things that kept me from trying this amazing mod was the odd faction names. I could not understand who I was fighting, who just offered a trade agreement and which faction I had lost reputation with. Historicism is great, but not when it interferes with gameplay. This file translates all names to English. If you feel like I felt, now you have no excuse not to enjoy the greatness of SSHIP.

Installation: copy to the mod's directory .../data/text/ replacing the file there. Remove the expanded.txt.bin file to force the game to regenerate another binary file with the updated values. Save game compatible.


More Fair Faction Standing: descr_faction_standing.txt
The fact that the pope himself would be shocked by the actions SSHIP declares are sinful, says a lot about the morality system in this mod. SSHIP severely punishes any type of military aggression, even towards rebels, which are the common enemy. Simply put, you’d have to forfeit any military activity to obtain a positive reputation in the game. This is not only not fun but very unrealistic and unimmersive. These few changes to faction standings fix a few inconsistencies and bring some sort of balance to faction relations. Having good reputation will still not be easy, far from it, but at least you won’t be deemed an unholy monster by every faction in the world for daring to take that neighboring rebel settlement.

Installation: copy to the mod's directory .../data/text/ replacing the file there. Save game compatible.

Civil War Away: campaign_script.zip
I recently read JoC refer to the Civil War in SS as the corona virus. I quite like that comparison and think it very fitting. Civil War is one of those things that sound good in theory but in reality is not.
At least not in the way it is currently implemented. Humans do not have control over their faction leader so they can’t take measures to avoid a civil war. And the AI is not even aware of what a civil war is, for them is even less fair. This file is the campaign script for SSHIP 0.96 with the civil war code removed. In addition to a more fair campaign for everyone, you will also enjoy faster turn times! Your are welcome.

Installation: Unzip and copy the file into the mod's directory .../data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign replacing the file there. New game is required.


XXZit AI: descr_campaign_ai_db.zip
This is a new campaign AI built completely from scratch, and designed with fairness, realism and efficiency in mind. I tried to work around the limitations and severe deficiencies in the way we can interface with the LTGD to make the AI act in a semi-intelligent manner, selecting optimal targets, and exploiting weaknesses. There are no backstabs just for the sake of backstabs. The AI will act in a manner which is most advantageous for them at the moment, considering faction relationships and strength before taking any military decisions. You will see strategic naval invasions, prioritization of slave settlements when convenient, effectively splitting of forces to deal with multiple targets and the use of different invasion and defense strategies.

What started as a desire to change some things that bothered me about the campaign AI, quickly turned out into a bigger task. Spending time familiarizing myself with the SSHIP Campaign AI file, lead me to find many inefficiencies, redundant entries and much code that did not do what the authors intended. I quickly realized that fixing that would take more time than starting from scratch.

Now, I do not mean to offend anyone, I'm sure the authors had the best of intentions. I started with zero knowledge of how any of this worked but I have some programming experience, which perhaps gave me a head start. I had to look at several AIs before figuring things out, but the most enlightening experience by far was looking at the vanilla AI. People who’ve never studied the vanilla campaign AI or regarded it with disdain would not be aware of certain basic principles of how things really work in the game. As modders we often forget the developers are the best source of information on how the game works. So it is understandable if some things were overlooked.

Although I would call it a big improvement, this won’t solve all stupid AI mistakes. The control we have over the AI is rather limited, many things are hard-coded in the program's executable and on top of that, many of the tools we are given do not always work correctly. e.g some control mechanism report incorrect and bogus results often, leading you to make incorrect assumptions(like when it’s best to attack). I'm sure with more extensive testing these issues can be mitigated or even eliminated entirely.

Still, I can say I’m satisfied with the results. And can’t wait for people to try out my work and give feedback; I know much improvement is still possible. I hope you try it out and enjoy the fleshed out AI and the faster turn times; the campaign AI is not the biggest turn time killer, that burden lies on the humongous campaign script, yet I see a notable difference with my AI vs the old one when playing in my laptop on battery.


Installation: Unzip and copy the file into the mod's directory .../data/ overwriting the file there.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Congratulations XXZit! This is how I perceive playing this mod: everybody should tweak it to his own preferences! Keep it up!
JoC

[Nemesis2345]

https://easyupload.io/lgetg9

Hope you don't mind if i post my Spearmen tweak as well.

I increased Spearmen damage against Cavalry , mainly because the AI tends to spam cav (looking at you Moors) and i noticed even professional spearmen still get too many casualities from a simple unit of knights.

Previously , most spear units had the same bonuses against cavalry , but honestly they underperformed and spears were still a bit weaker against cavalry.

Summary:
Increased Milita Spear damage by 1 against cavalry. (+3 damage against cav instead of +2)

Increased Superior spearmen damage by 2 against cavalry. (+4 damage instead of +2)

Increased Pikemen damage by 1 against cavalry (+5 damage instead of +4)

Increased the damage by 1 or 2 to some special units like the Novgorod Home guard or late pikemen. ( +6 damage instead of +4 or +5)

Note: Some units like Dismounted Noble/Chivalric/Kings men (the poleaxe units) have a vanilla +4 against cavalry , this is unchanged.

Billmen also got +5 damage against cav instead of +4 since they were mostly designed for that , they are still vulnerable to charges since they dont have shield or armor.

Heavy Billmen have +6 damage against cav , same reason as above but historically the mid-late bill was heavily modified for maximum effectiveness agaisnt cav.

Zwei , Religious fanatics , Woodsmen and other minor 2h axed troops have a +1 or +2 by vanilla , this was unchanged . Obviously a longer sharper weapon works better against cav than a sword, but they cant be compared to actual anti-cav weapons.

[Lifthrasir]

@XXZit, I've edited the OP and have deleted the 2 posts as requested. Let me know if I need to do something else.

That's a very interesting stuff here I definitively need to test your factions' standing and your AI

[XXZit]

@Nemesis I was actually going to take a look into buffing up spear units a bit, so you've saved me the time. I am eternally grateful to Lifth and the team for tweaking the cavalry animation speed, which I believe was the cause of cavalry be so insanely powerful in SS, but spears still felt a bit too weak for my taste. Perhaps a slight tweak like yours might be all that is needed.

Sometime ago I wrote a program to do precisely that, make mass text edits. I wrote it particularly with EDU edits in mind but is flexible enough to be used for anything. Particularly, it can look at individual records like strat_pri, search within that for a specific value, numeric or otherwise, and change it according to the parameters specified; so you could for instance increase the damage of all spears with an attack damage below a certain threshold by 20% or something. If there's interest, I could dust it off and work on it a bit more to get it ready for release.

[Lifthrasir]

If you make such tool, it might interest modders and you should post it in the Workshop (here to be precise) to reach the maximum of people

Btw, I can't remember but I don't think I've modified the animatinos speed. I know I have modified their stats in the EDU, lowering a bit their charge damages. But it was a while ago.

[Nemesis2345]

If you make such tool, it might interest modders and you should post it in the Workshop (here to be precise) to reach the maximum of people

Btw, I can't remember but I don't think I've modified the animatinos speed. I know I have modified their stats in the EDU, lowering a bit their charge damages. But it was a while ago.

Somebody a while back said the cav attacks too fast on horseback and 1hit kill troops, which was 1 reason why spearmen had difficutlies beating cav , the spearmen attack anim si almost twice as slow as the mounted sword atk.

Also , i think somebody a while back tweaked the soldier's ,,weight'' or ,,mass'' that made cavalry stop cutting through a unit like it's nothing during a charge. Obviously this change should only work with shieldwall or heavy armoured spearmen holding their ground but you get my point. Im preety sure i noticed some units be signifcantly harder to charge than others , unfortunately spearmen are on the weaker side, a direct frontal cav charge cuts them down easily.

[Elendil 03]

https://easyupload.io/lgetg9

Hope you don't mind if i post my Spearmen tweak as well.

I increased Spearmen damage against Cavalry , mainly because the AI tends to spam cav (looking at you Moors) and i noticed even professional spearmen still get too many casualities from a simple unit of knights.

Previously , most spear units had the same bonuses against cavalry , but honestly they underperformed and spears were still a bit weaker against cavalry.

Summary:
Increased Milita Spear damage by 1 against cavalry. (+3 damage against cav instead of +2)

Increased Superior spearmen damage by 2 against cavalry. (+4 damage instead of +2)

Increased Pikemen damage by 1 against cavalry (+5 damage instead of +4)

Increased the damage by 1 or 2 to some special units like the Novgorod Home guard or late pikemen. ( +6 damage instead of +4 or +5)

Note: Some units like Dismounted Noble/Chivalric/Kings men (the poleaxe units) have a vanilla +4 against cavalry , this is unchanged.

Billmen also got +5 damage against cav instead of +4 since they were mostly designed for that , they are still vulnerable to charges since they dont have shield or armor.

Heavy Billmen have +6 damage against cav , same reason as above but historically the mid-late bill was heavily modified for maximum effectiveness agaisnt cav.

Zwei , Religious fanatics , Woodsmen and other minor 2h axed troops have a +1 or +2 by vanilla , this was unchanged . Obviously a longer sharper weapon works better against cav than a sword, but they cant be compared to actual anti-cav weapons.

export_descr_unit.txt

[Tripledot]

https://easyupload.io/lgetg9

Hope you don't mind if i post my Spearmen tweak as well.

I increased Spearmen damage against Cavalry , mainly because the AI tends to spam cav (looking at you Moors) and i noticed even professional spearmen still get too many casualities from a simple unit of knights.

Previously , most spear units had the same bonuses against cavalry , but honestly they underperformed and spears were still a bit weaker against cavalry.

Summary:
Increased Milita Spear damage by 1 against cavalry. (+3 damage against cav instead of +2)

Increased Superior spearmen damage by 2 against cavalry. (+4 damage instead of +2)

Increased Pikemen damage by 1 against cavalry (+5 damage instead of +4)

Increased the damage by 1 or 2 to some special units like the Novgorod Home guard or late pikemen. ( +6 damage instead of +4 or +5)

Note: Some units like Dismounted Noble/Chivalric/Kings men (the poleaxe units) have a vanilla +4 against cavalry , this is unchanged.

Billmen also got +5 damage against cav instead of +4 since they were mostly designed for that , they are still vulnerable to charges since they dont have shield or armor.

Heavy Billmen have +6 damage against cav , same reason as above but historically the mid-late bill was heavily modified for maximum effectiveness agaisnt cav.

Zwei , Religious fanatics , Woodsmen and other minor 2h axed troops have a +1 or +2 by vanilla , this was unchanged . Obviously a longer sharper weapon works better against cav than a sword, but they cant be compared to actual anti-cav weapons.

As long as everyone else is posting their edits in this thread, here's some to (hopefully) make pikemen work more as defensive units. Working off of the base provided by Nemesis.export_descr_unit.txt

[kostic]

Very interesting work! It could well complement that of Joc (Jurand of Cracow).

[XXZit]

If you make such tool, it might interest modders and you should post it in the Workshop (here to be precise) to reach the maximum of people

Btw, I can't remember but I don't think I've modified the animatinos speed. I know I have modified their stats in the EDU, lowering a bit their charge damages. But it was a while ago.

Strange, I must have read you nerfed cavalry units and assumed you went for the animations. My bad.
Anyway, I followed your advice and posted the tool in the appropriate forums. If anyone reading this is interested they can get it there. (I won't post the link cause I'm unsure about the crossposting/linking rules here)

Also I have an update for the AI, in the works that I will post as soon as I'm done testing the changes.

Cheers!

[Lifthrasir]

What I've done with some cavalry units was to decrease their charge damage and to increase the rate of hits in melee, all in the EDU and not that much. It was illogical for me that a knight spent 30 sec between 2 slashes with his sword - if you get my point

About the tool, you can post a link here or in your signature

[Dekhatres]

It was illogical for me that a knight spent 30 sec between 2 slashes with his sword - if you get my point

didnt get your point, when did knights ever spend 30 sec between 2 slashes ?

[Lifthrasir]

In melee. It used to be that way.

[Dekhatres]

and you say you did changes only in EDU, so i assume what you changed was the min delay number ?

"stat_sec 1, 1, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 30, 1" the number in bold right ?

i am confused because i've never seen knights and cavalry in general in any mod ever waiting 30 sec between slashes, i feel like we're talking different things, in what version of SSHIP did cavalry slash with their sword only once every 30 seconds ? i need to see it for myself

[Lifthrasir]

30 sec was to illustrate my point. It wasn't that long in game.

[Dekhatres]

and what was the effect ? how weaker did cavalry get in melee ? roughly how much

[Jurand of Cracow]

Sometime ago I wrote a program to do precisely that, make mass text edits. I wrote it particularly with EDU edits in mind but is flexible enough to be used for anything. Particularly, it can look at individual records like strat_pri, search within that for a specific value, numeric or otherwise, and change it according to the parameters specified; so you could for instance increase the damage of all spears with an attack damage below a certain threshold by 20% or something. If there's interest, I could dust it off and work on it a bit more to get it ready for release.

Hi XXZit,
have you upploaded this program somewhere? I'd be quite interested in checking if it's useful for me.
cheers
JoC

[Lifthrasir]

Have a look at his signature

[Just let me post]

Thanks man for all this good stuff. All the things you made change in the upcoming version, so it might not be compatible tho (or do they make use of your work?)

Expanded.txt changes in the new version, so faction names would have to be translated again.

And did you just remove Civil War script bit and that does the job? I would like to have the same results.

Thanks again