My Impression

[Suppenkoch]

Hi there,

I'm a great TW-series fan and so im reading here in this forum very often.
And as you can see my english got a little bit broken with the time, but I'm still able to understand everything.

As the unit-mix and gameplay of M2 is very uncreative (especially compared to his forerunner), I tried my luck with some modifications (Age of Darkness, Stainless Steel, LTC, Anno Domini, RTJ). But most of them still have these same-value-units like the knight orders. Okay TLR has them too, I grant, but there is a big difference. In TLR all unit-stats got completly reworked and you get really able to feel these new balance.
Also the new balanced economey is very cool. I hate it to have too much money and pump out new buildings and units. Development should be slow and wisely decided.
So I rate TLR to my personal favourite. I no more believe it's a minor mod. It does great changes like LTC, Stainless Steel and so on, so I think it is more a major modification.

But I think there are several points where this great mod can be improved.
As I own basics in scripting and modding, am an ambitious roleplayer and a master of german language (it's my mother-tonuge ), I can offer my help in following sections:

-As in the sticket thread "TLR Team - Help Wanted" position for roleplaying elements.
-Editing and all these descr_ and export_ files.
-Translating text to german, if necessary.


Also i will give here my impressions and recommendations/improvement suggestions to this mod, based on VH/VH "TLR v1.9 Beta 5", my wisdom, my knowledge (and the knowledge of wikipedia ) and my thoughts about realism, balancing and history.
It would be useful, if you also use my numerations.

1. At first I have to introduce, I hate dismounted knights, or everyone who's called dismounted "bla". That's so absolute uncreative and robs atmosphere, especially in german. (I will ignore that an english knight differs from rest continental knights, it's not that importent, see wikipedia.) The german word for knight, called Ritter, is cognate to Reiter (Middle High German). Reiter is also the translation to "rider". You can see here the etymology of the word. Now build in your mind "dismounted rider". What the hell? It's such a conflicting stupid name. Okay, now let's show to history. If you will study on wikipedia (or other rescources), you will see, the knighthood developt in france and germany as an answer to the light cavalry of hungary armed with bows. The middle and west european forces had no chance in fighting those bowmen on their fast and agile horses. At 927 AD in Worms the great men of the Reich under the rule of King Heinrich I. decided to build up elite troops consisting of mailed knights, who easily crushed the hungarian cavalry.
Even though infantry and light cavalry build the mass of military power, the decision-making about the battle was done by the knights (is this the right formulating? My brain burns! ^^ ), wherefore knights attract more attention to european troops.
After some centuries it changed. In the late 13th century the scots lucky used a forerunner of the pike in a battle against england. During the 14th century the pike was regular used on battlefields in europe.
In the 13th century in south Germany the halbert was used first time. At the beginning it was not so effective. Up to the date 1470 it developed to a very effective weapon against infantry and cavalry.
To the upcoming of both weapons the knights had to dismount to fight against them. Up to the end of the 14th century pikemen and halbertmen had no chance fighting dismounted knights. In the 15 century it changend to the contrary.
You're still awake? Yeah? Okay, good!

1.1. Every dismounted unit should be put out of the game and replaced by new unique units (I will help!). If this is to hard, damn okay, than change the name of the most of them, please. ;-) The remaining dismounted knights should appear at the 14th century in-game.

1.2. Knights should be much stronger! The should be an amazing power on battlefield. And it was in history (you can read it on wikipedia) they was significantly to the moral of the rest troops. So give them a little moral boost to other units. Knights got now overpowered? No! Why? I will say it: We increase the upkeep to an immense number. Why? In history building up knights was very expensive. Noble men, who want to be a knight had to buy this title, and they was only allowed to buy the title, if they had about 9 farmsteads (right translation?). Poorer nobles, who want to buy the title, or who got drawn-in, had to pay all upkeep costs by themself (the servant, the horses, weapon and armor, provisions, and so on).

1.3. Knights (Heavy cavalry and only them) should be able to take out all kinds of early spearmen. Light cavalry is good balanced as it is.

1.4. Pikemen should appear in the early 14th century. The should have cheap upkeep and be amazing against knights. The Scots could get a unique pike unit 30-50 years earlier than the others.

1.5. Halbertmen should appear at the time like Pikemen, but should be a weak unit at first. Between 1450 and 1480 there should come much stronger Halbertmen. Upkeep should also cheap.

2. In history gunpowder artillery had very expensive upkeeps. For example (I'm not exactly sure about the numbers) the spanish paid for 1 galley about 500, but for their first 30 cannons they paid about 50.000 (ducats? guilder? Whatever!). So I think upkeep shoulb be increased, but to prevent that no one will build them, their attack against walls and gates should be increased, furthermore their accuracy against units should be increased.

2.1. Someone could say, damn, that's ****. Now the walls break like paper. I say, humm, thats logical. Why? At first you can watch the siege at minas tirith (does it called so? Not sure) in the movie "Lords of the Rings - The two towers" and on the second, give a thought on physics. Go out on the street and take a stone as big as your hand and throw it against a wall. Usually you will have some broken out some fragments, very small, as big as your fingernail and smaller. Go back to your thoughts and build in your mind a very huge wall like the towns in M2 have. You will throw (with a catapult, of course ) a huge stone, as big as your car, against the wall. What now will happen is clear. That's an enormous potential of energy. The wall should break like paper, or it is big enough and you will break out big fragments.
To let balancing win in M2 it could be possible to change the streghts differences of the walls. For example a trebuchet should have absolute now problems in shoting down a wooden wall. That's like a katana through butter (overacted). But the next wall could get much much more hitpoints. The wall after that could get much more. An extreme increase of wall hitpoints could be used to highger the importance of gunpowder artillery. It would be cool if gunpowder artillery is the only real artillery, who can break down citadel walls.

3.1. As I am a fan of imposing battles and sieges, I always double the number pieces of siege units. For example the catapult has 4 pieces instead of 2. To prevent to strong siege weapons, i doubled costs and upkeep of them. I can only recommend it.

3.2. As like above I doubled unit sizes of elite units like forlorn hope, shwerwood bowmen. Naffatun unit size got increased by 150%. To prevent overpowering I increased unit costs and unit upkeep by the same amount. I like it, makes them more useable (for me) on battlefield. I can recommend it, too.

4. Next point is the AI. I don't know how it is in Beta6, but in Beta5 AI is much to passive. I'm playing as Germany, VH/VH and im allied with everyone, without sicily(neutral), france(war) and turks(war). Egypt got attacked and killed by my aggression (crusade). At round 98 and this was 50% of all wars, that happened. The rest of wars was between AI. The only real fights by AI are fights against rebels. I want to see a much more aggressive AI, who will not always aim the player, but rather his rich neighbours.

4.1. Is it impossible to create a script, that simluates enviousness for every AI-player? This would be extremly cool, if the AI shows on rich trading/farming citys and on territory with rich rescources (like gold). For example, AI France has 2 neighbours, Germany and Spain, exact same relations to both. Hypothetical Spain has a province with 3 gold rescources. France is willing to fight, he attacks Spain. Why? Because of the gold. That would be cool!

5. Actually there are less reasons to build all kinds of guilds. I think they should get more effects, depending on their description. Also owning a headquarter should give a small faction-wide bonus.

5.1. Headquarters with a small faction-wide bonus could be also used for a AI with scripted enviousness.

6. During my investigation about knights I found some interesting thing. The Holy Lance of Vienna was periodically the most important insignia (in the Holy Roman Empire). A ruler who owned the Holy Lance was shown as invincible. The Holy Lance was the visible sign for the owner, that his might comes from god, and that he's the representative of Christi. Why not including the Holy Lance of Vienna as a trait? It could give moral and piety.

7. Let's talk about economy. I was able to notice, that the main factor for an effective economy (TLRv1.9beta5) is splitted in three parts (sorted by amount). The main factor are taxes. Improving happiness and higher taxes results i an economic boost. The second point is diplomatic. I'm able to sell trading right and alliances for sums like 3000 gold per turns up to 10 turns. Give's a good needed boost. The third point are merchants. Most time my income was only described by my merchants income. As I am a very militaristic player, it was very dificult to build up troops and economic. Damn, try to build up your economic with 3000 gold per turn, if you have 30 provinces.
And thats the point! Damn, I love this economic system, it's very very good, and the most dynamics should not be changed!
I'm at round 98 and it's for me imspossible to really build up my economic. I think it should be a little bit tweaked. Actually building up trading and farming brings too less money, so it does not remunerate itselfs. Increasing this income will compensate it. Also increasing mining a little bit could be useful. To prevent spamming out millions of cheap troops with this more money, I think upkeep should increased in general.


Okay, so much text, sorry!
Remember, this is my experience and are my thoughts.

Thanks and Greetings,
Suppenkoch


P.S. References (Most of them in german):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikenier
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellebarde
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speer
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanze
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilige_Lanze
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Lance
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsritter
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adel#Niederer_Adel
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsstandschaft
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritterschaft
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsunmittelbarkeit
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rittertum

[MacManus]

great ideas - auf könnte man sich freuen

[Goatbuster3000]

Wow, that is quite a list! Nice ideas. Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch. Aber, Englisch ist meine erste Sprache. (I probably messed that up somewhere...)

[tornnight]

Wikipedia is not always right. Unfortunately.

The Dismounted units may be named uncreatively, but it would be a huge effort that just wouldn't be worth it to remove them. I wouldn't want to anyway.
I think the best way to address this is to rename them via the
export_units.txt file. This has the least impact as it only changes the name seen in the game.

Pikes are now controlled by an event so they appear when is correct.

Wikipedia is wrong about halberds. Halberds were around long before that. They could have been called other things though. They are still available near the beginning.

I tried to make the guilds a bit more useful. I'll keep tweaking them as I go.

Artillery can't be increased in cost and upkeep like that. The AI will just never use them.

I want to make Knights and heavy armor much stronger too. That is the huge limitation of the armor stats we have now. The issue is armor upgrades only add 1 to armor. We are all waiting for the patch, hoping this gets fixed.

I can't double the unit sizes because this will make the game unplayable for those with average machines.

The AI is a tricky beast. We are very limited in the smarts we can give it. Envy is definately not something we can emulate easily. There is something that makes factions dislike much stronger factions. But this gets easily overridden by the fear of the strength. I'll see what I can do.
I'm still trying to get the balance between agresiveness and passiveness right.

The Lance of Vienna and other artifacts and such are the roleplaying elements I had in mind. Creating Ancillaries, Triggers, and graphics to go with it would be great.

[Suppenkoch]

At first, thanks for the nice response.

Wikipedia is not always right. Unfortunately.

Of course, but it's a good trusted resource.

I think the best way to address this is to rename them via the
export_units.txt file. This has the least impact as it only changes the name seen in the game.

That's good.. Maybe I'll find some useful resources.

Pikes are now controlled by an event so they appear when is correct.

Yehaa!

Wikipedia is wrong about halberds. Halberds were around long before that. They could have been called other things though. They are still available near the beginning.

Hrm, are you sure?
I've a investigated about it, but there is no really information about forerunners of the halberd.
I only found informations (via google) telling things like in wikipedia. Here's a german resource about it.
http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D8614.php
It tells in late 13th cenutry the halbert is ascertained, additionally through the poet "Konrad von Würzburg". As in 1315 in the war of Morgarten the Halberd is telled by "Johannes von Winterthur" as a completly new weapon.
Maybe you talking about the spear as a forerunner? Just joking..
But maybe lances? If yes, lances are lances and not halberds, there's a little difference. ^^
I would be happy if you will give me some resource about a forerunner.

tried to make the guilds a bit more useful. I'll keep tweaking them as I go.

Nice!

Artillery can't be increased in cost and upkeep like that. The AI will just never use them.

Hrm, about what amount of upkeep we are talking about?
In my games using TLR (modified like i described) the AI has no problems paying upkeeps of about 1000 gold. Regulary AI is moving 3 artillery units per stack around.

I want to make Knights and heavy armor much stronger too. That is the huge limitation of the armor stats we have now. The issue is armor upgrades only add 1 to armor. We are all waiting for the patch, hoping this gets fixed.

That's a good and a bad information.
Is it sure it will be fixed?

I can't double the unit sizes because this will make the game unplayable for those with average machines.

Maybe it is possible to use an installer with selectable varioations like in the TLR 1.8 Addon. So you can select if you want to play with doubled unit size (of the units we are talking about) or not. Shouldn't be dificult.

The AI is a tricky beast. We are very limited in the smarts we can give it. Envy is definately not something we can emulate easily. There is something that makes factions dislike much stronger factions. But this gets easily overridden by the fear of the strength. I'll see what I can do.

Hrm, of course, try what you can do, but don't forget your wife!

I'm still trying to get the balance between agresiveness and passiveness right.

Okay, I will try to give my experience in future.
Do you have made some tweaks between beta 5 and 6 about it?

The Lance of Vienna and other artifacts and such are the roleplaying elements I had in mind. Creating Ancillaries, Triggers, and graphics to go with it would be great.

I noticed in export_descr_ancillaries.txt already exists the Holy Lance, as many other holy insignia.
That's interesting, because most of them I have never noticed, without the Holy Chalic and other typical relicts.
Is there anywhere a list with all ancillaries and traits in overview?
Would be great!


Thanks man.
Greetings,
Suppenkoch