Kurfurst's DLV v3.0 edition - Extensive Unit Rebalance

[sicarius]

make sure you test that no cavalry can take out large numbers of troops from the front. i like to do my own modding but i cba to fix every horseman lol

[Csatádi]

In vanilla I do not like the horse archer stats. I think all of them should be roghtly with the same stats. But Magyar cavalry is far better than e.g. Cumans but historically Cumans were tougher.
Many thinks horse archers were useless in melee but in reality they did not avoided melee. They used archery only breaking the enemy formations and than they took their spears and charged.
In game terms I suggest more melee stats at least the same the Magyar Cavalry have. The knights and other heavy cavalry had the advantage of their shields and better armor.
I suggest armor 2 to them if any.

[Kurfürst]

I tried to overcome this by increasing all cavarly's defense by 6, as indeed, horse archers and such light cavarly had laughable defense values, 3 or so. This meant that even knights died faster than peasants... at a ridiculus rate. Now most have aounrd 10-12, plus armor and shield, and they last, they have the advantage against infantry in defense; even horse archer last for a while in melee.

In practice it works well, since spear units have +8 attack against cavarly, which means they quite easily kill even heavy cavarly (7 + 8 = 15 attack), but swordsmen and the like don't. except guys with very heavy weapons like polearms and high attack values. In the vanila it was quite laughable for unit balance since the only unit you'd ever need for ANY situation was the dismounted feudal knight. He owned all cavarly in melee, even the heaviest armored knights.

Not anymore. swordsmen suffer against cavarly, they can still kill them, but it's difficult. Simple as that, the sword is not the right tool to deal with someone who's much higher above you, it's simply difficult to reach him. Hence why long spears are good vs cavarly.

It should be noted the engine seems to take into account all DEF values separately. I tested peasants with with 30 armor added vs. peasants with 15 armor and 15 defense, and the former always owned the latter. There's much less chance to successfully break through a 30 def value with a 10 attack value, than to break through twice 15 and 15 defense... which is why armor is so important, it's not just that +1 value it gives to the total defense...

As far as the armor gow, CA's originl armor upgrade system is simply broken, that's clearly appearant if you look at the unit stats file.

Ie. a Peasant Archer's description from the export_descr_unit.txt file.

type Peasant Archers
dictionary Peasant_Archers ; Peasant Archers
category infantry
class missile
voice_type Light
banner faction main_missile
banner holy crusade
soldier Peasant_Archers, 48, 0, 0.8
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_withdraw
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 5, 1, arrow, 120, 30, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 2, 1, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_simple, piercing, knife, 25, 1.8
;stat_sec_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 0, 1, 0, flesh
;stat_armour_ex 0, 4, 5, 0, 1, 0, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 1, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 3, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 220, 100, 65, 50, 220, 4, 50
armour_ug_levels 0, 1, 2
armour_ug_models Peasant_Archers, Peasant_Archers_ug1, Peasant_Archers_ug2
ownership england, scotland, france, hre, denmark, spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, slave, normans, saxons
era 0 england, france, hre, denmark, spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, scotland
era 1 england, france, hre, denmark, spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, scotland
era 2 england, france, hre, denmark, spain, portugal, milan, venice, papal_states, scotland
;unit_info 2, 5, 1



Ie. if you look at the part in bold, you can see the peasants defense values are defined as

stat_pri_armour 0, 3, 0, flesh

And the syntax :

; stat_pri_armour Details of the man's defences
; armour factor
; defensive skill factor (not used when shot at)
; shield factor (only used for attacks from the front of left)
; sound type when hit = flesh, leather, or metal

Which means the unit starts with 0 armor, 3 defense skill and 0 shield.
This is what the engine uses for combat.

And this is the line below it, in italics.
The ';' symbol means the engine should ignore that line.

;stat_armour_ex 0, 4, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, flesh

And the syntax :

; stat_armour_ex Details of the man's defences
; armour factor. 4 values. First for base value, then 3 upgrade levels
; defensive skill factor (not used when shot at)
; shield factors. First for melee, second for missile fire
; sound type when hit = flesh, leather, or metal

It appears CA originally wanted to use a much more refined unit stat system which would tell the engine that on each each armor upgrade level (ie. base + 3 upgrades = 4) what the armor should exactly look like for the unit. It's even possible to give seperate defense values for shields to be used when the unit is shot at, and other defense bonus when in melee. Think of those big pavise shields.

If you look at this entry, you'll see the first number is 0. That's what armor the unit has by default, 0. Peasants don't have armor. the second number is 4, which means at bronze armor upgrade, which you get with the leather tanner with this unit, you should jump from 0 armor to 4 armor. The third armor is 5, which you get with the blacksmith and it gives mail armor to your archers. Actually, it's the same for almost every unit, most units get mail armor from the Blacksmith improvement, which means they'll have 5 armor

But somewhere in the development this nice line was thrown away and the engine was told with the ';' symbol to ignoe it.

This is rather sad this means the armor upgrades are broken.
Instead of just looking up the exact armor values at each upgrade level from this file, the engine will just add +1 at each level. With the peasant archers, at bronze level you will get +1 to 0 armor, which means you will have 1 armor. Originally the unti should have gotten 4 armor with the leather tanner. On silver armor upgrade, you get another +1, which means you will have armor = 2... instead of 5.


It would be nice from CA to fix this, by either telling the program to use this second line ;stat_armour_ex for reference for armor values (should be rather easy IMHO) by the time Kingdoms come out. Especially as this would mean the engine would remain very mod friendly and modders could alter armor values at each level, for example, I use bigger steps between mail and plate armor (but that's just my personal preference).


Because currently, the armor upgrade system is currently totally broken. It just doesn't works. Soldiers with upgraded armor do not get the advantages they're supposed to get.

It's especially hurting some pike and halberd militias which can have a gold armor upgrade, and were originally meant to have :

By default : 0 armor
Bronze upg: 4 armor (leather tanner)
Silver upg : 5 armor (blacksmith)
Gold upg : 7 amor (partial plate armor)

Instead, even on bronze they get armor = 1, on silver armor = 2, on gold they get just armor = 3, because on each level they just get +1.. which gives you militias posing in plate armor, and actually having less armor value than some guy in padded cloth (4)...

So please CA, if I got your attention, please try to fix this before Kingdoms is getting released...

[ivanhoex]

i feel a litle bad coz nobody answered before and i ended up changin those nonsense values that comes with an initial ";" im sad...



anyway, those that want to keep playing DLV as it comes, only that with units more properly showing their skills (than "vanilla" dlv3+bf03) can download this:

Download: Ivanhoe X Stats Modifier 1.5 for DLV3 (buggfix 03)



This Mod changes:

militias become lesser soldiers in melee combat than proffesionals
gives elites a little punch over normal soldiery
makes normal foot knights something in-between soldiery and elite troops.

it also gets the idea from Kurfürst of adding more melee abilitie to cavalry,
so you actually began to need those spearmen when engaged with cavs in melee.
also taking values for armor, better armour from heavier upgrades plus extra armor
if horse is armoured
now your heavier infantry can climb normal walls without being shot down by towers

swords and knives for lesser troops changed a bit in attack damage, also crusader knights
down to 13 attack, as the best knight of one hand sword available normally.

some units slightly corrected


Mongols get a huge pump up, so they are harder than ever.
moded back to normal their ammo, they re still pretty staminic,
changin that also soon i hope.


things changed in this archive:
-primary and secondary attack factor of some units
-all defensive stats

TO DO list:

accurate costs of maintenance and purchasing for all units that kurfürst is working out.
maybe lower amount of troops too, but not necesarily. not changing troops number will cause
cost to be wrong again. so i better ask explanation about cost increases and i do so myself.

i would want someone to check out if all elites are working as they should, coz i have
played 2 factions: danmark and venice, so im on the dark about wich units should be consider as elite...

add pikes not changing to sword immediatly (pirate36 is workin on that)

morale revised to make sure wich one is tough, not hurried this is pretty much ok already

gotta check if editing the txt that mesures the arcs of xbows they can shoot again from taller walls.
i dont know if CA purposedly inhibit xbows from shooting up there. but they can from lower walls so...
maybe if i compare normal riflemen with elephant riflemen something gets up... not really sure it would work anyway.

and offcourse, taking out pirate36 changes to mongol unlimited ammo + ultraStamina






@repman / other modders:

whats the logic behind cost / maintenance of units?
(i mean to make it compatible with the 2y/turn and your mod in general.)

whats the logic behind morale?
i want to check morale to completly diferentiate the peasant from the knigt, the regular troop from the mercenary
(if i dont feel like getting this right, i wont make any change at all, as i said, its working quite fine already)

[Tokus*Maximus]

Ivanhoex,

I'm on graphics, it's Repman and DerDrakken whohandle the DlV script stuff. Perhaps they'll get around to answering - they are very busy otherwise. Good to see you've got it ironed out with DlV3 plus bugfixer 3. I like your ideas and will give your stat tweaks a run in my new campaign tonight.

Tokus*Maximus

[Kurfürst]

Dear ivanhoex,

Sorry for not being able to answer your post, I am very busy with other stuff, not being able to work on my mod at all ever since the last one. Next thing to do is to iron out the bugfix03 problem on my mod with the utility repman kindly told me about.

In my mod I haven't changed archers, or touched the defense skill since I think CA did a good job at their, and don't want to fiddle it too much since otherwise the results can be unexpectable with just editing the txt without lots of testing... though I might take a look at some composite bow cavarly missile attack and have some more tweaking with price (to be the same for MP as well), and some adjusting of some silly names.

Hopefully I can find some time during next week for this.

Cheers to you.

[ivanhoex]

@tokus waiting for your opinions shoot hard =P
@kurfurst when you have your stats ready i will give them a go thats for sure
i just hope not to find militias powerful again and have to rewrite them over once again XD


btw, minor attack factor changes to swords and knives, primarily in hands of peasants,
and not melee-ready rangeds and pikes (they have better attack than unmodded anyway, dagguers have less)
but also downgraded swords of crusader knights, they were hitting as hard as a 2h sword...
i leave them at 13 like the best (regular) sword knights

also removed unlimited ammo from mongols. gotta check heat stat from vanilla and if that is the trick
to restless mongols i will change it back and we are clean. (no, it seams not..)

changed the link above.

[Kurfürst]

Hi,

I continued working on my unit rebalance stat. Here are the results. Now compatible with Bugfix 03 as well !

kurfursts_unitrebalanace_fordvl30bf03_v13.rar - 0.09MB

Major changes since last version :

- All cavary size has been reduced to 24, as in DVL 3,0
- Most corresponding dismounted unit sizes as well, except in some cases where it did not make sense (ie. Dismounted Arab Cavarly, which is basically a spearmen unit)
- Throughly tested balance between Dismounted units. DFK even at half the size reliably defeats similiarly priced Sergeant Swordsmen, and messacres Arm. Sergeant spearmen

- Pikes had been played with a lot. Basic Militia Pike unit's secondary weapon was removed, the more elite Pike units with good secondary attack values retained after much testing was done.

- Some unit renaming to more bearable names. More appropriate forms instead of the 'Dismounted' Mantra'.

Change in French names : Ordinance Mounted Archers and Ordinance Archers for french longbowmen.

Change in Hungarian names : Végvári Vitézek (ex Battlefield Assassins), Székely (ex Croat) Axemen, Székely Cavarly (ex Hun. Nobles), Baronial Banderia (ex Chiv. Knights). Text correspondingly updated.

Arquebus and Musket units have the same range, 200 meter, handguns slightly increased range, but less accurate and Muskets are more powerful and accurate than Arq.

[ivanhoex]

goot 2 know =)

may i ask a few things?

(if answer is yes, proceed to read what follows if not, jump to next post =P )


-militiamen of every weapon downgraded notably when confronted to same unit from castle except elite militias, that should be like trained soldiery.
this militias usually state so in their description (italian spear are good, just dont make them the same as armoured sargs, etc)

i also changed all sword bearers to have at least 5 in attack (5 for no melee archers, 6 for trained in melee or more)
and changed all dagguers to 3 attack (the ones defending ballistas have 13 attak with dagger and its ridiculous, most of them have almost = attack than swords, it always annoyed me)

-better mongols, lesser archery skills for top eastern archers non mongols / the better mongols overall is just because they are mostly like your normal soldiers, but the description says something like "there was no better soldier in the lands than mongol warriors" their stats doesnt reflect that at all, just check the dvors of rus for example
they also lack heavily in variety of troops, so the ones they have have to be multipurpose

-clear a litle the description of things like "goendagag" militia because it says something like "this is a militia that carries a goendagagaga" and wtf is that?

normally the vanilla descriptions provides this units with explanation more like "this militias carrys goendagags, these heavy halberds are meant to break through enemy lines and bypass all armour"

i dont know yet wtf is a goendagagag or wtv.

-care a lot about heavy hitting spearmen like the afgan javalin, they hit like 13 with spear. i left that particular unit intact because they were no cheap at all and they wear almost no armour. but 13+ attack with spear is potentially broken in any case. i left 2 or 3 units in the game with that 12 attack, as high elite spearmen. one of those where the mongol heavys foot, coz they should be like knights but carrying spears for mongols to have a real chance in late game (i mean for players too).

-is it posible to set second weapon to pike but lesser attack, and change animation to halberd/long spear?
they should have not ap bonus of course =P

[nightwar]

I think all the upkeep cost are waaaayyy unbalanced like this.....>>>>

type Trebizond Archers
dictionary Trebizond_Archers ; Trebizond Archers
category infantry
class missile
voice_type Light
banner faction main_missile
banner holy crusade
soldier Trebizond_Archers, 48, 0, 0.8
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_withdraw
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 9, 2, composite_arrow, 160, 30, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 8, 2, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
;stat_sec_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 2, 4, 3, flesh
;stat_armour_ex 0, 4, 0, 0, 4, 3, 3, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 1, 0, 2, 0
stat_mental 5, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 460, 150, 75, 55, 460, 4, 110
armour_ug_levels 0, 1
armour_ug_models Trebizond_Archers, Trebizond_Archers_ug1
ownership byzantium, slave
era 0 byzantium
era 1 byzantium
era 2 byzantium
;unit_info 8, 9, 7


type Byzantine Guard Archers
dictionary Byzantine_Guard_Archers ; Byzantine Guard Archers
category infantry
class missile
voice_type Light
banner faction main_missile
banner holy crusade
soldier Byzantine_Guard_Archers, 48, 0, 1
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, hardy, can_withdraw
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 9, 3, composite_arrow, 160, 30, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 11, 3, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 25, 1
;stat_sec_ex 0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 5, 8, 3, metal
;stat_armour_ex 5, 7, 0, 0, 8, 3, 3, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 1, 0, 2, 0
stat_mental 9, normal, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 710, 175, 90, 70, 710, 4, 170
armour_ug_levels 2, 3
armour_ug_models Byzantine_Guard_Archers, Byzantine_Guard_Archers_ug1
ownership byzantium
era 1 byzantium
era 2 byzantium
;unit_info 11, 9, 16

the more exspensive unit upkeep cost is like 25 more??

[Kurfürst]

Nightwar,

These are CA's own upkeep costs that were retained. I do not want to get into upkeep costs much. CA definietely made a lot more (it needs long term, sine it's strategic) testing on that than we did for game balance.

[nightwar]

Nightwar,

These are CA's own upkeep costs that were retained. I do not want to get into upkeep costs much. CA definietely made a lot more (it needs long term, sine it's strategic) testing on that than we did for game balance.

BUT DLV isnt the CA version.

[ZaPPPa]

Nightwar,

These are CA's own upkeep costs that were retained. I do not want to get into upkeep costs much. CA definietely made a lot more (it needs long term, sine it's strategic) testing on that than we did for game balance.

Hmm.. I wouldn't be too sure about this either. CA may have (tried) to balance things, but when a game is in development, balancing may have been done on an earlier release candidate and been thrown off when a bug was fixed right before release. Remember the 2H problem, the uber-peasants because of the shield-bug?.. The shield-bug alone clearly shows that either none to very little balance testing was done, or the bug was introduced after balance testing was completed.

I'd suggest you change everything you want and forget about the original values.

[Kurfürst]

The latest version :

http://www.zshare.net/download/kfs_dlv_ext-rar.html

[ivanhoex]

any news about this?

[ivanhoex]

just uploaded latest of mine in other thread so i would just make things easier by copy pasting it here


download stats balancer 1.7 by Ivanhoe X


-changes i made:

.militias are not equal to "same" unit from castle, they are lesser soldiers
.cavalry needs spears to kill them, trying to kill them with just swords is not profitable
.spearmen do not rule over swords
.heavy armoured troops do not fall to arrows so easily. lightly armoured do.
.troops with anti armour now are more important and notorious
.daggers hit less dan swords
.mongols are too good for you in melee (meaning they are better troops, so you are encouraged not to use them)
.mongols no longer have unlimited ammo (meaning they can actually be killed)
.firegunners fixed so they shoot consistently. you will love these, im sure.