[Proposal] Real "Realism" Mod

[RonaldAniban]

First, I'll list some unrealistic features of Shogun 2:

1.) The existence of pure Katana Samurais (historically, main weapons of samurais are the spear and the bow, katanas are secondary). What we can do here is to make them Archers with better melee but with less accuracy, ammunition, and reload skill than bow samurais.

2.) Homing arrows but unrealistically weak damage - you see 120 arrrows hitting 200 men who are light/unarmoured and only killing 10, and when you watch it slow mo you'll see many arrows passing through many units without doing any damage like OMGHAX

3.) Matchlocks have shorter range than bows (epic balancing from "CA's fun department" who values fun waaay more than realism); LOOK AT THIS>>>http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Teppo
IF YOU WANT TO BALANCE REALISTIC MATCHLOCKS (meaning waaay more range than bows) AND NOT BECOME A "CLICK TO WIN" BUTTON, REDUCING THEIR ACCURACY (which I've already done anyway ) AND INCREASING THEIR COST AND UPKEEP WILL KEEP THEM BALANCED!

4.) Katanas beat Yaris. LOL. Seriously. Yaris have always been more effective than Katanas during medieval ages. KATANAS ARE JUST SECONDARY WEAPONS. HOLLYWOOD MESSES UP HISTORY. If you want balance, as I've said in number 1, you can make all katanas be archers but with less missile stats than bow sams.

5.) You can spam samurais - Historically, Sengoku Jidai armies many composed of Ashigarus. Samurais are very few because they are expensive (AFAIK). What we can do here is to give them maybe 3x unit cost and upkeep to make them have a "realistic unit cap". Some mods made artificial unit caps. Artificial unit caps suck. For example: Bow Samurais capped to 5 - What if you have already conquered Japan? You can still train only 5 Bow Samurais? WTF?

I know that there are more unrealistic things, I just forgot them when I started typing. If you have good suggestions to be added in to the list, I'll add it.

If there are any good modders that can fix these issues WHILE ALSO AFFECTING THE AI (the AI is the reason why I can't do it myself...I don't know if changing stuff to historical accuracy will affect the AI), I'll be very grateful. BTW, I've already made projectiles "realistic" (IMO) by myself. If you want to try it out, I'll gladly post it here.

If these wishes are granted, I'll merge it with the projectiles mod that I made, and we will have the Realistic Shogun 2 at the same time fun (hopefully) that we are all dying for (only me I guess).

Sorry for my English.

 

[Hoplite of Ilis]

Hollywood is a plague! - I really enjoy the archers in shogun 2 more than any other TW game (and I'm a Rome fan).

 

[RonaldAniban]

I really enjoy the archers in shogun 2 more than any other TW game (and I'm a Rome fan).

You enjoy archers? Even if their arrows' accuracy are like the accuracy of homing missiles but with very weak damage?

Update: I've edited the last number in my OP.

 

[RonaldAniban]

147 views and only 1 response? :O

 

[Erwin Rommel]

TBH, threads with "Proposal" at the start rarely gets attention, unless its a "WIP" with flashy stuff showing with screenshots and a nice banner at the OP. Its a marketing and advertising 101 thing.....

 

[RonaldAniban]

So uhh...noone wants realism, eh? How could it be "fun" to know that certain things in history are changed to make a game "balanced" and "fun"?

It's really true that one who increases knowledge increases sorrow...

 

[Erwin Rommel]

Some people prefer their ways... and have their own ideas of "fun"

Behold, one of the popular mods out there, features a Rise of the Samurai unit, a mere retainer, riding a horse, armed with a katana.

Oh look...

I wont be surprised if they add mounted ASHIGARU....

Nobody seems to be complaining. (Dont mind me, if it was me though, I'd have the unit choices, as bland and as limited as Takeda 3, just like history.... )

 

[RonaldAniban]

Actually my top priority is about "physics" (Is it even the right term? Apologies for not having English as my native language). First is the homing arrows but with damage. Seriously. They are dead accurate but they just pass through units specially on the armoured ones, without even scratching/flinching them (for there is no animation for it yet, but the bulletproof samurai animation in where they are being shot by matchlocks but surviving has a potential of being a good animation for the units surviving arrows too). What I want (which I have already done by myself) is to give them much less accuracy but with better damage.

Second is about matchlock range. I have a proof that matchlocks had a much longer range than bows during the game's time period. (I have also done this by myself)

Third is not about "physics". Now it's about the cost of samurais. In vanilla you and the AI can spam samurais like OMGHAX but historically, armies mainly composed of ashigarus, probably because samurais are expensive. What I suggest for the good modders out there is to make their unit cost and upkeep for maybe like 2x or 3x the vanilla's while also affecting the CAI but with better stats (not too much armour because it will make them invulnerable to arrows, just like what other modders did). I can't do it by myself because I'm not sure if it will affect the AI and stuff.

The modder who had made such dream mod of mine deserves a special mention: Lord Baal
The problem is, it didn't become too much popular maybe because of its title (IMO) and it has some bugs. It is also very outdated, and he raised the damage of arrows to much (IMO).

I just wish that he didn't quit on his mod. Those patches made it so =(

Look at this quote from him:

Most samurai will be available right from the start, they'll have no artificial cap, but instead will require a crazy high upkeep, now every maxed up province will be capable of sustain a few samurai units, and a load of gary's or a combination.

Also the samurai units have less units, and their stats have been revamped, I. e. now bow sammies have almost the same stats of katana ones, so they can put up a fight like they should. In fact almost all sammies have the same stats/unit sizes, the main differences between them will come from their weapon bonuses (if any) and the dojos on the province they where recruited!

That's all the important stuff I'm working on now, but both my job as bofh and my gf has been surprisingly demanding lately, so don't expect this anytime too soon. Also the next version will be Ikko-ikki compatible.

 

[dbzvl]

have you looked at Shogun 2 Realism +?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=455297

 

[RonaldAniban]

have you looked at Shogun 2 Realism +?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=455297

Sad to say but, I don't like that mod.
They nerfed archers TOO MUCH (accuracy reduction, uber damage reduction, and increased armor of all units = ARCHERS ARE USELESS AND UNREALISTIC).
I also hate artificial unit caps. And I don't want any changes in the tech trees and stuff.

 

[Guile]

Sorry to burst your bubble friend, but arrows are not as deadly as you seem to be supposing. If you wanted them to be more realistic, they'd have to be about half as accurate as they are now, and they'd do very little to even medium armored troops. Historically archers have been used to deal moral damage over lethality, or to make attacking a position more inconvenient. Yes it looks odd if you zoom in and see arrows passing through the models, but I get the feeling you'd hate true realism even more.

As for your other points, they are mostly true, but I would have to add that wars between Japanese clans wouldn't have anywhere near the numbers we see in this game.

What I'm trying to say is that the game has struck a good balance between realism and "fun".

 

[RonaldAniban]

Sorry to burst your bubble friend, but arrows are not as deadly as you seem to be supposing. If you wanted them to be more realistic, they'd have to be about half as accurate as they are now, and they'd do very little to even medium armored troops.

What?!?! Japan is not Europe! Their armors are mostly made of leather. Ashigaru units should really be easily killed by bows, but not samurais specially from a far.

This is not Rome Total War, man! People don't have shields and their armors are low quality.

 

[Prätorianer]

Maybe, what Guile said is true - also for the japanese medieval.
Additionally, Yumi bows are not very powerful at longer ranges as far as I know but I am in no way a Yumi expert/Kyudoka, I prefer the sword and practice Iaido instead.

However, I understand the visual problem.
It just looks odd that nothing happens while the arrows impact and an arrow, that fast, should at least incarpacitate(spell?) at least Ashigaru units but deal less damage to Samurai/armored units.

This way the bow would be most balanced, I think.

 

[dbzvl]

Sad to say but, I don't like that mod.
They nerfed archers TOO MUCH (accuracy reduction, uber damage reduction, and increased armor of all units = ARCHERS ARE USELESS AND UNREALISTIC).
I also hate artificial unit caps. And I don't want any changes in the tech trees and stuff.

Yeah. The design model wasn't explained very well, so there were many changes that people didn't accept.

The accuracy reduction was to counter massing archer units to completely annihilate other units before they could reach your army. Also I think it was meant for you to micromanage your archers because the further the range, the less damage you would do. So it was best to turn on auto fire when the enemy was closer.

Damage reduction and armor increase was to make battles seem more real in terms of fighting. It didn't make much sense for battles to last five to ten minutes. The armor increase allowed for more fighting and tactical maneuvers.

 

[Dee Jay]

I would like to make a total overhaul for Shogun 2, and I think I just found my advisor guy for them mod development I sent you a PM Ronald

 

[Guile]

What?!?! Japan is not Europe! Their armors are mostly made of leather. Ashigaru units should really be easily killed by bows, but not samurais specially from a far.

This is not Rome Total War, man! People don't have shields and their armors are low quality.

Sorry, I'm not talking about the ability for the arrows to pierce people and do damage. I'm talking about the overall lethality of arrows, in addition to the accuracy. A large amount of people wounded by arrows would probably survive post-battle, and it's unlikely that they would immediately go down upon being hit by an arrow, especially if they had any armor. Again, if you wanted a "realism" mod, they'd have to be a lot less accurate, especially at-range, and they would have to cause about 60/40 lethal "kills". A lot of arrow caused casualties would have to recover post-battle. And then you have to take into the fact that it would take more arrows to knock out armored men then it currently does.

 

[Akaie]

I would like to make a total overhaul for Shogun 2, and I think I just found my advisor guy for them mod development I sent you a PM Ronald

Finally! More total overhauls for S2! Got a theme?

 

[Erwin Rommel]

I would like to make a total overhaul for Shogun 2, and I think I just found my advisor guy for them mod development I sent you a PM Ronald

Let me tell you about my ideas.....

*gestures Deejay to a dark place, then notices Anton III glaring at Erwin....*

Oh...uhm.....right....

 

[RonaldAniban]

I would like to make a total overhaul for Shogun 2, and I think I just found my advisor guy for them mod development I sent you a PM Ronald

Actually, it might not be me. I'm too busy, but if you need some information about unrealistic things that really bother me, their just in my OP.

The too much nerfing of matchlocks to make them "balanced" (making their cost and upkeep much higher should have been better) but unrealistic and homing arrows but little damage even to "unarmoured" units are what bother me most but I've done the mod for it myself.

This is my proof that matchlocks were much much better than the Yumi.


And uhh...Katana Samurais are just secondary. But still their worth removing for the sake of realism.

Edit: Oh and BTW, this is the mod that I was saying. But I can't figure out how to remove the ability of ashigaru archers to shoot flaming arrows. I also tried to make them a new flaming arrow projectile with a new skill (I cloned the row of the original flaming arrows) but failed. I don't know why.

 

[Dee Jay]

I think I have solutions to all your problems that I could use in the mod I want to create:

1) Remove the Katana Samurai, and give the Bow Samurai the about the same melee skill (like you said). But make sure that the Yari (I think thats spear) Samurai still have better melee than those the bow Samurai, because they are only trained in melee so they would be better at it. This is exactly what you said

2) According to that site you showed us, bows only had a killing range of 30 meters. So I would make bows have bows cause about 0.9 damage at this range (because it could still be possible to survive from that distance), and the greater the distance, the less damage (maybe 0.5 at max range, and it would do even less against armour). I would need someones help to know how long it took to reload your bow and fire it again, and also on how accurate a bow actually was (I'm guessing it was dead accurate at the 30 meter range).

3) Obviously by that site you showed me a matchlock musket/rifle (not sure what it was) is superior to the bow in everyway, apart from reloading speed I'm guessing (if someone could tell me how long it took to reload one of these guns that would be great). So that need to be taken care of.

4) Already solved that in 1

5) Samurai spam can be fixed by using a very detailed, advanced and unique area of recruitment system I created. This creates a unique "ARMY" to every region on the map, so every region has its own entire list of Cavalry, Infantry and Artillery. Then we can limit the amount of samurai to maybe 2 a region. And if you conquer an enemy region then you can recruit another 2 samurai. Larger cities with larger towns could build another recruitment building chain, which lets them train 2 different samurai units, allowing them to train 4 samurai in total from that region. Smart, aren't I

Do you think I have solved the problem well for number 5?

 

[Dee Jay]

Let me tell you about my ideas.....

*gestures Deejay to a dark place, then notices Anton III glaring at Erwin....*

Oh...uhm.....right....

I dont get it

Are you offering me help?

 

[RonaldAniban]

I think I have solutions to all your problems that I could use in the mod I want to create:

1) Remove the Katana Samurai, and give the Bow Samurai the about the same melee skill (like you said). But make sure that the Yari (I think thats spear) Samurai still have better melee than those the bow Samurai, because they are only trained in melee so they would be better at it. This is exactly what you said

2) According to that site you showed us, bows only had a killing range of 30 meters. So I would make bows have bows cause about 0.9 damage at this range (because it could still be possible to survive from that distance), and the greater the distance, the less damage (maybe 0.5 at max range, and it would do even less against armour). I would need someones help to know how long it took to reload your bow and fire it again, and also on how accurate a bow actually was (I'm guessing it was dead accurate at the 30 meter range).

3) Obviously by that site you showed me a matchlock musket/rifle (not sure what it was) is superior to the bow in everyway, apart from reloading speed I'm guessing (if someone could tell me how long it took to reload one of these guns that would be great). So that need to be taken care of.

4) Already solved that in 1

5) Samurai spam can be fixed by using a very detailed, advanced and unique area of recruitment system I created. This creates a unique "ARMY" to every region on the map, so every region has its own entire list of Cavalry, Infantry and Artillery. Then we can limit the amount of samurai to maybe 2 a region. And if you conquer an enemy region then you can recruit another 2 samurai. Larger cities with larger towns could build another recruitment building chain, which lets them train 2 different samurai units, allowing them to train 4 samurai in total from that region. Smart, aren't I

Do you think I have solved the problem well for number 5?

Jesus Christ! Am I dreaming! Holy shi~ You must be God Sent (wait, is the grammar right?)!

Oh and more details about the melee stuff...If we buff Yari too much Cavalries may be useless...
Hmm...so let's try to make it like this. Yari Samurais must not be that more stronger in melee than Bow Samurais. Maybe if they fight in melee only, the archers will lose and the yari samurais will have like 30 men left. So in general, archers would beat Yari Samurais for they can reduce them to almost half by shooting arrows at them specially during the time when they are close, and when they get close, the bow sams could beat them in melee for they are much fewer.

So Bows beat spears.

About the cavalries, they will, of course, beat archers. They can get close fast, do a good charge, and massacre them in melee.

So the yari samurais, in the other hand, would beat cavalries (duh!) because of the anti cavalry bonus.

So it would be like Rock Paper Scissors (with the extras known as "Naginatas" and No-Dachis").

Bows beat spears, for spearmen gets reduced to almost half before getting close, and they can't even defeat bow samurais in complete melee with a decisive victory (they beat them barely).

Spears beat cavalries. Of course.

Cavalries beat bows.

No-dachis and Naginatas: ???


But I have a question...How do you put damage varieties depending on the range? Do you have to make different skills with different minimum range, maximum range, and damage?

 

[Akaie]

5) Samurai spam can be fixed by using a very detailed, advanced and unique area of recruitment system I created. This creates a unique "ARMY" to every region on the map, so every region has its own entire list of Cavalry, Infantry and Artillery. Then we can limit the amount of samurai to maybe 2 a region. And if you conquer an enemy region then you can recruit another 2 samurai. Larger cities with larger towns could build another recruitment building chain, which lets them train 2 different samurai units, allowing them to train 4 samurai in total from that region. Smart, aren't I

As much as I love AOR's, I have to point out something.

This system only benefits the powerful. Once clans expand, the probability of survival for one-province clans suffers greatly, whilst the difficulty of the players' campaign/larger clans slowly decreases as the chance of coming into contact with weaker clans increases.

I toyed around with essentially the same idea, after all it forces the player to pay much more attention to what they are doing, but I just couldn't shake balancing concerns. There would certainly be some solutions, though: uber starting units and weaker region-specific units, perhaps. I'm very interested in hearing what the "very detailed, advanced and unique" elements are .

 

[Erwin Rommel]

I dont get it

Are you offering me help?

Yes, although it involves the Date in bulletproof armor, and mounted and wield ozotzu cannons.

 

[Dee Jay]

I'm very interested in hearing what the "very detailed, advanced and unique" elements are .

I can't talk about it, our team decided to make the campaign aspects of our mods classified for now.

EDIT: @RonaldAniban - I actually agree with you, give bowmen and spearmen the same melee. And I dont know about the No-Dachi and Naginatas.

@ Erwin - are those 2 things historically correct?

 

[RonaldAniban]

I can't talk about it, our team decided to make the campaign aspects of our mods classified for now.

EDIT: @RonaldAniban - I actually agree with you, give bowmen and spearmen the same melee. And I dont know about the No-Dachi and Naginatas.

@ Erwin - are those 2 things historically correct?

Well uhh...I think not the same melee. Spearmen should be barely better in melee than the archers. So overall, archers would beat spearmen because they'll get reduced to almost half before they reach the archers.

Oh and can you please answer my question?

But I have a question...How do you put damage varieties depending on the range? Do you have to make different skills with different minimum range, maximum range, and damage?

...with different projectiles? (man, that's gonna be a lot of work).

 

[Dee Jay]

It's in the kv_rules table (for Napoleon it is, I havent modded Shogun 2 yet, buts its the same engine so I guess its there).

This factor would be my safest bet "projectile_damage_distance_multiplier"

EDIT: Do you think you could upload the work you have done so far for me?

 

[RonaldAniban]

It's in the kv_rules table (for Napoleon it is, I havent modded Shogun 2 yet, buts its the same engine so I guess its there).

This factor would be my safest bet "projectile_damage_distance_multiplier"

EDIT: Do you think you could upload the work you have done so far for me?

Oh I see...

My mod is just above...but I didn't know about the kv_rules table when I made that.

Dang! I couldn't understand that kv_rules table...And I don't have the time to learn it.
I'll just rely on you

So...Good night. I'm tired. I've finally finished our Science project. Thanks.

Edit: BTW, I'm just curious. What makes Bulletproof Samurais bulletproof? Their animation where they stumble upon surviving a bullet is awesome. Maybe we could also use it for arrows?

 

[Erwin Rommel]

Some armourer in Sendai convinced Date Masamune that his wares are bullet proof by showing dents as proof that they've been tested to withstand as such. Then again, there are stories of those smooth armors just being dented with a hammer then claim it as bullet proof

 

[Trippah]

I like the idea of realism. But if samurai archers are able the defeat the yari samurai aren't they a bit too powerful, I understand that cavalry will beat them but I had seen very few clans recruiting cavalry will this be solved also? And what about the siege weapons are they realistic?