UNITS ROSTERS discussion

[Lifthrasir]

That's interesting. I never thought it was possible. That will be useful for further stats adjustments

[MWY]

What? There are boni versus cav for every spearmen. Mostly +2 attack, for more professional/later units a bit more.

[jurcek1987]

Yup, this line: mount_effect horse +2, camel +2

[Lifthrasir]

I guess that Dekhatres is referring to an finer adjustment depending on the spear type

[Dekhatres]

What? There are boni versus cav for every spearmen. Mostly +2 attack, for more professional/later units a bit more.

is this "mount_effect horse +2, camel +2" you mean ? i've looked more through and there's no any higher than +2, not even units like kievan palace guards have higher so which are those units that have it higher ?

+2 is too low anyway, i think the right number would be around 6-8, it can be higher than 2 right ? i guess i gota put them side by side and compare them to see which is better

[jurcek1987]

Billmen and some elite halberds (they get as much as +6)

[Lifthrasir]

I think that if you increase them too high it will only give a bonus to the spearmen/pikemen units. I mean it might be too disadvantageous to the cavalry units.

[Dekhatres]

I think that if you increase them too high it will only give a bonus to the spearmen/pikemen units. I mean it might be too disadvantageous to the cavalry units.

the problem is that cavalry can charge into prepared infantry and get out without a scratch, the spear bonus simply makes frontal cav charges more costly if the infantry is ready for it

EDIT: from the edu info "spear & light_spear = The unit when braced has various protecting mechanisms versus cavalry charges from the front; spear_bonus_x = attack bonus against cavalry. x = 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12"

[MWY]

Dude.. you where one of the guys proposing the buff to cavalry and armor if I'm correct. What did you expect? Besides that, ofcourse it's not true that cavalry can get out "without a scratch". As soon as the spearmen attack, they get the buff. And professional spearmen which are ready are already pretty good in hurting cavalry in my opinion.

[Dekhatres]

Dude.. you where one of the guys proposing the buff to cavalry and armor if I'm correct. What did you expect? Besides that, ofcourse it's not true that cavalry can get out "without a scratch". As soon as the spearmen attack, they get the buff. And professional spearmen which are ready are already pretty good in hurting cavalry in my opinion.

i have never said to buff cav, to be precise i actually proposed to buff only the armor and do that by taking points from defense skill, that way the total defense rating remains the same but the unit is more resilient to arrows which was the main issue in previous version

with the increase of overall defense rating cavalry units are once more excelent melee units because they have high melee damage AND defense

as for the spearman the problem is not as big as i thought, after some tests professional units like heavy spearman indeed hold very well against cavalry even on flat terrain, armored sergeants however much worse, they lose about 50-60 men after 1 charge and get destroyed by feudal knights in melee

the options at this point are either give a higher spear bonuses (up to 6-8) to professional spear units or completly curb the melee capabilities of cavalry by reducing their secondary weapon damage, i've personally been playing with cav that has only 1 melee damage (yep all cavalry has 1 melee dmg) for a while and i really like the results, cav dosent die fast but neither does it kill fast so they are only good with charge and that's the only way to make them do damage, and even with only 1 damage they still manage to get kills in melee

[Dekhatres]

on another diferent topic

why are spear units still worse than other infantry ? i mean is the spear sooo bad as an infantry weapon ? why cant spearman attack value match that of swordsmen ? i've seen someone long time ago ask this too, he even said that spears would be better in infantry engagements because of the reach which would allow several soldiers to hit the same target at the same time

[Lifthrasir]

It depends first if you're talking about levies or professional units. Considering the lack of training and of good quality equipment, that's logical for levies. For professional units, I guess it would depend what kind of unit they're facing.

[Dekhatres]

It depends first if you're talking about levies or professional units. Considering the lack of training and of good quality equipment, that's logical for levies. For professional units, I guess it would depend what kind of unit they're facing.

professional units, for example heavy spearman has only 3 attack, scoutatoi 4, kievan palace guard 4, all while scoutatoi swordsmen has 7, i think it should be a bit more even

ok enouth with talk about balance, MWY is gona burn me at the stake

[MWY]

Haha no I'm fine with proposing changes, they just shouldn't be as radical. Perhaps we can increase the range for spear attack damage to 1-5 and the bonus to 2-4? That should be enough or at least a good start I think.

[PerXX]

I think it's worth mentioning that there's a lot of other factors than simply attack and defence values.
Animations and especially reach is a very important factor. For instance, that's why pikemen can be so strong, despite having a very low attack value: they have a long reach.

The same principle should be true to spearmen; they should have longer reach than a sword or axe, but once the sword/axe get close enough to be in the spearman's face, they have the advantage.
Given the game engine, I feel the higher attack value for sword/axes makes perfect sense, we just need to make sure the spearmen can have a longer reach.
I'm not sure how it already is in-game though, but given that we have pikemen, it must be a factor that can be tweaked somehow?

[Boogie Knight]

Interesting point about reach. I was admiring some Foot Knights of Jerusalem the other day, and their spears seem to be longer than many other units', such as Spear Militia for instance. So I'd be curious to find out if it's based on the model or a stat. Needless to say if it's the model, it's going to take a bit more work. :/

[j.a.luna]

I think it's worth mentioning that there's a lot of other factors than simply attack and defence values.
Animations and especially reach is a very important factor. For instance, that's why pikemen can be so strong, despite having a very low attack value: they have a long reach.

The same principle should be true to spearmen; they should have longer reach than a sword or axe, but once the sword/axe get close enough to be in the spearman's face, they have the advantage.
Given the game engine, I feel the higher attack value for sword/axes makes perfect sense, we just need to make sure the spearmen can have a longer reach.
I'm not sure how it already is in-game though, but given that we have pikemen, it must be a factor that can be tweaked somehow?

yes i also think that a longer reach for spearmen could be a solution, and also is true that a spear(and more byzantines spears) have more reach that a sword or axe, and a compact number of spearmen can hold off enemies...

[Dekhatres]

Haha no I'm fine with proposing changes, they just shouldn't be as radical. Perhaps we can increase the range for spear attack damage to 1-5 and the bonus to 2-4? That should be enough or at least a good start I think.

yes the exact changes i had in mind were +4 or +6 against horse for professional spear units and change "light_spear" to "spear", imo these arent radical changes, spear militias have +2 against horse and i think it's unfair to pro units to be as good as militias against cav

EDIT: reach is an excelent idea, how to change the reach btw ? which value do i need to change ? is it in the EDU ?

[PerXX]

EDIT: reach is an excelent idea, how to change the reach btw ? which value do i need to change ? is it in the EDU ?

I'm honestly not sure. I don't think it's in the EDU, might be the models themselves.
My thought was just that, given that pikemen exists, and they have long reach, then it must be possible to edit somehow.

[Lifthrasir]

I might be wrong but could it relevant to the bounding sphere of the mesh model?

For the non-initiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounding_sphere

or...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Every model has a bounding sphere except stratmap ones. Basically, all what can be used in a battlemap, must have a bounding sphere: siege engines, mounts, soldiers, captains, generals... everybody. And yes, 99,9% of the non-Vanilla models around there have an incorrect one... and this is the result of the bad practice of using comments for new models taken from similar existing models. If you change only one extreme X/Y/Z axis extreme vertex, then you invalidate the bounding sphere since:

Given a non-empty set of points of finite extension in a 3-dimensional space, the bounding sphere for that set is the smallest 3-dimensional solid sphere containing all its points.



Hence, if you take a soldier and you change his weapon from a sword to a pike, you have invalidated the current bounding sphere and he will start behaving in a silly way.

If you want more information about this, I just wrote it down in the Technical Details spoiler of the first post. My tools can acually recalculate (hence, fix) the bounding sphere of a model during the conversion from MS3D to MESH. So basically, if you convert a MESH to MS3D and then convert the resulting MS3D model into a MESH again without making any change, you will have a fixed bounding sphere. I'm working on a tool that can fix bounding spheres on a large scale (fully recursive directory search) for the upcoming version.

If it's the case, we have to edit all meshes with the tool from Zarathos as it seems that most of them are wrong (according to Zarathos - in bold in the spoiler).

Edit: I might be wrong but before to do that or modify these stats, it might be better to wait until I've implemented all animations (not only the missile units one). I think the way an unit can behave while fighting will also bring some changes.