SSHIP - Original Thread (archived)

[cloud700]

Thanks mate.

[umbracatervae777]

i think i must play more careful to play aggressive

when i play as Georgia and try to capture Tabriz from the Seljuks, and succeed
but then, they come for revenge with a huge wave of armies. i still can survive 2-3 waves, but if more, duh..
that's because my armies are little match for them (only filled with spearmen, few Tadzreuli Swordsmen and only one cavalry exclude bodyguard), they muster at least 4 cavalry unit (also exclude bodyguard), and their Sipahi Lancers and Khwarezmian Noblemen are nightmare

at least, a challenging mod to play
and i must think strategically

[cloud700]

i think i must play more careful to play aggressive

when i play as Georgia and try to capture Tabriz from the Seljuks, and succeed
but then, they come for revenge with a huge wave of armies. i still can survive 2-3 waves, but if more, duh..
that's because my armies are little match for them (only filled with spearmen, few Tadzreuli Swordsmen and only one cavalry exclude bodyguard), they muster at least 4 cavalry unit (also exclude bodyguard), and their Sipahi Lancers and Khwarezmian Noblemen are nightmare

Same here I can't just go and blitz factions anymore that's why this is my favourite mod.
at least, a challenging mod to play
and i must think strategically

[Ichon]

Sipahi lancers at least right now die quickly against HA and javelin cavalry but the Khwarezmian Noblemen are a better though not as tough as Scholarii.

[Koso]

Hello. I'm not actually new here, I've been lurking on and off for a few years, as I have the time and then lose it to play M2TW; but I do have some questions I would appreciate if someone could help with. Some might be related to the submod (which is really interesting, among other things because it makes Portugal a bit more interesting to play with another, more accurate region(s) - yes, bias, I know, hehe - but not only, it looks excellent so far), others with SS, but I ask because somehow my search couldn't provide me with a conclusive answer. Anyways, on to the issues:

- Like others, I have noticed an issue with stamina regen, but, in my case, it was with my Portuguese Spear Militia. In the same battle (which I reloaded, since I lost precisely because I wasn't expecting this issue), I once walked my two units of Spear Militia up a really steep hill. They got up to Tired, so I put the game on 6x and waited for a few minutes - can't precise how many exactly. Nothing happened to their stamina, so I had to march further and by the time they hit the enemy they were Exhausted and thus quickly slaughtered. The second time, I walked them up a smaller hill, so they were only Warmed Up or Winded, at worst. Put the game on 6x and waited for 30 seconds. Again, noticed no change, so I decided to live with it and proceed. I did win the battle now, because I was aware of the fact my units weren't regaining stamina so I had to plan my route taking that into account. In any case, I would just like to know if I simply didn't wait long enough for them to regain stamina (seems it's slower in SS?) or if it's part of the plan, or whatever. Haven't had the time to run a proper test yet, but will do so later. I'm not necessarily complaining, as I did end up finding it more challenging for the player, as the AI usually does not pause to regain stamina, and possibly more realistic, but at the same time, it also prevents any kind of plan of keeping fresher troops in reserve if you have to march any kind of distance to meet the enemy.

- Another question regards diplomacy and simply how to avoid losing too much reputation. That is, from what I've read, the AI will mostly be nice if you play nice. However, I also need to expand. My question is, to avoid a reputation hit, do I have to declare war to an enemy and wait a turn before attacking them? (I think I've read this somewhere, but probably like a year ago) Or is it irrelevant if I simply siege a settlement?

- The last one regards the borderless window. It simply isn't working for me. I am not sure something botched in the installation, since I had to reinstall SS and SSHIP after the first try, and dived straight into it. Can't even tell you if it works with SS, as I understand I'll screw up SSHIP if I try it. My default.cfg file marks autoBorderlessMode as true, and I've tried manually setting windowed and borderless_window as true, but my file resets back when I launch the game (yes, I've made sure to untick Read-only).

Sorry for the big block of text, and kudos to everyone involved in this excellent work!

[MWY]

Hey kodos,

I don't know anything about the stamina issue unfortunately.

Sure you can expand. Your reputation will suffer mostly if you execute prisoners, sack a settlement, exterminate a settlement. So occupying and atleast ransoming prisoners should help keeping your standings somewhat okay. Otherwise, play slow. Global reputation restores itself over time, faction standing is set on very hard to normalise to "poor" (-.3), on hard to "so-so" (-.2). If you want continous peace with a faction, trade agreements and obviously alliances help. Otherwise try bribing them. No you don't have to wait a turn after declaring war before attacking.

I don't know about the borderless window issue, sorry. For me it works fine..

[Koso]

Thanks for the quick reply.

OK, thank you for the explanation. What about the one that says a faction is "Dubious", "Respectable", etc.? Does it have any particular effect, and how can I keep it above, basically, Dubious? I assume it's the same strategy? And, then, does declaring war serve any actual purpose, mechanics-wise?

[Ichon]

The 'Dubious' or 'Respectable' on other factions relates to that factions behaviour- not your own. So if you make an alliance with a 'Dubious' faction don't be surprised by a backstab while a 'Respectable' faction at least so far has acted more honorably. In my experience this does not matter hugely but does seem to have a small effect especially if you maintain relations with a 'Respectable' faction at 'Mixed' or higher by bribes, marriage alliance, war with its enemies, etc.

Stamina-

Far fewer units in this mod have hardy and very hardy traits as those traits made stamina have much less impact in battles and also encouraged unrealistic behaviour where heavy cavalry can charge at 100% speed for the entire battle and only reach 'Tired' which gave them extra power. Also the idea is to increase the value of light units which have very good stamina- if you want to maneuver alot in battle then use light units. If you have an army with heavy armor it is best to make your enemy come to you- if you try to move a heavy army towards enemy your army will get tired so sometimes instead of marching up a hill before enemy gets the height advantage better to wait at the bottom.

So you have to plan your movements on the battle map according to the type of units in your army. Units with good stamina have that reflected in their price and are more typically light and rural units. Don't expect to march your city militia with medium equipment across half the map and arrive good to do battle. However if you have some javelin men or African spear mercenaries they can run across the map once and even after getting 'Winded' will recover to 'Fresh' quickly.

Basically there are 3 factors in how units behave with stamina. Trained units suffer fatigue at a slower rate as do units with hardy or very hardy in their traits. Trained units have no bonus on stamina recovery but hardy and very hardy increase stamina recovery noticeably.

Heat is the other important stat is is related both to equipment weight and climate. Units that are from a hot climate get a reduction in the Heat stat related to equipment weight but the heavier the equipment the more quickly units will tire as well slower to recover.

A knight in heavy armor is likely to be trained and sometimes is hardy but has a much higher heat factor so will get tired at around the same rate as a unit that is not trained and does not wear heavy equipment but the knight will recover from being tired more quickly so if you have elite units in heavy armor you can maneuver them more easily if there will be time for them to rest before battle.

Heavy cavalry in this mod will get tired more quickly and recover more slowly so that means charging at the start of the battle and keeping on in this manner is not as effective. Tired units move slower and get reduced melee stats (unfortunately not reduced charge stats). So basically if you charge your heavy cavalry repeatedly they will get tired and move slower thus able to make fewer charge and also higher losses when in melee. Heavy cavalry can still be effective in charge when exhausted but only high XP units will have much chance in melee when exhausted. There are a few units with exceptions but always related to either conditioning or if cavalry the value of the horse as high ranked units are able to afford the best horses which do not tire as quickly.

All units will recover stamina if you let them rest long enough but it can take noticeably longer- almost the rest of the battle if you fight 1 army in other mods your army can recover before the second enemy reinforcing army arrives- in this mod only a few units will recover before the reinforcing army arrives. It should be a bit harder to fight multiple enemy armies as a result though it is still possible you will take higher casualties even if victorious.

[Konig91]

Can I use BGR 2's mod with this?

[MRENGLISHRULES]

When do u reckon the next update will be out? Roughly?

[MWY]

@Konig: Nope.

@MRENGLISHRULES: SOON! Seriously though, perhaps in about a month? We're working really hard on new stuff.

[Dominick]

Hi everyone, I'm back to Medieval 2 Total War, and of course I downloaded the latest version of SSHIP :') The mod (submod) looks gorgeous. Other than that, I have a couple of questions I can't remember if the submod uses garrison scripts, so if anyone can tell me where are am I supposed to expect a surprise host of enemy troops Also, I noticed in my first turn that Free Upkeep doesn't function the way it's supposed to function, so what's up with that, and I suppose that the starting Loyalty of Generals is now 3, so I'd like to know how exactly will that Loyalty reflect on the fact that most of my starting Generals have Loyalty of 1. Am I supposed not to send them to conquer Rebel territory so they wouldn't rebel? (Including my Heir, which is kind of weird.) Thank you for your time

[Koso]

*nice explanation edited out for space*

Thanks for the info, Ichon. I do agree with the direction that this is being taken to. It always bothered me that troops in heavy armour had better stamina (acceptable due to training), but also apparently the same speed as a light unit of, say, javelin skirmishers. It made them nigh-useless, and this way, they gain much more value.

It might be that the case I witnessed before (even if said militia was only climbing a hill directly in front of them) was a case of a unit with no real stamina or proper training getting winded and then I simply did not wait long enough for them to recover (although, again, it seemed like it was a very long time and they should have recovered at least a tiny bit). That said, I did manage to fight another battle where my Crossbow Militia got Warmed Up and then recovered back to Fresh in a relatively short time, so can't say this is "broken", maybe only a case of a bugged battle or something. I will try and test this out properly once I have more time on my hands - right now, when I do have a bit of free time I use it actually playing the game. =)

That said, what happens when I upgrade my unit's armour? Does it affect their movement speed and heat resistance, or do they use the original values anyway?

Also, on the topic of Generals, is there a way to avoid Poor Logistician, or gain the opposite? Seems it's gained when a General is out too long in the field, so we should avoid long sieges (that is, bring artillery, because that's how my General gained it)? Would make sense as another way of promoting the use of artillery.

Sorry for all the questions, and thanks for the time!

[Tombolicius]

Hey, I'm new to using submods, but this doesn't seem to install correctly. I followed the instructions and ended up with the data in a SSHIP folder within SS but when I loaded the game it was just normal SS. So I copied the data folder from that and merged it directly into the SS one and it's still just the normal SS game. Can you guys help me out here please?

[Tombolicius]

(Sorry for double post, I can't find an edit button). I've just discovered that when I merged the folders it simply created a new sub folder for the SSHIP data instead of replacing. I've no idea how to prevent this from happening

[Ichon]

Open the SSHIP folder and select all 'copy' then paste into SS6.3 folder which should be already updated to 6.4- after that make sure your game launcher path is correct. You can launch from within the folder SS_Launcher.exe create shortcut.

[Konig91]

When will we see ambient soundtracks for Oriental factions? It's really weird to hear only lutes when playing as a Muslim faction.

[accapulco]

My campaign as the Republic of Pisa has been going great and this mod is amazing =).

First I'd like to post some bugs I've found forgive me if they've been posted before.
- Miles Pedites raise their shields in a 90 degree angle rather than holding them normally, "auto-seppuking" themselves graphically. They also appear to have the Carrocio Standard icon in enemy armies sometimes.
- Carrocio Standard units textures are missing and they appear to be made from solid silver, â la T-2000 from the terminator. They are also apparently traitorous bastards since they keep praising Venice .
- The spice node just below the castle of Acre is too close to the road, every time someone passes, which is to say about once every three turns, the merchant gets shoved away and you have to move him back could it be moved left to the shore or to the right where there is open space?
I'll post more issues if I find them.

Now to my thoughts. I take back my comment about the sucky stamina, it is an excellent system. If you make your heavy infantry run they immediately begin to get tired, which makes perfect sense. They should only be running when there charging or running a ladder to a wall, which you shouldn't be their job as you got lesser infantry for that. I try to keep realistic army compositions rather than stacks of elites and this mod complements that perfectly. Running a ladder or ram to a wall during a siege under heavy fire by enemy towers and archers should bring with it enormous casualties as it does. I always use light troops and mercenaries as a preliminary attack force to soften and tire the enemy before sending in my elites, as was done realistically. When my knights engage the enemy they are fresh or warmed up while the enemy is tired, I also rotate backup forces to the fronts and walls when I'm under siege when possible. Light troops are amazing and I can't wait to finish this campaign and play as a Spanish faction or the Moors who have access to all kinds of light troops. Spain as a region is very well done and I think its got to be the best region in the whole map from a strategical play viewpoint. Its a carefully constructed maze full of river crossings, small forests and hills making for deadly pass ambushes with light units extremely effective. The rest of the world is still good, the changed in landscape and cities is well planned. Far eastern europe like Russia for example has vast open land which is probably very hard to defend and is no use to take since the land sucks anyways. I imagine a Rus, Novgorod, or Kıpchak campaign to be pretty hard because of that.

I took Granada via crusade so I am able to get a peek at the units of the area, I did find something strange though. They have two available horse skirmishers Grenadine Jinetes and Desert Cavalry where the first has a Melee/Mis/Defence Rec.Cost/Upkeep of 6/11/11 1280/640 and the other 4/10/5 3080/460. The Jinetes replenish very fast while the Desert Cav. every 7 or so turns. The Jinetes beat them in every aspect and are well worth the upkeep difference ten times over and the Desert costs almost three times with just a small stamina difference and a bonus to deserts. This seems a bit off to me, who pays 3080 for light skirmish horse which you only use for field armies and then disband?

On the subject of units, do the order knights persist the whole game or do they disappear after a while? I had them disappear for 10 turns then re-appear I've no idea why as the game didn't give me an event message for it. I'm still early in the game turn 198, the Mongols invaded a while ago and they're absolutely wrecking everything in the east . Never has a Mongol invasion felt so alive as every faction was just a dummy declaring war on me non-stop In the current game I have a certain connection with every faction as I follow their history with my spies. So far apart from Sicily and Venice, my immediate treacherous neighbors, not 1 faction declared war on me and I'm almost 200 turns in playing V.Hard/V.Hard. I was Respectable(?) at first but now after the Moorish campaign I'm down to Mixed(?) I believe. Even factions which have a poor opinion of me don't just blatantly attack like no matter what like they used to. I'm enjoying the game so much more because of this, alliances actually are worthwhile and I can see whats going on in other factions and feel like an actual kingdom with my place in the world and it's politics rather than just a different color on the map declaring war on every other color as I go along a conquest for the whole world. This mod makes this come true and I'm loving it so far.

I control the entire peninsula of Italy. I hold Milan and Venice as my north and eastern borders against France, HRE, and the state of Venice which ironically screwed themselves over when they betrayed me and now they are about to be wiped out by the Serbs after waging 50 years of war against the HRE, Hungary, Serbia, and Poland, screw those guys. They actually were on top for a while since HRE was fighting a Danish backstab and France, Poland and Hungard were fighting Rus and Novgorod while the Serbs clashed with the Byzantines, aka Basileria ton Romaion. My borders to France are held by a light infantry garrison in the castle of Nice. I've transformed it from a town to a castle as small towns such as these don't have much value and won't magically turn into glorious world renown cities after 50 turns of throwing money at it as in the original game. If you want to grow large cities into huge metropolises it comes at an expense to your minor cities who are forced to give up a part of their harvest and resources, leading them to become smaller and also more resentful of your rule and possibly plot for rebellion. So far I'm not doing this as it is hard enough to hold provinces without the penalty hit that comes from it but may do so in the future for the realism and the revolts.. oh the revolts. I had to reload when Venice revolted which caught me completely off guard as I was struggling at the time and the city immediately kicked my army out and sprouted 3 full stacks which gave me a heart attack. I did fight off the Sicilian revolt though as the rebel force was much smaller and I had a huge army there at the time I put the rebellion to the sword and took back MY city. Nice is held by an infantry garrison of 6 men, 3 spearmen units to hold the gate and 3 light infantry to fight off wall monkeys, along with a complement of 2 archers and 3 crossbow militia drafted into service from the common folk and taught the use of this tool of death. This is the army that will keep that city against whatever the odds may be for sake of fun. They are kept light for they harass the enemy and retreat to the previous set of walls and the enemy has to peel the castle like an onion while taking massive casualties, the onion of death will make them cry blood, oh yes. This cheap force lets the fort almost pay for its own upkeep and allows me to focus my inner cities on pure money making goodness. I have no intention of expanding further into French or German territory for role play purposes, my only debt is with the infidels to the east.

I was allied with France some 40 years ago but they showed their true colors as deceitful bastards when they attacked my ally Aragon and asked me to join in and split the cake, which I immediately declined and then smuggled Aragon supplies and money. Since then we haven't been great friends, our relationship bouncing from Poor to Very Poor and back again. So far they haven't attacked as they are constantly going back and forth with the HRE, who actually still exists as quite a decent power. I love that factions aren't being gang banged by their neighbors and half of them taken out by turn 100 because of stupid campaign AI but suffer defeat due to bad decisions or costly wars instead. Before the great French-German war where France took about a third of the HRE I made a bad call and accidentally slipped a knife or two into some German nobles, don't blame me they had 3 stacks of scary troops running around Switzerland and I had to act. Turns out they were heading to France and now with Peasanto Mc Doofenstein Ein,Swei and Drei at their lead instead of the nobles they were completely crushed. Now I gotta worry about the massive traitorous evil empire that France has become. Btw France has so many little regions, like 15. I'm assuming they suck because otherwise they could just build up France and become totally unstoppable rather than having to conquer like the rest of us scrubs. Oui oui we just wait you out mon ami you will see us in 200 years au revoir.

The perfect opportunity was laid before me on a silver platter, a call for crusade against Granada. Called by the French to secure a citadel in the Iberian peninsula no doubt. I assume they were planning on using religious fervor to rally up the Spanish against the Moors and then turn on them and conquer the land. Not on my watch mon ami! In his 64 years of age my great general Stefano "The honorable" grandmeister of the Knights Templar with 200 knights and an army of 800 crusaders hopped on to three ships from the port of Pisa and set sail for eastern Andalucia. He got there just barely one turn before the French who had assembled two huge, nasty armies just outside Granada but hadn't started the siege. Thanking God for the opportunity I scooped my prize right from under their smug noses. Now I'm aiding my allies in the "Reconquista". We've "accidentally slipped a knife or two" into the King and all following Heirs of Portugal (they were treacherous s) and got their two provinces to rebel and eliminate the faction. Now I provide military support weakening Moorish armies and letting my allies take the cities.

I've also made Tunis rebel and am now pressing against the Moorish capital of Fes by land, conquering as I go. Cut off and with all ports blockaded, the Moors stand no chance against our might. Note how I say our, this is the first time ever I can say this about a total war campaign and I'm loving it! I will only hold Granada as it is one of the few citadels(max level castle) that exist in this day and age. It is isolated enough not to mess up the Spanish and it will provide troop support for wars in southern France should they arise.

I've never declared war. I only fight wars which are declared on me. I use spies and assassins to make provinces rebel and take them when they do. I use agents so much I never knew they could be this awesome it makes much more sense, this lets you avoid the diplomacy hit with all other factions which would come of declaring war. The spies spreading plague should be removed though I have 2 "counter-spies" in every important town but still someone slips by now and then. I should still get plagued as it's a mechanic sure specially if you build a lot of mines (which cannot be demolished sadly) you take a pretty big sanitary hit in the settlement which may lead to plague. A little pest control here and there is good but I just don't like leprous lvl 0-1 AI spies jumping into my wells if you know what I mean. The plague is absolutely horrifying, it kills about 20% of your pop. each turn which is devastating to huge cities as it easily halves the tax in a couple of turns. Thankfully after 6-7 turns it stops and your population will recover. Milan has my thieves master guild providing me with good spies to keep me informed of surrounding lands via a spy network I've set up while Libya has a Hashasim order set up, who kill without question for I hold the keys to heaven and with it 70 virgins for every man, you will get them I promise now go kill me some kings!

I always release prisoners but sometimes if I've taken too many and its a really critical moment I have to ransom which might get them executed, do we take the penalty if the ransom is declined? Also its almost impossible to hold another faction's capital if you don't loot it. If you exterminate you suffer an extreme penalty with other factions so never do that, I mean imagine 50,000 people being butchered, it's genocide and everyone will hate you for it no matter who the faction was. Can the Mongols be programmed to only roll between Loot/Execute, or do they already do this? I haven't had conflicts with them, yet, so I don't know how it is. Historically that's accurate since they chopped everyone's head off, raped them, hopefully in that order (Firefly!) then burned down everything that caught fire and moved on to the next town. You can loot a little, its not accepted and you will take a small hit but there is just no way to hold if you don't otherwise they will rebel in 2 turns and spawn some full stack armies. This way you are encouraged to not take capitals or too much land for that matter and subjugate a faction to your rule instead. The AI does this a lot too, in my game, Scotland took over England, Norway over Denmark, the Zengids over the Rumi Seljuks (pronounced Salchook if you're wondering) and Lithuania has a 1 region struggle vs everyone, but they still bravely cling on to dear life. I'm thinking of taking Anatolia from the Zengids and gifting it to the Seljuks just so I can have a strong Ottoman nation to fight in 100 years as it should be cause so far there kind of pathetic. Looting Venice and Sicily gave me about 80,000 florins each and I still had to put down a Sicilian revolt and loot it a second time. This gave me a huge boost in economy and I was able to mass grow every city with low taxes and awesome buildings being built which developed me very well. I don't like something about the rebellions though, your army gets pushed out of the town and they spawn a full stack inside and possibly some more nearby. Does the town load my soldiers into wheelbarrows and dump them outside like sacks of grain or what? The peasants should rally the countryside outside your gates and attack you like that or you should spawn in a battle with the enemy army already inside the walls, if that can be done. You're screwed either way anyways, might as well lube your butt and get ready for a last stand and a good old fashioned lynching to follow.

I really want to get some real crusades in using templars and hospitallers before they go extinct, if they do. By the way, what were they called, Christian Guards? They are so strong, each one can take 2 units of foot knights on a wall to death with it. I mean they are the same christian foot knights I have who have gone dark side aren't they? So why are they so superior even though they look mediocre in the same lame ass mail and equipment that my guys have. I'm guessing they don't have further upgrades while your knights will soon be in plate since the Muslims didn't use plate. Just remembered something about cavalry too, can their "charge engagement" distance be a little higher? I was taking a settlement and it was just down to the general and his 30 retainers in the square so I sent a spearmen unit, 150 strong and charged them as they neared. When they were literally like 3 meters from contact, the general and his men, who had their backs turned, immediately did a 180 and charged point blank resulting in instant 50 casualties, followed by another 40 due to trample and my unit routed immediately. I thought I could just finish it with that and was mistaken, so then I took 3 units of spearmen, carefully surrounded the general unit and zerged them Alalalala! (imagine that as a native american war cry). This time they didn't charge but they still killed about 150 men overall before going down. I do like it though I mean those 30 were super elite 40 year old men who had seen many battles where as my spearmen are just 15-20 year old conscripts, drunken shaggy ass second rate sergeants and whore house guards. I'd just like it if cavalry required a greater time to build speed into a charge rather then hitting the red button and rocketing into an enemy.

Btw, I use spearmen just for the realism of having a town guard style unit along with the army in certain cases. They do absolutely nothing against cavalry, I assume pikes are the real horse killer but I don't have access to them. In this case all I can do is to let the cavalry charge cheaper units and then flank them but I can't do that with slow ass heavy knights as they get tired very fast and fight like overcooked macaroni. That's what I got Genoese Crossbowmen for, holy crap they are so awesome. Those bolts just punch through armor killing half their cavalry before it even gets to me from very long range, very sexy. The Spear Palise Militia is absolutely terrible though, it replaces your original Spear Militia unit after turn 140 or so with a 1-1-something totally crap utter garbage unit that is so expensive with 1000 something recruit and 600 upkeep, they totally suck even for a cheap unit, which they are not. Aren't they supposed to be reasonable militia, whats up with that and how did they get worse over time when they actually upgraded their equipment. Upgrade shields but downgrade spears how did that happen? Am I supposed to just use them to suck enemy missiles while my crossbowmen kill everything? I don't want to just hide behind meat or walls with crossbowmen and completely become reliant on them. Thankfully I have other units since this mod gives every faction a varied unit roster but still, I wish there was a troop tree so I would know what I can possibly get since trying to open a custom battle crashes the game.

Is there a troop tree somewhere, even if its just in text?
Thanks for reading hope it was fun now back to my game..

[achilles-91]

can someone please help me with one question.. is public order so hard to keep calm cause of new re-emerge system ? and can u tell me how to disable it then

[Tombolicius]

Awesome, works! Thank you.

And I am loving this mod. The new graphics are absolutely fantastic, as are all the extra added bits. Although I'm playing on easy and engage in some mild cheating (mainly just character traits), I'm still enjoying the extra challenge. Although the unrest mechanics seem like playing on a harder setting and without throwing in some general treatise would be borderline impossible