why be you, when you can be new?? UPGRADES!!!

[barocca]

(why be you, when you can be new?? - it's a catch line from the movie "robots")

when the "others" had control of this mod they designed the units to be perfectly matched (ha) without upgrades,
a number of online battles i played i was criticised for upgrading units.

I loved the trade honour for cash option in Shogun, (I THINK we might be able to ACTUALLY DO THAT in MTW too, there is an option for "starting valour")- (a seperate issue - i will experiment later)


UPGRADES
why do we have to play at valour zero?
if we want to spend the money why cannot we hire experienced troops?

opinions please
Upgrades = Good! or Upgrades = a SIN!!

[^HUN^]

Upgrades are a feature of TW that I have hated with a loathing. I didn't like honour upgrades in STW and I detested the inclusion of weapon and armour in subsequent titles. Valour 4 militia sergeants anyone? No thanks.

IMO, units are or should be what it says on the tin. The unit description tells you what they are and weaker units here allows for stronger units there.

Rather than adopt upgrades I would prefer two sizes of unit types with the cost varied accordingly.

[^Glyndwr^]

Upgrades!!===NO!!

Remember the valour 3 CMAA's and the 'spam' upgraded armies that the 'newcomers' brought to RTW etc etc.
The ruination of the MP game IMO.

For me.....you picks your army you fights your battle. Win or Lose.

[^Marcus Cornelius^]

I have nothing against upgrades. Just another option.
It is more difficult balancing factions with upgrades, anyway. Some unts upgraded could prove to be unbeatable or too strong for other units.

Anyway for me upgrades are ok.

Marcus

[barocca]

as long as we are restricting the amount of cash a player has to spend then going for a few upgraded units, and the rest being peasants or having a rump army (small) should balance the equation,

plus in the mod are units all start out very low factors anyway, (i dont have my books to hand at the mo')

i'll have to look through the stat file when i have time, but is there a column that effects how much upgrades cost?
(if so then i think we could do a little balancing to avoid cheap nasty upgrades)


will try to experiment tonight when home and will report findings..


wont be on much for a week or two,
ADSL2 is down here, and we are on a 32kbps modem line until that is fixed, up to 20 working days ... (eeeeek)
)(PLUS the modem line may yet be taken out to allow them to change the copper lines, so i may vanish altogether for a few days...)(

[^HUN^]

I work on telephone cables, twenty days sounds like a hell of a long time, we'd have our asses kicked if we took that long over a job.

[barocca]

telecom australia owns ALL the copper and are forced to lease access to smaller companies at a rate that allows those smaller companies to be competitive,
Telecom also have tp service the copper themselves, and charge a rate for such service that is not prohibitive,

but the governement never regulated how prompt Telecom are to be in providing such service,

SO, if you are a telstra customer, and want to change to another provider the process is

1. intended new provider must, in writing, ask for you to be disconnected from telstra
2. telstra, in writing, notifies provider that you have been disconnected
3. intended new provider must, in writing, ask teslstra to test the lines
4. telstra, in writing, notifies provider that the lines are working
5. intended new provider must, in writing, ask testra to connect the new line
6. telstra, in writing, notifies provider that the line is connected
7. provider can, upon receipt of said notification, activate the service...

bet you a dollar if that had to go through british post it would take 20 weeks...

[^HUN^]

Barocca,
You were wondering about that first battle? That's what upgrades do to unit balance. Unless upgrades are too costly to be worthwhile, the 'militia sergeant syndrome' will simply ruin the game.
The last thing I want to see is a return to the upgrade exploits of VI.

[^Glyndwr^]

I still say this mod should be balanced and played with === no upgrades.

Remember the 4 max rule that came into the games because of upgrades and super units?
We don't want to start introducing those types of rules again.

I repeat, I prefer that you select the best army units, of your choice, that you can with the money allocated.

[barocca]

i am not near home and thus cannot look at log files,

when you say the first battle, which one is that?
what was the result and what units were upgraded please?


i THINK it may be possible to set how much (as a percentage) an upgrade level costs,
i will have to experiment with a couple of vague columns and see what happens,

my goal is to present real value in the upgrade stream, without permitting the creation of extreme units.
B.

[^Glyndwr^]

This battle..

logfiles\internet_multi 10-11-08 224104.log
===========================================


Battle Type:: INTERNET MULTIPLAYER
Date:: 10/11/08
Time:: 22:41:04
Host:: ^Glyndwr^
Attackers:: ^Evil-HUN^, ^Glyndwr^
Defenders:: ^Marcus^, barocca
Victory for:: DEFENDERS
Game Time:: 17 mins 38 secs
Battle Name:: SamWars 908: ^^coastal assault
Map Name:: ^^coastal assault
Is Custom Map:: NO
Attackers' Florins:: 18000
Defenders' Florins:: 18000
Season:: Summer
Difficulty:: CPU
Time Limit:: No Limit
Game Style:: Last Man Standing
Unit Size:: 60
Limited Ammo:: on
Fatigue:: on
Morale:: on
Restricted Camera:: on
Battle Terminated How?:: BATTLE FOUGHT TO CLOSE

Defender had 3 units of K.Skirmishers with 2 upgrades each.

[barocca]

AH - are those the very mean skirms that absolutely wrecked my missile line?
they were impressive, and a nasty surprise,
we still won that battle, it was a close run, but we still won
i dont think the skirms were too strong upgraded

i think they were very usefull without becomming game killers,
what we have to watch are the really good units, like warrior monks and yuan guards,
those we would want their upgrades to be expensive.

when i can i will test what happens when i change some values in some unexplored columns in the unit prod that seem to be related to upgrade costs

[^Glyndwr^]

AH - are those the very mean skirms that absolutely wrecked my missile line?
they were impressive, and a nasty surprise,
we still won that battle, it was a close run, but we still won

No, not the skirmishers that wrecked your missile line.
Marcus had the upgraded skirmishers and he was on your side.

[^HUN^]

My skirmishers were not upgraded, they were attacking ashi archers which is a kind of no contest and the result was as expected. The valour 2 skirmishers on the other hand, trashed unit after unit of korean guards which inevitably caused the rout among the attackers infantry.

[^Marcus Cornelius^]

I upgraded 3 mongol skirmisher at val 2 to obtain 3 small guards with missile capability.
After last on line battle with you I tested them in single h2h.
Myu test say that at val 2 they are cheaper than guards and win easy h2h against guard if they can throw 1 javalin shot.
They are too cheap. At this ration Cost/Upgrade they are even too cheap.
To me the right cost for their ability is 300.

Marcus

[^Marcus Cornelius^]

it is also my opinion that song spearmen are too cheap. They can face yari samurai and cost like yari ashigaru.
Better to low their statistics.

Marcus

[barocca]

i am often away from my pc when you guys post,
i have time to think on things, but no time to look at stats and do things,

please if anyone is still awake can you post the stats for yari/spear infantry (ashi, yari, korean and song)
cost. samurai. contorlled/uncontrolled.walk-run-charge. charge-attack-defence-armour-valour. shield anti-cav

can you also posts stats for the skirms and both yuan guard infantry


B.

[barocca]

song spears vs yarisams = in hold formation the yari sams have it all over the song,
even with the song having 80 men,

in engage at will the odds change, with the extra men in the song unit compensating somewhat for the yarisams better stats and morale

i suggest we add one more supporting rank to the yarisam unit, that will give them an extra attack point when charging and 1/2 an extra point in mellee as long as they stay in formation.
BUT that will apply against all units they face.

i am reluctant to weaken the song spears at this point, but if you would rather i do that then i would reduce mellee by one point only.


as for the skirms with 2 valour upgrade they become 2/3/0/1/8 plus armour pierce, (chg/att/def/arm/hon)
whereas Guard Swords are 1/3/4/4/6 (inc. shield), and Guard Pole are 2/0/6/3/6 plus armour pierce,

+2 skirms would beat the guard poles, but would lose to the guard swords


as for upgrades in general
I like the idea of permitting some limited form of upgrades, to reflect differences in the quality of the men,
and to allow for a player to tweak an army fractionally to suit their style,
BUT the columns that i had hoped were linked to & or influenced upgrade cost increments, dont have any effect
so I PROPOSE we play with a limit/rule of 1 x +1 upgrade per unit,
ie you can upgrade ONLY 1 of the three options and then by ONLY 1 point.

but while we are testing major changes such upgrades should be by consent, so we know we are not testing the base model, but the upgrade model, and we can all design our armies accordingly depending on what each individual player wants to ttry out.
i like our testign method, basically we are not testing 1 on 1 matchups, where w eline up and send 1 unit at a time into the battle,
we are live testing unit combinations and possibilities, this is a lot more fun and a lot more realistic in my opinion.

[^HUN^]

song spears vs yarisams = in hold formation the yari sams have it all over the song,
even with the song having 80 men,

in engage at will the odds change, with the extra men in the song unit compensating somewhat for the yarisams better stats and morale

i suggest we add one more supporting rank to the yarisam unit, that will give them an extra attack point when charging and 1/2 an extra point in mellee as long as they stay in formation.
BUT that will apply against all units they face.

i am reluctant to weaken the song spears at this point, but if you would rather i do that then i would reduce mellee by one point only.


as for the skirms with 2 valour upgrade they become 2/3/0/1/8 plus armour pierce, (chg/att/def/arm/hon)
whereas Guard Swords are 1/3/4/4/6 (inc. shield), and Guard Pole are 2/0/6/3/6 plus armour pierce,

+2 skirms would beat the guard poles, but would lose to the guard swords


as for upgrades in general
I like the idea of permitting some limited form of upgrades, to reflect differences in the quality of the men,
and to allow for a player to tweak an army fractionally to suit their style,
BUT the columns that i had hoped were linked to & or influenced upgrade cost increments, dont have any effect
so I PROPOSE we play with a limit/rule of 1 x +1 upgrade per unit,
ie you can upgrade ONLY 1 of the three options and then by ONLY 1 point.

but while we are testing major changes such upgrades should be by consent, so we know we are not testing the base model, but the upgrade model, and we can all design our armies accordingly depending on what each individual player wants to ttry out.
i like our testign method, basically we are not testing 1 on 1 matchups, where w eline up and send 1 unit at a time into the battle,
we are live testing unit combinations and possibilities, this is a lot more fun and a lot more realistic in my opinion.

This method of testing is far more interesting, sometimes assessing how things feel at different stages of a battle is more rewarding. For this reason I have constantly changed my Mongol selection each battle, it's not about winning the battle it's about assessing the performance and noticing if things feel right or wrong.
I mentioned Song spearmen to Marcus and Glyndwr after the last test session and the fact they easily faced YS. Why buy Korean spears at 100 koku more when Song do a decent enough job?
Priced at 200 koku, they should be equal in stats with YA. No need to adjust YS at all, just give Song and YA the same stats.

The upgraded skirmisher stats should be all the evidence needed to show that the game will never be balanced as long as upgrades are a possibilty.
In reply to Marcus, I disagree. Both Song spears and Korean skirmishers are priced correctly.....at their standard level (with adjusted Song stats ofc) Skirmishers are far less effective at base level.

I have a multitude of suggestions and observations but I would prefer to keep these discussions away from the public domain.

[barocca]

if anyone can reach the other people (marcus etc.) now would be the time to open up all these discussions.

yuan light cav and song light cav - currently i cant pick much between them performance wise, we need to test them and make sure they are different enough to warrant the different pricing.

ALSO we need to be aware armour piercing changes nothing UNTIL the armour value being "pierced" is 4 or above.
that only impacts the 3 heavy cav on each side (keshig, mongol and yuan, hatamoto, heavy and nag cav, and the naginata infantry.)
only mongol horse archer, korean pole, thunder bombers, naginata and warrior monks have armour piece,
- should nagi cav have it too??

and PLEASE someone remind me to give thunder bomber an AXE for h2h, i think them being armour pierce h2h makes the bombers even more interesting!

lastly i think shield modifiers are wrong, IIRC i recently read the modifiers are 0, 0.5 and 1.0 - with zero meaning the shield is rendered useless in all situations, we are using 0, 1 and 2 - must do more research,

ALSO most mongols/chinese/koreans have shields, only ashi archers have shields for japan - might be why mongol seem a little over-powered at the moment??

we have song xbows, yaun archers and korena skirms, bomber and archers - do we need korean archers? I'd rather lose them and give mongol a little less scope.

ok - bedtime for me.

[^Jochi Khan^]

if anyone can reach the other people (marcus etc.) now would be the time to open up all these discussions.

Marcus has not been online for a long time now, HUN (Orda) has also long given up playing Total War (since RTW), Tomisama I think is on restricted internet.
There is no-one else that I know of who used to play that are now around.
Looks as if the main interests are now....waiting for TW:ROME II to arrive.

[barocca]

well my friend, if you have the time to playtest a few things on SP now and then that would be most handy.
I am, more or less, happy with the unit mix, we just need to balance them a little.

[BHCKingWarman88]

I be able to help out as well my friend .


Also, check your e-mail B, something important I need to talk you in private.

[barocca]

email - yes - cant read private messages here in these browsers, need tweed browsers i think, hmm, yes that must be it...

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