[S] Pike and Blade 3.5: Riders on the Storm!

[Cassial]

I think having heavy cav with armored horses is an important detail, so I would suggest trying to balance that out rather than removing them.

Also, to comment, I am hitting update troop and saving but the skill change still isn't showing.

Maybe you should just buff the sisters =P

 

[Aeon221]

Ok, so, I thought about it, and having horse archers on the same horses as knights is less than ideal! Also, I've been concerned about the maneuverability of horses for a while, as well as their inability to knock things over. So this is going to be a general horse rebalance rather than just a change to the armored horses. In general, horses will be faster, less maneuverable, better at knocking stuff over, and more vulnerable.

edit:

The first rule is that no horses will have armor better than 30. Plain and simple, horses are no longer going to have better AL than friggen Black Armor.

I also moved away from an explicit tier system to one based around horses being either fast or survivable (but not as survivable as in vanilla). The quick ones are cheaper and more abundant, to make up for the fact that they'll probably die more frequently.

And finally I moved the stats to numbers divisible by 5, mostly for my own sanity. The modifiers (heavy, spirited, retarded, etc) will provide the minor variation. TBH, I wouldn't touch the positive modifier horses, as they're way more likely to get taken down (due to their lower armor) than in vanilla, and thus much likelier to be crippled and thus lose their modifier when they're healed in your inventory.

I'll be testing these in my version, will upload as a 3.5 version in a day or two.

Armor Based Horses

Warhorse:
Warhorses are the crap version of Chargers in Vanilla. I'm changing them to be the slower, more defensive option. They'll also have slightly better maneuverability, but it'll be nothing to write home about. Knights will ride these.

Base AL of 30 (from 40)
Base Speed of 40 (from 39)
Base Maneuverability of 30 (from 41)
Base Charge of 50 (from 2
Base HP of 160 (from 165)
*Base Abundance of 40
*Base Price of 2000

Charger:
Chargers strictly dominate warhorses in Vanilla. I'm changing them to be the faster, heavier hitting armored option. To balance things out, they're less maneuverable and have lower armor. The Cataphracts will ride these.

Base AL of 25 (from 5
Base Speed of 45 (from 39)
Base Maneuverability of 25 (from 44)
Base Charge of 60 (from 32)
Base HP of 160 (from 165)
*Base Abundance of 40
*Base Price of 2000

Courser:
These guys aren't being designed for any specific unit so much as the player. They're not as highly specialized as the steppe horse, and are intended to provide a more well rounded (but speedy) mid level lancer or horse archer choice. As with the Steppe Horse, they're intensely vulnerable to attack, and should probably be used in an anti-cavalry role -- for anti-infantry purposes, use one of the other two tier appropriate horses

Base AL of 20 (from 10)
Base Speed of 55 (from 42)
Base Maneuverability of 40 (from 50)
Base Charge of 40 (from 12)
Base HP of 140 (from 110)
*Base Abundance of 40
*Base Price of 2000


Speed Based Horses

Hunter:
These guys are the vanilla "light warhorse". They're being slightly changed, but they already work pretty well for the Swadian Horsemen whose primary mount they'll be.

Base AL of 25 (from 1
Base Speed of 45 (from 43)
Base Maneuverability of 35 (from 44)
Base Charge of 30 (from 24)
Base HP of 120 (from 160)
*Base Abundance of 70
*Base Price of 1000

Sarranid Horse:
These guys are pretty irrelevant in vanilla. The Sarranid Horsemen who ride them (in this mod) use lance and jarid to attack their foes, and scimitars to defend themselves on foot. They need a horse that has some maneuverability, but they're mostly interested in it being quick and hitting hard when it gets to the enemy line. So, basically, like the chargers the Cataphracts ride, but faster and lighter.

Base AL of 20 (from 10)
Base Speed of 50 (from 43)
Base Maneuverability of 30 (from 43)
Base Charge of 40 (from 16)
Base HP of 120 (from 120)
*Base Abundance of 70
*Base Price of 1000

Steppe Horse:
Steppe Horses are designed for the Khergit horse archers who will ride them. They'll be especially vulnerable to damage, so that foot archers can bring them down without much difficulty, and their charge will suck so that infantry acts as a serious barrier. But they'll also be fast and maneuverable, so that they can ride circles around the heavy cavalry of the other factions.

Base AL of 15 (from 10)
Base Speed of 60 (from 40)
Base Maneuverability of 45 (from 51)
Base Charge of 20 (from
Base HP of 100 (from 120)
*Base Abundance of 70
*Base Price of 1000


Bad Horses
These horses are suckitude defined, and aren't actually supposed to be used for anything other than being on while you're killing looters and need to save money, or sticking in your inventory so you can haul crap faster as a merchant. The bandit units will only use these horses. They all have the same stats so the different varieties are really just flavor -- I mean, come on, sumpter has the same meaning as pack horse, and the desert horses sound like random starving crap you find wandering the sands anyway.

Saddle/Sumpter/Desert
Base AL of 5 (from 10)
Base Speed of 35 (from 43)
Base Maneuverability of 25 (from 43)
Base Charge of 5 (from 16)
Base HP of 80 (from 120)
*Base Abundance of 100
*Base Price of 100

 

[Aeon221]

I've already seen the changes in action in one battle, and it's huge.

The lighter horsemen can really race across the field -- I was shocked by how quickly the Sarranid Horsemen got to me, as I hadn't had a chance to really set up! I sent my companion cavalry after them, but that didn't go so well, as the Sarranids took a few of them down with javelin fire  -- chargers especially are now a whole lot more vulnerable to that particular weapon -- which gave the Sarranids an advantage in the opening moments of the battle, as I couldn't use my cav to hit their infantry as I usually do.

They had a lower than normal Cataphract force, definitely less than ten, and most of their infantry was crap while mine was mostly Sergeant quality. They moved the infantry and ranged troops to close range while charging the heavy horse into my line. The effect was impressive -- the much higher charge damage of the Chargers meant that a number of my wounded soldiers were killed/KO'd outright, and most of the second line was bowled over. Unfortunately for them, I had a third and fourth line, so the Cataphracts soon found themselves fighting on foot.

The AI infantry, which was mostly t2/t3, simply wasn't up to the task of taking down my sgt pikes and glaives -- although their axemen, as usual, gave a good account of themselves. It ended up a rout, with the AI fleeing and me attempting to turn so that I could slice em up.

Initial numbers were roughly 140 (me) vs 100 (them). I ended up taking about thirty killed and wounded. All in all, a very successful fight.

 

[raul-1]

now that custom commander has released is source code.
maybe you could combine this with pike and blade,
i think it's a good idea cause both of them together can become really major and perfect mod

 

[mar5ha11]

Agreed! I was playing native warbands with elite cavalry and I could beat about 300 enemies with about 50 Swadian knights with minimal casualties and without any commands or formations. Now that I am playing your mod, Aeon, and I am using solely infantry, commands and formations are necessary for the survival of my army.

IF (big request, same as the eliminating the automatic charge at the beginning of combats) you could integrate some formations, it would be amazing!

 

[Aeon221]

HORSES

Sorry folks, I'm still focused in on the horses. I don't think I have the balance quite right, so I'm going to look at raising the armor of the armored horses by another five points. The speed is definitely good -- I've actually been couched by the AI a couple of times -- but the maneuverability might still be too high.

Riding a courser now is just incredible. The turning is sluggish as hell, but they just rocket across the battlefield. They're the perfect commander mount, as you can keep an eye on any part of the field. But lord help you if an arrow or three hits that horse because -you- are going -down- when they do.


I read that the AI is having some command difficulties, so I've taken to posting my army to the right to observe the issue more fully. And it's odd. They march across the field line abreast tilted toward my left flank until they're about level, then charge.

It actually works for them, since it means their reinforcements are attacking from a different direction and often manage to ram into my ranged troops.

I still haven't seen any of the other odd behaviors people notice, but I'm guessing that there have already been some serious foul ups with the battlefield AI for this to have happen. Possibly caused by the addition of the Campaign AI slider!


Which brings us to Custom Commander. I've got no idea how code works, but I'll see what I can do.

 

[chunzhu]

I like your ideas on weakening horses. I rebelled against Swadia recently and their knights are just steamrolling me... keep up the good work! Yours is the only mod I play these days.

 

[Leowulf]

Kudos to you dude, i've always thought that Native horses always had way too much health for their own good, any horse i know would pretty much run die if it were hit by a couple of heavy barbed crossbow bolts.

Haven't had the time to play the most current variation of your mod, but will get to it soon.

 

[Aeon221]

V3.5 is out with new stats for horses as I had posted above (or in the readme)!

I'm wary of giving the warhorse the additional five points of armor I was considering, as Knights/Cataphracts do fine in autoresolve (in my current Vaegir game, the Swads have taken Veluca in the first month!), and I was previously fighting them with a force of sergeant pikes and xbows -- not exactly a representative force intended for equitable balancing.

Besides, I was busily formatting a machine for some family yesterday, so I had no time to playtest further!

So we'll get some feedback from you hairy masses and see how it works.


For those who might be worried about how the horse changes will impact tournaments, don't! I haven't touched the practice horse used in that environment, so nothing is different there.

For those who are used to charging into AI horses, watch out! Due to the increased speed of their mounts, they're much likelier to have gotten to couch speed, and they WILL used couched lances against you -- I've had it happen several times already! Apparently past problems with the AI not couching had more to do with them being too slow than being incapable of pulling it off!


@Adoring Fans Leowulf and chunzhu:
Thanks!

Feel free to swear and tell me which parts suck; balancing is a pain in the nutsack when people don't!

 

[Cassial]

The items file you put in... What lines does it change? My file is modified and I'd rather not move everything in the same order it's in over to your new file.

Edit: I just moved it all over anyway.

 

[Aeon221]

The items file you put in... What lines does it change? My file is modified and I'd rather not move everything in the same order it's in over to your new file.

Edit: I just moved it all over anyway.

It's just the horses, so you can open up the file in notepad, copy each horse entry (or as a block, because the horse entries are all together), paste them over the existing horses in your modified items-kinds1.txt, and then you'll be good to go.


edit:

Okay folks, today is the day I'm going to fail horribly at merging this and Custom Commander. I'm going to maintain the two files separately so that I'm not forcing people to swap to something that they don't want. If you want to help with this epic and painful task and know something about coding, feel free to PM me your contact info for any of the messenger programs and I'll convo you =D

editx2:

My God, it's full of stars!

editx3:

Ok, so I'm getting sidetracked by the production and demand scripts -- I can't help it, I've got a degree in Economics! It looks like I could tweak these around so that demand was a little bit more varied -- like, finished goods desired in villages, villages having gold to buy stuff, and selling unfinished stuff to player for towns to turn into finished goods, and different towns having different desires for both finished and unfinished goods -- without too much trouble. I'm pretty sure that there are scripts to cover satiation, so I could tweak how much towns want stuff over time, and how easily their desires are fulfilled.

I'm practically giddy with excitement over all the spreadsheets I'll need for this!

I think I'm also only going to take the autoloot feature -- I found it, by the by -- and just stuff that into native without the rest of it. I don't see any changes to actual battlefield command in here, and I'm definitely not about to allow the player to just switch to any old trooper at the beginning of the battle! It'd be horrifically wrong for a low level player to switch to a Swadian Knight or a Sarranid Cataphract and start wasting looters with their far superior gear and proficiencies.

There are a lot of other cool ideas that I'm learning from, but I don't feel that they really fit. Anyway, more info to come as I find stuff out!

editx4: I've figured out how lords work, and I've put that info in another thread, which I've linked to in my sig. It's neat!

editx5: Ok, so reverse engineering is a *****! I can probably snag the original autoloot functionality, since that's separately commented, but the expanded CC stuff is too mixed in for me to be able to tell where one thing ends and another begins. Plus, the number of commented changes he made is pretty staggering.

The economic stuff requires zero reverse engineering, so that'd actually be easier for me to do since I can just diddle the code, hunt down the called functions and diddle them too. Much much much much simpler. But I'm not so sure that it's in scope.

As a final thing, I'm not really sure WHY merging CC and P&B causes total freakout in the game, since there's literally no changes from native in the files that I'm overwriting with P&B. There's no intersection!

 

[Livinus]

Thanks for your continued work on this mod! I play with it all the time and I'm really enjoying myself, especially the harder decisions i have to make now. For example with my swadians: should i upgrade to men at arms now or make em squires (who seem to die quite often, rushing off with their 2-hander) to get better cavalry later. Sounds like the horses are more interesting as well now, I'll go test it out soon.

I'm personally not really interested in custom commander but I'm really interested if you could do anything interesting with the economy. I also had economic studies i guess that's why.

Anyway thanks for a fun mod and good luck!

 

[chunzhu]

Hehe, I'm also an econ major... very excited to see what you come up with. Personally, I wish we could see more of the details in the game, like what is affecting the growth of villages and towns and stuff like that. More improvements for towns and castles would be nice too, though I'm not sure how that can be done. So I'm having a lot of fun with the mod as it is now and and definitely looking forward to having auto-loot included in the next version.

 

[Anthropoid]

Hey! I just DLed the latest version of your mod. I like to roleplay my characters, and typically have always played a Swadian knight type. Is there a type of theme of player style you'd like to see someone try out to see how things are balanced? Also, the min difficulty you'd recommend? I generally tend to play at about ~40% difficulty these days.

ADDIT: I'm loving this mod! With max size battlemaps the terrains are beautiful! Will make the changes you recommend for economy next. I'm playing a female (cute little girl named "Eva Jarlsu") Nord warrior

 

[flazard]

Any progress?

 

[Taliac]

I'm really enjoying this mod, keep up the good work 

 

[Kogara]

Hey, just a quick suggestion: Have you considered merging your mod with Diplomacy? (The mod that is currently increasing Diplomatic options)

I tried just adding your files to the folder, seeing as I was pretty sure that it wouldn't touch troops, but still got errors. Anyway, its a small mini-mod, and would enhance the game, but I like your troops better =\.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there! Looking forward to your next release

 

[chunzhu]

Haven't heard much from Aeon recently, but I'm still looking forward to the next release.

 

[RdZaNoN]

Man... im using your Mod for something like 2 weeks...

Sincerly... I Loved it!

The only thing that I think that you've done wrong was the vaegir Champion. I think that your initial idea of an Elite Archer was better, after all, Vaegirs are said to have the best Archers in the game (by the Official Itself), and also theres no other Archer T6 in the game.An Elite Archer group, with the best bows, great proficiency/skills and some protection rs... it would be something realy nice to have!
Just an opinion tough...

Thanks for the marvellous mod!

Ah, and if possible, and for Christ Sake (lol)... join "Diplomacy" Mod with yours! Its the best political mod ever launched! Its realy worth it!

Cya!

 

[Kogara]

... join "Diplomacy" Mod with yours! Its the best political mod ever launched! Its realy worth it!

Cya!

I'm sayin! But yeah, I've been using it for roughly the same amount of time and I'm curious to see what Aeon does next, although he seems to have dropped off the face of the internet...

On the note of Diplomacy, everytime I check the updated version (of which he's cranking out like crazy) I almost want to cry as I can't use it with Pike and Blade lol.