Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[Saber Cherry]

I've integrated some of the suggestions on this board, made some additions, tried to eliminate all the errors that might have crept in, and re-typed the descriptions ofr all the units whose names I changed. Unfortunately, if you rename "Archer" to "Heavy Archer" because it carries a plate cuirass, that deletes the description, which is a pain=) Also, I upped the stats for Soulless... because in my experience, they are harder to get than longdead, yet vastly inferior in every way.

Longbows became armor-piercing (and dropped to 8 damage), mauls became armor-piercing (and dropped to 5), barbarians got berserk 1 (with morale 9, they are unlikely to berserk, though), barbarian leaders get standards so there is a reason to use to lead barbarians rather than normal commanders, villains and pirates get pillage bonus (and villains get better stats), all Jotun units get limited cold protection (25% for wolves and vaetti), bottom-line militia (for the most part) get their cost dropped to 3, xbow range is reduced to 32 from 35 (in RL XBows fire straight rather than in an arc, and have shorter range than even shortbows), jaguars and Cu Sidhe get new attacks that are better than before, Wolf Herders are made cheaper to reflect how weak wolves are, Ctissian predator lizards are made cheaper to reflect their value, assassins get throwing knives, all satyrs get 2 natural protection rather than 1 (goat hide is tougher than leather), soulless that should have natural protection (jotuns, atlantians) now have it (previously only ctis soulless got it), upper-end archers get 11 precision, and many many other changes. I can't list them all here, but I CAN post the completed portion of the mod If you spot any errors, please say so!

Edit: Long annoying post removed, superceded by the beta file posted in this thread.

[Arralen]

There's one little problem with this mod:

It's totally incompatible with lots of others, nation-specific mods. There are some units which are changed in multiple mods, and which changes take precedence seems to be random !?


So I would suggest to make it an "indie troops mod", and incorporate some indie commanders/mounted troops as well, which maybe need some reworking, too. (E.g. mounted archers)

[Endoperez]

IIRC missile precision is changed via #att command.

Other than that and the fact Arralen noted above, great work!

[FrankTrollman]

I'm a little confused. Many of you don't seem to like unshielded militia and I'm just plain surprised. Those things are great. Not a mainstay in the army or anything, but great nonetheless.

You take your militia and break it into groups of 1 and hang them in the front of the army distributed up and down the battlefield. About three of those should make the enemy crossbowmen lose an entire turn (which is actually 2+ turns of the battle) if they are set to "fire closest" - and most neutrals are set to "fire closest" by default.

For 21 gold and 9 resources you can take a province losing only that crap militia. And Slingers are even better, because they count as Archers and will be targetted for death if your opponent is set on "Fire Closest" or "Fire Archers". Some of those crappy naked dudes can give you a serious advantage in archery duels. If you back those losers up with some real troops you can get big enemy archer piles to shoot at your skirmishers.

That and the use as siege bodies (and Fires from Afar soakers) makes those guys eminently worth while when there's nothing better that you can afford resource wise. And sometimes even if there is.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

Is this longbow change included in the current mod? It is hard to tell given all the posts and edits.

If it is tho I wanted to point out that while this does make the longbow more effective against units with higher protection, it actually makes it LESS effective than shortbows against units with low protection. Which is kind of odd.

Not sure if that is what you were going for? You might want to consider the suggestion made earlier to make longbows strength additive. Or just boost the damage of the longbow up to 16?

Saber Cherry said:
Longbows became armor-piercing (and dropped to 8 damage),

[Saber Cherry]

Yes, the change is in the current mod.

It was kind of a tough decision... I don't want longbows to be utterly superior to xbows in every way. But I also don't want longbows causing universally instant death upon hitting a lightly armored unit, which would be the case at damage 16. Arrows are not generally capable of killing with a single hit on a random location, no matter what fired them. I doubt a longbow arrow would do any more damage than a shortbow arrow; the main differences should be range and armor penetration. But if I make longbows armor piercing and 10 damage, they're like crossbows... just... more than twice as good.

So difficult! If armor piercing could be set as a percent, it would be easier. With this mod, shortbows do more damage up to protection 3, and longbows do more damage above protection 5. Unmodded longbows do more damage than modded longbows up to protection 9, and modded longbows do more damage above protection 11.

Maybe I could move it up to 9AP. That would shift the breakeven points to 2 versus shortbows and 8 versus original longbows.

...

OK. I moved longbows up to 9AP and raised shortbow range to 32 to match Xbow range, and dropped the prices on all Xbows. Historically, Xbows are shorter range and their users less trained than bow users, but I don't want to mess with Dominions II's balance TOO much...

The end result is that longbows (compared to shortbows, composites, and xbows) should still reign supreme in all situations, but be much better able to pierce heavy armor, and no better at killing very lightly armored enemies (assuming a hit) than a shortbow. Longbows will be much better than composite bows versus enemies with armor over 6. Furthermore, Xbows can no longer safely fire at shortbows, since the range is the same.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, and pardon my stream-of-consciousness writing

[quantum_mechani]

A few balance/bug comments:

*You #cleared the Elite Longbowman, but forgot to give him back his longbow.

*Flagellents at 6 gold are a huge bonus for Marignon, I tend to mostly buy them as opposed to other infatry even at ten gold.

Also, I realize this is an infantry balance mod, but would you consider doing something about the many sorts of overpriced cavalry?

[Ironhawk]

Yeah, I can appreciate how tough of a decision this one would be. With 9AP damage longbows definitely are the supreme missle weapon. But then again, in my experience, longbowmen are the rarest indy archer type. Which fits in with the reality of longbows (they were elite archers, basically) and its good for game balance too.

Interesting side note: Why are there no sacred archer units? I just envisioned Man with sacred longbowmen and a W9 blessing.

Saber Cherry said:
It was kind of a tough decision...

OK. I moved longbows up to 9AP and raised shortbow range

[PvK]

There are other uses for scumbag troops. Split them into little groups with various kinds of attack orders on the flanks, and they can distract entire groups of enemies for at least a turn, or draw spells or missiles or whatever, which is often worth a few gold.

If you have a spell that makes use of dead units, then they can be nice twice.

Having a shield is usually better than no shield, but of course it costs resources.

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

Ok, here's the first released version of the mod. It includes all units that I consider infantry and that can be "recruited" without magic, up to protection 13, and all mundane archer-types.

I divided units into categories:

Ranged (archers, slingers, axethrowers, etc)
Militia (below normal stats)
Light Infantry (0-8 protection)
Medium Infantry (9-12 protection)
Heavy Infantry (13-16 protection)
Superheavy Infantry (17+ protection)

The cost guidelines for "normal" units in a category:

Ranged: 7g for a medium (ringmail cuirass indy) archer
Militia: 3-5g depending on armor and stats
Light: 7g for a 6-protection (shield + spear) indy
Medium: 9g for an 11-protection (shield + spear) indy
Heavy and Superheavy are not yet finished.

From these baselines, the cost was pushed up for additional abilities (elemental resist, flight, amphibious, extra stats, javelins, magical weapons, and so forth) or down for deficiencies or national trends (Mictlan has cheap infantry, for example). Sometimes stats were altered slightly to justify the price changes, and sometimes stats were changed instead of changing the prices (for example, soulless have no price, but their MR, ATT, HP, and STR were increased slightly). And some weapons have changed; Niefel Jarls and Giants now have longer and better Niefel weapons instead of Jotun weapons. Some units have gained additional abilities; all vaetti gained 25% cold resist, for example, since they live in frozen tundra. Some unit names were altered (like "Amazon" to "Garnet Amazon") and as a result I had to retype the unit description; some of these descriptions were changed slightly (improved and made more interesting, I hope).

In general, virtually every unit in the above categories has changed, unless it seemed perfectly fine as it was. Most of the changes are minor, except for units whose pricing and power were completely incongruous (like unarmored militia) and units who did not seem to fit their historic role (longbow became armor-piercing, but less damage). I'm aware that this mod changes the balance of power between infantry and cavalry, and hope to address it in the future, but I can only do so many things at a time=)

All that said - this is a beta, so please try it out and see if it is fun and balanced. I suggest that you NOT use it with any other mods that alter mundane units (spell and scale mods are fine, nation mods may or may not be).

Have fun, and be sure to report back!

Edit: Thanks for trying the mod! The file has been removed and an updated version 5 posted at the beginning of the thread.