Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[Saber Cherry]

quantum_mechani said:
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 infantry 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?

Thanks for noting the Elite Longbowman thing! I had to clear it to give it a leather hauberk, and forgot the weapons

As for the cavalry, I'm already on it! There are like 100 of them but I got them all typed into the mod file today (names and numbers). I need to look up all the costs, though, and come up with guidelines, etc... How much do you think cavalry are worth? I never buy them, personally I expect to increase the STR and HP to reflect the fact that 1) the horse's momentum adds power and 2) the horse absorbs some damage intended for the rider, but they'll still need to become cheaper.

I think the final mod version will be named something like "Recruitable Unit Rebalance," though I don't intend to mess with mages and priests.


For flagellants, there are a few factors I considered...

1) Why do they need a salary? They're religious loonies who give away all their money and whip themselves bloody for fun, not highly respected pampered sacred units like Valkyries, Mother Guards, and Knights of the Chalice.
2) They have no training.
3) They start with random wounds. (like Ermorian Praetorian Guard)
4) They rarely last more than 2 battles... they're as disposable as gladiators and unarmored militia.
5) There are hidden costs. In order for them to be worthwhile, you have to pay for high pretender skills and high dominion strength.
6) Holy level already prevents massive production. You can never fill a production queue completely with flagellants regardless of their cost, like you can with militia, archers, shamblers, light infantry, and so forth.
7) How does the cost compare to other units? Double base militia (3g) and just below base light infantry (7g) which are more survivable.
8) Are cheap flagellants, limited mainly by holy level, thematic? Well... I see Marignon as the sort of place overflowing with religious zealots and ex-heretics whose minds have been destroyed in the torture chambers...

Sending flagellants off to war is kind of like a release valve. You wouldn't want violent, insane, unproductive people hanging around town claiming to be "better" and "more pure" than everyone else. So there should be sort of a constant trickle of flagellants, at the rate society produces them... and setting the price at 6 should cause the player to do such a thing.

So I consider 6g reasonable from a theoretical standpoint. If it continues to seem like a massive advantage in the actual game, I'll change it...

Thank you for your feedback

[Saber Cherry]

Version 5 is uploaded, and can be found on the first post of the thread. Consider this a second beta. Thanks to quantum_mechani and Ironhawk for finding bugs/issues, to Edi for supplying the Unit Database, and to everyone who downloaded and played with the last version.

New:

Most important: Finished all heavy and superheavy infantry.
Now, aside from possible bugs and imbalances, all infantry, militia, and archers are complete.

Added all cavalry in the game, with name, number, and cost, but have not changed any cavalry yet.

Fixes Man longbowman (who lacked a longbow), makes longbow slightly stronger (9 ap) and shortbow slightly longer range (32, putting it equal to xbow). Xbowmen made slightly cheaper to compensate.
Assassins get armguards, so protection goes up to 5. Slayer gets no armguards but higher att/def to put him on par with cheaper assassins.
Fixes some bugs noted in Edi's unit database.
Abysian Salamander (the animal) improved and cheapened.
Lava Warrior base encumbrance drops to 8 (maybe they can stay awake for an entire battle now...)
Neifels get new, better Neifel-sized weapons, and Neifel Giants get attack high enough to hit militia reliably.
Tien Chi Imperial units improved.
Full Scale Mail dropped from -3 defense to -2 defense.
All Ulm units with armor get armor "of Ulm" (+1 prot, +1 resource cost)
Sappers made better.
Mounted unit "strength not added" mount weapons (hoof, bite, etc) got length 1, so that when striking spiny enemies, the rider would not be poisoned. I think length 1 is all it takes, anyway.
Cu Sidhe got stronger.
Alicorn gets armor piercing.
Black Forest Zweihander became elite, and Blood Marshal (Black Forest hero) gets lesser fear.
Indy Knight Commander gets 50 leadership, not 25.
Some Caelian infantry became slightly more expensive.
Changed a few weapon stats and added a couple weapons.
Some archers get 2 strat moves, and/or better attack and defense, and/or higher precision.
All non-commander units with full helms and heavy armor get reduced precision. Commanders are untouched because you can theoretically change their helmet.

Changed myriads of other things to make them closer to perfect. But I can't remember them all However, IMO, all infantry units are now "viable" except for a few that don't carry shields, and which only silly people would build. It's hard to balance soldiers that decide to leave some of their vital equipment at home

As before, thanks for downloading it, and please post any error / bug / mispelling / thing you feel is unbalanced / anything related to the mod in this thread, so I can help make it better. Thanks!

[Arryn]

Saber Cherry said:
Version 5 is uploaded, and can be found on the first post of the thread.

The version number given in the .dm file was 4. I adjusted it to 5 before I uploaded it to my site. FYI.

Keep up the great work!


Best regards,

Arryn

[Scott Hebert]

Saber, I'm working on the 'mounted' cost from the commander end. It seems like 40g is the cost you pay for a mounted commander. That seems... rather extreme, to me. I do realize, though, that being mounted invariably adds at least one 'extra attack' (that doesn't disappear with rearming), increases AP, removes non-spell fatigue due to armor, and similar things.

Anyway, I figure that halving the cost (going from commander to infantry) might be a way of going there. That would leave 20g.

Another way of looking at it is this:

Infantry commander base cost: 10
Infantry unit base cost: 5 (half)

Add a couple of gold for the weapons of the infantry (after all, you can't re-equip them like commanders), and you get about the 7g that you use for light infantry, right?

Cavalry commander base cost: 50
Cavalry unit base cost: 25 (half)

It would seem fair. Just a suggestion...

[Saber Cherry]

Arryn said:
The version number given in the .dm file was 4. I adjusted it to 5 before I uploaded it to my site. FYI.

Keep up the great work!

Thanks, Arryn; I can always count on you But I'll try harder anyway!

Scott Hebert said:
Saber, I'm working on the 'mounted' cost from the commander end. It seems like 40g is the cost you pay for a mounted commander. That seems... rather extreme, to me. I do realize, though, that being mounted invariably adds at least one 'extra attack' (that doesn't disappear with rearming), increases AP, removes non-spell fatigue due to armor, and similar things.

Anyway, I figure that halving the cost (going from commander to infantry) might be a way of going there. That would leave 20g.

Another way of looking at it is this:

Infantry commander base cost: 10
Infantry unit base cost: 5 (half)

Add a couple of gold for the weapons of the infantry (after all, you can't re-equip them like commanders), and you get about the 7g that you use for light infantry, right?

Cavalry commander base cost: 50
Cavalry unit base cost: 25 (half)

It would seem fair. Just a suggestion...

Cavalry unit cost is sort of confusing. I've been thinking and thinking... but no matter how reasonable your rationale is, we end up with 25g light cavalry that NOBODY is going to buy

However, light cavalry just use horses... you know, horsey-worseies. Whereas heavy cavalry use huge warhorses bred for strength and trained for battle... and armored! Well, I don't know if this is reasonable or not, but these are the factors I considered and their approximate costs. I made up all the numbers myself rather than analyzing Illwinter's numbers, and didn't really follow them very closely... Also, Illwinter never really factored in the resource cost of breeding and training horses.

Code:

---

-- Cavalry Guidelines:

-- Note that the existance of guidelines does not mean they are followed.

   

-- Type	Protection		GCOST		RCOST		ENC	MOVE



-- Light:	0-9		14		+4		4	3

-- Medium:	10-14		22		x1.5+6	        4	2

-- Heavy:	15+		30		x2+10		5	2

-- Elite:	17+ & stats+	40		x2+12		5	2



-- Other factors to consider:



-- Factor					GCOST



-- Bow: 				+2

-- Light Lance:				+2

-- Full Lance:				+6

-- Mount Attacks:			varies

-- Trample:				+.25*(size^3)

-- Mount Survives Rider:		+10 (varies)

-- Mount Joins Army:			varies

-- Slower Than a Horse:			-2 to 10

-- Protection Above Minimum:		+0 to 2 each

-- Bonus Stats:				varies



-- Other changes:  all cavs get +1 str to reflect mount's momentum,

-- and +2 hp to reflect hits taken by the mount (+3 on heavy cav)

-- heavy and medium cavs get minimum 11 morale

-- light cav precision penalties reduced, for 4 reasons:

-- 1) higher seat gives better vision and better angle

-- 2) they are trained to shoot / throw from horseback

-- 3) horses will often be still when firing

-- 4) the penalty made them worthless

---

Anyway, thanks for your analysis!

Ironhawk said: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.

Since longbows are quite rare, have virtually no armor, and are 30% to 100% more expensive than other archers, I guess it should be OK. As for holy archers - there are Crystal Amazon Pegasus Riders and Centaur Hierophants... But nothing common or cheap.

Ighalli said:I love the R'lyeh hybrid descriptions!!
You didn't make them upkeep free like you had mentioned though. Did you get them mixed up with the void gate summons?

Thanks!

As for the hybrids: They are recruitable with money, and require upkeep, though I did drop the prices of the inferior ones. I eliminated the upkeep on Void Gate Summons (Elder Thing, Vastness, Otherness, Thing of Many Eyes, etc). I don't know if they had upkeep before, but they definitely do not now.



So! I've spent about 30 hours in the last several days, smoothing over the previous changes, spotting and correcting bugs, and redoing every cavalry unit in the game. I also added some neat new weapons and armor to units that really needed them. For example: Soulless have no vital organs. They tend not to die from arrows. So I gave them "Missile Protection" (technically, a 0 prot, 0 enc, 1 def shield, and lowered their def by 1 to compensate). It should make arrows slightly less effective on Soulless, without affecting anything else. And I gave Sidhe / Tuatha full bronze equipment, based on their descriptions of "Hating iron and only using Bronze and Leather."

You can look at the attached picture to see some of the new armor and weapons

I'm in the final stages of debugging (primarily, ensuring that no units are missing attacks, got their description cleared, cost too much or too little, or have the wrong unit number for their name) and plan to release the first non-beta today or tomorrow. Thanks for all your comments!

[Saber Cherry]

This is the first complete, non-beta release. You can grab it (and read the release notes) at the first post in the thread. You can also see a screenshot of some of the new weapons and armor that units are sporting in the post above this one

Have fun, and I hope you enjoy it!

[tinkthank]

Looks very nice! Am away from home atm and cannot test, but will try to do so soon.

Naive question: Can many mods modding stuff such as this exist at once? (E.g., since I selected light cav for my Oglala mod, feedback on which I am still desperately seeking (shameless plug), and you have modded them, will that cause a conflict?)

Really Smallish Question: Would you also consider incorporating my Abysian Salamander changes to your mod by the same logic you changed the Vanheimian Fay Boar ("did anyone ever buy one before?") -- 75 gcost, sacred.

Anyhow, thanks for this mod, it looks like a lot of work, and I appreciate it -- for me, modding is really tough, and it would be abysmal without feedback.

[Tuidjy]

What we need now is a game in which all spells beyond level 2 and all pretenders
with magic path cost over 10 are disabled. It would be the perfer way to test
this mod.

If it is not PBEM (I seem unable to stick to these) I would like to join.

[Saber Cherry]

tinkthank said:
Looks very nice! Am away from home atm and cannot test, but will try to do so soon.

Thanks!

Naive question: Can many mods modding stuff such as this exist at once? (E.g., since I selected light cav for my Oglala mod, feedback on which I am still desperately seeking (shameless plug), and you have modded them, will that cause a conflict?)

I don't think so... I think the computer loads mods alphabetically, and mine is named "Cherry Recruitable Rebalance", so "Oglala Sioux" should be processed second, with your changes overriding my changes. But I might try that out later today and see.

Really Smallish Question: Would you also consider incorporating my Abysian Salamander changes to your mod by the same logic you changed the Vanheimian Fay Boar ("did anyone ever buy one before?") -- 75 gcost, sacred.

I changed them to 55g, made their fire flare much better, and made Beast Trainers cheaper. However, it does make sense that they should be sacred - not necessarily because Abysians worship hot things (although they do), but because salamanders shouldn't get paid so much after they are trained, since they don't have a use for money Hmmm... I guess 75g and sacred sounds fair. I'll have to retype the description to incorporate that change.

Anyhow, thanks for this mod, it looks like a lot of work, and I appreciate it -- for me, modding is really tough, and it would be abysmal without feedback.

I completely agree. Thanks for the feedback!

Tuidjy said:What we need now is a game in which all spells beyond level 2 and all pretenders
with magic path cost over 10 are disabled. It would be the perfer way to test
this mod.

If it is not PBEM (I seem unable to stick to these) I would like to join.

It would be very interesting to test this mod without powerful magic and supercombattants... it would change Dominions II into (as close as I can make it to) the low-magic medieval military conflicts in most fantasy novels, like Lord of the Rings, Magician, or A Game of Thrones. However, I'm not sure how much interest there would be, as most Dominions II players (on this forum) seem to love powerful magic. I'd be up for it, though! Of course, it would take several more hours to disable all those gods and spells...