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Edit: Long annoying post removed, superceded by the beta file posted in this thread.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

[Saber Cherry]

That's a use for a tiny number of the units to confuse the tactical AI... they have no use in bulk, and no "real" use in small numbers, except for castle sieges (and FFA targets).

Even when you can find a use for them, there's always another unit that is better or more cost effective. Unshielded militia die with the first volley, while shielded ones often last several volleys! However, that's really the best place for your diseased / crippled / blind shielded HI - as long as they do not engage in melee, they will generally survive through the battle and be reusable. Arrows are virtually harmless to shielded HI...

[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?

[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!