Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[Huzurdaddi]

Good point about the scout.

Perhaps the Scout is undercosted. Let look at the other sacred non-holy leaders. IIRC the sacred non-holy leaders are: the Shaman, the Wind Lord, the Hunter Lord, the Lord Warden, Keeper of Tradition, the Communicant, and the Prince General. All of the ones with combat potential ( everything except for the Shaman and the communicant ) are seriously expensive. I personally think that it is the scout which is out of wack and undercosted and not the Jotun Herse. As a matter of fact, I consider the Herse one of the more exploitable units in the game.

[FrankTrollman]

Question: in order to do this, it looks like you went through and figured out what al the weapon numbers corresponded to. Any chance that list is stored somewhere?

And another question: If you give a unit a weapon like "fire flies", does it actually shoot out a pile of those dinky little fires, or does it try to wield them as a melee weapon somehow? And if the former, how much ammo does it have?

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

FrankTrollman said:
Even with order 3 and productivity you can't afford 2 Black Knights a turn, and that means that you can't conquer neutrals in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Even a 3 turn build-up will just get smacked down by level 6 neutrals, and that's not cool.

After just having finished a game with SC's mod while playing Ulm, I can tell you that Black Knights are not the initial way to go vs indies. Just use about twenty or so of the ultra-heavy morningstar inf and you are ready to rumble. Which, by the way, can be done - given your starting force and a turn or two. Once you have all the provs surrounding your capital captured (for the production boost) then you can begin building BK's for your 2nd indy-killer force.

Additionally, its the choice of castle, not prod scales that effects production most. So as Ulm, in any non-blitz game, you would want to pick a Wizards Tower, since it is cheap/fast to build and has good production. This allows you to ramp up the total production of your empire far more than any prod scale. The only nuisance is that you have to muster your troops from many forts (easy for BKs, hard for footsoldiers)

They need a random elemental pick on the Smith

Iron Faith

PDF said:
Just build Arbalests, shielded chainmail units, back them with the Prophet casting SoC and it's done ...

PDF, how can you suggest to anyone that Arbalests be used? Ever? Thier rate of fire is so terrible as to make them usless. Unless thier accuracy or ROF has changed in the latest version of the mod?

[Saber Cherry]

FrankTrollman said:
Question: in order to do this, it looks like you went through and figured out what al the weapon numbers corresponded to. Any chance that list is stored somewhere?

And another question: If you give a unit a weapon like "fire flies", does it actually shoot out a pile of those dinky little fires, or does it try to wield them as a melee weapon somehow? And if the former, how much ammo does it have?

-Frank

I wrote down (with much help from others) the equipment IDs when I started on the Combat Simulator. You can search the forums for that thread... or just download Edi's Weapon and Armor Database, available at Arryn's site among others. I used Edi's compilation when making the mod because it is much more complete and up-to-date than the list I had made previously (listing all the weapon effects and so forth).

Fire Flies (like all spells) cannot specifically be given as a weapon, although multi-shot ranged weapons can be created, and it may be possible to replicate Fire Flies with a cleverly-designed weapon. Ammo can be modded, and ranged weapons are only used ranged, never in melee. A unit without a melee weapon will have "fist" or "claw" by default. Download Illwinter's mod manual for more info. BTW, also remember that ranged weapons do not cause fatigue.

Ironhawk said:
PDF, how can you suggest to anyone that Arbalests be used? Ever? Thier rate of fire is so terrible as to make them usless. Unless thier accuracy or ROF has changed in the latest version of the mod?

ROF and accuracy unchanged. However, they are now shield-negating (and 12 damage). I'm not entirely certain how projectiles and shields work - for example, if a person has no shield, is there a 100% chance of a projectile hitting, or a 45.7% chance (0 attack versus 0 defense)? I *assume* it is the latter but I'm not sure.


Stats:

Xbow: 10ap damage, rate 0.5, range 32.
Arbalest: 12ap damage, rate 0.333, range 45.


Hitrate versus a 2-defense shield (like a round shield):
Xbow: 30.2%.
Arbalest: 45.7% or maybe 100%.


Hitrate versus a 3-defense shield (like a kite shield):
Xbow: 24.7%.
Arbalest: 45.7% or maybe 100%.


Hitrate versus a 4-defense shield (like a tower shield):
Xbow: 18.4%.
Arbalest: 45.7% or maybe 100%.

Source: http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

So against shielded enemies, modded arbalests are always far better than crossbows by virtue of the greater damage and range; their high hitrate always more than makes up for the lower firing rate. The only weakness of modded arbalestiers is the high rcost.

[PDF]

About Arbalests : Ulm *only* has Arbalests as missiles at start, so even if they're bad they're better than nothing.
Additionally a critical mass of arbalests can rout indies outright, or break a charge (on their 2nd volley on round 4).
Even in middle game, Arbalests are the only weapon able to pierce the more common high-protection units.
So they're not that bad IMHO.

[Huzurdaddi]

Another question about Abysia: Do you think it was wise to increase the combat stats of the slayer to match those of human assassins? The slayer has 17 HP and 9 prot. He is very tough. And when I say very tough I mean Indep commanders have a rediciliously low chance of taking him out.

Everyone should have a chance to play Abysia at least once in this mod. It's comical!

[Saber Cherry]

Huzurdaddi said:
Another question about Abysia: Do you think it was wise to increase the combat stats of the slayer to match those of human assassins? The slayer has 17 HP and 9 prot. He is very tough. And when I say very tough I mean Indep commanders have a rediciliously low chance of taking him out.

Maybe, maybe not. Slayers have poison daggers instead of the superior poison dagger + shordsword, and are very expensive. In my experience, unmodded, unequipped Slayers are very unlikely to kill more then 2 indy commanders before dying or being wounded, and they certainly can't take out a commander with bodyguards. In fact I never found them (cost-effectively) useful for anything, without magical items, but used them anyway just for fun. If you compare a modded Slayer to a Star Child or Empoisoner, they come out far, far behind. Slayers may have gotten too much of a stat boost, so perhaps I should set them back -1/-1 to attack 13 / defense 12, but in so doing I'd also reduce their gold cost to perhaps 75. I'll look into it.

[Saber Cherry]

PDF said:
About Arbalests : Ulm *only* has Arbalests as missiles at start, so even if they're bad they're better than nothing.
Additionally a critical mass of arbalests can rout indies outright, or break a charge (on their 2nd volley on round 4).
Even in middle game, Arbalests are the only weapon able to pierce the more common high-protection units.
So they're not that bad IMHO.

Well... except Ulm now has Sappers, who carry crossbows. At 20g, they are not a good generic missile unit in my opinion, but for example Ironhawk employed them effectively as his main missile unit in the Test game, and their sapping ability came in very handy. Arbalests are certainly much more effective against high-protection units like Knights, HC, and Dragons, though, whether original (14ap) or modded (12ap sn).

[Boron]

Saber Cherry said:

Maybe, maybe not. Slayers have poison daggers instead of the superior poison dagger + shordsword, and are very expensive. In my experience, unmodded, unequipped Slayers are very unlikely to kill more then 2 indy commanders before dying or being wounded, and they certainly can't take out a commander with bodyguards. In fact I never found them (cost-effectively) useful for anything, without magical items, but used them anyway just for fun. If you compare a modded Slayer to a Star Child or Empoisoner, they come out far, far behind. Slayers may have gotten too much of a stat boost, so perhaps I should set them back -1/-1 to attack 13 / defense 12, but in so doing I'd also reduce their gold cost to perhaps 75. I'll look into it.

You have to keep in mind that Abysia is a bloodnation.
One lifelong protection is enough and a slayer can kill almost any commander/mage unless it is a SC.

[Huzurdaddi]

Boron,

That's a great strategy for later in the game and makes people's lives headaches. But the stat increase to the Slayer did not really affect the effectiveness of that particular strategy.

However if you equip a slayer with a sword of fire he will kill all indep commanders. I ran over 100 assassinations last night and lost 3. He is even better than C'tis empoisioners equipped with a skull talisman. And about equal to an empoisioners with a skull staff and enchantment-3.

It's just that good.