You of course are in that deep ocean. That's why you can not understand the matters. Then go read News and Updates discussion you will better understand the problem.
UPDATE Rate of fire slowed again (it was 90 at release, now 300 for 18th c units) and slight anomalies fixed. I found in my last game that the AI had a tendency to spam hundreds of hussars, to the point where armies were 70% cavalry. As such, I've increased melee cav's build time hugely, so as to make them a bit less expendable (ala American Conquest), and hopefully force the AI into more sensible army compositions. Next up are range increases (I'm thinking of doubling cannon reload time but trebling their range) in the hope of battles not being such a mosh pit, with a bit more distance maintained between lines. I'd also like to prevent battles being a rush to disable the enemy's guns, probably by making them fewer in number. My aim overall is to increase the worth and presence of line inf on the battlefield.
Testing today and the mod feels good. Line inf placement feels important because of possible musket friendly fire and well time cav attack is a must to avoid enemy cannon massacre your line. The only question is when the time howitzer is effective ? Overall the mod feels solid and balancing cav and inf in term of size. Cheers and thanks for the hard work
Glad you're enjoying it! I actually haven't changed the Howitzers yet as I've yet to see the ai use them. They'll be next on the agenda. I've just noticed that terrain now has a huge impact on musket armed soldiers. About 300 of my men were battered by a group of 120 musketeers standing on a hill, with my shots all falling short
Just as the cossacks 3 game promises quote "Considerable influence of the landscape on battle tactics". Hope will be implement in the vanilla game after some tweaks and changes About howie, i feel howitzer role kinda wierd because cannons is more efficient at disrupt lines and mortar for sieging your enemy base. Maybe some old and experience cossacks 1 player could help regarding this problem because im not playing cossacks 1 very often.
UPDATE Much longer ranges. Accuracy is such that this won't mean units are annihilated before they get close. Also, it is now necessary to advance to the 18th Century before recruiting Grenadiers and Dragoons from the Diplomatic Centre. Howitzers haven't been touched - as such they can still wreck formations and buildings but need to get close first. Next up: fewer cannons per depot and longer pike ranges to simulate pike blocks better (if someone is able to increase the length of the pike model, please do!)
Furious_Peasant made bigger Prussian Grenadier to use them as Giant Guards so maybe it's worth a shot for you to ask him on how he did it. Maybe it's possible to just enlarge their weapon instead of the whole model as well.
LITTLE UPDATE Updated for latest patch + Highlanders can now use bayonets. Pandurs and Chasseurs are still ranged-only to reflect their role as light infantry. I would add a melee attack to all muskets, but at present their retreating when units get too close is the only thing stopping battles becoming even more of a fight to the death.
All ranged units should have melee if you ask me, like in American Conquest, we just need animations for them to use the swords and sabers they carry around with them but never use them, 17th Century musketeers are just useless because of that retreat mechanic, they should just stand and fight with their sabers/swords, not run like a bunch of wussies.
Your Mod sounds very interesting. I haven't even started on my projected mod. I am still playing the game and planning the mod. You are moving in the direction of realism which I agree with. Below is something from a paper I wrote. The paper was about RTS design and this is about how time and space is handled in RTS design. Time is Special First we must consider time, space and scaling problems. We quickly discover that time is special in that it presents special problems for RTS modelling precisely because RTS is real time. Space can be re-scaled proportionally for modelling purposes but time cannot. Time can only be distorted. Let us look at the effect of physical scaling on time scales. Changing physical scales does not change the time scale and herein resides a key RTS design issue. Imagine a man marching for a kilometer over a flat landscape at 5 kilometers per hour. This is a relatively slow march pace and it will take him 12 minutes to cover one kilometre. In your mind’s eye produce a rendition on a computer screen of this man at 1/100th scale marching across a landscape also drawn at 1/100th scale. The 175 cm tall man (a good height for a man of the Napoleonic era) is now rendered on screen at 1.75 cm high. The kilometer march is reduced to 10 meters on this scale. Obviously, we must scroll the map on the screen if we want to track him. The man, the man’s stride length and the marching distance have all been reduced to scale (all being divided by one hundred) so the journey must still take 12 minutes. In passing, I will note that my computer wide-screen is maybe half a meter wide so this would involve scrolling for 20 “screens” distance to cover the 1 kilometre journey. Now, if we speed up the action by compressing the time scale, thus decreasing the time period of each stride, the man will scurry rapidly like an ant. He will look and behave like an ant crossing an ant-scale landscape not like a properly scaled down man crossing a properly scaled landscape at normal marching pace. Sped up, he will “behave like an ant” in very precise terms requiring a distortion of physical laws in the Newtonian physics engine. His spedup behavior would imply (and indeed mandate) very low mass and very low momentum. All this points to the fact that the three space dimensions can be proportionally scaled for modelling purposes. As well as proportionally scaling space dimensions, we can un-proportionally scale or distort space dimensions if we wish. However, we cannot proportionally scale time when modelling. We can only distort time in the in-game world. This is a crucial difference with major ramifications for RTS design and its usability or playability. The player does not share space dimensions with the game obviously. The player is in a real 3D space and the game is in a mathematically modelled virtual space. However, the player does share real time with the game. If overall game-time and/or specific tasks in-game are to proceed at a different pace to real time then game time must be distorted. If a game takes 1 hour of real world time to play out then it is a truism that it occupies 1 real world hour of the player’s time. People are time limited and need games to play out in a reasonable time span. We could scale a Napoleonic era battlefield to fit on a (very large) computer rendered landscape. A lot of scrolling would be needed to pan across the entire battlefield but in principle it could be done, at least at a very small scale. However, as specific Napoleonic era battles took from perhaps 6 hours to 2 days on average to “play out” (excluding pre-battle manoeuvres and post-battle retreats) and as we cannot scale time, then a game of the full battle without any time distortion would have to take the same lengths of time. So we see that truly accurate modelling of time is in fundamental conflict with “playability” because of the real time issue. End of cut and paste. It is clear that construction time is compressed in RTS much more than battle time. In RTS, building a building scarcely takes any longer than burning it down. Construction time is sped up. Construction time and military time are at odds in the design. The best we can do is make construction times not too absurdly fast but they do need to be reasonably fast or the game won't be playable. On the other hand, there is no reason not to make military action times a bit more realistic. Musket reloads, cannon reloads etc. should all be a bit closer to real time. A musket would fire say 4 times a minute and a cannon each 3 minutes. Would this be playable in a game? One would have to test it and make the reload times as long as is still playable. Other ways to slow battles are; 1. Play on the 2x map when it is available again. 2. Increase ranges as you are doing. 3. Increase inaccuracy at range. 4. Increase hit points of units and defence bonuses. Also, ensure that range relativities are correct. Maybe you cannot make weapon ranges fully realistic. I made a test mod of C1 with realistic cannon range. They shot half way across a 4x map! But keep the relative ranges correct I suggest. Here's some data I collected: Artillery of the Gribeauval System (Ranges quoted are approximate allowing for less than perfect gun performance and the variable quality of gunpowder in the field.) Gun Max Range Effective range Canister Range 12 pounder 1,800 m 900 m 600 m 8 pounder 1,500 m 800 m 500 m 4 pounder 1,200 m 700 m 400 m Gun Max effective Min safe effective Shell burst danger zone 6 in. howitzer 1,200 m 600 m 40 m diameter These are long distances compared to musket fire but slower reloads and cannon inaccuracy will help game balance. Compare the above ranges to this; "The accuracy of the Brown Bess was fair, as with most other muskets. The effective range is often quoted as 175 yards (160 m), but the Brown Bess was often fired en masse at 50 yards (46 m) to inflict the greatest damage upon the enemy." - Wikipedia So, an 8 pounder will have a cannister range that is eight times the effective musket range. That is scary. Foot troops and horse will need to be given an at-the-double speed and a charging speed if they are to be able to spike guns. How far can men on foot charge between canister shots? It's an interesting question. If the reload takes the real 3 minutes, the men should be able to charge 500 m I think. It would take really big maps though. Then you would have to decide. Do I halve all ranges to scale? Or make them all 1/4 to scale or whatever? By the way, OC Davout's OC Mod of C1 BTW+baddog implemented longer pike strike range. It worked well but might look a little odd without increasing the length of the pike on the graphical depiction if you too greatly increase the pike range. Happy modding!
Thanks for the details - I'll certainly take a look at regulating ranges. Personally I hate cannister at present as it has a tendency to kill as many of your own men as the enemy, so increasing its range might end up ruining your own lines! My biggest hope would be to write a morale script, but I wouldn't know where to begin when it comes to getting the game to recognise certain conditions before enacting the same scattering that bayonet-less troops suffer from at present (nearby troops dying, officer killed, holding high ground etc)
Now that is something I would love to see a more 16th century pike and shot sort of Mod, I definitly would also enjoy seeing south american tribes represented in the game as well with fast and agile melee units, would be awesome to have a faction that reproduces units very fast but is slightly weaker in armor. Being surrounded by them would be scary :O and if the formations had more purpose within the game it would be a great concept.
What you're describing is basically American Conquest, I eagerly await the modding tools that are going to come with workshop support.
There was a mod of C1, and "Hard core" or "Iron man" was possibly the name? Someone help me with the name here please? Anyway it was a 17th only mod. the musketeers build rate was shortened and more of a factor. the merc. selection had only 17th cent. options. And the market was flat. not affected by trading. And if I remember correctly you had a bigger bonus for formations, making them necessary for practical play. I loved this mod. with these simple changes, the game played much better for me. Possibly one of our modders here could give it a try? Daddio
I believe it's name was 17th Century Hardcore mod or something of that sort, I recently stumbled upon it while looking at mods I could use materials from for my mod for American Conquest.
Me to! With more tools it would be really cool to mod this game, I really cant wait to see what else we can do. Im going to see if can start a project to mod the game very soon.
UPDATE Rate of fire slowed even further and ranges increased. Some other balancing issues addressed from the base game: All muskets are now dangerous. 17th Century Musketeers are now useful and quicker to recruit. Prussian Musketeers reload a fraction faster than their counterparts, but don't have a huge damage boost. Chasseurs and Pandurs are far more dangerous owing to their longer range, but being light infantry they take much longer to recruit. Highlanders are now effective elite infantry, able to fight hand to hand. With the changes to muskets, cavalry is now very vulnerable to fire. Taking a long time to build, care must be taken not to waste them with frontal charges. About 140 18th C musketeers can be recruited in the time it takes 40 cuirassiers to be raised, even with the blacksmith upgrade.
I haven't tried your mod yet but I am really impressed by your reported progress. I have had a quick look at the two files where I think the unit data is that is units.scripts and country.scripts . They seemed like spaghetti code. How did you find the unit parameters within all that confusing code? Also, what modding tools or utilities are you using?
You use notepad++ to edit it as it's the most time conserving software to use. The spaghetti code you're referring to is the individual units inside unit.script probably, that's where all the unit parameters are stored. Musketeer18 for example contains the parameters of the 18th century muskets
