Mercenaries

[Neural Eclipse]

Hey guys, do you know where the mercenary camp unit lists are and the price multiplication formula? I want to modify the prices so that they're not ridiculously high (47x the price of normal Feudal Knights? 84600?? I had a big kingdom, but that's ridiculous) for the mods I play with.

[Figgie]

I was not personally aware there was a price mulitplier, but yes that -is- ridiculous! I always thought that as a mercenary your aim was to actually get hired, not sit around while you ask for enough money to build the most sophisticaed fortifications four times over to be paid for your 10 man squad ;)

[Neural Eclipse]

I've beat my head against the wall :bash: trying to find whatever governs mercenary prices, but for the life of me, I can't! It makes sense to use kingdom size and power to modify mercenary prices (slightly more for the more powerful, since they basically try and milk you for your money, because they know you have it), but when it's a two digit multiple that is higher than 50 (I kid you not, the knights cost over 100k now that I have over 30 provinces), it's not even ridiculous, it's just silly.

[Angryminer]

I never experienced such bahaviour like you discribed.
I believe your KoH-installation has gone mad after some modding.

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

Haha, I guess so. Just found another post with the same problem... I should've replied to that one instead of posting a new topic... oops~

I've been trying GoG1.04MOD currently,and it works fine,MTHXS!

But the problem is that whenever I find(not without delight :hello: )there is an exiled army camping near my castle, one click on their icon is enough to send me back with my heart broken. How come?They're just waaaay too expensive :bash: .One squad of horse archers is gonna cost me 13200 bucks. That's too much!

So can any of you be so kind as to tell me which file and where I shall edit in order to make it much more sensible? BTW, I really like those troops they look so cool.

[Angryminer]

Okay, I will investigate on that matter as soon as possible.
Will you please give a more detailed description of what you modified with you game after installing KoH, applying the patch and installing GoG?
That would surely help me a lot with finding the problem. :go:

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

Will do. But I actually did test it to see if it was a savegame bug after mods and it wasn't. Started new game, x10.0 speed, no fog, started looking for merc camps, switched sides to whoever had them to look at prices and they were all too high even for small 5 province kingdoms (ie: 2000 for axemen? That's a whole building... or a squad of templars/teutons, if you get them from province unit features).

I'll see if the prices are normal when I remove all mods and just play with patch 1.03. If not, my installation is botched up. If it isn't botched, I'll install each mod separately to see if if it's one of them that does it. It probably is your mod though, Angryminer, because I have parts of it installed and that guy, Godkin, had the same problem with your mod. But may be he wasn't telling the whole story. We'll see ^_^

[Angryminer]

I agree, there is propably a conjuntion with my mod. However, the problem didn't happen to most of the users, so I need to know what so special about your's and Godkin's setup that you experience this bug.
Did you modify my files? Which editor did you use? The correct charset is vital to the file-integrity. I messed up the game myself some times by using another editor than "notepad.exe".

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

File integrity is that easy to mess up with KoH?? The only time I didn't use notepad is for when I was messing around with unit.xls and *.txt, but when I ran into the merc overprice problem, I actually disabled any unit.txt changes I had made (renamed the file) and the problem was still there.

btw, I do not fully understand how combat works. From what I've seen, defense values seem to be in percent and offense values seem to be also in percent, but times 10. So varangians, for example, have a 100/10 = 10% to kill per strike and against, say, teutonic knights, when they do a killing blow, the teutons get a 60% chance to avoid death. Correct me on this, if I'm wrong, but that's the only way I could've lost 3 Feudal knights to a band of peasants that I could think of :scratch:

So that begs a question, why are there so few truly armored units? I mean medium armor is either 0 or 5 defense (IE: heavy swordsmen/archers), which seems worthless. 1/20 chance to avoid being killed? ... that's useful... :rolleyes:

From that, we jump to 20 defense, which is 1/5 chance of avoiding a killing blow... why such a huge descrepancy?? All in all, it seems chainmail is useless in this game, unless you can build steppe cavalry or a special infantry unit, because the former are just overpowered (against a dumb AI anyway) and the latter are kingdom specific (templars, varangians and roman infantry, the only chainmail users that benefit from it).

If somebody could clear that up for me, I would really appreciate it.

Also, morale seems to affect retreat/surrender conditions for units, but does it factor into their performance otherwise? IE: high morale = higher killing effeciency?

Same with stamina, does low stamina mean your troops can't fight as well? I've definitely lost more teutonic knights when they were tired (I mean, 0 or in the red), or was it a coincidence?

Also, formations. Tight formations are supposed to be better in melee, right? I find that after my units obliterate the first line of enemy troops (specific case: guards or peasants), they just stand there, tight packed, being hit with bardiches or pitch forks and not doing anything about it. I have to order them to spread in order to get back into melee range (telling them to attack the peasants/guards doesn't do anything, since they think they already are doing it). So besides that little bug, do formations offer any sort of technical numerical bonus (+ to offense or so) or do they just work based on their shape/density? With tight formations, I see that I end up having a couple of my guys attack 1 of enemies, because their formation is more loose, while a loose formation leaves more open space for arrows to miss? The hit/miss with arrows seems very important, which is a nice touch.

Last thing, with offense/defense in the units.txt, all armored units only have 1 value listed. Does it count for both, ranged and melee defense, or just melee? The column header reads Defense (m,r) and in other parts of the file, where columns have (a,b) after column name, like siege attrition, for example, there are two ways of putting the values in. For attrition, all the ranged units get a #,# listing for attack,defense while the melee ones just get one number, which I assume are for attack, which makes me think it correlates to defense in exactly same way, which means all the listed defense is against melee only...

bonuses.ini has heavy armor with -50r for non crossbow arrows, so I was just wondering..

And is it just me, or is there an artificial limit on how many squads can be atop a castle/keep and even wall sections? I was defending a huge castle with just the castle guards and 6 squads of archers. When the AI was close to breaking the gate, I moved most of my archers into the keep, but when I tried moving the last 2 squads in, they wouldn't... This was the largest keep I've ever seen in the battle view in this game. I approximated how many squads could actually fit in there, given how dense the archers were standing and it was 9, may be even 10.... big keep ^_^ If this is modifiable, Imma have to change it >_<

[Angryminer]

1. Don't just rename the files. Move them out of the KoH-folder-tree. KoH doesn't load destinct files in destinct places, but *all* files in the Knights of Honor-folder and scans them for useable content.
So KoH will actually read "unit_backup.not_xls" and use the values in there.
About the charsets: Every software assumes a certain charset. One can't just mess around with the byteorder in the scripts and hope the software still works.
2. Yes, units in KoH have 1 single hitpoint. They also have percentages to hit (called CTK, chance to kill) or to be hit (called defense).
If a soldier is hit he has a <defense value>% chance to survive the blow.
When a soldier attacks someone he has a <CTK>% chance to cast a blow that will be deadly if not blocked.
3. That's a balancing issue. I can't look into the heads of the BSS-guys.
4. In the scriptfiles I found no indication for a bonus through morale.
5. Tired troops can not charge at enemies. Charging is very important as it positively effects the troop's performance in combat and negatively effect the enemy's morale. There may be another hidden bonus from good endurance, but I can't say too much about that.
6. That bug was already observed in March 2004, nearly half a year before the game's release. No idea why it is still there.
7. Formations work the realistic way. There is no artificial bonus/malus by the developers. You're right about the melee and arrow-thoughts.
8. Bowmen have their weapon's range against heavy armor cut by half because normal arrows aren't in any way effective against heavy armor over far distances.
9. Citadells have specific places where squads can stand. Each of them can be used. Tell your squads to go to a free place on the citadell and they will go there.

I hope that helps. :go:

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

Thanks, that was informative ^_^ Couple more to clear stuff up tho:

2. So the actual CTK value is a % in of itself? What's the point of some units having it over 100%?

8. Aye, I realize that, but I was primarily confused about whether the defense values apply to attacks from range. It would make sense if they did more than if they didn't, given the 4 truly armored infantry units present in the game and how they either have big shields or are armored from head to toe (roman inf/varangyans vs templar/teutons), so arrows would have trouble penetrating that...

9. But it seems like I can move them to very specific spots... at some places the bowmen congregate automatically (atop the giant keep I mentioned, on the second floor, there was a little spot that looked like it offered more protection than others, and the bowmen congregated there, but the 1st level of it, where it's a square, I could put them anywhere on the square... o_O

[Angryminer]

2. Let's say you have some elite soldiers. If there is an enemy in armor they just know where to stab them in order to kill the enemy. All in all they have a (f. e.) 90% chance to kill a soldier in a 20%-defense-armor. Thought back that means their CTK-value was 110%.
The most units with a CTK above 100% are cavalry units. I guess a chain mail armor won't help you when there is a squad of cataphracts charging at you. You're dead anyway. So a CTK far above 100% is quite realistic. :wink:
8. Yes, the defense-value also applies in ranged combat.
9. I don't think I understand that sentence correctly. I believe there is at least one "not" missing. Would you please be so kind and clear that up? :go:

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

2. Haha, yeah, chainmail vs a few tons of armored horse charging into your face... hmm, I guess I can sorta, kinda see your point ;) :P And wouldn't the CTK in your example be 112.5? 90%/80% ?

9. Well what I meant was that some parts of the building behave in the way you described, but in general, I can move the archers around freely.. IE: move them toward the back of the wall instead of the front.. or slightly left or right..

At any case, is it changable?

[Angryminer]

2. If you refer to the CTK-value in units.txt, then 110%.
(110% - 20% defense = 90% chance the enemy actually dies)
9. It should be editable. The buildings are completely defined in the paks, so basically, they have to be modifyable. But the file-formats are not documented so you are searching for the famous needly in the hay. However, it might be worth a try. I wish you best success. :go:

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

I thought it was CTK*(100%-DEF%)=CTK% vs that unit.

I tested it... peasants vs peasants. CTK = 1000, Defense = 100... at 100 defense, the game would not let me even target the peasants. At 99 or below, though, it did ^_^

But that gave them 10% CTK so it's not like it was noticable that anything changed then... should've altered the CTK to something lower to see how long they'd stand there mashing each other.

I won't have time to search for the needle until the summer... :(