[UXP] Legends of Revolutions

[achilleszero]

I don't know if this was noticed before, but the spanish heavy tank art is not working. It is not just the art (that would only give red blob, also in the civilopedia). Know the entry does not display at all. Looking in the xml it is one of the german tanks (instead of heavy tank but that as a side note) but I can't find any problem with the xml.

See my post #337 on page 17 of this theread (sorry dont know how to link to specific posts). Download that file and then drop it into LoRtest/assets/art/units/german. Or you could put it into the fpk but thats really annoying to do. The art accidently got cut and was only recently discovered. It should be fixed in the next test build.

 

[Alsark]

So a few more entries to be added to CIV4UnitInfos:

Search for <Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_EARLY_BOMBER</Description>
Replace the 2nd line below that with <Strategy>TXT_KEY_UNIT_EARLY_BOMBER_STRATEGY</Strategy>

Search for <Description>Jet Bomber</Description>
Replace the 2nd line below that with <Strategy>TXT_KEY_UNIT_JET_BOMBER_STRATEGY</Strategy>

Search for <Description>Heavy Tank</Description>
Replace the 2nd line below that with <Strategy>TXT_KEY_UNIT_HEAVY_TANK_STRATEGY</Strategy>

The Early Bomber one actually confuses me. I BELIEVE that "Early Bomber" refers to the "Ground Attack Plane", but I couldn't actually find anything directly stating as such. The above entry assumes that they are one and the same.

Also, I found a bug. The Tank receives a +25% against a non-existent unit - the Early Tank. This should be +25% against Armor. Also, in my opinion, the Heavy Tank should retain the +25% against Armor and +25% against Armored Scouts (as well as the Tiger I). It just seems weird to me that the Tank would be stronger against Armors and Armored Scouts than the Heavy Tank would be.

And two questions... the Hwacha does not require Engineering (whereas Bombard does). Is this intentional? Also, the Opolcheniye does not require Military Tradition, and cannot be upgraded into the Paratrooper - are these intentional?

I'm pretty much done with all of the unit descriptions now. I just need to adjust for the Opolcheniye based on your response (and possibly the Heavy Tank). After that I'll probably move onto buildings.



Also, out of curiosity, what are the Strategic Bomber, Drakkar, and Wooden Longboat (not the same as the Longboat, the Viking UU) units? I noticed entries for these units in the strategy file, but they don't seem to pertain to existing units.

 

[achilleszero]

Also, out of curiosity, what are the Strategic Bomber, Drakkar, and Wooden Longboat (not the same as the Longboat, the Viking UU) units? I noticed entries for these units in the strategy file, but they don't seem to pertain to existing units.

They probably dont exist. There are lots of remnants like these hidden throughout the xml/art/files in general. They are left over from Wolfshanze mod. It seems as if he had bigger plans but then he disappeared. I think I remember seeing the art for the strategic bomber and may be wooden longboat (they've both been cut long ago), but I dont even know what a drakkar is.

 

[phungus420]

The Early Bomber one actually confuses me. I BELIEVE that "Early Bomber" refers to the "Ground Attack Plane", but I couldn't actually find anything directly stating as such. The above entry assumes that they are one and the same.

Also, I found a bug. The Tank receives a +25% against a non-existent unit - the Early Tank. This should be +25% against Armor. Also, in my opinion, the Heavy Tank should retain the +25% against Armor and +25% against Armored Scouts (as well as the Tiger I). It just seems weird to me that the Tank would be stronger against Armors and Armored Scouts than the Heavy Tank would be.

Early Tank and Early Bomber are Armor and Ground attack plane, respectively. These are leftovers from the Wolfshanze mod. In UnitInfos look up the word "Early" and there will be quite a few units with string definitions like "UNIT_EARLY_FLYER", you'll see under the description tags the string used to identify their name in the text, should be something like "TXT_KEY_UNIT_EARLY_FLYER", look up these strings in the text folder, and you'll find the name of the unit as it appears in game and in the civilopedia. I think I removed the bonus to heavy tanks though against armor, not sure. Look at it's atributes in the civilopedia, and go by that.

And two questions... the Hwacha does not require Engineering (whereas Bombard does). Is this intentional? Also, the Opolcheniye does not require Military Tradition, and cannot be upgraded into the Paratrooper - are these intentional?

Both of these are intentional

Also, out of curiosity, what are the Strategic Bomber, Drakkar, and Wooden Longboat (not the same as the Longboat, the Viking UU) units? I noticed entries for these units in the strategy file, but they don't seem to pertain to existing units.

They don't exist. I think achilleserzo is correct. You can just go ahead and delete them.

 

[phungus420]

I don't know if this was noticed before, but the spanish heavy tank art is not working. It is not just the art (that would only give red blob, also in the civilopedia). Know the entry does not display at all. Looking in the xml it is one of the german tanks (instead of heavy tank but that as a side note) but I can't find any problem with the xml.

First off thanks for the report. If you notice anything off like this, reporting it makes it possible for us to fix it.

That particular issue was already discovered, and as achilleszero mentions I accidently cut some meat when trimming fat out of the art in the current test build. It shouldn't cause anything more then a graphics glitch. This is actually fixed also, it's just that I'm ready to update but the current RevDCM release (2.10) is bugged, so I'm holding off till glider releases a stable and functioning version for RevDCM so I can merge it in before the next release. I'm willing to accept the fact the heavy tank for a couple of civs is glitched graphically for the test build, since it'll be updated in a couple of days anyway. If it's more then just a graphics glitch, ie if this is causing a critical bug that wol't let you play the game I can update the test build now, so let me know if this is the case (I'd just rather not update it now, since I will in effect be doing double the work when glider releases a stable RevDCM version).

 

[AKilla88]

i hate to keep chiming in on this issue i have from the previous page but none of the possibilities have posed as a solution and i am thinking this is a possible bug. when you create a scenario with pre-made spawn points when you go back and start the scenario you have relations with every civ in the game although you have not discovered these civilizations. if you go into notepad you will notice you do have not even discovered these civs and the pre-made maps listed also have the same problem. i really want to keep this mod because it is everything i am looking for but i absolutely love my premade earth scenarios so I either have to fix this or will have to stop using this mod which I have become a huge fan of.
retraction: i want to retract this i figured out all you have to turn is turn off the minor civs mod when creating the scenario then go back and check it on in custom scenario when actually playing it, i tried other things in notepad that didnt work but this works if anyone else is using the mod for pre-made scenarios. mod rocks otherwise thanks for making it!

 

[Berenthor]

See my post #337 on page 17 of this theread (sorry dont know how to link to specific posts). Download that file and then drop it into LoRtest/assets/art/units/german. Or you could put it into the fpk but thats really annoying to do. The art accidently got cut and was only recently discovered. It should be fixed in the next test build.

Ah I already removed the art link and reverted to the original one . I just wanted to mention it in case it wasn't noticed before. It isn't really buggy but you can't assign promos for example in this case. That is the reason I reverted back to the standard model for the tank.

 

[jmas]

Enjoying the mod, thank you for the hard work.

May I ask why pikemen receive +50% vs. gunpowder units in this mod?

I am guessing it is with the aim of balancing gameplay, which I can understand if that is the case.

However, the Sevopedia entry for pikemen says, in part, "... the invention of gunpowder made archers, pikemen, and knights a thing of the past," and I don't quite see how pikemen would be at an advantage against a gunpowder unit. By charging them with their pikes? Maybe in the case of musketmen and the UUs that replace them, but I see two problems with the general +50% vs. all gunpowder units: 1) With more advanced units (say riflemen and beyond) I think the pikemen would get shot before reaching the gunpowder troops, and 2) if you assume that pikemen could charge gunpowder units, why not also assume that they could charge archery units and therefore ought to have a bonus against them as well?

I don't mean to be too uptight about "realism" as I've seen how silly and argumentative threads about that can get. And if it is a gameplay balance issue, I can respect that, however I would appreciate it if someone would explain whether that is the reason or whether it is something else (and in any case I would suggest at least a minor modification to the Sevopedia entry so that it doesn't sound so much like gunpowder units would be "owning" pikemen).

 

[phungus420]

That came out of discussions on these boards mainly. There was a general claim that in the early rennesaince well regulated Pikeman formations were an effective counter to early musket armed troops. I probably should change it to 50% or 100% vs Musketmen. Overall it comes down to gameplay and balance, and I'm not really sure about this (In fact you're the first person to mention it, and I had forgotten about it). Does anyone have an opinion on this? Should I drop the bonus to gunpowder units for Pikeman altogether, should it be left, or should it be adjusted?

 

[phungus420]

i hate to keep chiming in on this issue i have from the previous page but none of the possibilities have posed as a solution and i am thinking this is a possible bug. when you create a scenario with pre-made spawn points when you go back and start the scenario you have relations with every civ in the game although you have not discovered these civilizations. if you go into notepad you will notice you do have not even discovered these civs and the pre-made maps listed also have the same problem. i really want to keep this mod because it is everything i am looking for but i absolutely love my premade earth scenarios so I either have to fix this or will have to stop using this mod which I have become a huge fan of.

I don't know what to tell you

Your best bet would be to bring this up to glider or jdog's attention, as I'm sure it's an issue with RevDCM (with the type of changes LoR makes to the RevDCM, it's not possible any differences in the two mods could cause this). I'll eventually look into it, but not any time soon. I did try to edit out all the AtWar references in the WBS file, but that just made it fail to load and crash...

 

[Alsark]

Early Tank and Early Bomber are Armor and Ground attack plane, respectively. These are leftovers from the Wolfshanze mod. In UnitInfos look up the word "Early" and there will be quite a few units with string definitions like "UNIT_EARLY_FLYER", you'll see under the description tags the string used to identify their name in the text, should be something like "TXT_KEY_UNIT_EARLY_FLYER", look up these strings in the text folder, and you'll find the name of the unit as it appears in game and in the civilopedia. I think I removed the bonus to heavy tanks though against armor, not sure. Look at it's atributes in the civilopedia, and go by that.

Thanks. So just a confirmation... Heavy Tank should not have a bonus against Armor or Armored Scout, but the normal Tank should indeed have a bonus against both?

That came out of discussions on these boards mainly. There was a general claim that in the early rennesaince well regulated Pikeman formations were an effective counter to early musket armed troops. I probably should change it to 50% or 100% vs Musketmen. Overall it comes down to gameplay and balance, and I'm not really sure about this (In fact you're the first person to mention it, and I had forgotten about it). Does anyone have an opinion on this? Should I drop the bonus to gunpowder units for Pikeman altogether, should it be left, or should it be adjusted?

I hadn't noticed, personally. I tend not to use very many Pikemen except for defensive purposes. Looking things up online, I can't really find any evidence of pikemen being effective against gunpowder units. If somebody has a link to a source stating this, that would be great. Several sources would seem to indicate that once bayonets were invented for the muskets, pikemen became obsolete. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

After the mid-seventeenth century, armies that adopted the flintlock musket began to abandon the pike altogether, or to greatly decrease their numbers. The invention of the bayonet provided an anti-cavalry solution, and the musket's firepower was now so deadly that combat was often decided by shooting alone. Through the Napoleonic era the spontoon, a kind of shortened pike with side-wings, was retained as a symbol by some NCOs; in practice it was probably more useful for gesturing and signaling than as a weapon.

In such an environment, pikemen grew to intensely dislike their own weapon, as they were forced to stand inactive as the combat went on around them as the opposing musketeers dueled, feeling that they were mere targets rather than soldiers, and that they were adding nothing to the battle raging around them. There are examples of pikemen throwing their weapons down and seizing muskets from fallen comrades, a sign that the pike was on the wane as a weapon.

However, if there is, in fact, evidence of pikemen being effective against gunpowder units, then by all means the bonus should be retained (although perhaps adjusted to only work against Musketmen).

 

[Roland Johansen]

That came out of discussions on these boards mainly. There was a general claim that in the early rennesaince well regulated Pikeman formations were an effective counter to early musket armed troops. I probably should change it to 50% or 100% vs Musketmen. Overall it comes down to gameplay and balance, and I'm not really sure about this (In fact you're the first person to mention it, and I had forgotten about it). Does anyone have an opinion on this? Should I drop the bonus to gunpowder units for Pikeman altogether, should it be left, or should it be adjusted?

My opinion:

Realism:

The pike is a unit that has great advantages against mounted and melee units because it can attack at a greater range than these units. Using close formations, the pikemen can stop the enemy from approaching their formation while they can still attack the enemy mounted or melee units. The formation does require good training especially when the formation needs to be kept while moving (offensively).
The main weakness of pikemen is that they don't have great protection from missiles as they typically lack shields and armor. When an enemy melee unit can break the formation of the pike unit, then the pikemen are also in trouble as the pikes cannot be employed in close combat.

This means that the unit should be good against horse based units (especially those without firearms) and decent against melee units. The disadvantage against macemen in regular civ4 is a bit weird however it does encourage mixed stacks. They should be weak against ranged units like longbowmen, crossbowmen and gunpowder based units especially once the fire rate of the gunpowder weapons increases and the gunpowder weapons get bayonets.

The only units that in reality could stand up to the early gunpowder units were horse based units that could close the distance quickly and longbowmen. The longbowmen could shoot a lot further than the musketmen and also had a higher fire rate. However training a unit of longbowmen was a lot more expensive than training a unit of musketmen. So maybe musketmen did offer more bang for your buck.

In reality macemen were sometimes mixed in units of pikemen to add close quarter fighting power (before the gunpowde era). Later in the era of gunpowder units, pikemen were often added to musketmen units to protect them against close quarter fighting units especially horse based units that could close in quickly.

Civilisation doesn't have the ability to create mixed units, but mixed stacks of units does offer some replication of this reality.


Read this wikipedia entry about pikemen. It's decent. The part from 'medieval revival' upto 'the end of the pike era' is probably the most interesting section.

Gameplay:

For gameplay, it is important that units each have their function so that they can't be ignored. You want to make sure that pikemen have their use but can't create one-unit stacks. In this game, I think pikemen should have a large bonus against all the horse based units upto cuirassiers and a reduced bonus against cavalry (because they have ranged weapons). That would make them useful. I don't see the need for a bonus against gunpowder units and realistically it would be very weird. Knights and cuirassiers should be able to attack musketmen.
If it is possible to get cavalry units shortly after riflemen, then it's probably good for game balance to let pikemen still have a good bonus against cavalry.

EDIT: By the way, you can make macemen less dominant against pikemen (giving pikemen also an anti-melee bonus) while keeping macemen useful by not allowing pikemen city attack promotions. A city attack promotion is pretty weird for this unit as for its power it relies on its formation. It's all but impossible to maintain such a formation when climbing city walls. On the other hand, one could argue that the highly effective pike formations are already represented by the landsknecht unit and that the other pikemen are lesser trained versions.

 

[bestbrian]

Pikeman should have a bonus v Mounted, and should not have a bonus v Gunpowder. The only reason Pikes were effective against early Musket units was as part of a mixed Musket-Pike formation where they provided mutual protection to each other; this is replicated by having a mixed stack of Pikes and Muskets. With the development of the Socket Bayonet, the Pike was rendered obsolescent and removed from frontline warfare (although halberds and such still hung on in a limited capacity into the 19th century).

In short: the default BTS Pikeman is just fine.

 

[Rusty Edge]

Pikeman should have a bonus v Mounted, and should not have a bonus v Gunpowder. The only reason Pikes were effective against early Musket units was as part of a mixed Musket-Pike formation where they provided mutual protection to each other; this is replicated by having a mixed stack of Pikes and Muskets. With the development of the Socket Bayonet, the Pike was rendered obsolescent and removed from frontline warfare (although halberds and such still hung on in a limited capacity into the 19th century).

In short: the default BTS Pikeman is just fine.

I was going to say something like that. Making the original musket somehow depend on combined arms makes sense if you want to do it that way, making all gunpowder at a disadvatage against pikes doen't make any sense.

I think the real issue is that muskets changed a lot from the time the Spanish conquered the New World until the American Civil War, both in rate of fire ( matchlocks/flintlocks/paper cartridges/percussion caps) and close quarters combat (bayonets). Fixng that would likely require another unit, or a 100% occurrence random event -type python bonus ( not promotion)whereby all muskets got a first strike bonus with Replaceble Parts ( for rate of fire) , and a Military Science bayonet bonus against melee and defense against mounted.

There I go again. Civ is a game of "what if?" and I can't resist those questions very well.

Phungus, I admire you as a man with a persistent vision as well as the passion and persistence to bring it to fruition. I don't want to take your eyes off of the prize. I wasn't lobbying for a change in LoR when I was discussing the disappointing deaths of GGs and legends earlier. Some people are in the habit of complaining, I'm in the habit of outlining ideas & options, it's just my way of being conversational. I am sorry, I didn't mean to nag.

As for Lor, when I'm not completely lost in my game, words like "smooth", "seamless" and "improved" often come to mind.

 

[phungus420]

Thanks Rusty Edge. My dream is to have people playing this mod in the Succession games, I like reading those.

Well seems the concensus is to remove the bonus against gunpowder from pikes. I think I'm going to up the Pike strength to 7 though. Anyone have an issue with this? Also no new units, everything is filled out well as far as I'm concerned.

 

[phungus420]

Thanks. So just a confirmation... Heavy Tank should not have a bonus against Armor or Armored Scout, but the normal Tank should indeed have a bonus against both?

I'm not sure, I think I'm going to tweak the Armor, Tank, and Heavy Tank slightly (very slightly). I just don't like the current upgrade path mainly. What I'm thinking is Armor Str 20 w/ +50% vs Machine Guns, Upgrades to Tank and Heavy Tank. Tank keeps same strength and retains blitz, but gets no further bonuses. Heavy Tank looses blitz and has a +25% against armor and armored scout. Armored Scout will gain an upgrade path to Tank. And both Tanks and Heavy Tanks will upgrade to Main Battle Tanks. At least this is what I'm picturing in my mind to balance things out and make the upgrade and unit differentiation more interesting.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Well seems the concensus is to remove the bonus against gunpowder from pikes. I think I'm going to up the Pike strength to 7 though. Anyone have an issue with this? Also no new units, everything is filled out well as far as I'm concerned.

There is in standard BTS no really good counter against the cuirassier as the pikeman is just at an equal footing against it. Next to that the formation promotion (+25% against mounted units, available with combat 2) is available later than the shock promotion (+25% against melee, available with combat 1) and mounted units can get extra experience from cheap stables. So the horse units are likely to be far better promoted to beat the pikemen than the pikemen are to beat the horse units

So those are good reasons to improve the pikeman.

However, in standard BTS, the pikeman costs 60 while the knight costs 90 and the cuirassier 100. Quite a large cost difference making the pikeman pretty cost efficient if it could reliably kill knights and cuirassiers.

If you improve the pikeman against cuirassiers, then it will become very powerful against knights and knights already are not used that much because of their high cost and good counter unit (pikeman). So it's hard to balance the pikeman against both units.

You could do something like:
Make the formation promotion only available at military tradition. That could represent the strong formations that were developed for pikemen and later riflemen which were pretty effective against mounted units. Since some promotions were moved to military science in the expansion pack, this is not a weird change. The pikeman could then be strength 7 + 100% vs mounted because the knight could get a promotion vs the pikeman and the pikeman not vs the knight. When cuirassiers are developed, then the extra promotion vs mounted also becomes available making freshly promoted pikemen able to gain the promotion to beat cuirassiers.

You should maybe raise the cost for pikemen a little as they are better now when unpromoted. I'd say 65 or 70 cost.

Numbers with pikeman strength 7 + 100% vs mounted (strength ratio pikeman/horse unit):

pikeman vs knight: 14 vs 10 (ratio 1,4)
combat 1 pikeman attacking combat 1 shock knight: 7.7 vs 6,06 (ratio 1,27)
combat 1 shock knight attacking combat 1 pikeman: 11 vs 12,95 (ratio 1,18)

pikeman vs cuirassier 14 vs 12 (ratio 1,17)
combat 1 pikeman attacking combat 1 shock cuirassier: 7.7 vs 7,27 (ratio 1,06)
combat 1, shock cuirassier attacking combat 1 pikeman: 13,2 vs 12,95 (ratio 0,98)
combat 2 formation pikeman attacking combat 2 shock cuirassier 8,4 vs 6,67 (ratio 1,26)
combat 2 shock cuirassier attacking combat 2 formation pikeman 14.4 vs 15,4 (ratio 1,07)

You probably will also increase the strength rating of the landsknecht to 7. To balance the matchup landsknecht vs macemen, you'll probably will want to reduce their bonus vs melee a little. Since civilization IV seems to only have bonuses in multiples of 25%, I'd suggest reducing the bonus vs melee to 75%. That works pretty good.

 

[bestbrian]

I don't think the Pikes need a buff, unless Knights and Curris have taken a strength bonus in LoR. In base BTS they counter Knights very well, and retain some effectivness against Curris; I don't see a need for them to be juiced. And, as pointed out above, they are cheap. I vote "leave 'em be".

 

[phungus420]

Well the thing is, pikemen armies were the main bulk of pre musket warfare. Yet in BtS the pikeman is probably the least used unit. While my philosophy is that gameplay > realism, there has got to be a way to encourage pikeman useage while leaving gameplay untouched in terms of feel, or improving it. How about making pikeman 8 str with 50% bonus vs mounted?

 

[achilleszero]

Hey Phungus, check this guy out. 4 weeks in the making. Its got the same helmet and sword as in the movie 300, and the cape actually animates this time around. He makes my original spartan look like a sissy. I think he'll be a much better posterchild for the opening screen (if I ever figure out how to make that happen).

Well the thing is, pikemen armies were the main bulk of pre musket warfare. Yet in BtS the pikeman is probably the least used unit. While my philosophy is that gameplay > realism, there has got to be a way to encourage pikeman useage while leaving gameplay untouched in terms of feel, or improving it. How about making pikeman 8 str with 50% bonus vs mounted?

Thats sounds reasonable. Of course I never noticed that they had the bonus vs gunpowder. Shows how much attention Ive been paying.