Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[<Nexus>]

I'm not really interested in new technologies at the moment. I'd actually like to cut down on the number of war techs that are currently in the tree - they feel too conceptually narrow to be good techs. Warfare can stay where it is now, and I do feel I have a little difficulty with counting civic and religious buildings as tricks for a particular tech when they are so dependent on other factors.

I dared to suggest it only because you already have introduced a new tech in the past days and I thouth it would be a good sollution for archery range and to cut back Warfare.
But you're the boss

I think I figured out over the last couple of days that it seems virtually impossible that I can stop modding.

Well, that is good for us

 

[Arkatakor]

@ Vokarya;

First off I would like to thank you for your contributions to this great mod. It is rare that I find so many ideas from a single source beneficial but that happened to be the case with your suggestions. I have only one suggestion though; the elephant bombardier seems way too high in strength (20). Mailed knights and other units in the same era are a good 6 points weaker or more. Even mounted units that show up later still have a weaker strength. My suggestion therefore would be to reduce the strength of elephant bombardier down to 13 or 14 - it would still have a niche, which is its 50% advantage vs mounted units.

 

[Vokarya]

@ Vokarya;

First off I would like to thank you for your contributions to this great mod. It is rare that I find so many ideas from a single source beneficial but that happened to be the case with your suggestions. I have only one suggestion though; the elephant bombardier seems way too high in strength (20). Mailed knights and other units in the same era are a good 6 points weaker or more. Even mounted units that show up later still have a weaker strength. My suggestion therefore would be to reduce the strength of elephant bombardier down to 13 or 14 - it would still have a niche, which is its 50% advantage vs mounted units.

I'll bring it down to 16 for now. I want the Bombardier to stay viable throughout the Renaissance Era, but I think I did go too far.

 

[Zorn]

Appreciated. There was really no incentive to build any other unit, despite the huge cost.

 

[Vokarya]

I finally finished the Dragoon unit. This is the third unit in the "Mobile Defense" line, upgrading from the Mounted Infantry and Man-at-Arms. It becomes available at Cavalry Tactics (giving this tech its second trick), and is fairly strong at Strength 17 (stronger than Arquebusier, but not quite as powerful as Cuirassier or Musketman).

View attachment 372413View attachment 372414

The unit artwork is taken from the Napoleonic Light Cavalry pack. I discovered when I was looking at these units that the face of the unit is a separate mesh from the rest of the body, making it fairly easy to create an array of diverse Dragoons by just replacing the face. I am not a very skilled unit modeler yet, but I am finding out what I can do with rearranging parts and skins. Most of the Dragoons use the British model:
View attachment 372415View attachment 372416View attachment 372420View attachment 372422

However, there is also a French Hussar in the pack that I am also using as the base for a Japanese Dragoon:
View attachment 372417View attachment 372421

And a United States Dragoon that I decided to use for various native American Dragoons:
View attachment 372418View attachment 372419

 

[Zorn]

I noticed a small inconsistency:
Mech. infantery has a 25% bonus for defending cities, but does not get the city defender promotions.
I think they should get the promos, they come from the city defender line, and the default infantry of the age should be able to ba a good city defender.

Also, Infantry can upgrade to mot. infantery. It´s not really wrong, since mot infantery has 2 power more, but they are serve different purposes, so it seems weird that one of them appears as an upgrade of the other.

 

[Vokarya]

The Mounted Rifleman is the last unit in the Mobile Defense line. It comes along at the same time as Rifleman, and is a little bit stronger (Str 28) but more expensive (cost 200). It fills the space between the Dragoon and the Motorized Infantry.

View attachment 372478

I found the art I was looking for in the ROME pack. It's called a Dragoon there, but I'm using earlier Dragoon arts and this was perfect; a Rifleman on a horse. I was able to create a few different artworks by dropping in different Rifleman bodies and skins.

View attachment 372479View attachment 372480

Also at this point, I'm cutting the Mobile Defense line free from the rest of the mounted line; instead, they are part of the regular ground troops array.

• The main mobile defense line goes Mounted Infantry - Man-at-Arms - Dragoon - Mounted Rifleman - Motorized Infantry - Mechanized Infantry - Walker Mech.
• Chariot now upgrades to Horse Archer instead of Mounted Infantry.
• Arquebusier can upgrade to Dragoon as well as Musketman. Rifleman can upgrade to Mounted Rifleman as well as Infantry. I put in <ForceObsoleteTech>s to make sure that they disappear when they are supposed to even if you don't have Horses. We will have to see if anything else gets weird because of this.

 

[Vokarya]

I noticed a small inconsitency:
Mech. infantery has a 25% bonus for defending cities, but does not get the city defender promotions.
I think they should get the promos, they come from the city defender line, and the default infantry of the age should be able to ba a good city defender.

I said the exact same thing about Mechanized Infantry years ago. Mech Infantry can't get City Garrison promotions because they are classified as a Tracked Unit. Promotion eligibility is set at the unit class level, and to change that would make tanks eligible for City Garrison promotions. Mech Infantry can dig in and be pretty good at city defense, but Special Infantry will be even better.

Also, Mechanized Infantry is not really the default infantry of their age any more -- that role goes to Modern Infantry, followed by Special Infantry. They are the units that you can conscript and promote to City Garrison. This is why I changed Special Infantry to be an upgrade of Modern Infantry; you would always have available one unit capable of City Garrison promotions.

Also, Infantry can upgrade to mot. infantery. It´s not really wrong, since mot infantery has 2 power more, but they are serve different purposes, so it seems weird that one of them appears as an upgrade of the other.

All of these mobile defense units are effectively an infantry unit + some kind of transportation (Dragoon is Arquebus with horses, Mounted Rifleman is Rifleman with Horses). I absolutely don't want to mess around with creating separate units for these, so I used the upgrade system. An infantry unit plus a number of vehicles (as modeled by Oil Products + Vulcanized Rubber) gives you a Motorized Infantry. Admittedly, once you get on the mobile defense path you can't get off, but you can still build non-mobile units.

 

[Zorn]

So - I should be able to upgrade a swordsman to a mounted infantery, right?

 

[JosEPh_II]

So - I should be able to upgrade a swordsman to a mounted infantery, right?

I don't think so.

JosEPh

 

[Vokarya]

So - I should be able to upgrade a swordsman to a mounted infantery, right?

I was thinking of allowing Axeman or Spearman to upgrade to Mounted Infantry. I'm not completely sure, if only on the grounds that I don't want MI to steal the melee units' niches. The mobile defense units in general are supposed to be fairly generic; it's part of the tradeoff for the speed bonus. Mounted Infantry and Man-at-Arms get a bonus against Archery since that's carried over from the Charlemagne mod; Dragoon and Mounted Rifleman get a bonus against Melee since I gave that to all gunpowder cavalry to cancel out the bonus that Spearman-type units get against Mounted.

 

[Vokarya]

Here is what I have to consider one of my favorite units: the Lancer. The Lancer is an upgrade of the Heavy Cavalry and is the light cavalry unit of the Renaissance Era. It comes available at Flintlock as I don't want Cavalry Tactics to have too many units of the same type (it already has both Cuirassier and Dragoon, so I think a third mounted unit would be too much of the same thing).

View attachment 372681

Compared to the Cuirassier, the Lancer is cheaper (cost 160 vs. 180), doesn't require Iron to build, and has the same base Strength but a lower overall Strength once the Flintlock bonus to Cuirassier kicks in -- Lancers stay at 18, while Cuirassiers go up to 21 at Flintlock.

The artwork was not as easy to do as I thought. Most of the Renaissance mounted units are gunners, and I wasn't quite sure how those would convert to a unit that acts like a melee unit. So I scrounged through all the units I have access to and put together a pretty good collection with some reskinning and some actual recombining of parts. I have what I consider to be a "standard palette" of ethnicities: African, Asian, European, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Native American. I think that covers most major civilizations pretty well. (Yes, that European Lancer has a Japanese flag. That was my first run-through to make sure that the base unit would work.)

View attachment 372676View attachment 372677View attachment 372678
View attachment 372679View attachment 372682View attachment 372683

I did come up with two bonus arts: a Japanese Lancer and a Russian Lancer.
View attachment 372680View attachment 372684

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Very cool! Another masterpiece by Vokarya! :thumbup:

 

[Zorn]

Here is what I have to consider one of my favorite units: the Lancer. The Lancer is an upgrade of the Heavy Cavalry and is the light cavalry unit of the Renaissance Era. It comes available at Flintlock as I don't want Cavalry Tactics to have too many units of the same type (it already has both Cuirassier and Dragoon, so I think a third mounted unit would be too much of the same thing).

Compared to the Cuirassier, the Lancer is cheaper (cost 160 vs. 180), doesn't require Iron to build, and has the same base Strength but a lower overall Strength once the Flintlock bonus to Cuirassier kicks in -- Lancers stay at 18, while Cuirassiers go up to 21 at Flintlock.

Sounds good, but what about putting the dragoon to flintlock (since they use guns) so you can put the lancer to cav. tactics?

 

[Vokarya]

Sounds good, but what about putting the dragoon to flintlock (since they use guns) so you can put the lancer to cav. tactics?

I'd rather have Dragoon and Cuirassier together as their roles are further apart. The other idea I had was to lower Lancer strength by 1 and move it to Leadership, but I'm not sure if that is too close to Chivalry and the Mailed Knight. Leadership is okay for trick count at 2 (Garrison and the free Great General), but I'd like it to have a little more. In absolute terms, you are not going to get any non-gunpowder Renaissance Era unit, so these are all gun units even if you don't actually see the guns being used.

 

[Vokarya]

After some work, I was able to put together a real Light Cavalry unit. This is effectively a Cavalry with pistols instead of rifles. So compared to regular Cavalry, they are cheaper (240 vs. 270), lower Strength (24 vs. 27), higher withdrawal (40% vs. 30%), and don't require Rifling to train, only Military Tradition.

View attachment 372838

I thought making these units would be as easy as taking the rifle off a Cavalry and putting a pistol in its place. It wasn't. What I was able to find was a Cavalry unit carrying a pistol and animated that way (so it's firing one-handed instead of two), but it was using a modern pistol. I did some work in Nifskope and was able to take out the modern pistol and put in a heavy flintlock one. Then I was able to copy it around using other models. Here's a selection with regular Cavalry for comparison.

European Light Cavalry have a slight reskin; this is the old French Dragoon look.
View attachment 372839

African, Asian, and Indian light cavalry.
View attachment 372841View attachment 372840View attachment 372842

Native American and South American.
View attachment 372846View attachment 372845

Middle Eastern and Roman/Italian light cavalry.
View attachment 372843View attachment 372844

I'm not sure how many more units I will be able to do, as I've started to run into some problems with big maps and adding units with the Megapack installed. I don't want to break the ability to use the Megapack, so I don't think there will be any more units with an array of models. I still want to re-introduce the Armored Car and Jeep units, who have art assets already in the mod. The Armored Car fits right between the Light Cavalry and the Light Tank, and the Jeep is a Modern Era scout.

 

[Vokarya]

Unit modding goes a LOT faster when the art assets are already created and all I have to do is make XML. Here are two units originally from ROM to fill specific niches in unit lines.

The Armored Car is the mid-Industrial upgrade of the new Light Cavalry, and upgrades from there to the Light Tank. The Armored Car is not very strong (Strength 32, and Infantry at Strength-34 are already available) but fast (Speed 3 and Blitz).

View attachment 372851View attachment 372853View attachment 372852

The Jeep is the Modern Era upgrade of the Scout line. I have deliberately placed it at Manufacturing to allow the Motorcycle some time to be useful throughout the Industrial Era. The Jeep is also a fast unit (Speed 3) and starts with Commando, allowing you to use it for quick reconnaissance. I use Scout-type units in my stacks for both passive recon (with Sentry promotions) and as a platform for Medic promotions (while recon units don't get Medic naturally, they can be promoted to it).

View attachment 372855View attachment 372856View attachment 372854

 

[Rezca]

Unit modding goes a LOT faster when the art assets are already created and all I have to do is make XML. Here are two units originally from ROM to fill specific niches in unit lines.

The Armored Car is the mid-Industrial upgrade of the new Light Cavalry, and upgrades from there to the Light Tank. The Armored Car is not very strong (Strength 32, and Infantry at Strength-34 are already available) but fast (Speed 3 and Blitz).

View attachment 372851View attachment 372853View attachment 372852

The Jeep is the Modern Era upgrade of the Scout line. I have deliberately placed it at Manufacturing to allow the Motorcycle some time to be useful throughout the Industrial Era. The Jeep is also a fast unit (Speed 3) and starts with Commando, allowing you to use it for quick reconnaissance. I use Scout-type units in my stacks for both passive recon (with Sentry promotions) and as a platform for Medic promotions (while recon units don't get Medic naturally, they can be promoted to it).

View attachment 372855View attachment 372856View attachment 372854

I'm thinking the Armored Car is going to be doing the same thing the Light Tank does with that 3 movement speed. That is, not many are going to bother with Infantry and Tanks since the Light Tanks and Armored Car(s) are only "slightly" weaker, but move much faster. Can get to the front lines faster, through enemy territory faster, but are only two points weaker?

I never liked the large movement on the Light Tank for that reason. Shouldn't they have something negative trait attached to them, like a penalty for attacking cities?

 

[Vokarya]

I'm thinking the Armored Car is going to be doing the same thing the Light Tank does with that 3 movement speed. That is, not many are going to bother with Infantry and Tanks since the Light Tanks and Armored Car(s) are only "slightly" weaker, but move much faster. Can get to the front lines faster, through enemy territory faster, but are only two points weaker?

I never liked the large movement on the Light Tank for that reason. Shouldn't they have something negative trait attached to them, like a penalty for attacking cities?

It's a tradeoff between strength and speed - these light cavalry units may not have the strength to break through fortified defenders. Also, just about all cavalry get -25% against cities; I think it's universal except for UU's. We'll have to do beta testing to find out. I'm using the existing unit strengths to benchmark these new ones.

 

[Vokarya]

I just had to do one last unit. The Hovercar is the Transhuman Era upgrade of the Jeep. I wanted to do this for two reasons: one, to give the Scout line one final extension into the Transhuman Era; two, to pull Automated Traffic out of one-trick-pony status. I probably would have considered proposing deleting this tech a long time ago if I didn't have this in the idea pool.

The Hovercar gets some substantial advantages over the Jeep: it moves faster (speed 5), can cross any terrain, and starts with the Sentry II promotion in additional to all the others. It doesn't need Amphibious, as it can never attack. Like all Recon units, it is defense-only.

Unfortunately, there isn't very much animation for this unit. I have it using tank animations, so they move forward properly, but they don't do anything if destroyed.
View attachment 372902View attachment 372903