Testing next version of the mod for those still interested, upping Offensive capabilities of militia while lowering their health



Current:

Attack 30

Dmg 20

Health 140



1.01:

Attack 40

Dmg 30

Health 100



I am also upping the scaling of units to the late game, as after age 3 they keep their current weapons (tier 3 iron) and need more buffs to compete and thus Era 4-6 should be much stronger (around 20% higher then current stats)

WHAT THIS MOD AIMS TO ACCOMPLISH:

Make conquering a civ, even when their army is destroyed, take a lot longer to accomplish. Armies can no longer steamroll through a civ and take no casualties. This is about the extent that I want this mod to accomplis

Leiska wrote:
This mod is very good, however, I feel like militia starts out a tiny bit too strong. They seem to wreck most basic units with starting gear, but they eventually get outclassed as units gain levels and better equipment. So, perhaps a nerf to inifial stats but a slight buff to era scaling to compensate would be in order?

Hello, I made a modification similar to the original, but with a nerf for the initial stats (too strong in my opinion at the first era) and a buff over time (Remain useful in the future)



City defense Alternative.rar
City defense Alternative.rar

If you do so you the folder will lack one essential file that binds everything together.

In the tutorial thread there is a reference modding file you can upload and take as an example.

If you need any help do not hesitate to ask.

Does this mod still work with the new update and mod compatibility if you just throw the files into a folder, and place that within the Community folder meant for modding?

This mod is very good, however, I feel like militia starts out a tiny bit too strong. They seem to wreck most basic units with starting gear, but they eventually get outclassed as units gain levels and better equipment. So, perhaps a nerf to inifial stats but a slight buff to era scaling to compensate would be in order?

Another great and essential mod.

JetJaguar wrote:
Sounds good. your mod has definitely made things better. Thanks!

Im happy people are enjoying it!

thatsgerman wrote:
Testing next version of the mod for those still interested, upping Offensive capabilities of militia while lowering their health



Current:

Attack 30

Dmg 20

Health 140



1.01:

Attack 40

Dmg 30

Health 100



I am also upping the scaling of units to the late game, as after age 3 they keep their current weapons (tier 3 iron) and need more buffs to compete and thus Era 4-6 should be much stronger (around 20% higher then current stats)

Sounds good. your mod has definitely made things better. Thanks!

thatsgerman wrote:
I tried adding multiple units to garrison to get infantry and ranged for city defense, it didnt work though. I have not yet tried just switching militia to ranged tho, It might make city defense too strong but it is something I would be willing to try. If this were to happen the models of the units would look weird, I could do 2 options.

1. make all the units look the same, so Drakken would have human looking city defenders, unless the faction had an archer model (assuming I choose Vaulter marines, which is my fav faction).



2. Im not sure if this would work, but I could keep the militia models, except they would magically shoot arrows out of their spears.

I doubt this would work since each model, im assuming, has its own animation code set for each model since each model varies in size, ect.



Also I added a bug I found

Great mod really makes game better.



I've messed around alot with the files and animations for ranged weapons and melee weapons when editing heroes.



It would be possible to equip militia with ranged weapons and set them to behave like ranged units but not animation to support it. They would basically wave the bow around like it was a spear. Even with allocating an already existing projectile battle animation does not seem to work unless the model is already a 'ranged' model.



You're 1st option seems the only viable one to change the militia model to an already ranged model.

I found that the natural city defense is pretty terrible in this game, bad enough that even on hard difficulties it is pretty easy to quickly take over an entire civilization with an army if the enemy has had their army destroyed. This leads to bad AI games and making backdooring too easy for multiplayer.



MOD DESCRIPTION:

Vastly improves Militia stats, they have similar stats to Broken Lord Infantry.

Improved starting Militia numbers, up from 1 to 3.



WHAT THIS MOD AIMS TO ACCOMPLISH:

Make conquering a civ, even when their army is destroyed, take a lot longer to accomplish. Armies can no longer steamroll through a civ and take no casualties. This is about the extent that I want this mod to accomplish, I may lower the military buildings that give more garrison units but besides that I only plan to balance Militia stats and numbers since I do not have much modding experience.



INSTALLATION:

1. Open up your endless Legend folder, wherever that is (C:\ProgramFiles\Steam\Steamapps\Common or wherever you installed it)

2. go to Endless Legend\Public\Simulation folder

3. Open up the winrar and extract the 2 files into the Simulation Folder (MAKE SURE TO MAKE BACKUP FILES BEFORE YOU DO THIS)

4. Play



As I cannot play as much as I would like I would love if people who do try this mod to give some feedback on whether militia are to strong/need lower stats in some areas, ect.



CityDefense.rar



KNOWN BUGS:

The circle before a battle showing your chance to win the battle is incorrect, it shows your chance based on vanilla militia stats (aka if you have 1 militia and 1 broken lord infantry, the circle would show you loosing, if you had the militia, but assuming both units have same equipment, the battle would actually be very close.) This does not effect autocalc battles, battles will autocalc with modded stats.

Changelog:



10/3/2014

1.0 of this mod released

Kadatherion wrote:
Seems to be helping indeed, although I'm still not far enough in my current game (endless speed) to testify it doesn't lose its efficacy as the eras advance (but as the AI seldomly gears up with new toys its units - from what I've seen in the files seems there's actually no AI whatsoever to design units equipped with strategic res made items - I suppose it should keep working).



Was wondering though: would it be possible (unit model/animation compatibility permitting) to switch militia units to ranged? Wouldn't change much for AI vs AI battles (they autocalc anyway), but in my experience, when I assault an otherwise ungarrisoned city, militia units tend to hold position, which makes it trivial to kill them from afar with my marines, no matter how buffed up the militia unit was. But if it was a range 4 unit (with possibly a couple of defensive skills sprinkled on top) the player wouldn't be able to 100% avoid taking at least some retaliation damage. Hopefully this could help limiting the player too in his steamrolling an enemy.

I tried adding multiple units to garrison to get infantry and ranged for city defense, it didnt work though. I have not yet tried just switching militia to ranged tho, It might make city defense too strong but it is something I would be willing to try. If this were to happen the models of the units would look weird, I could do 2 options.

1. make all the units look the same, so Drakken would have human looking city defenders, unless the faction had an archer model (assuming I choose Vaulter marines, which is my fav faction).



2. Im not sure if this would work, but I could keep the militia models, except they would magically shoot arrows out of their spears.

I doubt this would work since each model, im assuming, has its own animation code set for each model since each model varies in size, ect.



Also I added a bug I found

Kadatherion wrote:
Was wondering though: would it be possible (unit model/animation compatibility permitting) to switch militia units to ranged? Wouldn't change much for AI vs AI battles (they autocalc anyway), but in my experience, when I assault an otherwise ungarrisoned city, militia units tend to hold position, which makes it trivial to kill them from afar with my marines, no matter how buffed up the militia unit was. But if it was a range 4 unit (with possibly a couple of defensive skills sprinkled on top) the player wouldn't be able to 100% avoid taking at least some retaliation damage. Hopefully this could help limiting the player too in his steamrolling an enemy.

That sounds like an excellent idea. I don't know if militia units can be modded into ranged units, but if they can, I'd definitely like to play-test it.

Seems to be helping indeed, although I'm still not far enough in my current game (endless speed) to testify it doesn't lose its efficacy as the eras advance (but as the AI seldomly gears up with new toys its units - from what I've seen in the files seems there's actually no AI whatsoever to design units equipped with strategic res made items - I suppose it should keep working).



Was wondering though: would it be possible (unit model/animation compatibility permitting) to switch militia units to ranged? Wouldn't change much for AI vs AI battles (they autocalc anyway), but in my experience, when I assault an otherwise ungarrisoned city, militia units tend to hold position, which makes it trivial to kill them from afar with my marines, no matter how buffed up the militia unit was. But if it was a range 4 unit (with possibly a couple of defensive skills sprinkled on top) the player wouldn't be able to 100% avoid taking at least some retaliation damage. Hopefully this could help limiting the player too in his steamrolling an enemy.

I tried this out with a friend. It does not seem OP at all, although we did test it in a game in progress. We're going to start another one tomorrow. I'm interested in seeing if it'll keep more AI's alive. Tired of seeing 1 or 2 AI steamroll everyone.

thatsgerman wrote:
ATM AI modding is way out of my league, this mod just changes some base numbers, very easy to do. Modding which buildings the AI take priority on not only is hard to find, but hard to test. I would love if I could but unfortunately it is something I cannot do.

I noticed a "priority" rating in one of the files a while back. It was next to the AI bonuses for the various difficulty levels; including the AI's bonus for building units. but it was simply a "priority = 1" next to everything. I don't know what increasing it or decreasing it would do. but maybe modding the AI's priority to build units isn't difficult. I'm just hesitant to adjust numbers before I'm certain of what effect they'll have. Does anyone know?

thatsgerman wrote:
I also think this is a huge problem that rivals the lack of city defense.

I couldn't agree more. I've yet to even look at any of the files for diplomacy. I think something like Civ 5's system would work well here. It would be great if weaker factions could team up against run-aways. They could remain at cold war (basically a trade embargo) and I think run-ways should get banned from the market. We know such a feature exist, at least in part, because of The Roving Clans' ability to ban from the market. From my experience so far, getting banned from the market could hurt much more than not having trade routes with other factions.

JetJaguar wrote:
I agree. Hopefully they make use of the city tile morale bonuses, now that there are more units (they also get morale bonuses for being adjacent to one another, which is easier the more there are of them). I haven't had time to test (I will soon), but it seems like this decision will either favor battles that last over 6 rounds, requiring more time to take cities (Low Attack/Damage and High Def/Life) -or- cities not taking quite as long to conquer as in vanilla, but doing so can actually result in loses for the attacker (High Atk/Dmg and Low Def/Life). I think I like the second solution more, because in my last game, even if me or the AI had taken twice as long as we did to steamroll the enemy, it would have still happened; and all in one war. but ideally, both slowing conquest down and the attacker suffering loses are good. So having both, without going too far, would be great.

Playing the one game I have with the mod I think I will eventually do this, but I would like to have more people test it out to see others opinions. Right now they just serve as tanky cannon fodder that just delay the eventual conquest, I think having the later option might actually lead to players considering peace after taking a city or two.

JetJaguar wrote:


Another thing I was thinking about: can the AI be modded to make building units a higher priority? Currently, there are just far too few units/armies. The AI has so few that there's really no reason why the player should build many (just keep your few updated). because of this, it's far too easy to for the player to maintain a very high military ranking relative to the AIs. It also leads to the problem of the AI (or the player) destroying another AI's only army... which results in the conquest of all their cities in a single war; as they have no units left (you can see their graph-line sink all the way to the bottom in the military ranking charts). In my last game, The Roving Clans had more provinces than anyone else (9, I believe); but, after a single battle, they had a zero (yes, Zero!) military ranking. and they went from having 9 provinces to having none very quickly. The Roving Clan's AI should have realized that their large, wealthy empire was just one battle away from being completely conquered.

ATM AI modding is way out of my league, this mod just changes some base numbers, very easy to do. Modding which buildings the AI take priority on not only is hard to find, but hard to test. I would love if I could but unfortunately it is something I cannot do.

JetJaguar wrote:


I also think that there should be more incentive for factions that are winning a war to make peace (on favorable terms, of course, if they're winning). Currently, an AI (or a player) has little reason to end a war that they're winning. The best thing to do is to simply take every last city the enemy has. With some of the changes you've made with your mod, it may be too costly and risky for the faction that's winning a war to just mindlessly keep taking every city until the enemy is eliminated. The most exciting wars would be wars where there's a chance for the losing side to make a comeback and win the war (or at least fight back for a stalemate). With the AI building so few units, there's little hope of a comeback or even a stand because, with just one main army, it's all-or-nothing: one single battle early in the war decides everything because there aren't any reserves. nor is there even much an attempt by the AI to build new units in all of it's cities to create a new army, in case their main one was destroyed. but, to sum up, there's simply no reason to make peace when you (or the AI) know you can steamroll the defenseless enemy without much chance of even losing a single unit.

I also think this is a huge problem that rivals the lack of city defense. Other games (Civ,Total War, ect) with similar gameplay elements give severe penalties to conquered cities (Unhappiness in Civ, Rebellions in Total War) along with Political consequences (Warmongering in Civ which leads to other civs ganging up on you). In EL, you literally have no penalties (at least none that I could see) for taking cities. The AI cares very little if you gobble up their neighbor, and the cities themselves couldn't care less that they have been conquered and basically function like your own cities after a dozen turns. Because of this, once you defeat an army, why bother signing peace? Units take too long to build for the most part, and unorganized armies are easily crushed

Unfortunately this is something that is just too difficult for someone like me to mod, I am hopping that the buffs to militia serve as a deterrent for continual war as I stated above, but thats really all I can accomplish. Its something that the developers will have to fix.

thatsgerman wrote:
Posted on Steam Forums

What I might do is flip their Low Attack/Damage and High Def/Life to High Atk/Dmg and Low Def/Life to make fortifications more important. This will hopefully make steamrolling harder, assuming you take more casualties.

I agree. Hopefully they make use of the city tile morale bonuses, now that there are more units (they also get morale bonuses for being adjacent to one another, which is easier the more there are of them). I haven't had time to test (I will soon), but it seems like this decision will either favor battles that last over 6 rounds, requiring more time to take cities (Low Attack/Damage and High Def/Life) -or- cities not taking quite as long to conquer as in vanilla, but doing so can actually result in loses for the attacker (High Atk/Dmg and Low Def/Life). I think I like the second solution more, because in my last game, even if me or the AI had taken twice as long as we did to steamroll the enemy, it would have still happened; and all in one war. but ideally, both slowing conquest down and the attacker suffering loses are good. So having both, without going too far, would be great.



Another thing I was thinking about: can the AI be modded to make building units a higher priority? Currently, there are just far too few units/armies. The AI has so few that there's really no reason why the player should build many (just keep your few updated). because of this, it's far too easy to for the player to maintain a very high military ranking relative to the AIs. It also leads to the problem of the AI (or the player) destroying another AI's only army... which results in the conquest of all their cities in a single war; as they have no units left (you can see their graph-line sink all the way to the bottom in the military ranking charts). In my last game, The Roving Clans had more provinces than anyone else (9, I believe); but, after a single battle, they had a zero (yes, Zero!) military ranking. and they went from having 9 provinces to having none very quickly. The Roving Clan's AI should have realized that their large, wealthy empire was just one battle away from being completely conquered.



I also think that there should be more incentive for factions that are winning a war to make peace (on favorable terms, of course, if they're winning). Currently, an AI (or a player) has little reason to end a war that they're winning. The best thing to do is to simply take every last city the enemy has. With some of the changes you've made with your mod, it may be too costly and risky for the faction that's winning a war to just mindlessly keep taking every city until the enemy is eliminated. The most exciting wars would be wars where there's a chance for the losing side to make a comeback and win the war (or at least fight back for a stalemate). With the AI building so few units, there's little hope of a comeback or even a stand because, with just one main army, it's all-or-nothing: one single battle early in the war decides everything because there aren't any reserves. nor is there even much an attempt by the AI to build new units in all of it's cities to create a new army, in case their main one was destroyed. but, to sum up, there's simply no reason to make peace when you (or the AI) know you can steamroll the defenseless enemy without much chance of even losing a single unit.



I'm also surprised at how much of a problem lack of city defense and steamrolling is in EL. The good news is that, in my opinion, almost everything else is amazing. I think EL is nothing less than a masterpiece! That's why it's frustrating to have one issue that makes me hold off on playing until it gets fixed. but at least they've made it modding-friendly, so we can create some short-term solutions.



Thanks again for your efforts. Without something like this, I'd have to wait for the next patch to keep playing. and, as I said above, I think this game is a masterpiece. I like it far too much to shelve it for even a little while. and other than these fairly basic problems (like the AI simply not building enough units), the AI doesn't seem so bad. They seem to manage their cities fairly well... though doing this is easier when they don't build units. That brings up another thing: if the AI starts building a lot more units, then so will the player. This will result in more interesting decisions for the player because he'll be building less city improvements because building many more units is now a priority. and building less city improvements (buildings) results in more selective choices. also helps discourage the "build everything everywhere" mentality.

JetJaguar wrote:
Thanks! This is just what the doctor ordered; addresses what is, without a doubt, the most glaring flaw of the EL currently.



In addition to the player being able to entirely wipe out any AI faction with ease, problems come from the AI being able to completely wipe out other AIs when they have a small advantage. In my last game, most AI vs AI wars ended with the complete elimination of the losing side. Would be nice to see the AI win a war against another AI without taking everything they have; maybe just taking a single city, so that the losing AI has a chance to comeback later.



by the way, did you increase city defense? this might allow for the Militia stats to not need improvement quite as much (to the level of Broken Lord infantry). More militia, better militia and higher city defense... collectively, these three things should solve the problem.



You should post this on the Steam forums.



Thanks again for creating this.

Posted on Steam Forums



This has happened to me as well, makes the game very odd when games are usually over for me by the 4/5th era as the AI frequently wipe each other out, along with my conquest. As for City fortifications, I just finished up a game and found that even without any fortification buildings, Cities are hard to conquer with adequate defenses. It takes around 4-5 turns to lower defenses which I feel is a decent amount of time to take a city (and since the militia are super tanky, it takes another 2 turns to actually kill off the militia). It is still possible to steamroll through a civ later in the game however and might change the scaling of militia (looking at code the militia get a bonus by era in all stats according to the formula "Attack/Defense/Damage...ect =Attack/Def/Dmg * [1+(Era-1)*0.2]") but I feel that fortifications are in a decent place. As well as that having all AI city defense lie in fortifications (Although they do build adequate defense) seems kinda risky.



What I might do is flip their Low Attack/Damage and High Def/Life to High Atk/Dmg and Low Def/Life to make fortifications more important. This will hopefully make steamrolling harder, assuming you take more casualties.



What I am surprised at is that this game shipped as it is with such a glaring problem. I mean the rest of the game is great and I really like it, but for me no game has gotten past the 4/5th era without either me or one of the AI have double the score/Military/FIDSI of the other AI, which makes for very short and boring games. This mod is just a band-aid on a very huge problem, hopefully they do something about it soon.

thatsgerman wrote:
I found that the natural city defense is pretty terrible in this game, bad enough that even on hard difficulties it is pretty easy to quickly take over an entire civilization with an army if the enemy has had their army destroyed. This leads to bad AI games and making backdooring too easy for multiplayer.



MOD DESCRIPTION:

Vastly improves Militia stats, they have similar stats to Broken Lord Infantry.

Improved starting Militia numbers, up from 1 to 3.



WHAT THIS MOD AIMS TO ACCOMPLISH:

Make conquering a civ, even when their army is destroyed, take a lot longer to accomplish. Armies can no longer steamroll through a civ and take no casualties. This is about the extent that I want this mod to accomplish, I may lower the military buildings that give more garrison units but besides that I only plan to balance Militia stats and numbers since I do not have much modding experience.



INSTALLATION:

1. Open up your endless Legend folder, wherever that is (C:\ProgramFiles\Steam\Steamapps\Common or wherever you installed it)

2. go to Endless Legend\Public\Simulation folder

3. Open up the winrar and extract the 2 files into the Simulation Folder (MAKE SURE TO MAKE BACKUP FILES BEFORE YOU DO THIS)

4. Play



As I cannot play as much as I would like I would love if people who do try this mod to give some feedback on whether militia are to strong/need lower stats in some areas, ect.



CityDefense.rar



Changelog:



10/3/2014

1.0 of this mod released

Thanks! This is just what the doctor ordered; addresses what is, without a doubt, the most glaring flaw of the EL currently.



In addition to the player being able to entirely wipe out any AI faction with ease, problems come from the AI being able to completely wipe out other AIs when they have a small advantage. In my last game, most AI vs AI wars ended with the complete elimination of the losing side. Would be nice to see the AI win a war against another AI without taking everything they have; maybe just taking a single city, so that the losing AI has a chance to comeback later.



by the way, did you increase city defense? this might allow for the Militia stats to not need improvement quite as much (to the level of Broken Lord infantry). More militia, better militia and higher city defense... collectively, these three things should solve the problem.



You should post this on the Steam forums.



Thanks again for creating this.