Slitherine

Greetings, it's quiet here these days but for those of you who do still enjoy this lovely game I've put together East vs West: European Invasion, which in adds most of the armies from Pike and Shot into Sengoku Jidai. It's be available as an in game download, SP and MP skirmishes, no DLC required; I have not put together a campaign module for it.

Below is a detailed feature list. Largest mechanical changes are allowing any non-mob melee-only foot to charge any mounted, but they don't inflict an automatic cohesion drop, disallowing non light cavalry evasion, and disallowing overhead shooting by archers -

1) Adds about 140 army lists from Pike and Shot - leaving out B-sides and English Civil War lists
2) They face off against most of Mandate of Heaven's lists with B-sides and a few redundant lists removed, and Ikko-Ikki added.
3) Generals added for European side. They are not named. Cronos09 kindly provided icons for European generals
4) Overhead shooting for foot bows removed
5) Evasion for non-light cavalry removed
6) Fixed bug from vanilla SJ and PnS in which cavalry did not get +100 Impact against Mob in Open
7) Heavy Weapon get 50% Melee POA unlocked against Unsteady Pike and Bayonet
8) Spearmen get 50% Melee POA unlocked against Unsteady Pike and Bayonet
9) Heavy Weapon Melee POA is proportionate; thus Korean mixed units get 50, not 100, HW POA
10) Mongol light cavalry armed with Carbine given 100% Carbine
11) Reiters given 50 Impact Pistol, with Impact Pistol revised to allow partial POA
12) Turn & Shoot (thanks to Cronos09)
13) Evaders take casualties (thanks to Cronos09)
14) Dynamic score updating (thanks to Cronos09)
15) B-side no longer gets free first turn in MP (thanks to Cronos09)
16) Held Firm messages (thanks to Cronos09)

I did not mess with list composition at all. Thus there isn't a Dutch in Formosa or a Russian Albazin campaign list.

4) was done because that sort of thing is very rarely attested, and was added to the base game as flavor. In addition, I was fine weakening bows in a game that covers a time period that saw the decline of military archery
5) can be tough on many Asian armies, but it's not hopeless - their cavalry just have to be used carefully. I found the evasion led to very scattered battles, and again this is an era that saw the decline of steppe nomad power. This gives greater incentive to field proper light cavalry in conjunction with non-light mounted.

Many thanks to Cronos09 for his contributions.

You can see a sample of the mod in action here:
https://youtu.be/2osuRDinYfk

Added in 1.1:
1) Updated capability descriptions in detailed unit cards
2) Add HW and Spearmen 50% Melee POA against Unsteady Keils
3) Reduced number of turns routing units have until dispersal from 4 to 3. This leads to less atomized battles and fewer battles decided by distant rallies
4) Mobs reduced from 12 to 10AP
5) Any non-light infantry with no ranged weaponry other than Mob can charge non-light mounted
6) Infantry charging mounted do not inflict auto drop, only guaranteed +50POA, with the exception of keils, who still inflict a drop (thanks to Cronos09)
7) Fixed minor bug in which HW units with 50% Swordsmen only get 50 Impact POA
8) Ming & Zheng armored HW units changed from 100% HW to 84% HW 16% LS 16% Swords

Hi, the mod certainly looks interesting. Fingers crossed for Koxinga and VOC armies in the future.

For the sake of a little bit of historical accuracy, could you either

1) increase the range of Arquebus to be on par with other ranged weapons (2 tile shortrange, 4 tile longrange), tweaking lethality a bit making it superior to bows but inferior to muskets
OR
2) replace all arquebuses with muskets

The period Asian accounts are quite clear on how the arquebuses outranged bows in terms of effective combat range. (Presumably using war arrows, not the flight/small game arrows)
This is impressive considering that the Asian arquebuses originated from short barreled marine models.
Also, unlike the POA values assigned in game, it seems matchlocks were preferred over bows against cavalries as well.


On a side note, historical Imjin War era Korean army was very different from how it is portrayed in the game, but making it more historical might also make it too weak and unplayable for meeting engagement type battles, what a shame.

companion wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 3:28 pm

Thanks. I purposefully wanted to avoid changing the game too much from its vanilla state; the changes were meant to be a sort of "vanilla+/unofficial patch" in style.

If I were to mod the game further, I would probably make Bow have a range of two, give Asian units Musket, but make Musket a range of 3 (2 close range, 3 long range). The largest task by far would be going through the Asian lists and simplifying them, ie, reducing the myriad quality/size options of various units, combining many units into mixed units (such as Japanese teppo with covering archers) etc. I am not sure if this is a route I will take though; the mod is meant to be a bit of fun, but not a true alt-history exploration (thus I did not create Portugal in Macao/Dutch in Zeelandia/Russian Albazin lists).

Thank you for putting this together. Always happy to have more Sengoku content.

I don't understand why you canceled the evasion for the non-light cavalry units. It makes some armies relying heavily on regular horse archers like the Mongol, Jurchen, and Joseon unusable(even in P&S it makes the regular Muscovite cavalry and Ottoman cavalry unusable in many cases). It seems like a negligence of the P&S, rather than it was deliberately designed like that. Otherwise, the devs won't add it to the Sengoku and FoG 2 later.

Dux Limitis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 2:54 pm I don't understand why you canceled the evasion for the non-light cavalry units. It makes some armies relying heavily on regular horse archers like the Mongol, Jurchen, and Joseon unusable(even in P&S it makes the regular Muscovite cavalry and Ottoman cavalry unusable in many cases). It seems like a negligence of the P&S, rather than it was deliberately designed like that. Otherwise, the devs won't add it to the Sengoku and FoG 2 later.

It was a deliberate design decision in Pike and Shot, not negligence - it was an era in which massed missile cavalry did notably badly in Europe. Want evasion? Bring light cavalry. It also does not make such units unusable - instead, they need to be used carefully. I'm playing 5 MP matches right now, and they're doing just fine. Finally, I dislike the mass scattering of the battlefield that resulted; that didn't feel particularly realistic either.

If you want to mod your own version to allow evasion for such units, it is quite easy to do. Obviously if you do MP your opponent would need to do the same.

SnuggleBunnies wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:16 pm

Dux Limitis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 2:54 pm I don't understand why you canceled the evasion for the non-light cavalry units. It makes some armies relying heavily on regular horse archers like the Mongol, Jurchen, and Joseon unusable(even in P&S it makes the regular Muscovite cavalry and Ottoman cavalry unusable in many cases). It seems like a negligence of the P&S, rather than it was deliberately designed like that. Otherwise, the devs won't add it to the Sengoku and FoG 2 later.

It was a deliberate design decision in Pike and Shot, not negligence - it was an era in which massed missile cavalry did notably badly in Europe. Want evasion? Bring light cavalry. It also does not make such units unusable - instead, they need to be used carefully. I'm playing 5 MP matches right now, and they're doing just fine. Finally, I dislike the mass scattering of the battlefield that resulted; that didn't feel particularly realistic either.

If you want to mod your own version to allow evasion for such units, it is quite easy to do. Obviously if you do MP your opponent would need to do the same.

You need to consider Sengoku was set in Oriental, and this mod intends to bring the P&S armies to this environment, they were not notably bad in Oriental during this period.

If you could please tell me how to add it back, I'll try mod my own version for both MP&SP.

Dux Limitis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:29 pm You need to consider Sengoku was set in Oriental, and this mod intends to bring the P&S armies to this environment, they were not notably bad in Oriental during this period.

If you could please tell me how to add it back, I'll try mod my own version for both MP&SP.

...I did consider that, I made the mod. Bow cavalry are much more effective at shooting cav then gun cav. Melee Pistols who are disrupted or disordered are down 100 vs melee swords. Ottoman and Russian armies do just fine in Pike and Shot.

Anyway, linked is a version with evasion enabled for 'Cavalry' without Light or Heavy Lance:

(link deleted, this used an old version)

Thus, things like Cossacks with Carbine can evade, but ranged Horse cannot, neither can any Determined Horse or Gendarmes. If you wish to revise that, lines 506-508 in data/battle/scripts/assault.bsf:

if ((IsUnitSquadType(me, "Cavalry") == 1) || (IsUnitSquadType(me, "Camelry") == 1))
{
if ((GetAttrib(me, "Heavy_Lancers") == 0) && (GetAttrib(me, "Light_Lancers") == 0))

If you don't already have it, you want notepad++ for this kind of thing, not regular notepad.

SnuggleBunnies wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:43 pm

Dux Limitis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:29 pm You need to consider Sengoku was set in Oriental, and this mod intends to bring the P&S armies to this environment, they were not notably bad in Oriental during this period.

If you could please tell me how to add it back, I'll try mod my own version for both MP&SP.

...I did consider that, I made the mod. Bow cavalry are much more effective at shooting cav then gun cav. Melee Pistols who are disrupted or disordered are down 100 vs melee swords. Ottoman and Russian armies do just fine in Pike and Shot.

Anyway, linked is a version with evasion enabled for 'Cavalry' without Light or Heavy Lance:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fumhqma1 ... n.rar/file

Thus, things like Cossacks with Carbine can evade, but ranged Horse cannot, neither can any Determined Horse or Gendarmes. If you wish to revise that, lines 506-508 in data/battle/scripts/assault.bsf:

if ((IsUnitSquadType(me, "Cavalry") == 1) || (IsUnitSquadType(me, "Camelry") == 1))
{
if ((GetAttrib(me, "Heavy_Lancers") == 0) && (GetAttrib(me, "Light_Lancers") == 0))

If you don't already have it, you want notepad++ for this kind of thing, not regular notepad.

Many thanks, I'll try to mod it.

East vs West has been updated to 1.1. This is probably the final update to the mod, unless I decide to figure out how to put together a campaign for it.

Changelog:
1) Updated capability descriptions in detailed unit cards
2) Add HW and Spearmen 50% Melee POA against Unsteady Keils
3) Reduced number of turns routing units have until dispersal from 4 to 3. This leads to less atomized battles and fewer battles decided by distant rallies
4) Mobs reduced from 12 to 10AP
5) Any non-light infantry with no ranged weaponry other than Mob can charge non-light mounted
6) Infantry charging mounted do not inflict auto drop, only guaranteed +50POA, with the exception of keils, who still inflict a drop (coded by Cronos09)
7) Fixed minor bug in which HW units with 50% Swordsmen only get 50 Impact POA
8 ) Ming & Zheng armored HW units changed from 100% HW to 84% HW 16% LS 16% Sword

SnuggleBunnies wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:43 pm

Dux Limitis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 3:29 pm You need to consider Sengoku was set in Oriental, and this mod intends to bring the P&S armies to this environment, they were not notably bad in Oriental during this period.

If you could please tell me how to add it back, I'll try mod my own version for both MP&SP.

Thus, things like Cossacks with Carbine can evade, but ranged Horse cannot, neither can any Determined Horse or Gendarmes. If you wish to revise that, lines 506-508 in data/battle/scripts/assault.bsf:

if ((IsUnitSquadType(me, "Cavalry") == 1) || (IsUnitSquadType(me, "Camelry") == 1))
{
if ((GetAttrib(me, "Heavy_Lancers") == 0) && (GetAttrib(me, "Light_Lancers") == 0))

If you don't already have it, you want notepad++ for this kind of thing, not regular notepad.

Could you please teach me how to revise that? I tried to change it to:

if ((IsUnitSquadType(me, "Cavalry") == 1) || (IsUnitSquadType(me, "Camelry") == 1))
{
if ((GetAttrib(me, "Heavy_Lancers") == 1) && (GetAttrib(me, "Light_Lancers") == 1))

But it doesn't work.