12-02-2003 12:58									#1
	Clash Testbed 7.5.1 Enter the AD-FREE zone

has been released at:

http://paws.wcu.edu/rb22393/clash/Clash_7-5-1.asp

This is the proper name for the comprehensive file alteration. It also includes some last-minute changes like making tech growth faster in Jericho and Onslaught. This is a copy of the included manual and the text on the website:

	12-02-2003 18:40									#2
	Full PM-box? Change here!

I think the unit values are a bit too small. I agree that an attack of 20000 was huge, but I don't like "1", I'd rather have 10. Same for health.
I'd rather have a unit with stats around 10 than around 1 (i.e. stats like CtP rather than Civ), because attack and health decrease, and it is easier to read a health of 5 than a health of 0.5.
I also think you made distance units totally useless. I used archers quite effectively, but they and javelineers seem to be useless now, probably due to the lack of good distance strength.
Note you could use armorPen to counter armor. That should be worth 0 for those who don't have armour. It is subtracted from opponents armor, so should never be more than best current armor - 1.

	13-02-2003 05:42									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Hey Richard, you've made a lot of progress! I can't comment expansively yet on what you have done, because all I have done so far is played the Onslaught scenario several times. I think it's a pretty fun scenario in general, although I think the Army Supplies are about a factor of two too high for a good feel in the scenario. Specifically I think it is really weird to have a replacement unit almost instantly appear anytime a unit is killed. Also because army supplies are so high, you can rarely do anything else with the economy without risking utter annihilation. This makes the scenario much more one-dimensional than I think it should be. But overall I found it to be engaging!

One way or another we will get a slider on the Econ orders frame for you soon. If I can get someone more experience to do it, I will put in the time myself to bumble through implementing it.

I haven't used much in the way of distance attack units yet, but if there are problems as Laurent says, I think they need to be fixed soon.

I'm also uncertain about every scenario dealing from the same technology base, but will try out what you've got first before commenting further. I do agree with you though that working out game mechanisms that make a whole-history scenario work well is a fairly high priority, and a tech tree there works for a variety of scenarios is a key enabler for this.

If you are interested, when you're done with the core technology tasks, I think the Attila scenario could be partly fixed simply by reducing the map size by factor of two in each dimension, and also reducing the populations further if needed. It also needs a lot of things like the the roads that the Romans actually had etc.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done with delenda!

Thanks for all the hard work!

-Mark

BTW has everyone gotten what they want from the other thread moved here? I would like to delete the other one soon.

	13-02-2003 14:37									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I didn´t mean to make archers useless. I tried to keep the numbers in about the same ratio as they were before. In general, archers have a distance strength that is better than the melee strength of core units of similar tech. Don´t forget that archer units are half the size of similar melee units; a legion has 4000 men but elite archers have 2000.

One thing I noticed while playing as Hannibal was that adding Chargers to an army causes the entire battle to close to melee much faster than normal. That could also be part of the problem. I will experiment with decreasing everyone´s mobility or increasing the range increment, and see if that makes archers better.

I think that the current size is good, especialy since the civ should advance beyond attack 1 units quite quickly. A phalanx has an attack of about 16 plus tech IIRC.

How do I use armorPen? I read about it in the dataformat but no unit anywhere in the testbed files I got had it, so I thought it wasn´t implemented yet.

If I give Elite Archers armorPen of 3 and a Legion has armor 4, that means that the Legion has an efective armor of one, right? But what happens if I use those archers against a Mob with armor of 1?

But you will see in the xml files that I did not use Armor very much. At first, I made both defense and armor increase with tech, but that made higher units much too hard to kill, so I kept armor the same and only increased defense. Since the effective defense is defense times armor, I thought there was no point for two numbers.

Go ahead and delete the other thread; I already fixed what Laurent asked in that thread when I reposted the file.

	13-02-2003 17:37									#5
	Increase Your PM Length

My point is I never got to build anything better than javelineers in Onslaught. Archers are not very powerful (they don't have a lot of time shooting from afar), so they need big numbers for low cost. The problem with the current stats is I get lots of individually useless javelineers for little cost, so I'd rather have more men in them so I don't have to wait to have 10 of them before I can use them.
Armorpen wasn't used because I don't think it makes much sense before the advent of crossbows and maybe composite bows, then gunpowder. But if you increase armor by tech, then armorpen might be useful.
Damage dealt is divided by max(1,armor - armorpen), so if you have armor =1, armorpen = 3, it deals as much damage as armor=4, armorpen=3. It can also be used for walls. This is interesting because a wall with a good armor will resist better against archaic siege weapons with no armorpen, but more recent weapons will deal much more damage. I think armorpen could be used for siege weapons to start with.