After today, I am halfway through with the UI's. I managed to get the Unit_Infos together but it took a very long time. The Romans alone took 45 minutes just to assign the correct names to the cards.
However I've been able to fix the ladders, they now work perfectly with the new walls, also a few EDU tweaks were made for visual purposes. Finally I implemented parts of Iskandar's Naval tweaks that he made for ExRM. Here is the description:
Crews: Heavier ships have larger crews in order to represent their affinity for boarding. This also increases their lifetime over consecutive battles.
Attack/Defence Stats: Light ship classes have better attack, to simulate their preference of ramming. All classes have similar defence values, light ships due to better defence skill, heavies - due to better armour. This makes heavies distinctly superior ships without turning them into undestroyable juggernauts.
Recruitment/Maintenance costs: Light ships have higher costs, heavies - slightly lower or the same(maintenance is always increased, though). I have sought two effects with that - first, to diversify the ships classes the AI produces and second, to reduce the overall ship numbers in the game, thus placing greater value on naval superiority.
Pirates:In the original stats, pirates had larger defence due to high armour which was the only thing that distinguished them from other ships, combined with whatever hardcoded bonus they get. Originally I sought to preserve this trait, but since Quinn pointed out that pirates seem to be too strong, I kept only the slightly higher overall defence value and reduced the armour value. They also have the minimum crew number. I've upped their costs as well, just in case this effects spawns. The AI seems to handle them better now, although it still costs 3-4 battles to finish off a pirate fleet. As the game progresses, though, and factions start to build heavier ships, the situation improves.
Overall, the battles take more casualties now, since crews are either the same or smaller and attack/defence values rebalancing makes for more damage done. So, no more chasing for 10 turns up one end of the Meditteranean down the other.
Everything that he said is included except for the recruitment and maintenance costs since the economy is still vanilla.
What's left:
1. I need to assign the correct names to the next half of the Unit Cards (Will take a few hours)
2. Bercor is in the process of generating Sprites. He was experiencing some issues, but I think we solved it.
3. Whatever goodies that I can find and add before everything is finished.
Then we can finally start testing and playing this thing.
Other News:
There is a member at TWC that I have messaged in regards to textures and models. Hopefully he responds and is interested. His work is amazingly good and he would easily be able to do anything for us in a short amount of time.
If he is not interested, I'll PM Hoplite of Ilis. He is an option but it looked like he just painted over the textures in his work. We will see.
In regards to the map, if leoni cannot make the map it's fine. I have a clean version of FO's map that we could start working on. Basically we have three options in regards to the map:
1. leoni/FO's bare map - Yes it's bare and yes we will be able to make it our own but with all the research and trial and error, this map could take forever.
2. Our current map starting from scratch - Basically just preference, but same situation as above.
3. Editing and tweaking current map - Quickest and easiest to do but this can mess up trade and AI expansion.
I don't want to make the map a huge deal. As it is we have a very historical map that isn't too big but not too small. It has all the geographical features that we need, is balanced throughout, and everything works smoothly. I think with some minor adjustments like we have already discussed would be perfect for it. It would at least do its part for the Grand Campaign.
If we really wanted to make a map from scratch, it would take a lot of dedication and hard work from multiple people to finish it. Just know that.