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Solved Enemy Town Guards Too Strong during Quests

Upon further thought, I suspect that the town guards did not let me pass because my leadership was too low at level 1. I was fast tracking my career with lots of smuggling and robbing in forts, which does nothing for leadership.
The only way to test this is to start another game and build up my leadership before going back there. But, the fact that I already did this fine twice before, and this last time was an aberration for me suggests that those having problems here are simply trying to do too much too soon with sub standard skills.

On a different note I have noticed that there is now a very pronounced difference between the town guards and regular sojers. The regulars need to be beefed a bit as they are pretty easy to beat.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
On a different note I have noticed that there is now a very pronounced difference between the town guards and regular sojers. The regulars need to be beefed a bit as they are pretty easy to beat.
Click to expand...
That's what would happen, yes. The regulars returned to their pre-modified strength and the guards remained strong.
Could you tell me how you reckon it should work then? Eg. what level/skills you reckon they should have to be strong-but-not-too-strong?
 
Rather than trying to come up with a difficult solution, I've just done this:
1. Strong town guards only ABOVE Apprentice difficulty level
2. CANNOT change Select Storyline difficulty, so that this will ONLY apply to the Standard Storyline
3. This means the Difficulty text in the interface is now more of an indication of how difficult the story is meant to be
4. You can still change the difficulty during the game
 
Since it seems all soldiers can be edited easily, I have a suggestion. This is for all soldiers, regardless whether they are guards or not.

All soldiers should more or less be the same. There might be some individual differences, especially for officers and elite soldiers, but on average they should be similar. With "officers" here I mean guard captains and fort commanders and the like, not the kind of officers the player can hire.

In the stock game, where characters get 5 HP per level, soldiers have 80 HP. This would mean that they should be on level 9. In the build characters get 10 HP per level so level 5 is enough to have 80 HP. Is 80 HP enough for soldiers? Perhaps level 10 and thus 130 HP would be appropriate. They are trained soldiers and several of them have probably been in real combat situations so a higher level, but not too high, should be appropriate.

Their Melee skill should be between 3 and 7, with 5 on average. 0 means you don't know anything about the skill at all, 10 means that you know everything there is to know about the skill, so 5 means that your are neither good or bad in the skill. Some soldiers might not be very good at fighting and should thus have 3, some soldiers are good at fighting and should thus have 7, but on average soldiers should have around 5. Only elite soldiers and perhaps some officers should be able to have a Melee skill above 7.

Their Accuracy skill is irrelevant, as Accuracy is not used for weapons like pistols and muskets. Accuracy is only used for cannons in ship combat.

Since there are eight abilities usable in melee combat, level 10 seems good enough. The soldiers are military trained, and regardless of their skill, they should have proper knowledge of how to fight, so Professional Fencer is appropriate. Professional Fencer requires Advanced Defense (which itself requires Basic Defense) and Improved Critical Hit, so following the rules of the game's mechanics, soldiers should have those as well. Since they use muskets they should have proper training in using them as well, so Professional Gunman (and thus Gunman) is also appropriate.
I don't know about Rush - perhaps some soldiers could have it, others not.
Not all soldiers are "though guys", so most soldiers should not have Toughness. It should perhaps only be for elite soldiers.
They could have two more abilities, but since they don't need any other ability than these, the rules can be bent a little so they only have up to these eight abilities.

This should make soldiers challenging without being too hard when the player needs to fight them. In general, I don't think soldiers should be fought without any particular reason. They also tend to fight in groups. I have it like this in my game and I think it works fine.

This is of course just a suggestion, but I thought I should mention it. What do you think?
 
Would you mind setting up the code to do that? It is in PROGRAM\Characters\characters_init.c:
Code: 
        // PB: Strong Soldiers -->
        if(GetDifficulty() > DIFFICULTY_APPRENTICE) // was CheckAttribute(chr, "guard")
        {
            chr.rank = 20;
            chr.skill.Fencing = "10";
            chr.skill.Accuracy = "10";
            chr.perks.list.BasicDefense = true;
            chr.perks.list.AdvancedDefense = true;
            chr.perks.list.SwordplayProfessional = true;
            chr.perks.list.CriticalHit = true;
            chr.perks.list.Gunman = true;
            chr.perks.list.ProfessionalGunman = true;
            chr.perks.list.Rush = true;
            chr.perks.list.Toughness = true;
        }
        // PB: Strong Soldiers <--
 
Level 10 is too low. I am regularly meeting sailors in boarding operations with well over 200HP.
 
Perhaps the sailors' level is too high, or maybe soldiers should be kept at level 20? I changed the file, but it's from Beta 2.5 so I don't know if it's compatible with the latest WIP patch. :shrug
 

Attachments

  • characters_init.c
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The town guards were way too easy before, but I freaked at how much Pieter beefed them up. Now I'm used to them and it is ok where they are.
The only problem with them is newbies trying to do too much too soon and getting stuck.
 
Well, that's why they're back to "pathetic" level for the Standard storyline, since that is on Apprentice difficulty anyway.
 
I noticed that "chr.perks.list.ProfessionalGunman = true;" needs to be changed to "chr.perks.list.GunProfessional = true;" since that is its name in the code, otherwise it won't work. :p
 
Cheers! :cheers

Edit: Here's a thought on randomizing these guys a bit:
Code: 
        // Baste: Strong Soldiers -->
        if(GetDifficulty() > DIFFICULTY_APPRENTICE) // was CheckAttribute(chr, "guard")
        {
            chr.rank = 20;
            chr.skill.Fencing = 3+rand(4);
            chr.perks.list.BasicDefense = true;
            chr.perks.list.AdvancedDefense = true;
            chr.perks.list.CriticalHit = true;
            chr.perks.list.SwordplayProfessional = true;
            chr.perks.list.Gunman = true;
            chr.perks.list.GunProfessional = true;
            if(rand(10) == 0) chr.perks.list.Rush = true;
            if(rand(20) == 0) chr.perks.list.Toughness = true;
        }
        // Baste: Strong Soldiers <--
 
Hah! :bonaparte I came back here right now to specifically say that I can not play the standard storyline anymore. After getting used to the strong soldiers in other storylines, these mannequins are just too extremely unreal.
I just cleaned out Willemstad without even getting hurt.

Let the cherries take their lumps.
 
Well, what do we want to do with these guys then? Ideally, we'd recode all quest uses of soldiers to become more playable.
But that is NOT a simple solution that we can apply straight away.

Other easier options we have:
1. Have them ALWAYS be weak in the Standard storyline, but not any of the others (I'd intend making this a StorylineVar so it can be easily changed as if it were in InternalSettings.h)
2. Have their strength be dependent on the Difficulty Level. Should this be "fully weak" on Apprentice and "fully strong" on the other levels? Or should it increase gradually?

As per Baste's suggestion, we did tone them down a bit again, so they're no longer 10 Fencing and don't always have all the relevant abilities.

I'd welcome ideas here. If you prefer #2, I'd appreciate numbers on how much HP and skills you think you could handle for the quest soldiers.
I can write the code, but that is difficult if I don't know what to write. :facepalm
 
I've noted it on my To-Do list. Any thoughts on the minimum and maximum HP soldiers should have?
So how strong should they be on Apprentice and how strong on Swashbuckler?
 
:shrug

I'm ok with their strength on swashbuckler although Jason has said he has seen them with over 400hp. At the level he plays at he has all the perks though.

Apprentice level? I used a cobblestone on the first soldier, took his sword, and all the others were 1-2 stroke kills. Is that easy enough? With an average cutlass they might be 4-6 stroke kills.
I messed up on the tutorial and did it at apprentice level and ended up with a level 5 melee skill. I usually get level 3 or 4 melee skill before Malcolm is satisfied.
 
So how does this sound for difficulty-scaled Town Guards?
Code: 
        // Baste: Strong Soldiers -->
        chr.rank = GetDifficulty()*5+rand(4*GetDifficulty());    // Apprentice: between 5 and 9 - Swashbuckler: between 20 and 36
        chr.skill.Fencing = 4+rand(GetDifficulty());            // Apprentice: between 4 and 5 - Swashbuckler: between 4  and 8
                                        chr.perks.list.BasicDefense = true;
                                        chr.perks.list.AdvancedDefense = true;
                                        chr.perks.list.CriticalHit = true;
                                        chr.perks.list.SwordplayProfessional = true;
                                        chr.perks.list.Gunman = true;
                                        chr.perks.list.GunProfessional = true;
        if(rand(10) > GetDifficulty())    chr.perks.list.Rush = true;
        if(rand(20) > GetDifficulty())    chr.perks.list.Toughness = true;
        // Baste: Strong Soldiers <--
 
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