TML Submod 1.21 for Brytenwalda 1.40 (Updated 11/27/2012)

Oh hey I just noticed I forgot to flag the Gwrda troops as guarantee_armor. I saw that they weren't the other day and was going to before I released it but forgot to do it heh. Was also going to give it to professional mercenaries and spearmen.

Oh well, they can randomly spawn in naked a bit longer. (They're the only faction tier 3 infantry that doesn't have guaranteed chest armor).

No will we need to start a new game with each new patch you make for this submod or what?

Not if I can help it. I'm running my own game with it, so I don't want to start over either

This 1.1 version is fully compatible with 1.0. Even 1.0 is mostly compatible with regular Brytenwalda 1.4. It's just not compatible with the unofficial patch, it won't even load a save game because the unofficial patch adds an extra troop (along with lots of other things it doesn't document).

For instance, the ability to see the population of a city in the menu for it is specific to the unofficial patch. It also adds population to villages.

The population of villages doesn't actually do anything though, since nothing was implemented for it to do. All population is for is control of the land usage around cities in the banking system, so being able to see the population of a city really isn't necessary. I guess if you saw the city pop was way down after the city was in a poor state for a while it helps explain why your land isn't paying you as much money anymore, but the fact that the land started paying you less is fairly self explanatory

TheMageLord said:

This 1.1 version is fully compatible with 1.0. Even 1.0 is mostly compatible with regular Brytenwalda 1.4. It's just not compatible with the unofficial patch, it won't even load a save game because the unofficial patch adds an extra troop (along with lots of other things it doesn't document).

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Since I stumbled over this mod only a week ago I have played it with regular 1.4.
I am ~200 days in now I would hate to start over again but your changes seem way to good to miss out.
I hope it works 'mostly'

Is it enough to just use the 1.1 version or should I use 1.0 and THEN 1.1 ?

Great changes !

From plain Brytenwalda 1.4 I haven't added anything to break compatibility. If you happen to have your caravan out on the map when you load the game it could break the caravan, but as long as you get it back in your party before swapping over it should work fine. The only things that I can think of that are saved in the save files are the NPC heroes that I changed - that is, the lords and companions. The companions were just changes to their total skill points, some I added a few others I took away. You could accomplish the same thing if you wanted to by adjusting their skills via import/export. The lords all I did was lower their power strike to 5 since the mod sets a max of 5 for the player and it seemed odd for the NPC lords to be stronger than the player can ever get.

And I just realized that neither I nor the original Brytenwalda actually took troop intelligence into account when adding skills to the heroes. I think I'll go ahead and make adjustments for that and release a 1.11 with that fix and the couple of troops that weren't guaranteed armors. Not a huge deal, but it serves to make the heroes more even. Otherwise the dumb ones are better than the smart ones, haha.

The fix for making troops guaranteed armors will be save compatible with 1.0 and 1.1, although my hero changes won't be - but you can just import/export them if you need to.

Mike of Kingswell said:

TheMageLord said:

This 1.1 version is fully compatible with 1.0. Even 1.0 is mostly compatible with regular Brytenwalda 1.4. It's just not compatible with the unofficial patch, it won't even load a save game because the unofficial patch adds an extra troop (along with lots of other things it doesn't document).

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Is it enough to just use the 1.1 version or should I use 1.0 and THEN 1.1 ?

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1.1 is all you need, I just left 1.0 up in case someone wanted it.

-edit- Huh, looking at them in comparison to player they all have an extra 7 stat points than the player, but only 2/3 the skills. That's different, I thought the heroes in this mod seemed better than the player. Should I leave them with the extra 7 stats or remove them?

-edit again- Even the char creation has diff amounts of skill and stat based on choices. Maybe I should rebalance char creation to have the same total number between choices too, seems odd for some choices to get more total stat and skill points.

-edit yet again- Ah, I see. The player char creation is just lower stats. Native gives you the same stats as the heroes start out with. I wonder if that was unintentional, or if char creation was supposed to be low stats. Native is 34 stats 20 skill points (at 6 int). Brytenwalda's highest looks like 27 stats 29 skill points (at 6 int), but some starts get less.

So, should I drop the hero stats down to brytenwalda levels, or change the player stats up to Native levels? Or just leave it as-is? And should players still get all the bonus skill points compared to the NPCs? (Most of them are set to around what Native would give them).

hey TML would you know how to do this suggestion from zagibu - What if we made all armors that have colors use the banner background color instead of a fixed color? It's like a heraldic armor without the symbol.

Link http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/colored-armors/

Would be cool to have army's with their lords colours.

PS I added the 3 source module files to 74 comp mod link, just in case you did want to improve it 

Alfred of Gloucester said:

hey TML would you know how to do this suggestion from zagibu - What if we made all armors that have colors use the banner background color instead of a fixed color? It's like a heraldic armor without the symbol.

Link http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/colored-armors/

Would be cool to have army's with their lords colours.

PS I added the 3 source module files to 74 comp mod link, just in case you did want to improve it 

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Never really worked with heraldic armors or coloring armors, so I wouldn't know how to do it. Not sure if it really fits the theme of the mod though - that being that your army isn't a uniformed group.

it dose look cool tho, and lets say I was in charge back then I would Insist my men wore at least some type of colour ribbon to distinguish them from foe, so this would be the same sort of thing.
As it is I allways Equip my Comps with same colour helmet tassels and faction shields etc, because I have banners turned off.
Anyone else know how to do it?

Went ahead and put v1.11 up. Not much of an update from a mechanics perspective, just a few rebalances on char creation and further tweaking of npc stats. All character creation choices will now end up giving you the same total number of stats and skills (28 stats, and 28 skills if you have 6 int - the Native gen gives 34 20, so Brytenwalda is still a lower stat higher skill environment for players than Native). All npcs now also only have 28 stats, so they've been nerfed a bit to be equal to player stats. They only have 20 skills at 6 int, since I decided to stick with the idea of the player having more total skills than his followers. As with anything changing player and companion npcs, you can always change things yourself to whatever you see fit by exporting importing 

Only thing that will affect save games is the guarantee armor on Mercenary Spearman and the Briton Gwrda troops. Now they'll always have at least a shirt on. I personally didn't bother starting a new game for this update, I just adjusted my player and companion stats accordingly via export/import.

OK gona start new game with 1.11 with brythw special 1.40, improved woman faces and the one that fixes couple siege scenes. I will post here if I find some issues. Sadly will not put companions multimod as afaik it is not supported.

Well first thing I noticed that francesca still has unmodified melee damage thus being best axe atm.

Seve82 said:

OK gona start new game with 1.11 with brythw special 1.40, improved woman faces and the one that fixes couple siege scenes. I will post here if I find some issues. Sadly will not put companions multimod as afaik it is not supported.

Well first thing I noticed that francesca still has unmodified melee damage thus being best axe atm.

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I didn't modify the melee damage of throwing axes. They're set to deal cut damage, which doesn't pierce armor like pierce does in Brytenwalda. All other axes were set to pierce. Francisca is also really slow and short in melee, since it's a throwing axe. I guess I could have dropped their melee damage and set them to pierce to make them act more like other axes, but the AI rarely uses the melee aspect of throwing weapons anyway.

Just realized - Motomataru is the one who did the coding for the formations here?

I didn't realize he did it. Guess he must have added the code to restrict them to boxes. Not sure why he would have done that, though.

There are a few issues with them forming big lines, but the boxes definitely didn't solve it. Guess I'll dig into it and see if I can make things better.


-edited to fix spelling of Motomataru's name. Just noticed I had spelled it Motomaru.

TheMageLord said:

Just realized - Motomaru is the one who did the coding for the formations here?

I didn't realize he did it. Guess he must have added the code to restrict them to boxes. Not sure why he would have done that, though.

There are a few issues with them forming big lines, but the boxes definitely didn't solve it. Guess I'll dig into it and see if I can make things better.

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Yes, I dont know if he read here as he is quite busy lastly but you can try ask him by pm.

I never realized he did them. They're a lot different in comparison to his standard formation scripts, I thought someone else had reworked them heh.

They work great for moving archers around and flanking enemies, but are rather poor for big AI v AI infantry battles. The two boxes was just boring - they were spaced way out and didn't really do much fighting. But removing that limitation makes them move in lines, and the lines only work in certain circumstances.

Two evenly matched enemies it generally does good - the two big battle lines form and they clash. But when one side is made up of a smaller number of elite units (like, say, franks, or a player with a small tight formation) the formation just sticks in the big line even when the enemy is cutting a swath out of the center, and never encircles them. In that case the box would probably work a little better, but they'd still get wiped out by a charging enemy due to the distance between units.

I'll have to see if I can make things a bit better. Perhaps less initial spacing between units and a charge routine that kicks in once the fighting starts. Will have to try a few things and see how it works out.

TheMageLord said:

If anyone had suggestions of something they wanted to see changed in Brytenwalda feel free to say so, I might just agree with you and do it  ;D

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Hi. been lurking these boards for years, starting from times 0.8x versions of M&B were out. Needless to say I love the game and been playing it, along with various mods, for years. As a history student I find the mods based on historical periods/events to be the most appealing. Brytenwalda is obviously one of such mods. I also love a degree of 'realism' mod adds to the game (like featured stamina system) something that makes Brytenwalda so special and gives it a unique flavour.

Brytenwalda looks like a sort of a rough diamond: it is outstanding in and of itself but could still use some polish, minor bug/script fixes here and there, something that your sub-mod implements. I like virtually all of the fixes/changes you've introduced, but have a small request, if I may. Would it be possible to incorporate some of the changes from the polished overland map?
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,249833.0.html

I am not concerned with smoothing the textures, adding bridges and such, but with placing coastal towns properly along the coast lines. They visually spoil this otherwise great map. Would that be possible to implement in your sub-mod at all?

I am yet to give your sub-mod a try, but all the features/fixes you put in make sense. So long you generally follow the direction Brytenwalda takes I will download future versions of your sub-mod without a reservation.

All in all (from the script inconsistencies and fixes you highlighted) it looks as though Brytenwalda could use one final patch that would add your fixes into the mod (along scene fixes by Adorno), perhaps? Especially in the light of a new patch for Warband being worked on (1.155). It'd be great to see some sort of cooperation developing between the mod's team members and yourself as your skills are obviously a great asset that could improve this already brilliant mod, elevating it to the new level of excellence.

sorry for a long post. good luck and thanks a lot to both yourself and Idibil, Adorno as well as the rest of Brytenwalda team.

Keep up good work!
 

Never really tried that one. Looks nice, though.

Is the source parties.py file for that anywhere? Don't see it in his main download. I haven't actually changed the parties file, so I could just modify his map to have the elevation changes and use his parties files on top of this mod. But every time I re-compile it I'd have to remember to overwrite the newly generated parties file with his, and I'd inevitably forget to include it in an update heh. If I could just add it to the source it'd be easier.

Just got back from my Monday gym trip and I'm feeling like modding some more. Making a bit of progress on the infantry battle formations. Now I have them charging when they get close to the enemy formation or when at least one infantry is fighting them - this makes the line break and encircle the enemy once they get close and then reform the line once they've mopped up those infantry to get ready to charge the rest. Just working out proper distances, don't want them charging too soon and ruining their formation or waiting too late and getting cut to pieces before they surround the enemy. Minor issue of a few stragglers sometimes running off after some archers while the main infantry force is fighting, but I'm not sure the best way to handle that. They eventually move back to the main force when they reform the formation, but it can get a little scattered sometimes. I changed the numbers a bit to make them charge when a bit closer than I had before and I ran some more test battles to see how it looked.

I have a few diff battles ready to go for testing, but I obviously can't test all possibilities. So far it seems to be working better for the AI fighting small groups of elite units (in my test, the 150 men moved in in a line then the sides closed in and they surrounded the 30 franks and killed them, still suffered a good bit of losses but nothing like when they just stayed in line and got slaughtered). Also better for when it's just a slightly smaller number of comparable units - a 300 vs 150 battle of just regular troops, the side with more men moved in and surrounded the smaller force and kept on them until they wiped out all their infantry - a few friendly infantry got side tracked by the enemy archers, but they returned to formation when the enemy infantry was wiped out then all together marched to finish off the reinforcing enemy infantry and then charged to mop up the archers. Works ok in really big battles, in my 300 v 300 evenly matched fight the lines clashed and worked well at first but quickly devolved into small group fights as the lines on both sides broke into little clusters as the men died. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, hah. They still reformed before the enemy reinforcements arrived though, so it worked alright.

A weakness of the check for if any infantry is still fighting is a single really tough infantry might backpedal and keep both sides charging and break the formation AI, but I'm not sure the best way to handle it. Without the check for infantry still fighting the infantry will try to reform before the fighting has stopped just because the enemy is trying to fall back for reinforcements which seems dumb since they should really be pushing their advantage if they're winning. So far I haven't seen a problem with one infantry breaking things happen, but it's a possibility.

I haven't tried this against the player (my current save is just a freelancer char with no troops), but it should work the same I think.

this is great, I like shield walls over squares.

TheMageLord you seem like a good programmer who can fix bugs 

I love Brytenwalda and I think it is the best mod made for any game... ever.

I am an amateur programmer and this Brytenwalda code looks to complex for me (I think I am really poor programmer  )

As you noticed though, some of the programmers who volunteered their time to make this mod happen where probably not professionals and this is way we have some funny code in there.

I have spent hundreds of hours playing the game and have found many small bugs during gameplay that do not effect the gameplay that much but would make the game much more polished if they were fixed.  I'll just list some of the ones that I can think of right now

1) The Lords seem to alwasy stay a few paces away from the main blocks and do nothing in the battle.  I find they are very easy to shoot/lance as ofthen they do not even have shields (I have also seen them barehanded!)

2) Ai behaviour is bugged during sieges and sometimes soldiers stand around even when ordered to charge/move.  Its like they are rooted to the spot.

3) I am sure everyone has noticed the wierd shield twich where soldiers "twitch" and raise the shield to the heaven for a split second.

4) Is it possible to make enemy cav act a bit more rationally.  I realize that some of the battle AI is hardcoded and many people have already tried but it always seems weird seeing lone horseman charge solo into a block of 60+ guys.

5) Is it possible to involve the wife a bit more after the marriage?  Can she be made to give different intereting quests?

6) I noticed that in the mid/late stage game the player who usually will have a very high surgeon skill will lose less than 1/3 of his soldiers during a battle (2/3 or more are "just" wounded) whereas teh AI almost always has fatal injuries.  Is it possible to give the AI lord greater surgeon skill so that all their casualties are not fatal?

7) There are currently only 3 quests from villages, is it possible to make more?  Even simple ones such as: "Can you bring [insert any item here] to our village? we are in need of it".

I don't know if anybody has noticed but troops tend to release their throwing weapons slighlty too early and they mostly hit the ground infront of the enemy troops.  The soldiers throwing javelins/darts seem OK but the heavy troops throwing angons/throwing spears/franciscas cannot reach their target since their weapons do not fly as far as javs/darts.  Can this be remedied?

I probably have a lot more suggestions it is really late and I am falling asleep!

Hope some of this seems interesting to you and you can implent some of this

The line battles are awesome. Tho in my experience the lines tend to move in quite slowly as if they were waiting for me to make the fist move towards the enemy which would lead me to become hedgehog of arrows sticking from my way overkilled char . All I really try to do is to stay on fringes and backstab or shoot arrows at big enemy concentrations hoping to get some hits.

I think that in line battles troops should stick closer to each other. I tend to use stand closer once or twice to form my shield walls tho it might be preference thing.

Pacific_Salmon: Now there's a wish list, hah. Let's see...

1. This works a little better with the troops in lines and issuing a charge order once they're close (doing it in next version). This way the lords join in the fight among their troops.

2. Haven't even really tried working on sieges yet. Making AI that works well in sieges is a difficult thing. I might take a look at it later and see if I can do anything, but I'm not very experienced in making AI for M&B. So far my edits to the formations script are 1) simply removing a limitation that was added (commented out a couple lines, heh) and 2) adding in a check that says if enemies are close by, issue charge order. Not all that complex, and I'm probably 'dumbing down' the AI a bit since I'm effectively overriding the infantry formation AI when they get in close, but the formation AI wasn't working so well in large scale infantry battles anyway. They still keep to their formations up until they get to the charge, and it keeps them together so that when they do start charging they're a cohesive unit - but they can get scattered out a bit during the actual fighting if given a charge order, and other than having them reform the line every couple seconds (which is what it does now) I'm not sure how to keep them together throughout the fight.

3. I've seen that too, not sure what causes it. If I knew what was causing it I might be able to fix it, but I wouldn't really know where to start looking. I've never even tried altering the combat AI before.

4. I haven't looked into the cavalry AI yet. Haven't really set up any good cavalry battles to see what they're doing. When I get around to it I'll set up some cav battles and get an idea of what they're doing and if I see issues try to fix it.

6. Surgery skill doesn't affect enemy teams at all. Any enemy troop killed with pierce/cut damage in a battle is automatically removed from the enemy party. Friendlies (allies and your own troops) are the only ones who even benefit from surgery. It's a limitation of the standard M&B game. I did a bit of code to work around it, though - my realistic casualties fix has the game change 1/3 of the enemy casualties from killed to wounded after the battle is over while it's calculating the casualties for display. It adds wounded troops back to the parties that lost them, although that will only matter if the player loses the battle. If you win you get them as prisoners, so it doesn't help the enemy lord that his troops survived as your prisoners. If you lose though, or are forced to retreat, 1/3 of the enemy troops will be placed back into the party as wounded. I could up this to half or two fifths or whatever if you guys think more than 1/3 should survive.

8. I've seen it happen a few times. Could be something to do with shoot speed of the heavier throwing weapons? They don't always throw into the ground, though - In my testing I saw a few throwing axes get chucked into the enemy archers while the infantry were advancing on them. I'll have to play around with it later and see how often it happens and if the low shoot speed is to blame.

5 and 7 are both just adding new content. It can definitely be done, but before I get to doing that I'll be working out the kinks of regular game play. Having some extra quests might be fun, though - every mod could use new content 

Seve82 said:

The line battles are awesome. Tho in my experience the lines tend to move in quite slowly as if they were waiting for me to make the fist move towards the enemy which would lead me to become hedgehog of arrows sticking from my way overkilled char . All I really try to do is to stay on fringes and backstab or shoot arrows at big enemy concentrations hoping to get some hits.

I think that in line battles troops should stick closer to each other. I tend to use stand closer once or twice to form my shield walls tho it might be preference thing.

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Part of messing with the formations has the troops a little bit closer together, and once they get in close they break formation and charge. It seems to work better to me, although I'll leave that up to you guys once I release my next version. I pretty much have it finalized now, just playing with a few other things before I release a new version.

I also went ahead and incorporated that polished map into my next version. I added a trigger to move all the parties into position if you are using an old save game, so it's mostly compatible. Only issue is I don't know how to rotate parties on the world map, so the rotation of rath celtair and some of the bridges isn't quite right if you load a save from a previous version. If anyone knows how to rotate parties on the world map I could add that in too, but it isn't really that big of a deal - you can still cross the bridges, a few of them just look a bit odd being turned the wrong way.

Hopefully the author of polished map doesn't mind me slapping his work into my mod. I sent him a message about it and am going to credit him, but I kind of jumped the gun and did it already haha