Reviving Floris Expanded Mod

Hi,

Currently - I'm working on enhancing the Expanded version of this mod (I've dropped work on all other versions, also - I'm gonna concentrate on single player only, dropping the Multiplayer part at the moment).
The name of the Mod is going to be changed, propably - so it would not confuse people and so they wouldn't bother people that were involved in this project before (still - all credits and information is going to be added)
Things that I've done so far:

-added all native fixes from all patches up to 1.158
-updated Diplomacy to 4.3
-added custom tools that allow you to easily add new stuff (for now - npcs/companions/items, in the near future - also fiefs, factions, etc)
-added a working end-tier-troop to lieutenant (hero). In order for it to work, I've added custom script generators that are able to pre-generate heroes with random, unique names into a static file, based on specific critieria. Right now - it's pre-generating 2000 hero troops for each end-tier troop which you can then upgrade into lieutenants anytime, based on the amount of your current renown/charisma PLUS an option for you to promote troops into lieutenants through certain after-battle triggers.
I've tested it and there is no memory overhead for these troop templates, alone. A very little of memory is being consumed every time you are going to add an unique instance of the hero from the template into your party.
-I've taken all meaningfull variables out and I've put them into separate file. These are the same factors/variables that you can tweak right now through TweakMB (and - I've added some more)
So - there is no more need for you to re-adjust all parameters every time with TweakMB, after you tweak&re-compile all the source files.
-access to the inventory through "I" shortcut key has been ENABLED by default (except for tournament and arena)
-added a "lots of new companions (credits: malik faris), adjusted for floris expanded mod (77 new companions)
-enabled another 65 companions from floris mod, that have been disabled by default in the previous version of mod (PLUS added generic, yet - more plausible dialog options that make sense for every and each new companion)
-added new OSP map of the whole Europe, reworked it a little bit so it wouldn't look eactly the same as in "our reality"
-added & enabled regeneration by default (it will be reworked. I'm gonna add "medic" unit into the game which is going to heal
friendly troops that will be close to him during the battle, he is going to look for injured units and adjust his position, accordingly (with an ability for you to set priorities when it comes to the units that needs to be healed, first and with an ability to revive unconscious units within a critical period of time)

things that I'm working on right now:
-an ability for you to create a new fief in any place on the map (at your current party position in the game), while having required amount of peasants/villagers in your party. you are going to have an option to leave caravan masters at the village, to set higher starting relation and prosperity at the creation time (also - possibly hunters, priests?), if you've got some in your party
-more factions/kingdoms/fiefs (& more lords/kings)
-an ability for you to expand villages into towns/castles
-more than one interest in towns (& an option to build more than one, simultaneously)
-more fief upgrades and enhancements
-an option to choose any quest you like, from the quests that are currently available at the npc
-custom settlements mod will be added
-landowners/moneylenders is going to be reworked (gold will be added to you, automatically just like the earnings from town businesses/taxes coming from fiefs)
-all npc's mumbling connected to personality clash have been disabled by default (it's a war party after all, and not some kindergarten band of drama queens.)
-you are, actually - receiving positive morale while succesfully recruiting prisoners, by default (your party is content with the fact, that it's getting stronger when it comes to the amount of troops)

also:
-new pbod (when the update for WSE is going to be released)
-some other osp mods (I'm gonna credit their authors properly, of course)

The full source code will be released publicly
ETA time for a final release - for now, undefined (propably more than 2 weeks, less than 2 months)

I'd like to invite you to work together on this project. If you are interested - send me PM with an information about your area of expertise and in which way exactly you can add your value to this project.

p.s
please - post your suggestions when it comes to the features that you would like to see first

thanks

Well I would first see a Gameplay version of this because my wooden PC can't play expanded.

tomkele said:

Well I would first see a Gameplay version of this because my wooden PC can't play expanded.

Click to expand...

Since I'm able to pre-generate the ingame troops tree, and convert the item sets automatically - I may end up writing a converter that is going to scale it down

Wait wait wait. Now that's interesting!

Well an amazing feature that was desired by the development team (as far as I can tell, I think I did read it somewhere) was to create an island. A new faction.
Maybe, along with this, a little remap of Swadians land to make them less vulnerable and less ridiculously weak after two months...

About the prisonner recruitment granting moral boost... I'm not very fond of it. I may have some kind of "better idea" in term of RolePlay, but I think it wouldn't be easy to do. I think it should depend on your troops, and their relation with prisonners. For example, Nords hate Vaegirs, so recruiting a bunch of Vaegirs horsemen when you have an army composed of 80% Nords may be risky.
Or another example: Recruiting bandits would grant a moral boost to all your troops (what's not my enemy won't kill me) BUT the ones of the faction of the bandits. An example with sarranids: their soldiers are mostly village folks, who are oftenly robbed, enslaved, raped, killed by desert bandits. Recruiting desert bandits would grant a heavy moral malus to sarranids troops...


Also, a rebalance of the money system would be good. Particularly with lands. If you have a lot of lands, like 75 or more in each city, you're basically the richest man in Calradia and can afford a huge sized T7 army... I don't want to have less money though. But it would be great if, when going to the very high level game (lvl 30+, 800 renown or more...) you have a lot of money but things are really expensive.


So that's all. Hope I'm not too wrong with those, and thank you!

PS: Now that I think about it, in Warbands your men are all sheeps that follow your rules and command. Having Nords and Vaegirs in the same army while the two countries are at war and raping each other's women, looting and destroying villages, should normally cause what you may call a rebellion of your troops, or battles...

You can adjust the effect of Leadership and Renown to the party size.
The more you are known, the more people want to join you.
I already have a suggestion on this. Let me find it and share with you.

Here it is: (At the beginning and end of my post, I paid respect to the developers of Floris Mod, I haven't erased them. )
I also have suggestions about prisoner handling issues.

coolchucky said:

First of all, thanks for this great mod. It completely changes the style of play and performance-wise, it is great. Even with my really old computer, I can play with an acceptable performance (By reducing the graphic levels to bare minimum of course  )

A couple of people mentioned the below suggestions in different posts but I would like to sum them up:

In Brytenwalda, Renown has a greater effect on party size. This is logical since the more you are known, the more people would like to follow you. This can be implemented in Floris as well. If need be, it can be tweaked a little. Below is an example in which the values are totally arbitrary:

We have a character with 10 points of Charisma (CH), 2 points of Leadership (Ld) and 50 Renown (Rwn).

We have a base party size of 10 men.
1 points of CH increases the party size by 1.
1 point of Ld increases the party size by 5.
And let’s say:
    -At 0 point in Ld, the effect of Rwn is: 20 Rwn increases party size by 1
    -At 1 point in Ld, the effect of Rwn is: 15 Rwn increases party size by 1
    -At 2 point in Ld, the effect of Rwn is: 10 Rwn increases party size by 1

So, the party size limit is: 10 men due to CH, 10 men due to Ld, 5 men due to Rnw (Ld:2) and base size 10 men. The party size is then 35 men.

As I said before these values are totally arbitrary and it should be tweaked. I just want to emphasize the importance of Renown and the effect of Leadership skill on Renown. By increasing Leadership you learn how to handle people following you because of your increased Renown.

The Prisoner Management (PM) skill can act similarly. It is illogical for a force of 100 men just handling 5 prisoners. For example:
For 1 point of PM, 10 of your soldiers can hold 1 prisoner.
For 2 points of PM, 7 of your soldiers can hold 1 prisoner, etc.
So, again, you teach your men how to handle prisoners with your ability.

Finally, thanks again for the developers and contributors of this great mode.

Click to expand...

Another thing that I always think about:
When riding with a lance couched, the knight exerts a large force which can kill an enemy. But what about the lance itself..

Doesn't it get broken or damaged? Is this something to be implemented to the game? I know that some mods have weapon breaking feature. This can be implemented on the new mod but I am not sure how this can be achieved. I specifically think about breaking of the lance when it successfully hits an enemy.

So, do you guys think it is something worth implementing?

Please avoid triple posting...

Xenomion said:

Please avoid triple posting...

Click to expand...

Why?
I ask 'cause I don't know, is there a rule or something?

Yep. Even dual posting is something that should be avoided.

Floris is the only mod (pack) that I play anymore. I'm ecstatic that someone is working to revive it (not that it fell behind for long). Have you spoken to any of the original modders about your plans?

Please implement the Combat Enhancements by Chel. I'd do it myself, but as a new, learning coder, I'd make a mess more than anything.
Also, can you get rid of those heads and just have the native ones in there?

coolchucky said:

Xenomion said:

Please avoid triple posting...

Click to expand...

Why?
I ask 'cause I don't know, is there a rule or something?

Click to expand...

Yeah, your really suppose to use the edit button if you wish to add something when someone hasn't posted anything after you. This kind of rule is on most forums.

On topic, I would love you alot if you revive floris. It's one of the best mods for warband and I was sad when I recently found out it died. (was away from these forums and warband for a while.)

new pbod (when the update for WSE is going to be released)

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Caba'drin has withdrawn from the forum and even we do not have contact with him anymore. It is therefore unlikely that this will happen. For those interested, certain sources indicate that he is doing well in real life.

Good luck on continuing Floris. I do not believe that anybody is bothered by your continuation, though you should pay attention to the non-osp parts, if you plan to release your work outside of the floris board as a seperate mod rather than a submod.

nice features

Xenomion said:

Wait wait wait. Now that's interesting!

Well an amazing feature that was desired by the development team (as far as I can tell, I think I did read it somewhere) was to create an island. A new faction.
Maybe, along with this, a little remap of Swadians land to make them less vulnerable and less ridiculously weak after two months...

Click to expand...

I'm thinking about adding a little bit more Swadian lords and a little bit more castles/town to Swadians to balance them and maybe lower the level requirements for troop upgrades so they could level up a little bit faster.

Every time I play the game - they get their ass owned hard, and that regardless of the difficulty settings.

The new factions that I'm gonna add are going to "emulate" japanese/samurai faction, Polish/Lithuanian factions (since I've got a lot of resources already from other Polish-only mods that have been discontinued by their authors [mostly because they've lost their sources] and that I can legally use, thanks to permissions that I've obtained), later - maybe Irish/English-like factions as well. I'm gonna try to keep the firearms out of the mod to make the game balanced and fun (leaving the ones that are already in the game, but I'm not gonna add any additional ones).

Also, a rebalance of the money system would be good. Particularly with lands. If you have a lot of lands, like 75 or more in each city, you're basically the richest man in Calradia and can afford a huge sized T7 army... I don't want to have less money though. But it would be great if, when going to the very high level game (lvl 30+, 800 renown or more...) you have a lot of money but things are really expensive.

Click to expand...

Well, if you have a lot of income - you should be able to own everyone.
I'm thinking about some other solution - spawning a brand new, "bonus" faction (or maybe - even a couple of factions like that) through the event-like trigger ("they've came from the distant world, through the ocean, and landed there" etc, etc), dynamically - later in the game, somewhere around the map
It is going to be as strong as you are, at the moment (similar army strength, similar number of fiefs/towns owned, etc)
It will be relatively - easy to do, since all the fiefs are, in fact - "parties" that can be spawned, dynamically and the final map is going to be 4-5x the current size. And I've got a lot of OSP mods with different scenes, that I can attach to the new fiefs.

This way - you are going to face a greater challenge and you won't get bored in the late part of the game.

In Brytenwalda, Renown has a greater effect on party size. This is logical since the more you are known, the more people would like to follow you. This can be implemented in Floris as well. If need be, it can be tweaked a little. Below is an example in which the values are totally arbitrary:

Click to expand...

It's going to be handled a different way. The more renown and the higher Charisma and Leadership is - the more troops you can promote to the ranks of Lieutenants/Cornets&Ensigns/Sergeants. The amount of lieutenants/Cornets&Ensigns/Sergeants in your party is going to provide additional bonus to the limit of troops that you can hire. It's more logical, imho. You can't lead an army of million people, alone, effectively. Regardless - of how good people know you. You need to decentralize your command a little bit, on the field.

The medieval army ranks go like that:
                                                                                                                            /->Cornet (cavalry)\
regular troops->Lance Corporal -> Corporal-> Sergeant (which carries the flag)->Ensign (infantry)- - >Lieutenant ->Captain (vassal) -> King

Doesn't it get broken or damaged? Is this something to be implemented to the game? I know that some mods have weapon breaking feature. This can be implemented on the new mod but I am not sure how this can be achieved. I specifically think about breaking of the lance when it successfully hits an enemy.

Click to expand...

I'd need to look into it. From what I've read on the forums up to this moment - it's being handled as a "hack" in mods like decapitation. Basically (afair) - an unit keeps his own head in his hand and throws it when it gets killed, or something, so by implementing it, I'd need to exclude, for instance- (afaik) gloves equipment from all glove slots from all troops and replace them with their own heads.

I'll look into it, but it's not a priority for me, at the  moment.

Please implement the Combat Enhancements by Chel. I'd do it myself, but as a new, learning coder, I'd make a mess more than anything.
Also, can you get rid of those heads and just have the native ones in there?

Click to expand...

See above.

Good luck on continuing Floris. I do not believe that anybody is bothered by your continuation, though you should pay attention to the non-osp parts, if you plan to release your work outside of the floris board as a seperate mod rather than a submod.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I will.

About Swadians, I don't think adding Lords and castles is a good idea. It may be even worse...

If you let Swadia the way it is geographically but add more Lords and castles, since they oftenly are at war with 2 or more factions, they'll still get beaten. Well, at least if you don't double up the number of Lords.

So even more castles will be taken. Even more Lords will be grumpy about that and kill the kingdom from inside. Even more Lords will join the ranks of their former ennemies, leaving Swadia not only armyless (like it is in nowadays games) but with an even bigger army in front of them.

Ah, you too talked about upgrades. But do Lords upgrade their troops? Don't they recruit them from different pools with different prices?



The main issue with the income is the total absence of risk. Buying a silk fabric is a bit risky but not that much. Buying lands is absolutely 0 risk for 5% of your original investment, this investment being virtually as big as you want. Buying up to 50 lands is safe, 75 is okay, 100 is risky but if you're in a rich and prosperous city (such as Sargoth when Nords have taken half the lands of Swadians and Vaegirs), that's only better.

So yeah, if after a while you're able to stabilize your income, after a long while, you can buy everyone. But it shouldn't be so easy. Lords and Kings may not be happy to see you gaining wealth, nor should be the market leaders. There should be a lot more of bribes/assassinations in the process! Why bother to pay this merchant 10.000 denars for him to agree to my buyings rather than sending his head in a travel meters away from his body?

About the new invading super strong faction: Bloody hell, yes, absolutely! But rather than have it of an equivalent level, couldn't it be of an already super-high level with very strong armies and such? You could even have two or three of them: Arabic people from the desert, vikings from the north, crusaders from the west sea...

Xenomion said:

About Swadians, I don't think adding Lords and castles is a good idea. It may be even worse...

If you let Swadia the way it is geographically but add more Lords and castles, since they oftenly are at war with 2 or more factions, they'll still get beaten. Well, at least if you don't double up the number of Lords.

So even more castles will be taken. Even more Lords will be grumpy about that and kill the kingdom from inside. Even more Lords will join the ranks of their former ennemies, leaving Swadia not only armyless (like it is in nowadays games) but with an even bigger army in front of them.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your feedback in that matter. I see your point. Besides what I've mentioned before - I'll propably mess around and tweak the starting relation for each faction and make all further changes in that matter dependant also on the geography, not only - the current relation in-between the factions. So, if you are going to attack, for instance - Swadians it makes sense for some other faction, that is geographically adjacent to them - to go and help them, since it's logical that if Swadians are going to lose their fiefs (especially - when you've already taken some decent amount of fiefs and you've estabilished a lot of additional income sources & a decent army) - they will be next.

Right know - I'd like to implement all the features that I'd like to see in the Floris, as a future core base - and then, tweak around them to make the game satisfying and challenging, at the same time.

Ah, you too talked about upgrades. But do Lords upgrade their troops? Don't they recruit them from different pools with different prices?

Click to expand...

I believe that they get their reinforcements from the pre-made reinforcements party templates. I'll look into it.

The main issue with the income is the total absence of risk. Buying a silk fabric is a bit risky but not that much. Buying lands is absolutely 0 risk for 5% of your original investment, this investment being virtually as big as you want. Buying up to 50 lands is safe, 75 is okay, 100 is risky but if you're in a rich and prosperous city (such as Sargoth when Nords have taken half the lands of Swadians and Vaegirs), that's only better.

Click to expand...

That's another thing that needs to be re-done but I'm not gonna start tweaking the game economy right from the start, since it's a very delicate matter and it can be easily broken after implementing new features.
So the plan for me is - to first introduce new "static" factions, add content (horses, items, new units, troop trees, etc) add an option to trigger the spawn of additional factions later - in the game, add the new buildings and upgrades, the ability for you to create new fiefs around the map, etc and then - to rebalance the economy, taking all these, already implemented features into account and all the feedback from the forums, after I'm gonna release the first version.

So yeah, if after a while you're able to stabilize your income, after a long while, you can buy everyone. But it shouldn't be so easy. Lords and Kings may not be happy to see you gaining wealth, nor should be the market leaders. There should be a lot more of bribes/assassinations in the process! Why bother to pay this merchant 10.000 denars for him to agree to my buyings rather than sending his head in a travel meters away from his body?

Click to expand...

Well, now we get back to the geopolitics and economy, again (which needs to be re-done). At a very early stage of the game, when your economy is still at the very basic level - it should be very profitable for you to start the war, to expand.

But when you rise the economy level in your kingdom, later in the game - you should consider all the factors into account.
For instance, if we assume that you're the Swadian new king and you are holding the production of the whole silk in your kingdom - it means that the your market is (or - is going to be) saturated with silk, which brings the prices down fast on your local market, considerably, which, in turn - makes it unprofitable to sell it in your own kingdom, after a while..

However - let's say that Vaegir's haven't estabilished a decent silk entrprise and that you'are selling to them 90% of your production. Since they'are close to you, geographically - it means that as long as you've got a good relation with them, you can make a good profit by sending caravans with silk to their kingdom and getting some other, cheap goods to sell them at your own market.
When you are going to start the war with them - you will cut yourself from their market and the silk production is going to bring more cost than what you can possibly sell & earn, at the moment (and hence - is going to bring you closer to the bankruptcy, if you won't be able to stockpile it up, or - to pause the production and be able to pay only the maintenance costs of your workers.
And again - If you won't be able to pay the villagers to maintain your enterprise - they won't be able to earn gold to spend it on some other goods, which is going to further - hit the demand for the whole market, which in turn - is going to reduce the prosperity and the income even further, etc)

So, you should always be faced with dilemma: is it more profitable to just create my own, new fiefs and work on expanding them, instead of starting the war? How much can I earn on starting the war with the specific faction, how much is it going to cost me on the long run? Am I really able to handle all costs of the new war AND the changes in the economy, with the gold that I've stockpiled, in the meantime? What if some other faction will decide to join the war on their side (& possibly - cut you off from even a greater percentage of the global market)?

So - there are a lot of factors to consider and a lot of work to be done, to make the geo-politics and economy work as it should.

About the new invading super strong faction: Bloody hell, yes, absolutely! But rather than have it of an equivalent level, couldn't it be of an already super-high level with very strong armies and such? You could even have two or three of them: Arabic people from the desert, vikings from the north, crusaders from the west sea...

Click to expand...

That's also something to consider, I'm gonna see how is it going to affect the balance when it gets implemented, and then - the tweaks will follow.

Thanks for answering the feedback! (and yes, that sentence is the beginning of a loop)

For all thi, will the map get expanded? Meaning the map gets bigger but the proportions are kept, so that there's plenty of room for building fiefs.

I'm using Mundus Magnus OSP map as a base for further map work

Here is comparison of the HM size vs vanilla size

its circa 20-25x bigger. it should be enough