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I've hidden my original post behind the spoilers tag, and updated this post with what I've actually done.
Brytenwalda Realism Submod 0.5
Compatible with both TML and non-TML versions (there are only 3 txt files to be dropped in or out, that don't affect anything else).
Changelist
This is a more concise listing of changes I've made. More lengthy explanations and reasons for these changes can be found earlier in the thread.
ITEMS (item_kinds1.txt)
Trade Goods Overhaul
- Raw hides substantially decreased in value (they were equal to silver!). Buying and slaughtering cattle is no longer a road to unlimited riches.
- Most raw materials, such as wool or flax seed, have decreased in value.
- Most finished goods, such as wool cloth, linen or fine cloth have increased in value.
- Silver has increased in value.
- Mead and ale have decreased in value, owing to the cheapness of grain.
- Grapes and olives are more expensive.
- Food amounts have been adjusted to better account for their weight.
- Notably, Grain now gives 200 instead of 150, and dried meats give 225 instead of 150.
- Various other minor tweaks. Trade routes that you're familiar with, are still in place, but the profit is a little more realistic.
Cloth Armor
- All cloth armor, with the exception of noble clothing, have been at least halved in value. It made little sense for dirty shirts to give 70 scillingas from being sold.
- Some cloth armor have had armor values adjusted. Such as pants and villager dresses, or naked picts.
- In the interest of realism, changes here could have been even more extreme. But were actually quite restrained. Those who use the supply wagon to hoover up every dirty, ragged scrap or pair of trousers will still make otherworldly profit.
Heavy Armor
- Most Heavy armor has had chest armor modestly increased (around +10/+15 depending on the item) and leg armor substantially increased. It often didn't make sense, with byrnies or hauberks that went as far as the knees, giving hardly any protection. Brytenwalda also has a dearth of leg protection in general, with legs often being the most vulnerable spots on the body, which isn't that realistic.
- Various tweaks balanced for playing with normal damage, tripping, fatigue and armor penalties ennabled.
- Medium armor left alone. Which is fine, as in many cases, medium and heavy armor had nearly the same armor values before being modded.
- Heavy armor was made rarer in the game. It does not show up as often on some troops, such as frankish raiders or dena pirates.
Weapons
- Hundreds of tweaks and adjustments to various weapons, aiming for more realism.
- Slings, sling stones and rocks decreased in re-sale value and damage.
- Swords are both more expensive (doubled in value, as a minimum) and more lethal, and are better to thrust with. Many sword values had thrusting damage of as little as 11-14, making a rock or cheap knife more dangerous than a blade thrusted into the belly.
- Swords are a bit more rarely found equipped on various troops.
- A few swords, such as the Pictish and Celtic long swords, were moved to the back sheath.
- Most axes are now cutting instead of piercing damage, although their cutting values have been increased.
- Axes that retained piercing values, often had their damage lowered a little and value raised, such as the elite decorated axe.
- Some axes, such as hatchets, lost their ability to parry.
- Knives and daggers do better thrusting damage, making some of them a decent choice for armor penetration (as occurred historically, being able to fit through eyeholes and such). Some had their reach fixed, which were set as long as swords in some cases, despite the model of the weapon being far smaller.
- Spears do blunt damage when swung, and piercing when they thrust.
- Banners do blunt damage instead of cutting.
- Axe hammers do blunt damage. I know it looks more like an axe, but I imagined them as being more crushing-like, with damage and speed to show for it. The game also suffers from lack of any mace or maul weapon, which I hope to fix soon. I'd also like to make blunt damage not give an automatic KO.
- Most bows/arrows do cutting damage now, instead of piercing, except for pictish crossbows and byzantine arrows. But their cutting damage was very slightly increased.
Horses
- North Horses, Draft Horses, Paraverdus and Greek Armored Horse had their charge damage, armor values and hit points adjusted upwards.
- They were tweaked to be realistic, not overpowered, though in truth, could probably have been raised even higher. It's still a significant improvement over un-modded, where they seem to collapse instantly.
- Previously, a 800 pound horse barreling into a soldier would more often than not, come to a dead stop and inflict little if any damage. Now, a North Horse WILL knock over who it collides with.
- Donkeys, mules and ponies are virtually untouched, or possibly a bit worse (slower, less maneuverable).
- There can now be champion and timid horses as well. I would've liked to adjust 'timid', but that requires going into the scripts. For now, it's a -1 riding requirement.
- Riding skill requirements adjusted for all horses. 0 For donkeys/mules, 1 for ponies, 2 for North Horses, 3 for Draft Horses, 4 for Paraverdus, 5 for Greek Armored Horse.
SKILLS (skills.txt)
- Power strike cap raised from 5 to 7, to better accommodate a high strength overcoming heavy armor penalties.
- Power Throw and Power Draw cap raised from 5 to 7 for same reason.
- Athletics cap raised from 6 to 8. Having max athletics should allow you to reach a siege ladder without getting winded and collapsing even while wearing heavy armor. This was the easiest and most obvious change to make.
- I was extremely tempted to move Athletics to Strength, but did not. Feedback wanted on this!
- Trainer and Persuasion moved to Charisma.
- Trade moved to Intelligence.
- Spotting, Tracking and Pathfinding moved to Agility.
- Shield moved to Strength and had its cap raised to 5. They still seem to break way too easily, but it's a start.
TROOPS (troops.txt)
- All troops have received a comprehensive pass to have more realistic stats. Most were copy-pasted, and it didn't matter what level they were. A villager was as likely to have Power Throw 4 and Athletics 6 as an elite soldier.
- Soldier skills have been adjusted to be more realistic. Skirmishers and elite infantry are more likely to have higher athletics and better power throws, than heavy infantry, who are more likely to have better iron flesh and power strike.
- Athletics, shield ability, riding skill, as well as Power Strike/Power Throw etc have all been distributed with the raised caps in mind, and taking into account armor penalties.
- No more peasants with 16 strength and maxed skills. They're more likely to have around 9 strength.
- Some minor adjustments to troops based on faction. Germanic units, such as Angles, Saxons and Jutes tend to have +1 strength, and +1 power strike/iron flesh to some of their best units.
- Briton, Irish and Pictish troops, roughly in that increasing order, tend to have better agility, better athletics and better power throw. Britons are the best riders. Germanics and Picts are the worst.
- 'Special' units, like Ship Captains, Bandit Leaders, and various lords, were left alone. They're still technically overpowered (some are level 52!), but I suppose that's part of the challenge. Personally, I like to seek out the opposing lords or generals and defeat them in personal combat. And it helps them to stay alive a bit more, because they're often roaming around on their own away from the shield wall.
- Arena/Tournament units left untouched. They're overpowered, but making them weaker would only make tournaments even easier to abuse than they are now. Besides, you can reason that it's impossible to accurately model stats where the combatants are supposedly holding back a little and using blunted weapons.
- Villagers now fight like...villagers. The ones you dueled while training them, for example, had beastly stats and maxed athletics which made going 3 on 1 a fool's errand.
- Equipment was adjusted for troops. Some notable examples:
- Cantabrian javelineers now have horses, which they inexplicably lacked before.
- The 'huscarl' or 'hearthsworn' elite heavy infantry have exchanged their medium and heavy spears for battle axes and two-handed axes.
- Frankish raiders and dena pirates are less likely to have mail armor. Both were far more heavily armored than the Franks of a century later. They've also lost their swords, although Ship Captains might still carry one.
Companions
- Companions were given starting levels of 5, 10, 15 or 20.
- 5 Companion levels equates to 3 player levels, in terms of attributes.
- All Companions were given reasonable specialties, though none with a higher starting Skill in something than '7'.
- This represents a middle ground between Companions as they are in a semi-worthless state, and Companions in the defunct Stronger Companions submod, which were quite overpowered by letting you spend all their points and going up to level 33.
- I tried to give each Companion a little flavor to them. The Welsh companions tend to be good at archery and spear use. Example: Ultan is a decent combat medic, with a high Iron Flesh, Power Strike and decent two-handed, but who lacks Surgery. Bridei is a good tracker.
MISC NOTES (OR HOW BEST TO ENJOY THIS MOD)
In module.ini, change the damage soak values to these:
Don't play with the supply wagon.
It's an entertaining concept, but it completely wrecks the game's economy, and allows you to engage in all kinds of cheating. Like stashing troops in a wagon to avoid feeding them, then racing across the map with more speed, and unpacking them for battle. It also allows you to take unlimited troops onto a ship, and to get maximum profit off battlefield loot, by letting you sell to towns long after their merchants would be out of scillingas. You can still use the wagon, but acknowledge that it makes the game far, far, far trivial than it was meant to be.
Don't use the mystic merchant.
This also ruins the game's economy, and makes it impossible to justify buying weapons or armor from the regular merchants, when you could take a chance and get a lordly or tempered version. It's also deeply unrealistic. I don't usually like to force my own gameplay on other people, especially since I'm not a skilled enough modder to include an 'enable/disable' switch. So these files don't affect the merchant. But you'll have more fun if you ignore him.
Companions
One of the least entertaining aspects of Brytenwalda to me, is companion management. As well as getting them all at level 1, and having it take forever for them to be of any use, excepting Aleifr with his trade. I've made all of the Companions useful in this mod, and those you take from level to 5 to level 20, will have more attributes and skill points than those you get at level 20, making them worth the investment, or for short-term long-term decisions to be made.
What I would have liked to do however, is limit the number of companions to either 6 at one time, or to tie the number of companions you're allowed to your leadership skill. I wasn't able to figure out how to do this, yet. You should be aware of that philosophy regarding them, even though it's up to you, whether to adhere to it or not.
INSTALLATION
Just drop the files into your Brytenwalda module. Overwrite as necessary. Back up the replaced files as you desire.
LINK:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9xjlugcji9mtoxr/AABXD1DIuVbVm0W_3_lEOqLBa
I just recently discovered Brytenwalda, and Warband for that matter owing to a Steam sale (what an amazing mod!). However, after tooling around with it a little, some things began to bug me. So I schooled myself in some rudimentary modding, and made some tweaks. I'm going to share what I did here, for your feedback, and if a lot of people agree with them, I'll make it an actual submod.
My Installation:
I installed Brytenwalda 1.40, then the graphic pack, then the patch. Then I installed TML's submod, and over this, the spears overhaul (for the overhand thrust, but see the adjustment below).
Sentences in italic were where I struggled or came up short of my meager modding ability. If you could help there, let me know.
My Adjustments:
1) Trade Goods - It seemed to me that Trade Goods were all out of whack. Some items were overpriced or underpriced. For example, I could go to any village, buy a couple cattle for around ~220 scillingas, and make a ~1000 scilingas profit from selling the two hides and two slabs of beef. This was ridiculous. Raw hides were as valuable as silver! Crazy. There were also various distortions in the productive enterprises, like wool cloth and dye vis a vis fine cloth, or flax vs linen cloth, or grain vs beer. Just about every item that should be more rare in Dark Ages Britain became more expensive (such as grapes or fine cloth, or iron tools), and other items got downgraded in value, like basic meats, hides, wool, flax, etc. Beer and mead were also decreased in value (since they're made from grain which costs pennies for pounds).
These were not massive changes - think like 25-45% either up or down, except in the case of hides which went from an astronomical 320 (equal to silver!!!) down to 100. You can still make a bit of a profit from buying and slaughtering cattle, but the margin is much more reasonable, and possibly not worth the time. It returns to the way it should be - feeding your large army as you walk by on campaign, with the hides just a little to defray the cost.
These tweaks also mean that a much wider range of productive enterprises are more viable. A winery or brewery is no longer the automatic answer (though unfortunately, it's close. The solution to this is probably to jack the price of fine cloth even further up, or even double its already nearly doubled value.)
I also raised the amount of dried meat from 150 to 225, to better justify the time/loss factor in making it. To better justify the weight of grain and bread, I raised their amounts to 200 for grain, and 175 for bread. A lot more work could probably be done with foods.
I'm trying to get a balance between cost outlay and weekly earnings. But some values, like labor, I can't edit. I also would have preferred to reduce cattle to one hide and two slabs of beef, but I wasn't skilled enough to modify.
2) Clothing Values - It seemed clear to me from the items file there wasn't a great deal of rhyme or reason to values assigned to certain objects. A lot of utter trash - rags, tunics, headwraps, pants - basically tattered crap that a player will never wear unless forced to, was often worth between 300-500 scillingas. I slashed, with the exception of noble clothing, all of these items by at least half in value. Slings, clubs and stones, were also reduced to maybe 5 scillingas in value at best. It doesn't make sense that the detritus from ragged bandits could sell for enough to pay an elite mercenary captain for a week.
As it happens, because I didn't want to make dramatic changes, to my mind much of the 'clothing' is still overpriced. But it's more reasonable while keeping a nod to gameplay. But you'll be making like 17 scillingas a ragged tunic, instead of a 87. I made this adjustment, after realizing I was raking in ~8,000 scillingas from filling my wagon with the trash of war and mass selling it.
I've also adjusted some armor. There was no reason for the naked pict armor to give +10 to body in addition to its other bonuses. I reduced it to +5. Same for the pants. There was no reason for pants to give +10 to bodies and +2 to legs. I made it like +3 to body and +8 to legs. I reduced the average gloves from +12 body armor to +7. I would have liked to make a new type of gloves called 'fine leather gloves', which gave closer to the original +12 but were more expensive, but I'm not there yet with my modding ability.
The costs of armor (basically anything that a player would want to wear), was left alone. The costs of heavy armor in particular, are already reasonable. It's already expensive enough that I never buy armor from the armorer, although I might take a risk with the mystic merchant. Mostly, enough decent mail will drop from the battlefield, after killing enough dena raiders. More on this later.
3) Armor Values - My main focus here was heavy armor. It seemed that heavy armor had too many detriments to be worth using. I came to this conclusion after realizing I was playing the game quite happily naked as a pict, or wearing the 25 armor light noble's tunic, and turning up my nose at 44 armor heavy mail, with crushing skill negatives (-3 to athletics and power strike!!!) on top of already fatiguing you faster and making you slower. That's not just a double whammy, that's a triple whammy, all stacking on top of each other. Even with 6 athletics, wearing heavy mail, you will be out of breath before you reach the top of the ladder in a siege.
A possible solution is to turn armor skill effects off, or fatigue off, but that's really a no-go for me. I like the idea of armor skill effects, although I think it was a heavy-handed implementation. And I like the fatigue system.
To begin with, I gave all the heavy armor +10 to the body and legs. I still don't wear it, but at least there is a moment's contemplation between 54 mail and a 25 tunic. I left medium armor alone. Which makes sense, because often, medium armor had the same value as heavy armor (bronze lamellar is 41, for example). And sometimes I do wear medium, especially the lamellar, since the skill penalties aren't quite as egregious.
If I were a better modder, I'd reduce the penalty of heavy armor to something like -2 athletics, -2 power draw, -2 power throw, -1 power strike and like +3 iron flesh. Medium armor would be simply -1 across the board. That said, I don't know if armor bonuses actually work. The naked pict armor is supposed to give +2 iron flesh, and the iron flesh shows up on your skills, but is not reflected in your HP. That's also the deal for mules and inventory management. If I were a better modder, I'd very much like to know how to fix these (mules in particular annoys me, as that inventory management bonus makes a lot of sense).
4) Weapon Values - I was bothered by how cheap swords were, as well as how ineffective they were. With TML's submod change to spear, a two-handed swinging polearm was basically death incarnate. I went about fixing this, by doubling or even tripling the cost of all swords, and giving both their cut and thrust damage a boost (something like 3 to swing, and 5-8 to pierce). That's because in no universe, should getting a thrust to the belly from a sword inflict less damage than a knife or arrow. Many swords has like 14-16 pierce, and 33 swing. Now, most have an average of ~37 swing and 20-24 pierce. There are still some variations. Some celtic, pictish or warrior swords break the formula a bit in being better to swing and still a bit bad to thrust with.
Another reason that the sword's cut values had to be raised was because it was seriously unbalanced with axes. Axes are all pierce damage, with carve through armor like butter. Cutting damage is supposed to have a higher base damage (to hurt unarmored opponents more) but do worse against armor. Well, this is impossible in practice, where even 'unarmored' opponents, will have like cloth caps (or wimples) that give +10 or +12 armor, and cloth armor, whether it be rags, dresses, with gloves and cloaks, that can stack up to 25+ armor. Part of this solution was lowering the armor of some of the cloth. Another part was raising the swing damage of swords.
As it stands, swords could probably still do with a bit more damage added, or with the light cloth armor made more like 5/2, and get rid of the 10/2s, and take the 13 or 16s down to 10s. But I didn't want to make too sweeping of changes just yet.
The spears in TML's submod were doing equal piercing damage to swinging as with thrusting. This made them GROTESQUELY overpowered. I returned all the spears swing damage to blunt damage. I know he did this because of the way the overhand thrust works. And I like the overhand thrust animation. But it was too much. I was spanking guys at point blank range with a long saxon war spear, one-shotting everyone. I also changed banner damage to blunt from cutting, and a few other weird things.
Some axes lost the ability to parry. Some swords (the bastard celtic/pictish swords) were moved to the back slot. Axe hammers now do modest ~30 blunt damage, and only the long handle version can parry. I know they're not really hammers, and look more like axes. But I really, really missed a mace-type weapon in Brytenwalda.
I noticed that for a lot of weapons, their reach didn't align very well with their actual weapon. A knife or sickle for example, can hit someone from like a foot past where the blade ends. I didn't screw around with reach, because I just didn't know if I might make something worse.
Ideally, I'd add in other blunt weapons, like sledgehammers, mauls or maces, but change it so that blunt damage has a greater chance of killing someone instead of automatic captive. The lack of these weapons is one of the main things that perplexes me.
5) Horses - Horses are extremely weak in Brytenwalda. I've lost count of the times that I've just happily one-shotted horses spilling their riders left and right. I don't think that horses should be tanks - and I very much approve of the absence of the couched lance. But right now, they're quite ridiculous.
In order to fix this, I adjusted all their stats. Donkeys were made slightly worse. Ponies left mostly the same, but north horses, draft horses, the paraverdus and greek armored horse all got boosts to their hit points, charge damage and natural armor. You can actually knock someone down by running into them at full gallop with a north horse instead of bouncing off them. They last a bit better in combat as well. They'll still go down when stuck amidst a bunch've troops (sigh, AI cavalry), but are no longer at quite the same risk when riding by or in scattered knots. They can take a few whacks before tumbling.
Beforehand, I honestly did not notice much difference between a donkey and a north horse. Now, there is a considerable difference. Donkeys and mules are actually weaker and worse in combat than they are now. The only reason I'd ride a donkey in battle, was to get to the front lines and dismount. Pony stats were left mostly unchanged, which means there is a significant gap between them and the new and improved horses.
To compensate, north horses now require 2 riding, draft horses 3 riding, paraverdus 4 riding, and greek armored war horse 5 riding.
6) Companions - This is what gave me the most trouble. What I would have liked to do, is something like the no-longer supported or available 'stronger companions submod'. However, I always thought that was overpowered, and my own version is more modest, with levels at 5-10-15-20, instead of going to 33. Also, I spent the points myself based on what I thought made sense. However, there are still at least 3 different companions avaialble to fill each niche, so a player is hardly stressed for options.
Unfortunately, I ran into a major obstacle. I was unable to increase the cost for hiring an NPC, without having to edit it in python. And editing it in python gave me like 20 interconnected txt files, which would have wiped away all of TML's mods that I did like, and I wasn't even sure how up to date the basic Brytenwalda Module System was. It also would have made me, seemingly, have to re-edit a few files. Point being...There was no way I could find, (and I looked long and hard) to just increase the cost of hiring certain companions. If there is a simple way to do this, please let me know.
So the solution I hit upon, was to keep with the 5-10-15-20 changes, but to make it more 'fair'. This means that, the NPCs do not get the full attribute and skill points for their levels. They get pretty much 3 'player levels' for every 5 NPC levels. This ensures that getting a level 20 NPC companion off the bat is a boost, yes. But he'll have less attributes than a level 5, 10 or 15 NPC taken all the way to 20 normally. Also, the higher level an NPC begins as, the less likely you'll be able to modify them. Some NPCs are very good, but they're all good in the Aleifr sense (him of the magic 7 trade). Which means that no NPC is starting with higher than 6-7 in a party skill. Liuva has 6 training (and is a high level to allow him to actually train level 16 peasants). Bridei has 7 track. Ultan is a so-so medic (lacking surgery), but with good iron flesh, power strike and two-handed proficiency. One of the Picts is a good forager/looter. Some of them, like Lothar or Cealwin, are straight up fighters. Some make good emissaries.
Ideally, I would have liked to pair these new companions, with a system that limits your total number of companions to your leadership rating. Or alternately, to a max party size of 6. I wasn't able to figure out how to do this, or of it's even possible. But I think it's a fair system now, and it makes it somewhat harder to cheese trainers, while being easier to use trainers.
7) Troops - A few minor changes here. A lot of them have templates from base Mount and Blade...So there's a lot of weak troops with like 6-7 athletics, 7 shield, 8 power strike. It means that even supposedly crap units have monster stats. I know the AI needs every advantage it can get, but its depressing that weak-ass bandits are faster than I will ever be, with 20+ agility and maxed athletics. I wasn't able to dig much into this, but I did give Neko's men their horses (Canabrian javelin men should have horses!). A lot more could be done here.
But I'd also like it if the player could raise their power strike/athletic skill further. Getting a max bonus of 5 from it is fine, but if we could keep raising it, then you could eventually compensate for the penalty in heavy armor, which would beautifully model the importance of higher strength.
I've also noticed that effective fighting with a spear requires both great speed, and constant backpedaling. This makes it extremely difficult for the player, because even with 6 athletics, I trip ALL THE DAMN time. Don't get me wrong. I like tripping. I feel like it limits some potential abuse. But I'd much rather prefer if Athletics went to 8, and eventually reduced the tripping chance to 5%. The AI, which almost always has maxed athletics, and 20+ agility, even on middling troops, and backpedal-fights well, does much better with spears. In a similar vein, you'll often find that because of the skill cap, many soldiers in Brytenwalda have identical stats, regardless of level, since both are maxed out...Noone ever went back to account for the fact that there there are lower limits on certain skills.
Thoughts?
My Installation:
I installed Brytenwalda 1.40, then the graphic pack, then the patch. Then I installed TML's submod, and over this, the spears overhaul (for the overhand thrust, but see the adjustment below).
Sentences in italic were where I struggled or came up short of my meager modding ability. If you could help there, let me know.
My Adjustments:
1) Trade Goods - It seemed to me that Trade Goods were all out of whack. Some items were overpriced or underpriced. For example, I could go to any village, buy a couple cattle for around ~220 scillingas, and make a ~1000 scilingas profit from selling the two hides and two slabs of beef. This was ridiculous. Raw hides were as valuable as silver! Crazy. There were also various distortions in the productive enterprises, like wool cloth and dye vis a vis fine cloth, or flax vs linen cloth, or grain vs beer. Just about every item that should be more rare in Dark Ages Britain became more expensive (such as grapes or fine cloth, or iron tools), and other items got downgraded in value, like basic meats, hides, wool, flax, etc. Beer and mead were also decreased in value (since they're made from grain which costs pennies for pounds).
These were not massive changes - think like 25-45% either up or down, except in the case of hides which went from an astronomical 320 (equal to silver!!!) down to 100. You can still make a bit of a profit from buying and slaughtering cattle, but the margin is much more reasonable, and possibly not worth the time. It returns to the way it should be - feeding your large army as you walk by on campaign, with the hides just a little to defray the cost.
These tweaks also mean that a much wider range of productive enterprises are more viable. A winery or brewery is no longer the automatic answer (though unfortunately, it's close. The solution to this is probably to jack the price of fine cloth even further up, or even double its already nearly doubled value.)
I also raised the amount of dried meat from 150 to 225, to better justify the time/loss factor in making it. To better justify the weight of grain and bread, I raised their amounts to 200 for grain, and 175 for bread. A lot more work could probably be done with foods.
I'm trying to get a balance between cost outlay and weekly earnings. But some values, like labor, I can't edit. I also would have preferred to reduce cattle to one hide and two slabs of beef, but I wasn't skilled enough to modify.
2) Clothing Values - It seemed clear to me from the items file there wasn't a great deal of rhyme or reason to values assigned to certain objects. A lot of utter trash - rags, tunics, headwraps, pants - basically tattered crap that a player will never wear unless forced to, was often worth between 300-500 scillingas. I slashed, with the exception of noble clothing, all of these items by at least half in value. Slings, clubs and stones, were also reduced to maybe 5 scillingas in value at best. It doesn't make sense that the detritus from ragged bandits could sell for enough to pay an elite mercenary captain for a week.
As it happens, because I didn't want to make dramatic changes, to my mind much of the 'clothing' is still overpriced. But it's more reasonable while keeping a nod to gameplay. But you'll be making like 17 scillingas a ragged tunic, instead of a 87. I made this adjustment, after realizing I was raking in ~8,000 scillingas from filling my wagon with the trash of war and mass selling it.
I've also adjusted some armor. There was no reason for the naked pict armor to give +10 to body in addition to its other bonuses. I reduced it to +5. Same for the pants. There was no reason for pants to give +10 to bodies and +2 to legs. I made it like +3 to body and +8 to legs. I reduced the average gloves from +12 body armor to +7. I would have liked to make a new type of gloves called 'fine leather gloves', which gave closer to the original +12 but were more expensive, but I'm not there yet with my modding ability.
The costs of armor (basically anything that a player would want to wear), was left alone. The costs of heavy armor in particular, are already reasonable. It's already expensive enough that I never buy armor from the armorer, although I might take a risk with the mystic merchant. Mostly, enough decent mail will drop from the battlefield, after killing enough dena raiders. More on this later.
3) Armor Values - My main focus here was heavy armor. It seemed that heavy armor had too many detriments to be worth using. I came to this conclusion after realizing I was playing the game quite happily naked as a pict, or wearing the 25 armor light noble's tunic, and turning up my nose at 44 armor heavy mail, with crushing skill negatives (-3 to athletics and power strike!!!) on top of already fatiguing you faster and making you slower. That's not just a double whammy, that's a triple whammy, all stacking on top of each other. Even with 6 athletics, wearing heavy mail, you will be out of breath before you reach the top of the ladder in a siege.
A possible solution is to turn armor skill effects off, or fatigue off, but that's really a no-go for me. I like the idea of armor skill effects, although I think it was a heavy-handed implementation. And I like the fatigue system.
To begin with, I gave all the heavy armor +10 to the body and legs. I still don't wear it, but at least there is a moment's contemplation between 54 mail and a 25 tunic. I left medium armor alone. Which makes sense, because often, medium armor had the same value as heavy armor (bronze lamellar is 41, for example). And sometimes I do wear medium, especially the lamellar, since the skill penalties aren't quite as egregious.
If I were a better modder, I'd reduce the penalty of heavy armor to something like -2 athletics, -2 power draw, -2 power throw, -1 power strike and like +3 iron flesh. Medium armor would be simply -1 across the board. That said, I don't know if armor bonuses actually work. The naked pict armor is supposed to give +2 iron flesh, and the iron flesh shows up on your skills, but is not reflected in your HP. That's also the deal for mules and inventory management. If I were a better modder, I'd very much like to know how to fix these (mules in particular annoys me, as that inventory management bonus makes a lot of sense).
4) Weapon Values - I was bothered by how cheap swords were, as well as how ineffective they were. With TML's submod change to spear, a two-handed swinging polearm was basically death incarnate. I went about fixing this, by doubling or even tripling the cost of all swords, and giving both their cut and thrust damage a boost (something like 3 to swing, and 5-8 to pierce). That's because in no universe, should getting a thrust to the belly from a sword inflict less damage than a knife or arrow. Many swords has like 14-16 pierce, and 33 swing. Now, most have an average of ~37 swing and 20-24 pierce. There are still some variations. Some celtic, pictish or warrior swords break the formula a bit in being better to swing and still a bit bad to thrust with.
Another reason that the sword's cut values had to be raised was because it was seriously unbalanced with axes. Axes are all pierce damage, with carve through armor like butter. Cutting damage is supposed to have a higher base damage (to hurt unarmored opponents more) but do worse against armor. Well, this is impossible in practice, where even 'unarmored' opponents, will have like cloth caps (or wimples) that give +10 or +12 armor, and cloth armor, whether it be rags, dresses, with gloves and cloaks, that can stack up to 25+ armor. Part of this solution was lowering the armor of some of the cloth. Another part was raising the swing damage of swords.
As it stands, swords could probably still do with a bit more damage added, or with the light cloth armor made more like 5/2, and get rid of the 10/2s, and take the 13 or 16s down to 10s. But I didn't want to make too sweeping of changes just yet.
The spears in TML's submod were doing equal piercing damage to swinging as with thrusting. This made them GROTESQUELY overpowered. I returned all the spears swing damage to blunt damage. I know he did this because of the way the overhand thrust works. And I like the overhand thrust animation. But it was too much. I was spanking guys at point blank range with a long saxon war spear, one-shotting everyone. I also changed banner damage to blunt from cutting, and a few other weird things.
Some axes lost the ability to parry. Some swords (the bastard celtic/pictish swords) were moved to the back slot. Axe hammers now do modest ~30 blunt damage, and only the long handle version can parry. I know they're not really hammers, and look more like axes. But I really, really missed a mace-type weapon in Brytenwalda.
I noticed that for a lot of weapons, their reach didn't align very well with their actual weapon. A knife or sickle for example, can hit someone from like a foot past where the blade ends. I didn't screw around with reach, because I just didn't know if I might make something worse.
Ideally, I'd add in other blunt weapons, like sledgehammers, mauls or maces, but change it so that blunt damage has a greater chance of killing someone instead of automatic captive. The lack of these weapons is one of the main things that perplexes me.
5) Horses - Horses are extremely weak in Brytenwalda. I've lost count of the times that I've just happily one-shotted horses spilling their riders left and right. I don't think that horses should be tanks - and I very much approve of the absence of the couched lance. But right now, they're quite ridiculous.
In order to fix this, I adjusted all their stats. Donkeys were made slightly worse. Ponies left mostly the same, but north horses, draft horses, the paraverdus and greek armored horse all got boosts to their hit points, charge damage and natural armor. You can actually knock someone down by running into them at full gallop with a north horse instead of bouncing off them. They last a bit better in combat as well. They'll still go down when stuck amidst a bunch've troops (sigh, AI cavalry), but are no longer at quite the same risk when riding by or in scattered knots. They can take a few whacks before tumbling.
Beforehand, I honestly did not notice much difference between a donkey and a north horse. Now, there is a considerable difference. Donkeys and mules are actually weaker and worse in combat than they are now. The only reason I'd ride a donkey in battle, was to get to the front lines and dismount. Pony stats were left mostly unchanged, which means there is a significant gap between them and the new and improved horses.
To compensate, north horses now require 2 riding, draft horses 3 riding, paraverdus 4 riding, and greek armored war horse 5 riding.
6) Companions - This is what gave me the most trouble. What I would have liked to do, is something like the no-longer supported or available 'stronger companions submod'. However, I always thought that was overpowered, and my own version is more modest, with levels at 5-10-15-20, instead of going to 33. Also, I spent the points myself based on what I thought made sense. However, there are still at least 3 different companions avaialble to fill each niche, so a player is hardly stressed for options.
Unfortunately, I ran into a major obstacle. I was unable to increase the cost for hiring an NPC, without having to edit it in python. And editing it in python gave me like 20 interconnected txt files, which would have wiped away all of TML's mods that I did like, and I wasn't even sure how up to date the basic Brytenwalda Module System was. It also would have made me, seemingly, have to re-edit a few files. Point being...There was no way I could find, (and I looked long and hard) to just increase the cost of hiring certain companions. If there is a simple way to do this, please let me know.
So the solution I hit upon, was to keep with the 5-10-15-20 changes, but to make it more 'fair'. This means that, the NPCs do not get the full attribute and skill points for their levels. They get pretty much 3 'player levels' for every 5 NPC levels. This ensures that getting a level 20 NPC companion off the bat is a boost, yes. But he'll have less attributes than a level 5, 10 or 15 NPC taken all the way to 20 normally. Also, the higher level an NPC begins as, the less likely you'll be able to modify them. Some NPCs are very good, but they're all good in the Aleifr sense (him of the magic 7 trade). Which means that no NPC is starting with higher than 6-7 in a party skill. Liuva has 6 training (and is a high level to allow him to actually train level 16 peasants). Bridei has 7 track. Ultan is a so-so medic (lacking surgery), but with good iron flesh, power strike and two-handed proficiency. One of the Picts is a good forager/looter. Some of them, like Lothar or Cealwin, are straight up fighters. Some make good emissaries.
Ideally, I would have liked to pair these new companions, with a system that limits your total number of companions to your leadership rating. Or alternately, to a max party size of 6. I wasn't able to figure out how to do this, or of it's even possible. But I think it's a fair system now, and it makes it somewhat harder to cheese trainers, while being easier to use trainers.
7) Troops - A few minor changes here. A lot of them have templates from base Mount and Blade...So there's a lot of weak troops with like 6-7 athletics, 7 shield, 8 power strike. It means that even supposedly crap units have monster stats. I know the AI needs every advantage it can get, but its depressing that weak-ass bandits are faster than I will ever be, with 20+ agility and maxed athletics. I wasn't able to dig much into this, but I did give Neko's men their horses (Canabrian javelin men should have horses!). A lot more could be done here.
But I'd also like it if the player could raise their power strike/athletic skill further. Getting a max bonus of 5 from it is fine, but if we could keep raising it, then you could eventually compensate for the penalty in heavy armor, which would beautifully model the importance of higher strength.
I've also noticed that effective fighting with a spear requires both great speed, and constant backpedaling. This makes it extremely difficult for the player, because even with 6 athletics, I trip ALL THE DAMN time. Don't get me wrong. I like tripping. I feel like it limits some potential abuse. But I'd much rather prefer if Athletics went to 8, and eventually reduced the tripping chance to 5%. The AI, which almost always has maxed athletics, and 20+ agility, even on middling troops, and backpedal-fights well, does much better with spears. In a similar vein, you'll often find that because of the skill cap, many soldiers in Brytenwalda have identical stats, regardless of level, since both are maxed out...Noone ever went back to account for the fact that there there are lower limits on certain skills.
Thoughts?
Brytenwalda Realism Submod 0.5
Compatible with both TML and non-TML versions (there are only 3 txt files to be dropped in or out, that don't affect anything else).
Changelist
This is a more concise listing of changes I've made. More lengthy explanations and reasons for these changes can be found earlier in the thread.
ITEMS (item_kinds1.txt)
Trade Goods Overhaul
- Raw hides substantially decreased in value (they were equal to silver!). Buying and slaughtering cattle is no longer a road to unlimited riches.
- Most raw materials, such as wool or flax seed, have decreased in value.
- Most finished goods, such as wool cloth, linen or fine cloth have increased in value.
- Silver has increased in value.
- Mead and ale have decreased in value, owing to the cheapness of grain.
- Grapes and olives are more expensive.
- Food amounts have been adjusted to better account for their weight.
- Notably, Grain now gives 200 instead of 150, and dried meats give 225 instead of 150.
- Various other minor tweaks. Trade routes that you're familiar with, are still in place, but the profit is a little more realistic.
Cloth Armor
- All cloth armor, with the exception of noble clothing, have been at least halved in value. It made little sense for dirty shirts to give 70 scillingas from being sold.
- Some cloth armor have had armor values adjusted. Such as pants and villager dresses, or naked picts.
- In the interest of realism, changes here could have been even more extreme. But were actually quite restrained. Those who use the supply wagon to hoover up every dirty, ragged scrap or pair of trousers will still make otherworldly profit.
Heavy Armor
- Most Heavy armor has had chest armor modestly increased (around +10/+15 depending on the item) and leg armor substantially increased. It often didn't make sense, with byrnies or hauberks that went as far as the knees, giving hardly any protection. Brytenwalda also has a dearth of leg protection in general, with legs often being the most vulnerable spots on the body, which isn't that realistic.
- Various tweaks balanced for playing with normal damage, tripping, fatigue and armor penalties ennabled.
- Medium armor left alone. Which is fine, as in many cases, medium and heavy armor had nearly the same armor values before being modded.
- Heavy armor was made rarer in the game. It does not show up as often on some troops, such as frankish raiders or dena pirates.
Weapons
- Hundreds of tweaks and adjustments to various weapons, aiming for more realism.
- Slings, sling stones and rocks decreased in re-sale value and damage.
- Swords are both more expensive (doubled in value, as a minimum) and more lethal, and are better to thrust with. Many sword values had thrusting damage of as little as 11-14, making a rock or cheap knife more dangerous than a blade thrusted into the belly.
- Swords are a bit more rarely found equipped on various troops.
- A few swords, such as the Pictish and Celtic long swords, were moved to the back sheath.
- Most axes are now cutting instead of piercing damage, although their cutting values have been increased.
- Axes that retained piercing values, often had their damage lowered a little and value raised, such as the elite decorated axe.
- Some axes, such as hatchets, lost their ability to parry.
- Knives and daggers do better thrusting damage, making some of them a decent choice for armor penetration (as occurred historically, being able to fit through eyeholes and such). Some had their reach fixed, which were set as long as swords in some cases, despite the model of the weapon being far smaller.
- Spears do blunt damage when swung, and piercing when they thrust.
- Banners do blunt damage instead of cutting.
- Axe hammers do blunt damage. I know it looks more like an axe, but I imagined them as being more crushing-like, with damage and speed to show for it. The game also suffers from lack of any mace or maul weapon, which I hope to fix soon. I'd also like to make blunt damage not give an automatic KO.
- Most bows/arrows do cutting damage now, instead of piercing, except for pictish crossbows and byzantine arrows. But their cutting damage was very slightly increased.
Horses
- North Horses, Draft Horses, Paraverdus and Greek Armored Horse had their charge damage, armor values and hit points adjusted upwards.
- They were tweaked to be realistic, not overpowered, though in truth, could probably have been raised even higher. It's still a significant improvement over un-modded, where they seem to collapse instantly.
- Previously, a 800 pound horse barreling into a soldier would more often than not, come to a dead stop and inflict little if any damage. Now, a North Horse WILL knock over who it collides with.
- Donkeys, mules and ponies are virtually untouched, or possibly a bit worse (slower, less maneuverable).
- There can now be champion and timid horses as well. I would've liked to adjust 'timid', but that requires going into the scripts. For now, it's a -1 riding requirement.
- Riding skill requirements adjusted for all horses. 0 For donkeys/mules, 1 for ponies, 2 for North Horses, 3 for Draft Horses, 4 for Paraverdus, 5 for Greek Armored Horse.
SKILLS (skills.txt)
- Power strike cap raised from 5 to 7, to better accommodate a high strength overcoming heavy armor penalties.
- Power Throw and Power Draw cap raised from 5 to 7 for same reason.
- Athletics cap raised from 6 to 8. Having max athletics should allow you to reach a siege ladder without getting winded and collapsing even while wearing heavy armor. This was the easiest and most obvious change to make.
- I was extremely tempted to move Athletics to Strength, but did not. Feedback wanted on this!
- Trainer and Persuasion moved to Charisma.
- Trade moved to Intelligence.
- Spotting, Tracking and Pathfinding moved to Agility.
- Shield moved to Strength and had its cap raised to 5. They still seem to break way too easily, but it's a start.
TROOPS (troops.txt)
- All troops have received a comprehensive pass to have more realistic stats. Most were copy-pasted, and it didn't matter what level they were. A villager was as likely to have Power Throw 4 and Athletics 6 as an elite soldier.
- Soldier skills have been adjusted to be more realistic. Skirmishers and elite infantry are more likely to have higher athletics and better power throws, than heavy infantry, who are more likely to have better iron flesh and power strike.
- Athletics, shield ability, riding skill, as well as Power Strike/Power Throw etc have all been distributed with the raised caps in mind, and taking into account armor penalties.
- No more peasants with 16 strength and maxed skills. They're more likely to have around 9 strength.
- Some minor adjustments to troops based on faction. Germanic units, such as Angles, Saxons and Jutes tend to have +1 strength, and +1 power strike/iron flesh to some of their best units.
- Briton, Irish and Pictish troops, roughly in that increasing order, tend to have better agility, better athletics and better power throw. Britons are the best riders. Germanics and Picts are the worst.
- 'Special' units, like Ship Captains, Bandit Leaders, and various lords, were left alone. They're still technically overpowered (some are level 52!), but I suppose that's part of the challenge. Personally, I like to seek out the opposing lords or generals and defeat them in personal combat. And it helps them to stay alive a bit more, because they're often roaming around on their own away from the shield wall.
- Arena/Tournament units left untouched. They're overpowered, but making them weaker would only make tournaments even easier to abuse than they are now. Besides, you can reason that it's impossible to accurately model stats where the combatants are supposedly holding back a little and using blunted weapons.
- Villagers now fight like...villagers. The ones you dueled while training them, for example, had beastly stats and maxed athletics which made going 3 on 1 a fool's errand.
- Equipment was adjusted for troops. Some notable examples:
- Cantabrian javelineers now have horses, which they inexplicably lacked before.
- The 'huscarl' or 'hearthsworn' elite heavy infantry have exchanged their medium and heavy spears for battle axes and two-handed axes.
- Frankish raiders and dena pirates are less likely to have mail armor. Both were far more heavily armored than the Franks of a century later. They've also lost their swords, although Ship Captains might still carry one.
Companions
- Companions were given starting levels of 5, 10, 15 or 20.
- 5 Companion levels equates to 3 player levels, in terms of attributes.
- All Companions were given reasonable specialties, though none with a higher starting Skill in something than '7'.
- This represents a middle ground between Companions as they are in a semi-worthless state, and Companions in the defunct Stronger Companions submod, which were quite overpowered by letting you spend all their points and going up to level 33.
- I tried to give each Companion a little flavor to them. The Welsh companions tend to be good at archery and spear use. Example: Ultan is a decent combat medic, with a high Iron Flesh, Power Strike and decent two-handed, but who lacks Surgery. Bridei is a good tracker.
MISC NOTES (OR HOW BEST TO ENJOY THIS MOD)
In module.ini, change the damage soak values to these:
Don't play with the supply wagon.
It's an entertaining concept, but it completely wrecks the game's economy, and allows you to engage in all kinds of cheating. Like stashing troops in a wagon to avoid feeding them, then racing across the map with more speed, and unpacking them for battle. It also allows you to take unlimited troops onto a ship, and to get maximum profit off battlefield loot, by letting you sell to towns long after their merchants would be out of scillingas. You can still use the wagon, but acknowledge that it makes the game far, far, far trivial than it was meant to be.
Don't use the mystic merchant.
This also ruins the game's economy, and makes it impossible to justify buying weapons or armor from the regular merchants, when you could take a chance and get a lordly or tempered version. It's also deeply unrealistic. I don't usually like to force my own gameplay on other people, especially since I'm not a skilled enough modder to include an 'enable/disable' switch. So these files don't affect the merchant. But you'll have more fun if you ignore him.
Companions
One of the least entertaining aspects of Brytenwalda to me, is companion management. As well as getting them all at level 1, and having it take forever for them to be of any use, excepting Aleifr with his trade. I've made all of the Companions useful in this mod, and those you take from level to 5 to level 20, will have more attributes and skill points than those you get at level 20, making them worth the investment, or for short-term long-term decisions to be made.
What I would have liked to do however, is limit the number of companions to either 6 at one time, or to tie the number of companions you're allowed to your leadership skill. I wasn't able to figure out how to do this, yet. You should be aware of that philosophy regarding them, even though it's up to you, whether to adhere to it or not.
INSTALLATION
Just drop the files into your Brytenwalda module. Overwrite as necessary. Back up the replaced files as you desire.
LINK:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9xjlugcji9mtoxr/AABXD1DIuVbVm0W_3_lEOqLBa
