M&B: Realism

[Sidus Preclarum]

I do not get why people would want to have a slower progressing in the lvls when it already takes a long arse time to lvl all your soldiers up to the highest lvl with out them dieing in battle.

Lol, wut ?
Besides, the point is exactly not having a 100 strong army of upmost  tier soldiers, isn't it ?

[Giledhil]

Choosing the troops you deploy on the battlefield and the moment of the reinforcement arrivals could be good.

Good luck, I'll watch this topic !

[GMachine]

sounds great but don't make it too complicated

[Zaro]

I do not get why people would want to have a slower progressing in the lvls when it already takes a long arse time to lvl all your soldiers up to the highest lvl with out them dieing in battle. Then what happens when the final patch gets released... your going to have to restart your char after take double the time yo lvl them up with this mod.

There will barely be any leveling at all. This isn't a mod about increasing the skill of the player character and your troops, as the "peasant to superhuman killing machine" aspect of native is completely unrealistic. Leveling will be limited to troops becoming a veteran version of the original unit, and certainly won't be upgrading into a different or vastly superior troop. If you want mounted troops, hire mounted trooped. You won't be getting them by upgrading (you can, however, buy horses through your fief to mount your men, where doing so effectively swaps a dismounted man-at-arms for a mounted men-at-arms).

Also i love the idea about all this excuting normal soldiers and things like that but is there a place where you can try the acual admins of this game to do this in their final update... it would be alot easier on your part when making this mod.

I don't understand what you're trying to suggest? If you're saying to suggest execution in the suggestions section of this site, it's not going to work. The game is too far along for them to make a lot of last-minute additions. I'd suspect anything script-related that they do add is something they've had around for months.

Besides, the point is exactly not having a 100 strong army of upmost  tier soldiers, isn't it ?

Kind of. You won't be able to max out your party with top tier troops as party size is controlled by what you can afford and what is available, not by mechanical party limit system based on player stats. If you bought the largest party you could afford and chose 100 mounted men-at-arms, you will find yourself vastly outnumbered and outmatched by better-balanced forces.

Choosing the troops you deploy on the battlefield and the moment of the reinforcement arrivals could be good

You won't be able to choose which troops you bring into battle (although it would be helpful, particularly for people with lower battle sizes). Reinforcements can be manually called for as is included in the battle morale script by Chel.

[Maecon]

After seeing your work with the graphical enhancement mod, I have no doubts this will be an impeccable work of art. I'll be keeping my eye on this one.

[youhou]

Could you do that if you have lance what have some wooden parts can broken example to plate armor? Then the lance woud do lesser damage. And it wont broken like everytime and it wont broke to leather armors or something like that.

[Conners]

I love this mod already  !! Can't wait to play it  .

[Zaro]

sounds great but don't make it too complicated

I wouldn't say it's complicated, just harder, largely due to finances and the slower progression.

I have no doubts this will be an impeccable work of art

That may be a little strong, I just hope to create a mod with a good alternative form of gameplay. Adjust and enrichen I suppose.

plate armor

The mod takes place at the same time as native - 1257 - so there won't be plate armour. Your point brings up something I've been thinking about though. I would like to put some sort of restriction on the lances, as the couched ability is just too easily exploited by the player. The AI can't deal with them as they won't attempt to block or move, and it's an automatic insta-kill for the player. There are two options that I'm aware of:

1. Remove couched polearms. The problem is this would be an unrealistic change.
2. Significantly decrease the speed of the weapon, so they're quite unwieldly unless you have a good run-up. The problem with this is that mounted troops will be attempting to use these in combat .
3. Already one of my plans, but perhaps when horses are made more vulnerable it will balance it out? The kills may be easy, but we might act less aggressively if it may cost us our horse. This would be reinforced even more if I'm able to have horses killed quicker (rather than being lamed many times).

Update, I finally realised I had the combat AI turned to poor (the default setting, recent install etc). The combat is certainly far better with the stat/equipment adjustments and with AI set to 'good'.

[Modrule]

Excellent mod you're making, can't wait to play it. I have a couple of questions tho. You're planning to make things more financially challenging, do you plan to put in ways to buy Fiefs from lords or maybe pay for the services of other lords as ways to spend any excess money? If it is possible, making them dependent on the player's relationship with the lord in question would make them more realistic. May also allow some empire building aspect to the game as well.

[Zaro]

It's tougher financially simply because there are less ways to make money, they're generally less proftitable, and there's also more to spend money on. If there's excess money, it's either because it's a flaw or you have seriously earned it.

Ways to profit:
- Grinding it out in the arena practice.
- Looting after battle, less profitable).
- Looting settlements, risky, and villages are less profitable).
- Trade, which is less profitable and more dangerous.
- Fiefs, they certainly won't be overpowered.
- Ransoming prisoners and lords. About the only thing that has become more profitable, and it really is quite lucrative.
- Income for mercenary work. Much better than native, but it will still take time to save up for good equipment.

Removed ways to profit:
- No longer gold after battle. I can't imagine people carrying their riches to battle.
- No money for quests. You already get weekly pay.

Expenses:
- Horses are potentially very expensive, they require upkeep and they die more easily.
- Taxes kicked up to those above you and buying your way out of campaigning.
- Paying your own ransom.
- Offering gifts/feasts to other lords in order to boost relations.
- Buying people off such as in sieges, politics etc.
- Fief improvements.
- NPCs cost much more than native.

I don't to remove the ability to get rich, just make it much tougher than in native. Costs should scale well too with your party/kingdom size.

May also allow some empire building aspect to the game as well

It can play a role, since you can buy your way out of situations or use your wealth to convince other lords to act in your interest, such as starting a way, keeping a lord out of a war etc. At some stage I want to adapt the rebellion feature in the game so that you can do it yourself, with you as the King rather than a claimant. This would be extremely tough to do though, and I may make it so you'd have to start as a noble to take over a faction. If I did that, I would also allow an independent player the option of taking over settlements themselves, and be able to negotiate with other factions (instead of them all unwilling to deal with you).

[inter17]

ok i know my way of thinking is hard to understand but back there about slow lvling, i get what your saying... but don't mess with the lvl system to much because we don't want to take half an hour to kill a single soldier!

ALSO can you implement a barracks where you can train raw recruits for the army. have you ever played the total war series??? i like that i can have no worrys about searching from town to town for raw recuits but instead maybe you can put in to this mod a new building structure for a barraks? where you can have the cpu round up soldiers for you and depending how trained you want them to be the more the cost.

if you can also add better siege battles into this mod making it more relistic with how many ladders you can have  or acually real catapults. to get a catapult you can add a new building type such as the siege works. im not sure if this can be done so im just shooting this out there. also active rams would be nice instead of always fighting top the wall instead attack through the gate and the wall.

the battles can use the sounds from the crusaders mod which are very good! also you can add a charge roar! when both sides are about to clash and everyone is yelling before the armys reach ea other in the middle

if you don't understand what i mean just post it and maybe i can lighten the situation

[youhou]

I think the couched polearms is able to remove. Hegemony mod has no couched lance damage.

[Wu-long]

sounds good 

[youhou]

Also if its able you could add to siege battles gates opening system on the wall.

[Zaro]

Previous post (deleted):

I know couched lance can be removed (it has been removed in a number of mods), it's whether it should be. It's certainly not realistic to remove it. The AI cavalry seems to do okay with it though and given the expense of cavalry, maybe they're allowed to be overpowered. Formations should help to keep it being too exploitable for the player.

Also if its able you could add to siege battles gates opening system on the wall.

No, but I will add another one or two ladders to each siege. I'm not against opening the gates, I just doubt I'd be able to make it work.[/i]


Some updates on the battle AI. There are significant improvements that can be made. Rather than just two sides charging each other which is usually the case in native, battles will progress more slowly and in a more organised fashion. First of all, the AI will make more intelligent decisions on whether to attack or defend, and they will defend often. The next part of the battle - the movement phase - is quite a bit slower than native. Both sides will almost certainly have time to organise themselves well before they engage then enemy. One side will likely take a defensive position, while the other marches across the battlefield. During the latter part of this period there may be a large exchange of missile fire between the two sides. The roles of the two sides can change during this period, as an attacker that has superior firepower may just camp within firing range, which may force the defender to assault the attacker. The final phase is the melee. Improved AI makes this tougher as troops will remain relatively grouped rather than ending up all over the place like native.

Here are some battle shots showing basic improvements in battles:

This first shot is when I attack an inferior army. They are inferior so they choose to defend. This suits them well since they're an army of skirmishers, and will be able to fire at me while I advance. This is a very simple situaton for the AI as it's completely outclassed. There's nothing it can do but defend. I mentioned the effective use of shields as the stat boost plus the combat AI set to 'good' makes the AI reasonably effective. You're still far superior individually, but each kill will take longer and they're more likely to get a hit in.



This second shot is when I attack a superior army. They also attack me on the campaign map, but after I'm knocked out I'm given the option to leave the battle, so technically I was the attacker. I attack but they're far superior, so they advance on me. They do this because I can simply leave if they choose to defend. If they weren't significantly superior, they'd just defend, I'd leave and we'd walk away from each other (although they will still try to attack on the battlemap, which would mean I wouldn't have the choice to leave). Note the formation they are in; they're more organised than native, but since mountain bandits are basically skirmishers, their formation is still relatively loose. It would be much tighter if they were purely infantry.



I got knocked out in both battles (I fought on foot). The first one I believe we were winning, and the second I believe we were losing. The defending team seems to do better, so you'll likely need a superior force to assault the enemy. I didn't have cavalry in either, but it certainly would have made a difference.

Formations
I had played around with mirathei's formations script, but I decided not to use it. There were a number of reasons:
1. They aren't nearly as responsive as the native double line formation. The native formation will do exactly what you want, when you want it.
2. I didn't really use the formations, apart from the ranked formation of infantry. Archers and cavalry only really need the native line (tightened for cavalry).
3. In this mod, infantry is effective against cavalry in a native double line (if you charge front on, you will likely get hit and wounded badly, if not unhorsed and/or killed), so there's not really a need for 10 ranks of infantry, and to add just 1 or 2 ranks isn't worth the issues.
4. When there are only two ranks of infantry, wedge isn't needed to punch through. You shouldn't be making a frontal charge anyway.
5. With the formations, infantry will likely be in ranked formation for both sides, which results in a large performance hit during combat (two native double lines would be far more spread out).
6. Visually it's more epic to have two double lines clashing than two heavily ranked formations taking up a small fraction of the space.