Suggestions thread (please don't ask questions here!)

I personally would like to see a better recruitment system. Seriously, I hate how I have to go around doing quests for EVERY village I want to recruit from, and more than half the time they don't even have anything for me to do. Some of you may say "Hire mercs." Well guess what? They're too expensive. Why? Because I keep getting my ass handed to me by bandits, thus losing both money and equipment. Why? because I'm always stuck fighting them by myself. Why? Because I can't seem to hire anyone. Now you may also say "Get a horse, it makes the game way easier." Well let me ask you something. If I can't afford mercs what makes you think I can afford a horse? Rant aside, I think this is an excellent mod, but this recruitment system ruins it for me. Most of the time I'm stuck fighting in the arena to slowly earn money to buy mercs and a horse if I've been going at it all day.

Make a starting battle for every type of person.

Generalmonkey said:

I personally would like to see a better recruitment system. Seriously, I hate how I have to go around doing quests for EVERY village I want to recruit from, and more than half the time they don't even have anything for me to do. Some of you may say "Hire mercs." Well guess what? They're too expensive. Why? Because I keep getting my ass handed to me by bandits, thus losing both money and equipment. Why? because I'm always stuck fighting them by myself. Why? Because I can't seem to hire anyone. Now you may also say "Get a horse, it makes the game way easier." Well let me ask you something. If I can't afford mercs what makes you think I can afford a horse? Rant aside, I think this is an excellent mod, but this recruitment system ruins it for me. Most of the time I'm stuck fighting in the arena to slowly earn money to buy mercs and a horse if I've been going at it all day.

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In the very beginning you usually have more than 1000 denars. That's more than enough to buy a saddle horse and some of the bent lances. And if you have them, the world is yours .
The recruitment system is one of the key features of the mod and it will remain unchanged, I believe.

After playing through this mod a bit, I have just a few suggestions:

1) Remove archers from tournaments: It's all good and fine for variety sake, but 99/100 times if you are stuck with a bow you get knocked out very quickly. Bows do ridiculously poor damage and it is almost impossible to stop a target from closing in and engaging you in melee... especially one with a shield. And you can forget about having any sort of chance against multiple targets. Once engaged in melee, archers stand absolutely no chance; they literally get smacked around in a melee due to no melee weapon or ability to block or fire an arrow when being pummeled with melee strikes. Such a common situation makes it extremely frustrating to lose nearly every tournament due to being unlucky enough to draw a bow as your weapon in one of the five rounds. Now people here can bolster their own egos as say that they win with bows all the time, but the fact is that those idiots are full of crap. So if you are readng this and want to comment about how uber you are, please don't. I will admit that is possible to win when given a bow (as I have a few rare times), but the degree of difficulty coupled with a complete lack of skill and a reliance upon luck to win under those circumstances makes it an unecessary component to this wonderful mod.

or

If not removal of bows from tournaments, at least give bowmen a club or something as a secondary weapon. Give them a chance to defend themselves against the inevitable melee that they will be engaged upon.

2) Expand the factions on the map: The map wonderfully portrays the warfare in the Baltic region, however it seems somwhat lacking as there were some important players involved that are not represented. I personally believe that the warfare in the Baltic region could be expanded on by this mod. Sweden, Denmark, and Roman Empire are a few that come to mind; the former two had specific regional interests in the Baltic, and the Romans had long standing ties and interests in Crimea and with the Kievan Rus. (I won't say Byzantine because that is an unintellible reference to them). Sweden and Denmark could be directly represented, while the Romans could be indirectly (if at all).

Cities could also be added in the northern area of the map to not only make an addition of Sweden more plausible, but also an introduction of the Republic of Novgorod. I understand the logistical reason for having a singular russian state, but the Rus were far from a united people and faction at this point. I just feel like a united russian faction is extremely ficticious and I hope it wasn't done with the main intent of seeing them survive the Mongols and being able to do in a game what they couldn't in history. If cities were added to the north and north-east, Novgorod could be added as a faction, and the rest of the current Rus state could be split between Vladimir and Kiev.

3) Rename the 'Crusader' faction to the Teutonic Order. Yes, they were Crusaders from many European nations, but the TO is the faction being directly represented by the currently named 'Crusader' faction.

4) The quality of some of the voices are poor. I know you guys are not a company and you all do this on your free time and for fun, so I'm not expecting perfection. It's just that the sound quality of a few of the voices has static, has an echo, is very quiet, or sounds far away. Not a big issue, but one of the little things to be done as an extra to make the overall quality and feel even better.

5) A far off land?: The crusaders are currently represented by Denmark, the Holy Roman Empire, and others in items and in-game appearance, but are only represented by the HRE in character creation. Perhaps add a 'Distant Catholic Nation' option as well for non-German Crusaders?

6) CTDs: I get them all the time. I did as some people suggested in other posts, and the CTDs are less frequent, but I still see them a lot.

Now some good things:

1) The models and textures are absolutely beautiful. I think this mod is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The Rus and Mongolian armor, especially the dynamic lamellar, is amazing. Bravo!

2) The representation of the age and era thus far is pretty good. Although I made some suggestions above as far as faction expansion, I think you guys have done a very good job in what you have so far.

3) I like the differences in faction specific armor and the upgrade system to the armor. Very good idea and implementation. Money could be a tad bit easier to come by, but that is another situation altogether.

Seether said:

6) CTDs: I get them all the time. I did as some people suggested in other posts, and the CTDs are less frequent, but I still see them a lot.

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Have you updated to .622 version? I did recently and alot of my crashes went away.



On another note, I've been hashing over what I would like to see in this mod. I've narrowed it down to only 3 suggestions.

1. Formations: not tactics, I've seen some suggest battlecries... F~that; I think it would detract from a mod where realism is too important. But infantry formations and lancer formations would be a nice idea.

2. More building options in villages, towns, and castles. Improvements and what not

3. Banners that match or very closely relate to the tabards already present in game. Aesthetics, ya know.

I know you guys are constantly fine tuning and some coarse tuning. While you do so; look over castle sieges, recently I've noticed during alot of the castle sieges the defenders stand back away from the ramp more or get spawned at a place where they can't make it to the ramp.

I've been playing 6.20 since the day it was released, And this is a brilliant mod. There's been so much work put into it, in every aspect. I've been particularily impressed by the textures, the balance, sounds, and most importantly realism.  I do have a question however. The stereotypical crusader, has always been depicted on a warhorse, or on foot, in surcoat, chainmail, etc. Heavily armed and armoured.  I'm not that knowledgeable about the history of this era, but one thing bothered me.  You have Knights axes, and you have swords and longswords. You have a good number of two handed axes too, I adore the German Axe, its very realistic.  But I noticed there are no swords that are two handed, included in the mod. Why is this? I would have thought that Germans, especially since they were well known for the Hand and a Half sword, would carry that type of thing? Am I wrong? Was this just a stereotype of Crusader knights? I know they are Tuetonically based, but I know little about who or what the Tuetons were.  Rus is a very very good history lesson.

Aerid Thongar said:

I would have thought that Germans, especially since they were well known for the Hand and a Half sword, would carry that type of thing?

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As I remember my history correctly, the hand and a half sword was not used until later periods of crusades. Probably off by a small amount like 50-100 years.

Aaaah, that explains more about it then.  So the heavier weapons of the period were mainly axes?

Seether said:

After playing through this mod a bit, I have just a few suggestions:

1) Remove archers from tournaments: It's all good and fine for variety sake, but 99/100 times if you are stuck with a bow you get knocked out very quickly. Bows do ridiculously poor damage and it is almost impossible to stop a target from closing in and engaging you in melee... especially one with a shield. And you can forget about having any sort of chance against multiple targets. Once engaged in melee, archers stand absolutely no chance; they literally get smacked around in a melee due to no melee weapon or ability to block or fire an arrow when being pummeled with melee strikes. Such a common situation makes it extremely frustrating to lose nearly every tournament due to being unlucky enough to draw a bow as your weapon in one of the five rounds. Now people here can bolster their own egos as say that they win with bows all the time, but the fact is that those idiots are full of crap. So if you are readng this and want to comment about how uber you are, please don't. I will admit that is possible to win when given a bow (as I have a few rare times), but the degree of difficulty coupled with a complete lack of skill and a reliance upon luck to win under those circumstances makes it an unecessary component to this wonderful mod.

or

If not removal of bows from tournaments, at least give bowmen a club or something as a secondary weapon. Give them a chance to defend themselves against the inevitable melee that they will be engaged upon.

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A. Suggestion for a first time improvement :

1. I think that character that participate to a tournament should participate with their own equipment and not with an equipment given by I don't know who... It's how it work in the 1257 edition mod.
2. Range weapon should be disabled for the tournament. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think they where used at all.


B. Eventually, for a more deeper improvement :

The tournament could be split into various "events". The player could have the option to participate to each "event" if he can. He could also see them (from the "arena view") or to skip it to the next event. Each event will have it's winner (with a prince, some renown and better relation with the city).
Some events :

Joust
Only noble character and "noble troops" can participate.
Character need to own a lance, a mail armour, a shield and a horse in order to participate.
Battle are always 2 teams of 1 member until it last only one participant.
They fight with their equipment. Range weapons are disabled.
Defeated character become prisoners and must be ransomed immediately at the end of the tournament.

Mounted mêlée
Only noble character and "noble troops" can participate.
Character need to own a lance, a mail armour, a shield and a horse in order to participate.
Battle are always 2 teams of lots of members until it last only one participant.
They fight with their equipment. Range weapons are disabled.
Defeated character become prisoners and must be ransomed immediately at the end of the tournament.

Dismounted Mêlée
All character and mêlée troops can participate.
Character need to own a mêlée weapon in order to participate.
Battle are like they are currently with x team of y members until it last only one participant.
They fight with their equipment. Range weapons and mount are disabled.
Defeated character become prisoners and must be ransomed immediately at the end of the tournament.

Those tournament take place in Poland and in Crusader cities.

Aerid Thongar said:

Aaaah, that explains more about it then.  So the heavier weapons of the period were mainly axes?

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As I recall correctly yes. I'm sure there were some larger swords, but from what I could research, there weren't any bastard swords or large broadswords as commonly issued weapons. Here's a link where you can read about the high guard fighting styles.

http://www.staffordrapier.co.uk/index.php?a=styles

Seether
1. I'm sure the tournaments will be reworked in one of the later versions. We had a lot of suggestions on the official forum regarding tournaments. Archery contests will be held in Horde camps, but I'm not sure how they'll be organized.

2. Lots, no, LOTS of work. Even in 0.622 the work on the four major factions is not completed. Lots of Native items remain in the mod, lots of scenes need to be redone. So, it's a very distant perspective.

3. No. First of all, there's only a part of the Teutonic order territories present in the mod. As you can see, there's no Grandmaster here, the Landmeister is the head of the faction. Secondly, there are some lords (jarl Birger, jarl Ulf Fasse, Knut Valdemarson, Abel Valdemarson that are not members of the Order. So, it would be incorrect to rename this faction to the Teutonic Order.

4. I wrote about this issue yesterday in one of the threads here. Voice acting will be redone. The final quality will match the quality of Rus warcries.

5. Maybe, but what would be the real difference between these options?

I have some CTDs only during saving game. Some people say that those can be fixed by turning off music (from M&B launcher) and/or shades. What version are you using?

3) I like the differences in faction specific armor and the upgrade system to the armor. Very good idea and implementation. Money could be a tad bit easier to come by, but that is another situation altogether.

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Actually money is not a problem in the mod. The thing is that, in contrast to Native, in order to earn money from some specific activity you have to improve the corresponding skills. If you want to make your living by selling loot, improve trade skill, if you want to sell slaves, improve your prisoner management and so on.

aggietex84
Many of the ideas were discussed on the official forum. In most cases, cavalry formations do not work as intended. Infantry formations... yes, it would be good.
In the final version only Polish troops (and, maybe, Scandinavial ones) will get some heraldic items.

Captain frakas
Actually the rules of the mid-XIII century tournaments were not so clear and straightforward. Basically they resembled small-scale battles (i.e. horsemen could engage footmen, several warriors could attack one guy, etc.) Real combat weapons (i.e. not blunt ones) were often used. No 1 vs 1 jousts.
And... I'm not sure about the tournaments in the Crusader towns... At least I'm not sure about the participation of the Order brothers in such events.

JoG said:

Actually money is not a problem in the mod. The thing is that, in contrast to Native, in order to earn money from some specific activity you have to improve the corresponding skills. If you want to make your living by selling loot, improve trade skill, if you want to sell slaves, improve your prisoner management and so on.

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I don't know JOG, I find the economic aspect to be very difficult in the beginning,  when all you really have access to are mercenaries and maybe levy troops. The mercenaries are too expensive to implement in significant numbers and the levy troops are so weak and slow down travel speed to where I frequently get repeatedly chased down and annihilated by bandits and war parties. Thus it is incredibly hard to survive the early period of the game when you don't have access to decent troops or the ability to make significant income. Most of the quests to build relations actually give you a net fiscal loss or are impossible to complete due to the object being located in enemy territory. Now as the quests develop and NPCs are added to round out party skills  this will be ameliorated to an extent, but the point remains that the start up phase of the game could use some work.

The-Doc said:

I don't know JOG, I find the economic aspect to be very difficult in the beginning,  when all you really have access to are mercenaries and maybe levy troops. The mercenaries are too expensive to implement in significant numbers and the levy troops are so weak and slow down travel speed to where I frequently get repeatedly chased down and annihilated by bandits and war parties. Thus it is incredibly hard to survive the early period of the game when you don't have access to decent troops or the ability to make significant income. Most of the quests to build relations actually give you a net fiscal loss or are impossible to complete due to the object being located in enemy territory. Now as the quests develop and NPCs are added to round out party skills  this will be ameliorated to an extent, but the point remains that the start up phase of the game could use some work.

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Hm... I don't use mercs at all.
1. Buy a horse and a lance for your starting 1200 denars. You will be a lord after some time, so playing as heavy cavalry (or, maybe, as a horse archer for monglos) is a part of the roleplay. After all, this is XIII century.
2. When travelling through a European part I try to eliminate hostile scouts. It's very easy, since their parties consist of 3-4 horsemen. By that time I already have my prisoner management skill value of 2-3, so i can capture them and sell them to the lords of their faction. It's not a problem to get 1000-2000 denars after defeating several scout parties. If I have spare 1000 denars, I can participate in torunaments. However, if I play as a lancer, I don't take part in the Mongol tournaments (since my power draw is crappy) and so on. After winning a couple of tournaments I usually have 10-20k denars.
3. For the first 20-30 days I travel alone and pick my companions up from taverns. It's very easy, because you are very fast. You can earn some additional money from guildmaster and lord quests. At the early stages of the game you can equip your companions using the loot taken from defeated sea raiders (when I'm powerful and wealthy enough, I try to equip my companions using faction unique weapons and armor, e.g. Bahestur is a mongol horse archer, Ulrich is an Order brother, Rolf is a French knight, Yeremia is a Polish nobleman, Ludota is a Rus boyarin, etc.)
4. I don't care about village troops unless I have my own castle (village troops are perfect garrison troops because of their low cost. Noone will attack the castle with the garrison of 500-700 men even if most part of them are low-tier villagers.) I try to improve my relations with towns and lords instead. If I have a possibility to take the "lost party" quest, I take it, because its completion gives me ~15 city troops. It's pretty possible to complete this quest if you equipped 8 NPCs as heavy horsemen).
5. It's time to have a party! This is the 50th-60th day of your adventure, you are at level 20-25, your leadership and renown allow you to have a military company 60-70 strong (town troops), but your party usually consists of 40-50 men in order for the morale to be high. You give the oath of vassalage and start participating in serious military engagements. Money is not a problem for you anymore, because selling prisoners and loot allows you to make a good profit out of the warfare.
6. Taking a castle. Now you have the access to elite troops and can engage almost any hostile party you encounter.

I haven't really tried soloing early on, since there are scout parties now I suppose it is viable. This does exclude a lot of play styles though.

The-Doc said:

I haven't really tried soloing early on, since there are scout parties now I suppose it is viable. This does exclude a lot of play styles though.

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Well, that's how I usually do. I'm sure there's a lot of other playing styles available.
The thing is that I like travelling alone or with a small company of NPCs performing quests and fighting small parties, and I try to keep this stage of the game as long as possible. Another thing is that I love the Medieval spirit of R13, so the role-playing potential is huge here. The thing is that if I want to play as a warrior, then horse, sword and lance is a must-have if I play for any of the European factions (even though, for example, I prefer infantry style in Warband). Probably I need to play as a merchant as well...

JoG said:

Seether
1. I'm sure the tournaments will be reworked in one of the later versions. We had a lot of suggestions on the official forum regarding tournaments. Archery contests will be held in Horde camps, but I'm not sure how they'll be organized.

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Ok, sounds good. Although a simpler option, as opposed to removing arhcers, is to give them a simple club as a secondary weapon.

2. Lots, no, LOTS of work. Even in 0.622 the work on the four major factions is not completed. Lots of Native items remain in the mod, lots of scenes need to be redone. So, it's a very distant perspective.

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Right. I know that it a lot of work just to complete the major factions you have now, plus even more to add in more factions. Just an idea for the future of the game to expand the scope of the warfare in the Baltic region.

3. No. First of all, there's only a part of the Teutonic order territories present in the mod. As you can see, there's no Grandmaster here, the Landmeister is the head of the faction. Secondly, there are some lords (jarl Birger, jarl Ulf Fasse, Knut Valdemarson, Abel Valdemarson that are not members of the Order. So, it would be incorrect to rename this faction to the Teutonic Order.

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But in the same regard, isn't it incorrect to bunch them all together and call them Crusaders, as the lands given to the faction in the game were not of a unified government? For example, the Danish had independent aspirations and lands in the region apart from the Teutonic and Livonian Orders. I know that not all of the Teutonic Order's lands are on the game map, but the Crusader lands that are, belonged mostly to the TO and their direct vassals. Most of the Golden Horde's lands are not on the map either, but they are still refered to by that name. It's just a difference in opinion, but this is your guy's game, not mine, and you have been doing a hell of a job thus far.

4. I wrote about this issue yesterday in one of the threads here. Voice acting will be redone. The final quality will match the quality of Rus warcries.

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Good to hear. It's not an issue that is a deal breaker for me; just a critique I had. But I do realize it's a lot tough thing to get done for various reasons.

5. Maybe, but what would be the real difference between these options?

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Mechanically... maybe nothing from the current HRE option. To me, this game is an RPG. The 'Distant Catholic Land' option is just for the RPG aspect and for flavor.

I have some CTDs only during saving game. Some people say that those can be fixed by turning off music (from M&B launcher) and/or shades. What version are you using?

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6.22... I'm going to play some more and try to be more specific with the CTD occurances.

Actually money is not a problem in the mod. The thing is that, in contrast to Native, in order to earn money from some specific activity you have to improve the corresponding skills. If you want to make your living by selling loot, improve trade skill, if you want to sell slaves, improve your prisoner management and so on.

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As someone already commented on, it's not that simple early game. If it is kind of a requirement to have a horse and a lance just to survive, then perhaps give them those items at game start and also reduce the money the character starts with to offset that. Also, if that is the requirement, it does limit playstyles a great deal if players have to be heavy knights.

JoG said:

And... I'm not sure about the tournaments in the Crusader towns... At least I'm not sure about the participation of the Order brothers in such events.

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The knights of the Teutonic Order were not allowed to participate in tournaments or jousts. It was against the rules of the Order.

Would it be possible to get a unit upgrade chart? It would be useful in it's own right but when you get quests to provide and x number of unit y to a lord, unless you know all the units it's a bit hard to know how to get the men you need

Seether said:

But in the same regard, isn't it incorrect to bunch them all together and call them Crusaders, as the lands given to the faction in the game were not of a unified government? For example, the Danish had independent aspirations and lands in the region apart from the Teutonic and Livonian Orders. I know that not all of the Teutonic Order's lands are on the game map, but the Crusader lands that are, belonged mostly to the TO and their direct vassals. Most of the Golden Horde's lands are not on the map either, but they are still refered to by that name. It's just a difference in opinion, but this is your guy's game, not mine, and you have been doing a hell of a job thus far.

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It's the most correct of all of the versions. The thing is that Poland and Rus were also divided into different principalities. So each of those three factions represents a sort of a conglomerate.
Same thing in the case of the Horde. It's neither "the Golden Horde"/"Ulus of Jochi", (because it's only a part of it), nor "Mongols" (because of the inbelievable number of tribes and nations in what it now called "Mongol troops") it's just "the Horde".
We had a discussion about the names of the factions on rusmnb.ru more than a year ago. Most of the people involved agreed with those names since they reflect the nature of the factions in the best way possible.

Seether said:

As someone already commented on, it's not that simple early game. If it is kind of a requirement to have a horse and a lance just to survive, then perhaps give them those items at game start and also reduce the money the character starts with to offset that. Also, if that is the requirement, it does limit playstyles a great deal if players have to be heavy knights.

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No, (now I blame myself because everyone will think my playstyle that I shared here is the only possible one  ) there's a variety of playstyles possible in the mod. I know people play as traders or infantry fighters. While speaking about myself, I cannot imagine a mid-XIII century lord without a horse. But that's just my point of view.

Calamir said:

JoG said:

And... I'm not sure about the tournaments in the Crusader towns... At least I'm not sure about the participation of the Order brothers in such events.

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The knights of the Teutonic Order were not allowed to participate in tournaments or jousts. It was against the rules of the Order.

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That's what I was thinking about while typing that phrase.

Calamir said:

Would it be possible to get a unit upgrade chart? It would be useful in it's own right but when you get quests to provide and x number of unit y to a lord, unless you know all the units it's a bit hard to know how to get the men you need

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Just spent half an hour creating it and another half an hour adjusting it to the forum settings and... voilà!




Yes, I know, there's a lot of grammar mistakes here (especially in the names of Polish and Teutonic troops) but that's how they are called now.

No I know other play styles can work, I've been having a blast playing a sort of Russian foot soldier peasant hero, but the early game set up just isn't conducive to this. More than anything I get by on luck or I get wiped out a lot, for the reasons I outlined before. As quests are developed I expect this aspect to improve, just noting that it does in fact require improvement.

Thanks Aggietex, thats actually really interesting to read, and they also look like an interesting re-enactment group. Are you a member? o.o
About the Tournament, which everyone seems to be complaining about.  This was pre-jousting warfare. This is not France, or Europe. The Crusaders of the time would have had small tournaments probably with hand-weapons. And in reality, no tournament EVER pitted a man on horseback against a man on foot. OR involved melee and ranged combat simultaneously. This isn't Rome, with gladiators (actually only 1 in 8 gladiators ever died in the arena), The aim is not to Kill. However, the idea of a multi event Tourney, is interesting. If you remember the Archery tutorial scene? Break the pumpkins on posts? Something like that possibly, maybe utilising the targets instead. Something bloody hard to hit, so that the tournaments are no longer such a breeze. And maybe some 1 on 1 combat scenes. Like two men with wooden swords and sheilds, and two men with two handed wooden swords.
You CANNOT have such a thing as a "practice axe".  Especially not two handed. The aim was not to stove the other guy's head in, when fighting in medieval competitions. Everyone seems to be forgetting that. The aim was to demonstrate martial prowess. The wooden swords and suchlike were not used to bludgeon the opponent into goddamn submission. they were used to outwit the opponent, and as soon as the weapon connected, the round was over. x.x Do you really think they got a group of men into an arena and said, right lads, start smacking away at each other, whoever is the last man standing wins? NO! Of course not! Cause thats purely barbaric. There needs to be some real thought put into this, to maintain the realism of the mod. Jousting is senseless, Because in reality, The lances shattered on impact. I've yet to see an M and B mod acheive that (I probably just jinxed myself thanks to Slawomir and Rzady Miezca).  The point is, Tournaments were practically non contact.  Do you REALLY think they threw Javelins, used bows, and fired crossbows at each other? Would you really want to get in an arena with someone throwing 5 ft pieces of sharpened wood around? pulling the trigger on a device that fires a projectile at about 70 or 80 miles an hour and can when used correctly easily pierce steel plate? no. Go back to th drawing board and rethink. The Mongols? they would have had non lethal races or something. Remember the Practice scene on horseback with thrown weapons or whatever? that finishes when you reach the end. Maybe the script that closes it, once you've been round the track, can be reworked onto a racetrack for the mongols. with short javelin for hitting the targets as you pass. Incorporating other riders to race against. Figure it out. No more ishi bishi bashi in the freaking courtyard. x.x