Currently working on...

up next, v152 B    non savegame compatible to A series, expected due date: minimum 7 days.

  If I released to the publish then trash their save games 5 days later its not doing my 92 users any favors.
  If their sitting on a release and preventing me from adding badly needed features, its not doing ME any favors.  Thus testing is closed this week.

1) I'd like to add the Floris character creation presentation used by so very many mods, BUT it would need heavy rework to add:
          race, primary class, secondary class  selection fields
  and  {magic defense, unarmed combat, stealth} skill fields, with  {magic power, faith} skipped as the player no longer controls these.

If room exists (and it does not as supplied) there should be the Rigale crafting fields  {Woodcrafting, Smithing, Leatherworking},
    harvesting fields {Gardening, Hunting, Fishing, Lumberjacking, Mining}  and secondary skills {Skinning, Butchering, Exploring, Camping}.
  But also each Rigale crafting or harvest skill has a guild membership level to display.  It probably begs having a second page to fit all the Rigale fields without having to struggle with the original Floris presentation, which might cut 2 days on the one hand but add 2 days on the other...

  I would expect a good presentation driven character creation tool needs 5-8 working days to build.  It's probably the hardest single change yet;
other mods its a simple cut and paste because they change nothing, but I have to move nearly every field AND populate the fields with non standard information that has complexity by context -- if you're a dwarf AND noble character background how does that change what you start with compared to Orc and noble?  But how does each of those change Rigale skills?

2)  This ought to have "fog of war" hide the moved villages, with some thought to block the usual "find it for me". It should be enough to know what faction it belongs to, and have to ask for directions...  There's a roleplay experiment I'd surely fail every time in real life!

3) changes per  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8936499.html#msg8936499

  The most important changes to make up front are database changes, adding more reserved simple_triggers, adding reserved troops,
  and TPE (tournament Play Enhancements) [as that would change global variables].  Adding any of those later would break savegames, so best to do those up front.

-----  Sea travel adds 10 days coding calendar time; I might just put stubs and disabled ports to reserve the parties on the map where ports go.
4)  Also some of the castle placement and splitting of faction boundaries makes sense only if there was some sort of sea travel, but adding sea travel puts a significant delay plus the cleanest sea travel requires ports to be placed and blocks disembarking at non-ports.  This in turn would change caravans for trade and opens some concern for how to handle naval battles.  The simplest kludge is to assume all ships hug the seacoast and manage to find an uncharted small island for fighting from land, turning it into a simpler scene without ship props ramming each other and disappearing.  I'm not interested in a repeat of 2016 Warsword Conquest, and I don't have time to make a fancy replacement, at least not right now.  But even this much change requires pre-placing the ports on map, possibly disabled to allow late binding/hot patching of code, ahead of time. 
-----
Status:  2 - 3 weeks.
    drop dead deadline Orthodox Easter 2018

  Actually, I changed my mind.  I had a little help in getting my priorities straight yesterday...
  My wife's grandmother dropped dead.  It wasn't such a tragedy as that; at 93 she was in constant pain, and her quality of life was low.  She stopped eating food 28 days ago.  Nevertheless, she refused to die.  So for the last month or so, and for some long time before that, she cried out every few hours and mainly my wife went to her, and I watched the family melt.  I just buried myself here and eventually told her that Death came to everyone, and she shouldn't fear it.  But she surprised me -- she didn't believe in God, in any faith whatsoever, and I guess swallowed the Communist belief that all religion was bullsh*t.  While I felt that God was real just as devs are real, but that he allowed his shadow to make the documentation and that's why so much of it seems Devilish.  Certainly the other side gains much from men's use of religion for militancy and persecution, instead of being a healing and uniting balm.  I suppose it is upon reflection, a prescription medicine much misused by amateurs. 

  As you might know I managed to spend all my inheritance AND what little retirement savings we had on making a lifestyle so that I could make this video game, which somehow would show me the meaning of life.  Instead I lost my first marriage and right to visit my daughter, and that was 30 years ago, and this second time my family likes me but theres no money.  Maybe we'll (devs in general) be allowed to have income after Bannerlord.  Right now they haven't decided (at Taleworlds).  Being old myself and having a lot of medium to minor health issues, I'm not certain there is ever a tomorrow for me.  I choke a lot eating simple foods, and can't swallow well.  My kidneys constantly hurt, and my heart isn't strong.  But at least I have Faith.  I believe God is a better Dev than me, with an internet commencted community, and capable of making MMOs and single player campaigns sufficient to rehabilitate, punish, or reward populations according to their wishes.  What bothers me about a brave new world to come is this: People.  People are cruel to other people.  In my ex-America, there is the Red and the Blue.  They both claim to be "America", and yet they hate each other.  Lie to each other.  Distort everything.  CNN once made us cringe showing real life death live from Bosnia, from Kosovo.  Now we yawn about events in Syria, and are far more fascinated by a school kid killing 17 than the 17 deaths per hour happening at each village or town in Syria.  Or maybe its more like 170 in certain communities.  Yawn.

  So what does this all have to do with this mod?  Well, it means I'm busy a few more days, since we didnt have money to hire a funeral agency.  We instead had to clean her.  Dress her.  Go do the paperwork.  The apartment is not ours, to protect us from carpetbagging scum, but now that becomes a mess too.  So actually, life is all tangled up.  But cleaning a body -- its just an avatar, in God's MMO.  Its just another avatar.  Maybe in my next life I'll be a dog, for mentioning all this and breaking your bubble of disbelief.  Or an insect.  Certainly there are plenty of ways to have hell in plain sight, where all factions can audit the results.  But its all good Dev work.

    I plan to take 40 days and release the next version v160 afterwards, with less communication here, and no intermediate patches in between.  This lets me explore as many layers of new things while allowing failures and changes in plan and everything likely to go wrong, because I just havent paid my dues etc.
But sometimes things go right.  I'm happy that 175 people managed to find and download P3.  I hope most of them can patch too.  It looks to me like the other 10,000 downloads either still run an obsolete client or gave up because what they downloaded was not perfect.  After some years efforts, some generations effort, the larger MMO we live in seems stable enough.  Confident enough to give us the internet, and the ability to dev for ourselves a baby copy of the larger world.  As the children we are.  My advice: don't trust anyone under 1000.  They're still small in wisdom compared to the ones that outlived them.  I'll be 57 when v160 launches on April 26th.  Exactly 40 days after granny died.  I hope she's not an atheist anymore, but I think we're all allowed our own religion, and God respects our choice enough to stop showing us evidence if it would hurt our faith.  Maybe you have no faith.  But who can say what you'll believe in 50 years?

v153 A1b:  released internally.  Breaks all save games.
  1) adjusted number of simple triggers to have extra unused triggers defined for future use
      this also allowed enabling diplomacy recruiter, not that it is particularly useful.
      renumbered simple_triggers for faster future debugging as there was an error previously.

  2) added 8 reserved troops to the list system for more list based static arrays for future use.
      moved lords between factions to balance the factions. 
      changed the number of kingdom females in each faction to better match the number of male lords per faction to reduce errors in finding guardian

    changed starting towns per faction so that in general factions that were tiny are more equal to their neighbors.  This should change how wars are started. 
    reduced Orc Horde party size buff by 50%, making the Orcs more manageable early game for their neighbors.
    moved capital status from Praven to Suno
    changed which lords get which town to accommodate shifted territories.

      adjusted initialize_aristocracy to factor in changes in lords and kingdom ladies

  3) roughly doubled the number of low tier troops trained each cycle by constable

  4) Tried custom troop trees and the upstab animations.  Custom trees highlighted a need to revise prices of some gear, which otherwise becomes instantly overpowering in custom trees. Changed difficulty rating of most chest armor while I was there to better prepare the player's expectations for how much strength they should have before wearing that armor, roughly 1 point of strength per 2 kg weight.  This assumes they have no other gear or armor, so really the player should have a little more than minimum difficulty rating to move comfortably with that armor item.
--------

  5) most likely, the next research test changes is Tournament Play Enhancements (TPE), a replacement for tournaments that was part of Silverstag AND a presentation driven character creation tool to show what you get from what choices you make.

  6) possibly Rigale exploration will be removed if that allows entering towns/castles without clicking twice.  It's not certain that is the place where the problem came from, but if so a different technique will be used.

  7) Probably the balance of this month will be looking at sea travel, as coastal transport and amphibious landings make sense given the map changes.
Sea travel has a number of problems that may not seem obvious, such as what to do when hitting land and how to best do naval battles.  There are a number of kludges and some systems work well but have different limitations (Viking Conquest and required port extensions to cities).  This also has implications for traders and trade routes.

  8 ) Documentation ought to be at least a little more prepared, but this is gated by the character creation tool and how other items added change the starting game.
  Most people got into trouble because they really weren't capable of just surprising themselves and figuring out how things work by themselves.  Half of the "bug" issues were real and half were didn't understand what was happening and thought it had to be more bugs...  Knowing how things really are supposed to work would help.

v153 a2:  released internally,  intended save game break due to changes in map

goal:  Trying to hurry up and finalize the start so that save-games can grow deeper for the weekend without being disturbed by ongoing changes.

1)  shifted faction ownership of several castles to plug holes in faction defenses
        removed explicit grant of lords to castles in game_start script;
        castles will be auto-assigned lords and this helps hasten moving castles to other factions as needed.

    changed pricing and sometimes minor stats of items to avoid unintended sweet spots in selecting gear for custom troops
    changed starting food inventory for players choosing to start as king/queen to have fewer items that will shortly go rotten
    reduced the number of castles (and implicitly this changes number of lords in the player kingdom at start) from 5 to 3, so 2 less lords at start.
      At least the player has a few lords at start, pulled mostly from Swadia, which will dislike the new kingdom as all the property came from them and at least it is marked accordingly in the OSP code.
  [analysis HERE: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8941673.html#msg8941673  ]    DONE
    tested working for lords shifted between kingdoms at start to repair Swadia and only when choosing King/Queen at start option.

2) made analysis of starting position and from this added scripting to shift lords automatically from other factions ONLY if player selects to start as King/Queen of a faction using Custom Troops.

3) cleaned some potential notifications from:
    party leader mismatch originating from Rigale harvest nodes (they are auto-cleaned when found to have phantom members)
    various scripts and simple_triggers for Diplomacy notifications, without disturbing the changes from actually taking place

4) set Necromancy skill to "inactive" to block player selecting it as an upgrade for themselves or companions/spouse.
    NPC necromancers are still able to perform their functions; they just never change skill level.

    Removed auto-upgrade to Necromancer marking at save game database to block players from using Morgh's editor to pervert the game into a
  Necromancy launcher instead of using my time as intended.  I'm not paying to code (as it is a huge net loss) so juveniles can day dream all day about unclean things.  At least it will be gimped if they do manage to activate it by Morghs.  Self heals from hacking edit on next battle. Continues to curse player otherwise when player companions are selected for necromancy via Morgh's, since they cannot be directly commanded to take that skill otherwise.

    removed "Necromancer" as a choice at player start.

5) Rigale harvests reduce the time needed to complete by 1 hour per each 10 unwounded troops in the player's party, down to a minimum of 2 hours.

Bug noted:
  A) choosing to recruit via caravan from Elf Forest always instead pulls from Sargoth.
      Trying a second time also puts at Sargoth, which now shows troops underway and 0 available.
      Perhaps the number of trade routes is clipped to 14 from 15?

  B) successfully helping villagers against bandits and raising relation with the village faction shows NO STRING where player faction belongs

Status:  released internally
  patch assumes you already have updated v150 to P3 then made a copy of the mod renamed for example  "Phantasy v153"

patch v153 a3:  hot patch  to v153

1) Integrated (most of) Whydott's Swadia colorization experiments
    breaks savegame, no matter what tricks I use.  While a good idea in principle, maybe it should wait a week or three.
    Next time will go faster...

2) found the issue for some towns not getting correct troops for caravan based town recruits.
      trade route towns 12-15  improperly received town "0" as the selection, so that although you remember clicking one town, the mod later believed you certainly meant the first town on the list and none other.  Fixed.

3) tweaks for positive energy burst (player cleric spell), negative energy burst (player cleric spell), and NPC Cleric auto-turn undead
    mainly giving victims a reduced damage by magic defense but not as drastic as in P3
    increased damage and healing effects for positive and negative energy burst using the same algorithm in both directions

patch v150 P4:  hot patch
    Intended to move some of the fixes and features tested at v152 / v153 test series back to v150 so player games in progress can benefit.

1) renumbered simple_triggers in the code for ease in Guspav future maintenance, if he wishes to work with v150 in the future.
    This needed to be done a few times to get it right.
      v150 is the last series where player necromancy exists; the next player series will not have necromancer as an option. 
      v150 is otherwise "end of life"; I don't plan more patches for it.  Very few people patch anyway, so what's the point?
      It looks like 4% of downloads patched to P3 after 2 weeks, so it looks like the only time there is a patch applied by clients is the one main download.

2) Extended check for items that adjust stats (gauntlets of ogre power, etc) to include kingdom ladies instead of stopping at companions_end  (s_t_127)
    The checks for these were wasting considerable time, so changed these to 2 per in-game hour instead of 10 per in-game hour.

    Chance of prisoner heroes escape adjusted to 18% instead of 12%  (this is different from the pre P3 fix for prisoner escape)  (s_t_49)
    escape from prisoner tower chance is 4% instead of 3%  (s_t_49)
    escape from parties of former prisoners recruited remains disabled  (s_t_65)

3)  some empty simple_triggers were found while renumbering, allowing adding the missing code needed to move diplomacy recruiters.  (s_t_106)
    recruiters can be used alongside the town recruiting now, and they work, but due to very strong bandits it is foolish to send recruiters outside your own kingdom - that is where caravan based recruiting shines.
    restored recruiting option to constable dialogs

    (s_t_10)  the check for mismatched party leaders that comes from recycled parties becoming leaderless parties (such as Rigale harvest nodes),
      which previously showed as an error when cheat menu is on, now silently cleans up the problem instead of spamming text.

    faction ai's are computed less often, giving kingdom lords a greater chance to follow through on their last decision.  (s_t_37)
    (s_t_124) Orcish Horde surge is (1/2) strength now
   
4) Adjusted items for difficulty, weight, sometimes cost.
        Difficulty now better prepares player expectations for minimum strength to use heavy armor.

      Added upstab support for spears and redid animations thanks to technical assistance from MitchellID's "custom troop trees"
        Custom Troop Trees would completely break v150 series savegames so cannot be added to v150 series.

5) Game menus repaired broken recruiting via caravans when the source trade route is numbered 12-15 this always returned route 0 so wrong source was used.

6) Mission_templates change is a slight tweak to NPC cleric/paladin timer triggered spell "turn undead" to do slightly more damage while still respecting
    target's magic defense skill.  Magic defense helps but does not overwhelm the effect completely, as it did in patch v150 P3.

    Presentations prayer_book adjusts player cleric/paladin spell "positive energy burst" and player cleric spell "negative energy burst" to do enhanced healing / damage depending on the target, which damage modified by target magic defense as in turn undead.  Positive and Negative energy bursts use identical calculations now so that each mirrors the other.

7) Scripts changes:
    a) filtered many Diplomacy notifications using a more clever mechanism
    b) Rigale harvest nodes are harvested more quickly with larger parties: each 10 not wounded troops reduces harvest time by 1 hour, down to a minimum 2 hours.
    c) Bandit lairs that player has closed by entering them now stay down longer.  Many days can pass before they re-open somewhere else.

Status:  uploaded to NexusMods
      approved at NexusMods

v150 P4b:  hot fix
  experimental fix for slow map movement in P4:

  This adjusts some animations back to Guspav's original while trying to keep the positive benefits of dual stab spear animations.
It seems to let me move freely.

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/17Xr43gX__wXwVetAKjwgUxI9i1ZTQ4um/view?usp=sharing

v153 B1:      save game breaking modifications  (unreleased)

Main purpose today is to determine how much impact to the mod adding:
    1) TPE (Tournament Play Enhancements) v1.4 from WindyPlains' Silverstag (and included with Floris Extended)

    2) Character Creation kit (CCK) from Floris

  Both of these are arranged as modmerger additions, which in theory makes them simple to add, except
    A) TPE adds a few new global variables and several new items, which breaks save game so can't be a hot patch add-in.
    B) CCK adds MANY new global variables and a new troop ID to store configuration selections.  Many new slot types are added to in-game
          variables stored at the savegame, which sometimes I call the "database" but actually there is not much formal "database" involved in savegames.  The layout of these variables is critical however and changes of even what seems a very minor nature certainly corrupts savegames.

    TPE's added items use models that need to be added to the game, both at the Resources  .BRF  file level and as declaration lines in Module.ini
   
    CCK needs modification to be appropriate to our mod, as the standard fields and selectors don't always apply.
      In particular adding more fields implies changing the spacing of existing fields, probably over many tries, to fit added fields for display of new information.
      The method used to track items to be handed out needs changing, possibly with 2-3 lists to store incremental changes so that those same changes can be undone without having to start completely over.  I've thought about it and want to make a generic system that can also be used at Warsword Conquest (201; this probably requires 3 lists that are used only at character creation then cleaned and returned to general use afterwards:

TPE is the easy one.
    Adjusted all items to be standard Phantasy items (except the colorized mounts, still have to research)
    Adjusted to add factions 7-13 instead of only 1-6
--
  What a PITA.  It finally compiles.

Started on CCP (Floris Character Creation Presentation).
  Just trying to get it compile as it is, but even that needs conversions as every item is named differently or changed
  The main push right now is to get all the global variables, added troop declarations, and every other save game breaking dependency
into the next test character to be built, as it is a time sink to constantly stop and make a test character that is obsolete overnight.

  CCP finally compiles.  I suppose I should make some test characters and then get started making it useful to Phantasy...  (Thu 13:16)
    cleaned up around 30 warnings from the rest of Phantasy so that new warnings would not be overlooked

  OK I had my first "automated" character built, and can now get busy modifying it for Phantasy.
    So far the background mesh is not loaded so I'll run it down;  I did get the "character_creation" meshes in and had one message only for a icon for renown to nab next, and otherwise maybe that is what I get until I bum art from someone.

    briefly, I kept the old start so I can compare side by side, the presentation populates fields and a script replaces what menus were handing out in the way of goods, money and skills.  Once that is done it drops into the standard skills table and I next make the face as normal.
It picked up the full list of factions but I still have to add race, class1, class2 and populate items for the non-standard factions.  Also the tables show choices for floris backgrounds like "gladiator" etc so I have to adjust still more of it. Anyway it was a fair amount of work to even get this far.  I reckon it will be useful in a few days, possibly this weekend.

-----
  For those who have never seen it, TPE:
  this puts an end to some of the "exploit" behavior of Guspav's betting, and hands out prizes according to the difficulty and your actual results.
It is not necessarily better to just cringe in the corner until you're the last one standing; you get points per round for actually doing things, and failure to earn as many points as someone that ended up going down does not put you ahead of them.  You can also set to not have to do tournaments with weapons you have weak proficiency with, although I can turn off editing if I really feel its needed. 

    For now all the exotic factions think they're Sarranids, but that can change.  I might turn off editing for specific locations, like the Orc town.

Notice Fog of War is working:
  I was worried it was something unique to Perisno but its from Floris, like many of the features common to most mods.
  I started in Sargoth, visited Curaw, and attended a tournament at Khudan. The rest of the map is hidden until I visit it, which is exciting
since everything is moved around a little in v160.  I plan at least one "castle" that moves around the map.  For that matter, I wouldn't mind a town built on clouds that moves, and needs a special quest to unlock the teleportal to it, but that can wait...

finished v153 B1  v155 A1  today (Friday 30 Mar 201, a save game shredding change.

  Main push today is hammering down CCK (Character Creation Kit) lifted from Floris.
    So far:
1)  added support for all 13 factions instead of native 6.
2)  reformatted  (adjust indentation) around 2500 lines for future ease in debugging errors in branching conditionals.
3)  added race effects implicit on changing starting faction
          which changes start town
              and unhides towns belonging to your chosen faction at game start, once your choices are final.

4) did fix camp fire songs yesterday, forgot to mention that.  They earlier were expecting a bard skill that does not exist now.

5) selecting your starting faction actually sets you to that faction for diplomacy purposes.  This means you start with allies and enemies from the first second, and travelling from place to place and collecting enterprises is less trivial.  There is also no 4-ways inn.  Deal with it.
This should mean you pretty much have to flee your starting town in some cases and evade any nearby patrols, who will be hostile rather than neutral.  Hopefully get your bearings quickly, as everything moved on the map and most of it is hidden now...

6)  added support for Rigale skills and Guspav's various renamed reserved skills.

  Happily for me no new fields needed defining in the presentation for these.
    Rigale guilds are now implicit at character creation so that when total skill in a guild is 7+ the middle political ranking "compagnon" is given
      and otherwise any skill > 0 but less than 7 receives "novice" political ranking in the guild.
      All secondary Rigale skills have effective "compagnon" ranking to allow them to expand to up to 15.

    Started converting the original menu selections into script support for the presentation, now that all types of adds and changes have syntax support.  Some numbers are changed for starting race/background combinations, especially for Dwarves/Gnomes, Elves, Drow, and Orcs.

7 ) Did cb1 ("your father was") and cb2 ("early life").  Now doing  Primary class selection 
      Still need to limit character class availability at specific starting factions, for reasons that will later be obvious.

8 ) finished Primary class selection.  Have not started secondary class selection.
  Most likely this CCK will finish tomorrow, but I still have a number of things to do with the cheat menus scattered all throughout the mod

9)  Cleric deity selection can remain menu driven, it will be enough to select cleric as a class and show the generic cleric adjusts in skills
before finalizing cleric by menu and having that menu cascade into skills select exactly as if the presentation has taken the player there.

EDIT: Saturday 31 Mar 18: 
  It SHOULD work.  That's what the compiler thinks...
  A)  But it looks like classes (and most fields) are backwards one off from how they display...
  B)  Clerics and Fighter specialization  menus should have worked also but it did not get picked up, so I have to work on that also.
  C)  skills display has enough items to be clipped short so the last items don't display.  Instead, it needs to be moved to center so a longer area is available for display, so that all Rigale skills etc are shown.  It looks like the skills display for Rigale otherwise works, I can see some of them.


First look at working correctly:  (and cleric and fighter submenus working correctly, through some programming tricks)
    Although specializing in firearms gives the player an expensive weapon up front, the other specializations add stats or give weapons with imod values like "balanced" or "tempered: to make the overall package better, so that no one selection is technically weaker than another in a min/max sense.

  acres are auto-sold at game start, worth 1500 dinars each in terms of value.
  Here we see adjusts for race (implicit elf upon selection of this faction), female gender, paladin primary class, and so on.
  These adjusts are the base values BEFORE selecting how you plan to spend your last points at character skills selection and before picking your face.  If you have a banner coming as a result of starting noble or you have selected as class "cleric" or "fighter" there will be an additional menu pop up in the next 4 game hours.  I've tested 2 of these at once and they correctly pop up (cleric and banner,  fighter and banner), so shortly I'll have a test of all 3 with stat adjusts cascading to show the result of all your multi-class selections.  I plan to have experience climb more slowly for multi-classed players.

10)  I need to validate more of the presentation driven characters getting created then set up a second class at start to do all that I intended this version.

  adjusted the M button that shows what primary and secondary class choices are to match the choices selected at character creation.
  removed the auto-add class for Necromancer and Cleric at mission_templates first spawning agent in battle

11) There is no ability anymore to add a third class by any means, so no adding late a generic cleric or mage, but this needs to be blocked elsewhere.  Also with a maximum 2 classes that have to be picked from day one, choosing exactly what you expect instead of trying to "collect them all" after start makes your choices matter more. Some classes have minus values added for strength or some other stats, to offset all the positive values that class adds. 

  One class is frozen to a specific race and faction and some selections block a second class from being selected.

  Primary only classes:
      {Paladin, Barbarian, Necromancer}.

    Necromancer can only have Necromancers faction selected at start and automatically loses their race (and gender!) to start as undead.
      All mechanics for becoming a necromancer later in game have been removed.  If you try to use the old game_menu to put in lich (and thereby try to activate necromancer after start) your savegame will destroy itself.  Do it my way instead of cheating your way through life.  Necromancy skill is blocked from being added to; if you try your points are lost with no refund given.  If you start as Necromancer you are instantly at war with all neutral or good factions with no shelter; you must flee from where you start and make your way to "safety".  Necromancer is no longer an easy mode like ALL v150.  Necromancers start as liches.
  If you want to be disgusting, now you have to work for it.
  But a certain amount of disgust is available as a game start inheritance, if that's all that matters to you.

  Paladins can lose their status on failing some very simple checks.  I guess it takes all the fun out of it to mention what those checks are.
Treat others like they are yourselves and you'll be fine; be greedy and paladin becomes a fighter with a sword that no longer has power, and the spellbook stays closed. **

  Clerics are no longer made by shopping for a holy symbol.  It might grant some minor protection from magic however.
  Non-Mages can no longer pester the magic guild to become mages.  If you don't take it up front, you never have it later. **

  Primary OR Secondary, but Primary has more stats than secondary:
      { Fighter    -- only primary Fighter gets the additional specialization bonus
        Bard, Ranger, Monk, Cleric (with full selection of deities whether primary or secondary), Mage, Rogue}
       
    You'll notice two changes from what I had published earlier for the next series.

    the presentation for character creation, including second class, is working fully.

12) Camp menu cheats:
    Cheat items clipped before magic swords and firearms.  DONE
        Diplomacy super cheat give free lordly/masterwork items without bothering to pay for them is removed  DONE
    Recruit all prisoners, Heal party, increase player renown  cheats are removed  DONE
    add XP to all of party is clipped to stop after player reaches lvl 9  DONE
    vote yourself free money is set to 50 not 250  gold.  It might be less draining to actually get a job than cheat weekly.  What a concept.

      Dialog cheats:
    Removed {Make Peace with me, Make your faction like me,  I want to join your faction
    "Like Me" for kingdom ladies and kingdom lords moves reaction by 2 not 20 now. 

13) Banker at 4-way inn changes.
    Maximum loan cut off is now 20K dinars, regardless of your (meaningless) paper renown
    Interest on deposits stops accruing after 33000 dinars;  the interest is 1/12th deposit per week, down from before
    Interest on loans stops at 40000 in debt, but until then grows at 1/8th of previous weeks balance, weekly.
     
    4-ways inn seller (shady merchant) now remembers the dice rolls that unlock different items, with fresh rolls made each 24 hours.
        pestering the shady seller every few seconds no longer grants free rerolls.

14) Diplomacy recruiter is removed.  I'm already pushing hard enough on getting this out before Friday to get a detour for a tiny and un-necessary "feature" that does not make sense in a world populated mainly by bandits stronger than native looters.

15)  added Whydott's item rebuilding for Swadia, Rhodok, Blazing Hand factions, and some mounts. These involve technically new items so would have broken save game; best to add them now while noone has a save at risk for next series. 

      Maybe I should call this "v155" as it's half way between v160 and v150...

      Merged again Custom Troops in order to validate starting as ruler of your own kingdom is present in the final build, while still allowing multi-class by presentation.

16) adjusted necromancer weekly creation of undead to check prisoners first, which is a little bit difficult; I started to do this earlier and got distracted.  Otherwise prisoner liches, dark mages, and necromancers continue adding undead to the main party they are captive to.

17) in custom troops, the race selected only set the appearance, but everything else (magic defense skill, magic power skill, faith skill, flags like "troop_is_undead") have to be set explicitly in a script.  So instead, all custom troops start with a fixed magic defense skill of 2, regardless of the race you think you set for custom troops. 

Necromancers will have their troop race set to undead regardless of what they asked for earlier, when the generic custom trees asks what race to set your troops.  Don't worry bunky -- it's like this:  You wanted to be anti-social, so you lose some freedoms.  Your troops are set to be ugly, and they can be zapped as undead by every 2-bit punk cleric and paladin they meet. But on the bright side (except they prefer darkness), they start with Magic Defense = 2 and Ironflesh = 2, just because your adversary believes in fairness.  But in return, every last faction on the map declares war on you, except fellow outcasts.  So being antisocial isn't just socially self rewarding, it has consequences.  You want to daydream of destruction, destruction will be day dreaming about you.  But its just a game, so don't take it personally.  If you wanted easy mode, you'd either be playing v150 "training day/Phantasy lite" or "Hello Kitty".

18 )  Entertainment for pay is only available to bards and otherwise non-bards can only use it for campfire songs.
        Unarmed combat is soft capped at "3" skill for non-Monk class characters.
          some queens and (mostly) female NPCs have been studying self defense skills as the world is indeed a dangerous place

19) a) Player Necromancers should never be offered mercenary positions to any faction, even necromancer, to prevent washing relations.
      b) Player necromancers must not be allowed to become anyone's vassal except at factions "necromancers", "drow" and "orcs"
              both for invitations and in dialogs bantering with some faction's lord
      c)  Player necromancers should have lowered relations with every faction and the faction leader EXCEPT for Orc, Drow, Necromancers,
              who should gain relation weekly as they recognize either a potential ally or someone they use as a dupe to deflect their own problems onto.  Thus even if the player washes relations with a pretender or their faction achieves peace, they soon will be magnets for trouble again.  Necromancer is by design a class that never knows peace, and has picked a fight with every potentiate and deity except their patron.  Actions have consequences.
      d)  Necromancer exiled lords must never be accepted into any other faction.  If exiled, they should be marked as exiled but never returned.  s_t # 136
      Also the incriminate loyal advisor quest in triggers needed modification to block sending necromancer or undead lords to any other faction.
      e) For player Necromancers that start game as King (there are no female liches due to Warband limitation of skins to 0..15 range),
            the 6 lords that accompany the player get marked as undead a week later.  Besides making them fear clerics more, the practical
            purpose of this is to block exiled lords from recycling later and carrying your undead custom troops to another faction.

      f) Player Necromancers who have their own kingdom may now recruit Dark Mages from their own towns without having to visit or be friendly with Necromancers faction.  This also means you no longer have to migrate a tow to Necromancers faction culture to get dark mages as a town recruits menu line item choice.  You could instead for example save money for setting town culture to Mageocracy to recruit golems and mage novices at your own towns.

20) the demon Molocadrum can have a rest.  The main issue is changing the number of companions also changes several markers for assigning dialogs so it takes longer than it would seem.  scripts ln 44239 sets # companions  He's still here.

21) needed to update credits, pages 1 & 2

-----------  <--- here
22) Need to go through module_parties.py  for these changes:
        https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,369695.msg8939908.html#msg8939908    NOT DONE

23) campfire songs are broken, they're still looking at the wrong values to decide success level.  SOME OTHER TIME

----
I was taken by surprise for Catholic Easter (Western/USA/etc) coming yesterday, I thought I had more time.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8941103.html#msg8941103
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8941673.html#msg8941673

  v155 is "mostly" done, but Necromancers can still get into trouble when they select a kingdom at start.
  Now, instead of arguing that its MY JOB to protect you, the consumer, from bone headed mistakes, let's agree its my job to educate you in how to choose correctly the choice you were going to do anyway, but at least try it MY way before complaining:

  If you really MUST roll a Necromancer AND start with a kingdom, the easiest way to screw up your entire universe is to select the wrong skin for custom troops, and for that matter the wrong faction for your own background.  Select faction DELTHERSAM EMPIRE (the undead faction) after selecting Primary class Necromancer.  Actually they're supposed to stay in step - select one and the other gets selected, but it doesn't update for you.  Picking any other faction and Necromancer will cause trouble.  As in none of your dialogs will work.  As in you cant even use the 4-ways inn services.  As in you cant hire companions.

  You can also screw up your start by selecting some other skin than undead for your necromancer's custom troop tree.  Whatever you pick, when the game sets your troops to undead, if you picked some other skin for them, all the troops will be off by 10 or more positions, causing a massive corruption of all dialogs.  Even looters suddenly think they are custom troops.  You will be totally screwed.  It ONLY happens for Necromancers.  ANd ONLY if you do it "your way", instead of what I told you.  So I don't want to hear about it if your way didnt get results.

  Now, there are a number of really swell reasons why you would want for example human troops in your troop tree.  You could saunter into towns, in theory, and they'd see all those human skins and instantly like your party, if they weren't at war with you that is. Likewise Elf, Dwarf, etc. 

  Non necromancers have the best of everything; everything works.
    If you start as an Orc, or Drow, you'll have traditional enemies of those start at war with you.  But at least you might be able to buy peace or let it blow over, unlike Necromancer kings, who just keep accumulating aggro.  Necromancer vassals that didnt start off as Kings have it easier.  They just have to flee from Shariz to Obsidian Spire and get enough renown going to get a vassal offer off the Delthersam empire.  Better, every week the Lich king likes you more.  The Orc Warlord and Drow Matriarch also approve of you slowly, but not like the Lich King
 
Status:  v155 a2  is released to NexusMods in both "main" and "patch from v150" versions.
  https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194?tab=files

  You should copy your  "Phantasy v150"  folder by right click COPY and right click PASTE to it makes a copy of the folder, then rename that folder to    Phantasy v155
  Then patch  with  patch_v155a1 from THIS folder:
  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IpoRh0Pu3j3cvyNwMnEZk9SLYN2uT2lW?usp=sharing

  I'll make a full base tomorrow from home but it is almost not necessary if you can patch.  The patch file is 19 MB instead of 680+ MB.

  I will be closed Friday until Tuesday as it is MY Easter.

I should mention I slipped v150 P4c onto NexusMods to cure the animation slowed map movement which started after v150 P3 and dual stab spears.
Although things ran fine here I had a P4c on my side and so I tried the P4b at NexusMods, saw it was still slow, sent what I had.  P4c had been on back burner as I was pushing to get v153, now renamed v155, out the door.

  Same test P4b, slows down, P4c, speeds up but only after the wounded heal a few hours after battle.
  Take care of your people.

  v155 needs some real testing, but for those that look around its already up  It is "mostly" done, but Necromancers need more work.  Its fine for non Necromancers, but I seem to have mainly Necros in the audience, and frightfully few (if that is the phrase) other classes.  All things being equal, anyone without a deep save game would be vastly better off going with v155 over any version of v150.  Necromancers are just plain trouble; if I could do anything more to dissuade players from picking that class and stop giving me problems, I'd do it, but its like flies to crap.  Something about necromancers draws every novice to it, and its the hardest class.  I NEVER asked people to play it, so don't blame ME for Necromancer related problems.  The class was glitchy before I inherited it.

    I will say Necromancers have a much stronger troop base than they did under Guspav, recover far more undead after battle (2-3x more!), start with immediately higher necromancy skill that they didn't have to spend points on, have partial magic resistance, have 1/2 the damage Guspav gave them when a cleric turns undead, face mounted paladins that cast while mounted on the down side, face many more paladins than before (all the female blazing hand), can promote their tier 1 troops unlike Guspav's source, have considerably buffed zombie, skeleton, shadow, and mummy troops available, and no longer have a free ride so far as normal factions ignoring them like they used to.  So pluses and minuses, if you feel the need to cry to me about your character class, please water the plants or something.  Theyre arguably over buffed already.  Don't ever come at me like _I_ owe you something because YOU picked the wrong class.  Go get the Necromancer author to maintain his own code,but expect all the necromancer buffs since August to be undone, and you'll be worse off than ever.  I also buffed your party size, reduced costs, reduced food, greatly increased buffs to morale so even the tiny hits are trivial compared to the offsets given the party.  So I already feel like I "gave at the office", and no further buffs to Necromancer are needed or "fair".  Fair would be removing the class.  thats fair.  So don't push me.

Opened v156 A2:  not save game compatible with anything, its own series.

  This is everything v155 is except no custom troop trees.
  You may still start as your own Kingdom, but now you have native troop trees.

  1) the -2 faction hit per week was intended only to apply for Necromancers, but mistakenly was applied to everyone.  This is fixed.
      Also, even Necromancers only have this happen on a roll of 2 out of 10, per faction per week, meaning that not everyone declares war at once and not every peace is instantly shattered again by a fresh war declaration.  The faction GAIN for Necromancers with Orc, Drow, and Necromancers (Delthersam Empire) continues at full pace, only the negative faction hits have a dice roll associated with them.

  2)a) Necromancers gain +2 necromancy skill, making their Necromancy skill at start 7 not 5.  They don't have to pay this out of skill points, so it is a buff.
  I'll also add 1 intelligence and 1 wound treatment, since they are crippled otherwise and will move slowly if wounded stay in party.  Necromancers always wound themselves, or the dark mages they carry are wounded making more undead.  Once more I have to waste time on a class that shouldn't even be here.
Necromancers were losing agi and charisma twice; once for Necromancer/faction select and again when converting to lich.  This is now done once so players can better plan.

    b) Fighters had a higher than correct starting strength because I was using that as a marker to find which label was really fighter and not some similar (barbarian, ranger, paladin etc)  class.  As the labels and classes are aligned I can adjust it correctly so that Barbarian and Fighter are not widely different stats at character creation.

    c) Secondary classes needed adjustment so that the class numbers had spacing where primary class choices had been removed, so that for example secondary class monk was not the same value as primary class Barbarian.

    d) and speaking of Barbarian, that class had a (this_or_next|eq, "$background_3", cb3_barbarian),  line
          except nothing after it, so it took ANY second class and set it as if was a barbarian.  Fixed.

  3)  Investigation of "speed slowdown" complaining by various people finds this:
    at script_ game_get_party_speed_multiplier,
      various bonuses and minuses were set according to active versus passive exploring, and earlier the default was passive, then recently default was "active" exploring.  This should be "Passive" for maximum speed and is adjusted as a text tip at Phantasy Settings  and as default new games.
Also a number of factors silently influenced map speed:
  having any ONE of these in your party {Elven forester, Elven Forest Runner, Elven Ranger, Elven Scout, Drow Scout, Blazing Hand Squire,  Wolfwere,
Valkyrie, Djann, feral Wolfwere, Diplomacy Scout}  secretly boosted the party pathfinding.  Having more than 1 type does nothing extra.

    movement speed could be reduced by Rigale disease in the party, not knowing the terrain well, active exploration status.
    movement speed was previously checked to never be less than 0 base and now is checked to never be less than 80% normal after all minuses.
        all minus values (speed reductions) are cut in half now, for fewer tears from players.  But after this I don't want to receive more whining.
        Bonuses for knowing terrain are increased.  You can move faster if you have well explored a region.

  4)  cleric alignment choices for second class are now filtered by check of primary class, to avoid Necromancers choosing fire cleric for example (neutral align),  or if it were possible a paladin primary with evil secondary cleric.
         
  ----
  5)  The setting kingdom culture to faction you chose at start  (and adjusting lords to use the new culture, and setting the town to that culture, meaning resetting the garrison) and finally declaring war with that faction, has not yet been made but will be next week. 

  Here's what I have done so far this morning:
  This is the kingdom day 0 for a female Drow Paladin (I need to tighten down classes and races, also Clerics and races / other classes)
  Choosing Paladin class automatically set me at war with Orc, Drow, and Necromancer factions and peace with everyone else.

Status:    removed at NexusMods in both "main" and "patch from v150" versions

    be sure you know what version (v155 or v156) you patch.  I'd recommend renaming the mod as  Phantasy v155    or  Phantasy v156  to keep them straight, as the savegames will be different because of troop trees or not troop trees, so a v156 save cant ever work on v155, and v155 saves cant ever work on v156.

made a quick patch for Easter using this discussion:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,276393.msg8949873.html#msg8949873

  Everything mentioned in there got put in.
  Some small buff for all classes to give a short period of peace at start.
  All classes eventually drift into war.
  Kingdom culture is set to be the faction selected at player creation for v156 when selecting start as King option.

  picture 1: Mage / bard  female with faction set to "Mageocracy" at character creation, start as Kingdom option selected at first game menu.
      day 3 when first town recruiting option appears, showing impact of auto-setting of Dhirim culture (normally set by "Migrate Population")
          Note: This is not valid for v155 (custom troops) where the player selects Necromancer as a class; setting faction to anything EXCEPT Delthersam Empire in v155 when player starts as Necromancer for Kingdom faction will corrupt the game.  Non necromancers can start as any faction they like.


patch_v155_a3
patch_v156_a3

Status:  removed from Nexusmods

Its pretty obvious I need to stop and address issues before anyone else has to come hotly on and demand I fix them:
  1) making a non kingdom start
  2) looting, as party looting skill >= 3 seems to crash the mod intermittently
  3) the check for eligible family members for marriage constantly fails, as too many "daughters" are assigned to one parent/grandparent
and this implies rewriting the code that checks for relations to be more clever in handling complex families.

  #1 is fixed but 2 and 3 are open.  I dont know how long they need before they are fixed.  Its not as easy to waive my magic wand and solve things as the pundits expect, and when I seem slow to their reckoning things get heated and in turn I vomit from ulcers and have other physical manifistations from what should be free software freely applied.

  I'll ask the mod close for a week, possibly two and everyone just go play something else, or visit their families, or say hello to the next kitty they see.  Just leave me out of it.  Just that.

  The mod SHOULD have been tested more.  Yes.  It shouldnt have had problems.  Yes.  And its unreasonable for end users to have to find issues instead of me.  Sure.  All of which contributes to a closed mod.  But its spring time and a great time to take a break. So take one.  Users are too stressed, and that makes me stressed too.

for some far away future release,

1)  amended for v155 release some of the throwing spells as items that can be equipped by custom troops, but that also means I have to slip in magic power covertly, probably by assuming every 4 int secretly buffs magic power by 1, so that the ammo numbers and recharge stay consistent.  Otherwise the code would break because magic power of 0 means most spells cannot be cast.  This is a mechanic free of backfire though, as the weapon is already equipped and its not really the same as casting a spell.  I had earlier excluded normal troops from being filtered for gear on waking as agents, but had filtered companions and potential spouses.  In my tests yesterday, custom troops were pretty much quickly wrecked by normal troops, so I should probably write about my personal strategies for and against custom troops.  I had quietly upped magic defense to 3 for all custom troops (across all skins -- the skin is cosmetic except for undead, which has both undead flag turned on for vulnerability to cleric spells, and a quiet added 2 ironflesh bonus).  Also I expect since they really ARE normal skins, the effect for morale and night / day weapons proficiency changes applies to Orcs, Drow, and Undead skins used in custom troops.

2)  The whole "necromancer for players" is still a little up in the air.  If the community can live quietly as it is now it becomes more work to remove it than let it stay, but if I have a bunch more SJW activities waste my time I'll execute it.  I think I can remove the option to make necromancers in about 30 seconds now that I think about it more.  I wouldn't bother if I'm not pushed.  But honestly, one class causes more work than all the other classes combined.  It's not what the mod was for.  As for morality of Magick*, I'd say a person complaining about a computer implementation of a physics based force ought to instead better complain about the use of Napalm in today's time.  Napalm is at least as spiritually obscene as anything else presented.  I know this because I was once burnt heavily, so its a fresh enough memory.  Neither am I a fan of witch burners.  But I don't need Necromancy as a flag attracting some bull to a mod that isnt even close to complete; necromancy isnt a mandatory layer.  It just looks "mandatory" because nothing has been presented, yet, to replace it.  Per se, no class is absolutely critical.  I personally would rather see a magic world that looks like "the last airbender" but I am loathe to use IP from anyone if I can help it, after seeing what happened to Warsword Conquest. They have to spend every moment looking back and fearing some patent attourney, over what seem to me comic like mashup of various books and "IP" published before them.  Rats that use tools and menace humans?  Andre Nortons "Breed to Come" published at LEAST 20 years before GW made Skavens.  But which aggressively chases tiny mod makers?  Mrs Norton dropped dead decades ago.  GW seems to have discovered lichdom.

  But back to something useful, I plan to make something "unusual", since I have the luxury now of taking my time.  When it works, you'll see it. Until then, it's just "pie in the sky."

changes derived from reviewing bugs opened since Christmas in both the Phantasy Calradia 2014 bugs thread,
and the thread for Phantasy 2018:

nearly every post has a comment embedded in it regarding status or a better explanation.  I was pretty stressed during the last 3  9 months or so and did not always take time to explain what was seen or go back and check if the problem was fixed or open, and if fixed how long passed between posting and fixed.  This impacts perhaps a few hundred posts.
  status:  posts for 2014 thread digested back to Sept 2017
              posts for 2018 thread digested back to page 27, around 7 January 2018.

1) Player Necromancers now raise normal skeletons and zombies as if they were Necromancy skill = 10;
    "specialized skeletons" still get the skill results as necromancy skill = 7 BUT the numbers are buffed for skill=7, and shadows are now available exactly as if the player had skill = 8 in the previous v150 series.  This tomake up for players not able to add to their necromancy skill (nor did they have to spend skill points on first day creation, so its not like they didn't get something in the way of up front favors.

  2) Player Paladins no longer have their aura permanently on after casting, all auras are turned off at mission start, making faith point regeneration much more predictable for player paladins.

  3) changes specifically to support a surprise update today for v150 P5, hot patch for v150 series,
      but carried to v156 and v155 A5 versions also:

    a) Necromancy changes at game_menus:
        the process of becoming a lich has about half negative faction penalties as before, plus now gives faction relations bonus with evil factions.
        summoning "specialized skeletons" now has a possibility of faction hit similar to making normal skeletons and zombies, except the chance of a penalty is higher due to larger numbers and greater negative energy release.
        summoning shadows has an increased risk of faction reactions
        somewhat more specialized skeletons are summoned at necromancy levels 6-9 in each category than before
            a check is made for party space before allowing the summon "special skeletons" than before; you'll need room for 20 more party members to even see the specialized skeletons option.  Gone are the days of overloading your party far beyond party limits using an exploit, and then complaining that trim was too aggressive a week later.  At most now you can summon 30 more skeleton archers than you really had space for, at necromancy skill 10+, assuming you had exactly room for 20.  It is still a good option for refilling a very depleted party quickly, as now more are made each time than in previous patches.  There just isn't an exploit as well.

        player necromancers that have their own kingdom can now recruit dark mages directly at any of their towns in the town recruits menu item
        although most heals (now including ring of healing) have no effect on anything with slot_troop_is_necromancer set to non-zero,
            negative energy burst now heals necromancers (lich or not).  This includes ANY NPC necromancer in your party, if close enough to the player (negative
            energy burst is a player cleric spell).

    b) changes to cheat menu also to match v155/v156
    c)  you may no longer cheat auto-win tournaments, and the maximum bet in tournaments is reduced

    d) buffed constable training at simple_triggers to match v155/v156
        filtered necromancer lords from recycling from exile to match v155/v156 behavior
        bank interest paid and highest amount the bank pays interest at 4-ways inn changed to match v155/v156
        necromancers, liches, dark mage undead summoning at weekly "stars aligned" event now check to see if they are prisoners first to match v155/v156
        items merchant at 4-ways inn now rolls once only each day and asking him a second time does not give different inventory.
            come back again in 24 hours for different inventory.

    e) scripts, presentations, dialogs synchronized to follow v156 A4 changes where possible

            script_ game_get_party_speed_multiplier is further modified to adjust pathfinding bonus to 4% instead of 3% per skill point
                and to give the player's party a technically unfair 5% speed bonus just to reduce the obvious sense of frustration some report.
                They still have to bother to set "passive" rather than "active exploration" if they want to go full speed, as patches don't change your choices for how you last left a toggle at camp menu "Phantasy Settings".

Status:    patch v150 p5 is uploaded to NexusMods
  patch_v155_A5  uploaded to NexusMods
patch_v156_A5  uploaded to NexusMods
    both A5 patches add meshes that I forgot to load in earlier A-series patches and the earlier base, besides the other above patch history

EDIT: It is Thursday 4/19 and the main news is I found problems in the creation of kingdom families that require restarts for anyone that ever intends to get married without eloping or special cheats.  That said, plenty of people managed to otherwise get games in, but at least for an "official" launch the families are now made successfully and the step where you ask a lord's permission to court their daughter/sister does not return nonsense. I'm finally getting good answers when I ask in my first test case that succeeded.  Now I need to make several more test cases.

  I doubt there will be time for documentation before tomorrow, which is a pity as that triples the number of people that give up or otherwise are frustrated for their entire time here.  I could push "launch" back a week, or make it available as planned with the idea that as before it launches with just enough done so that at least the day 0 game does not need re-doing anytime very soon and everything else that needs doing becomes a hot patch, which at least a few people manage to apply with varying degrees of success.  It looks like up to 200 people at least attempt to patch; in my limited experience, more problems happen when a person declines to patch and then asks "why don't you fix ___" when the patch was already released several weeks before the post.  I'll accept that its a pity anything needed patching in the first place, but if that's the way people feel about it, they can always not download the mod and see if the mod is still around next year.  No guarantees I'll be able to work on it in the future. I plan my life week to week, and don't even accept I'll be alive on some other year.  But this week at least something got done after all, and it's been improving each week for 9 months in a row. 

  I'll relabel the clean start as "B" instead of "A" and there won't be a v150 version of it.
  Thus tomorrow I'll have v155B1  and v156B1 versions up.

changes:
1) Kingdom lord / lady families changed at start to allow correct handling for giving permission to court daughters/sisters.
    As stated, the "father" field had garbage and the guardian/brother/sister field was often trashed also.  Next, assigning daughters and sisters in the old scheme there was no control for limiting the number of eligible female family members being assigned a family and this placed many sisters + daughters that could not be properly accessed when trying to find the head of household.  Also, if you spoke to a family member that was NOT the head of household the confusing and useless message "unfortunately no one in our household is eligible for marriage" was given, instead of something useful like a clue as to who should be asked for permission when there IS an eligible daughter/sister but you're talking to the wrong person.  Also families are more complex in Phantasy 2018 than other mods so needed a handler for female heads of families, female lords, female lords that are guardians to adopted sisters or mothers to children (and no father is listed/alive).  Finally when after every attempt is made to push an orphaned kingdom lady into a family but all places are taken, the orphan dies from some unspecified illness, leaving fewer kingdom ladies but at least all of them know their marriage status.  Some lords are already married as the game wakes, reflecting arranged marriages happening probably from birth.

  2) Fog of War:  it was a novelty when the map was first changed but it gets in the way.  Removed Fog of war for this release.
Increased sighting distance for games where fog of war is still active.  Finally shows Fog is off in testing @ 14:30 Friday.

-----
Status of testing:
After some effort, kingdom ladies are almost done, but the practice of adding female lords to kingdoms did throw a monkey wrench into everything, because now if a female lord is the head of household and you ask about marrying into the house, it is assumed you intend to marry that female lord, not that female lord's ward (sister or child).  Also kingdom families can get very complicated, as shown in the last two slides.  I ended up optimizing the search for the first kingdom lady that meets conditions for marriage by searching from the end downwards, as the family is slightly less tangled.  I control adding more adopted kingdom ladies into the family by marking when a lord already has a qualifying kingdom lady in their family during the initial start, and then clearing my marks once the families are created so that lords are free to establish relationships later.  The player is in competition for the last remaining unclaimed kingdom ladies; they'll probably get married off fairly quickly.  You could always date one of your companions, but it won't give much easy right to rule...


  EDIT: 17:00 Thursday:  Kingdom ladies and asking permission to marry is good enough to green light tomorrow's release.
The minor issue of dialog for a lesser family member not being head of household but apparently able to give permission to marry (but it would normally mark the wrong family member as permission granted.  I will try to adjust this to mark the head of household's permission next, so as to allow a way past female head of households and others you cannot find.  You should still ask permission before speaking to the lady you wish to court.  Fixes involved not just changing creation scripts for start of game but also changing dialogs (same text shown, but different code happening behind the talking).

Friday:
  fixed a minor error on my end not loading one of Whydott's changes; thanks to him/her/they for helping clear up what I did wrong.
  Some few hours testing in v156 to make sure no very big surprises and now I'll migrate changes to v155.
  emptied a few of the bonus chests placed by Diplomacy - not all of them, just some of them.

v155 only:
  custom troops gain receive +1 Magic Power when their agent spawns in battle per each 4 Intelligence.
        Since all troops get 6 intelligence all custom troops have a nominal Magic Power skill of "1", but as this stat can have points spent on it
    in the troop tree editor you may now increase magic power in order to equip your troops with magic spell intermediates.  ONLY custom troops can use the spell intermediates directly -- although they show for sale at merchants (in order for custom troops to access them) any companions, spouses, or players using them will have them permanently removed from inventory, so don't shop for them.  They're for custom troops.

      Custom troops receive 1 Magic Defense per 3 Charisma, making all custom troops receive a nominal 2 magic defense plus
1 given when they received their base values at script_cstm_troop_set_stats_to_default in ctmmerge_scripts.

The following spell intermediates are available for equipping to custom troops.  Notice they are all single target spells and in some cases gear worn might reduce their effectiveness.  None of these can be directly equipped to companions, player, or spouses; they'll be stripped and removed permanently from inventory.  That said, they all require at least some magic power to use, thus the above changes for v155 custom troops (only).  The magic power and magic defense are not shown in your custom troops; those values are adjusted dynamically when the troop awakens for battle.  These spells probably all can be cast while mounted.

vampiric bolt
acid arrow
darkness
flame arrow
charm person
magic missile
hellish bolt
black bolt

Status:  Uploaded to NexusMods
      https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194?tab=files

opened  v156 B2:  intended hot patch for v156B1.

1) fix for opcode 23 error on script_cf_troop_get_random_leaded_town_or_village_except_center
      this is called for the Lord quest "collect taxes for me", and has been wrong for a good long time.

2) Mage class has faster mana regen now; roughly +50 to 100% more mana
  5 categories of magic points ("mana") regen, by Magic Power skill:
a) MP 2 or 1 but not 0  9 points/11 seconds mages, 5 points/11 sec non-mages with special items that needed mana to use
b) MP 3-4  11 points/9 seconds mages, 6 points/9 seconds non mages
c) MP 5-6  13 points/7 seconds mages,  7 points/7 seconds non mages
d) MP 7-8  15 points/5 seconds for mages, 8 points/5 seconds non mages
e) MP 9+ 4 point/second for mages, 2 point/sec non mages but with mage spell intermediates (certain special troops/lords only)

  EDIT: I find the check for Magic Power is looking at the wrong variable at the agent level, fixed for B3.
    Clerics/Paladins have  an added 1-2 faith points restored per 7 second tick

3)  Investigating Quest opening and closing problems.
    Copied all the quest manipulating scripts for opening, updating and closing scripts from Floris expanded over the existing ones, and now quests seem to close/update/and add new ones without hanging as before.  Yesterday's test specifically closed one open test and hung on the next and now the same save game closed the same quest and took the same new quest as yesterday but did not hang.  This may yet be ready "Soon".

4) targets of opportunity:   
    a) "join defense" option in a siege menu mistake  (remove from showing)

    b) adjust "faction" label at character creation to be "race/faction" and then remake a series of strings with races overwriting faction names
          to be clearer what exactly this does for the player
        Also the mesh for "renown" is temporarily removed, so players do not have to panic over a missing mesh message.  Next time.

    c)  very slightly soften necromancer faction drop to be "fair".  Go ask Perisno or PoP to host your cuddly skeletons.  They won't.  But now fewer factions jump you at start and you have more time to prepare.  Other than that, don't roll a necromancer if you expect the universe to be more "fair" than you are.

    d) related to c) Necromancers can now receive the bonus for King and Marshal status when computing the base party size.  This means big undead stacks are possible, if you live that long, since the maximum party size buff for having qualifying undead is 3/2 * base party size, so anything puffing up base party size also puffs up the possible undead bonus.

  e) Necromancers starting as kings start with 1 added Necromancer and 3 clay golems in party, besides the 13 dark mages they already received.  The clay golems were research needed to finish learning how necromancy was performed, after which you performed it on yourself, becoming a lich.  At the same time, you attracted a follower, of sorts.  You can consider the 13 dark mages as your apostles.  It's not like you have a long life expectancy, but at least now you have a fighting chance.

  f) when starting as King, faction "player supporters faction" now is auto-renamed  "(player name)'s faction"

  g) Town recruiting used to check your primary class and stop, so if for example you had Necromancer and Bard, you used to get the penalty for Necromancer for numbers available but not the buff for bard. Now each class has its plus and minus values added separately to the total numbers available, and those values are:
Base number of recruits:  30    (and prejudice can modify the numbers after that, so pay attention to your party at the instant you are recruiting)
    Necromancer      -10
    Bard                  +20
    Rogue                +25
    Cleric or Paladin: +10
    Town recruiting will refresh each 48 hours.

5) I'll get to v155 tomorrow.

Status:  approved at NexusMods
  https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194

patch v156 B2 "plus":  hot patch

1) Magic regeneration was looking at the wrong value these last months.  Thanks to Owltiger and others for pointing it out.
  The result was all Mages regenerated as if they had Magic Power = 1.

2) Negative energy bolt (evil cleric) is reworked; it now needs 40 not 50 faith points and can be used at faith SKILL = 4
    this will be tested on a Necro/Cleric;  finally works. My test lich is healing himself, via negative energy burst.  That's something.
   
    Removed icon for the incomplete evil Cleric spell "Tyranny" on evil and neutral prayer books.
  When/if it returns it will only be seen on evil clerics' prayer books.

  To this point:
v156b2_plus

Status: approved at NexusMods
  https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194?tab=files


3) Made a v155 version I'll call v155b2_plus with all to here and adding:
  a) made vampiric_bolt blunt instead of pierce damage.  Rationale is these are vampire bats that sometimes induce sleep on victims instead of killing them outright, as an experiment.
  b) Morion helm is skill 8 not 9 to wear.
  c) Swashbuckler cuirass armor costs too little.

  just remembered how much I hate v155.  Loading my old 155 save with troop tree filled out in 1.172 and the troop tree is stripped when I change PCs.  It makes it useless for a reference model.  Took a bunch of screenshots anyway.
  save built with Warband 1.173 at  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-9alnCJQwvB8T5pufjB_ebbkK3GNAkg/view?usp=sharing

Status: approved at NexusMods
    https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194?tab=files

v150 P6 full install.

  This is specifically made for people that cannot apply a patch, for v150 series games in progress.
  Pretty much every feature found in current v156 B3 exists except the start - and characters made here average 4-5 points less than in v156
    Gnomes and Dwarves lost their super buff start.

    If you ever plan to be a necromancer you MUST start as one.
    Gone forever are the days when you could decide you had an extra skill point to spend on you or a companion and put it into adding necromancer class.  If you do start as a necromancer, you start with 7 skill points in necromancy.  You can NEVER increase that skill directly.  You also can not become a lich anymore. Liches are for v156.  They're gone for v150 users.
    Did lower the number of hit points needed to create shadows from 50 to 40.
      Did increase some of the numbers of specialized skeletons created.

    All the documentation for 150+ variations of how you start a character are gone.  Those were for v156 users.  Apparently, a tool meant to make life easier was the top thing people complain about.  I decided to remove every last exploit and gift you with v150 for nostalgia sake.  If you were refusing to upgrade to v156 because exploits were closed, they're still closed.  But every true fix is applied.  So its a trade off.  Since the 97% that won't patch aren't testers, the testing buffs are pulled.  Cheat menu does less.  Quite a bit of dynamic cheats are gone.  There are no free upgrades of item cheat menu items where you also don't have to pay if you press the magic keys.  Gone.  Sorry, but stock diplomacy has lots of back doors.  Gone baby gone.  Good riddance.

    If you're still here, what you get is a remarkably clean mod, without the character creation or start as your own prince, but nobody wanted those until they were offered and once they were given a significant number of people demanded Barabbas instead of what the dev placed.  This is the Barrabas edition v150. 


Status: approved at NexusMods
  https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6194?tab=files

Downloaded and validated unzips cleanly and runs, as inevitably someone will claim I messed that up too.
Use 7-zip from  https://www.7-zip.org/

The forum has spoken.

  I'll put up Guspav's August 1st 2017 mod. JUST the August 1st 2017 mod.  Then the forum can decide whether or not it was better my way or the highway.
As for this shadow war for one freaking class, lets just see how much better it was under Guspav's code and then STFU.  You write it.  I can make a new forum and let you fight over who will do this one.  With nice forum etiquette etc.  That's how mods are written? -- the community does all, democracy style?.  Hey I'm for it, if the mod gets made that way.  Give it your best shot.