Please never change this mod

First off, do you guys take donations?

Second off:

The core mechanics in this mod, are absolutely the best I have ever seen in any low tech mod, better than AD1250, brytenwalda etc.
This is probably the most casual friendly mod too, it doesn't feel like "work" when you're playing it, nor does it feel like the labors of Sisyphus, unlike pretty much all the other "big name" mods out there.
I just got through playing Brytenwalda. I absolutely love that time period (600s england) and the wonderful ideas in that mod, and the historical detail, but the mechancis absolutely ruin the game here's an example, I was leading my army to the enemy, then right when I started to swing, I started falling over every two seconds the whole fight, all the while getting hit, then when I got about 3 kills in, my character went into some kind of idiotic "berserk" mode, which ALSO made me lose control of my character every two seconds, it was basically, fall over, bang on shield, fall over, bang on shield, all the while shortswords and spears were impaling me, and my men. It would happen every fight, pretty much. the falling over had to do with some realism (yeah right) mechancis because I jogged in chainmail for 100 feet. Cute how none of the mechanics apply to the enemies, just me. Then you have another common mistake Brytenwalda, and 1860's old america makes.... most units have weapon/skill caps of 255, and the minimum cap is 150 for peasant levees etc. There's a reason why in vanilla warband, and other mods with good mechanics (like Redwars) has the maximum Troop skill capped off around 160, and the lowest around 60; it makes the game less extreme, and more balanced. Like in brytenwalda for example, the Dena sea raiders have 255 weapon skill, and the armor mechanics in that game (which are unrealistic) make the raiders also like tanks. Basically, you could take an army of peasants, and mid-tier soldiers, around 100, and go up against 10 Dena raiders, and the raiders they'd be like a Cuisinart to your entire army, all the while your char would be tripping over and banging on his shield like a dumbass LOL. The raiders wouldn't have a scratch on them, when the fight is over in about 0.5 seconds. I really wish more modders were like you guys, it makes me wonder of some M&B  modders even log into their own mod and see what the mechanics are like.

IMO, battles in M&B should be basically more difficult versions of fighting mountain bandits, fighting bandits in Brytanwalda felt "normal" but when mod authors sometimes set the skill caps, and other settings to such extremes for anything above a bandit, you might as well replace your enemies with a bunch of T1000's.

Anyway, on a final note it is so awesome being able to play as Etruscans, and it's neat the level of detail; they're italics, but their names/town names etc. and outfits are distinctly different than the romans, for example, also your in combat mechancis are ((((PERFECT))))) so far.

Thank you for this mod.

Thanks and now to your questions and remarks,
We don't really take donations but I can remind that this thread exists and can help us if you don't already have dropbox (or if you can bother making other accounts  ):
Dropbox thread, most if not all is explained in the thread but in short we need some more space to make backups of our work and at the moment Rgcotl needs it the most as he is working on several models and needs the extra space for the backups. Alternatively you could talk to KickingJoub and donate to him towards the official server expenses, do specify as we wouldn't want to have the money going towards rum and jaffa cakes.

On to the rest, I kinda look up to 1257 AD as being a well rounded mod and I've been lucky to play only the stable releases so I've never encountered any glaring issue to spoil the gameplay and unlike many mods it offers you the possibility to have a bit of a headstart which after years of playing M&B and dreading to go through the initial grind each time you start a mod (unless you cheat but that can potentially spoil the immersion). It feels immersive as it had its own style and balanced enough unless you try to take over the English as the Welch.
Brytenwalda on the other hand is more of a love-hate relationship, it's rich in content but has some questionable design choices that affect mostly the player but as I remember some can be turned off (thankfully), the stumble was problematic since the AI has no fear of death and would throw itself at the player unless in a scripted rout, this coupled with the fact that they tend to prioritise you could lead to frustrating moments. The grind seemed endless when all you stumbled upon were the dreaded Dena pirates.
Concerning the mod I wanted to have so that the player could partially customise how he wanted to start and how difficult his initial challenge would be, right now it's frankly quite basic but the idea is to expand on that so the way you decide to start influences in some way the gameplay, from the lowliest runaway slave to faction leader you should be able to decide if you want to go through the initial grind and make up your mind or start the journey some way in-between. More on this later hopefully.
Right now there's a significant amount of rebalancing to be done, for 2.5 all the items were rebalanced but some stats are still not satisfactory, some animations need to be tweaked and army compositions for the AI needs to be looked at. Overall I don't aim at making it more "casual" but to allow the player more choices if he wants to travel around or start picking fights while serving others or himself without having to chase looters until you can afford butter with your bread. First we have to lay down the foundations and get the balance right.

Seek n Destroy said:

Thanks and now to your questions and remarks,
We don't really take donations but I can remind that this thread exists and can help us if you don't already have dropbox (or if you can bother making other accounts  ):
Dropbox thread, most if not all is explained in the thread but in short we need some more space to make backups of our work and at the moment Rgcotl needs it the most as he is working on several models and needs the extra space for the backups. Alternatively you could talk to KickingJoub and donate to him towards the official server expenses, do specify as we wouldn't want to have the money going towards rum and jaffa cakes.

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I basically run the server with jaffa cakes and rum but to be serious, the server would be the one place where donations would go. Not that the server costs that much to begin with, hence why no donation button is on the server thread. So you might as well go help with the dropbox space

Seek covered everything else nicely.

I won't say a bad word on other mods(especially, because i contributed in 1250AD myself ), but I absolutely love this mod. It strongly reminds me of Haegemony from the very old days. As a mostly SP-Player, I'd be happy to see it improved and I'm doing some research myself, that might help you further with historical accuracy.
I'd be happy to see a lot more factions added with time and some extra options on the "political life" of the character(like buying the marshal title for yourself or something) and the opportunity to kill enemy lords(I capture Neoptolemos for the 5th time and whenever he gets released, he comes back for more and it's start to annoy me. )

Seek n Destroy said:

On to the rest, I kinda look up to 1257 AD as being a well rounded mod and I've been lucky to play only the stable releases so I've never encountered any glaring issue to spoil the gameplay and unlike many mods it offers you the possibility to have a bit of a headstart which after years of playing M&B and dreading to go through the initial grind each time you start a mod (unless you cheat but that can potentially spoil the immersion). It feels immersive as it had its own style and balanced enough unless you try to take over the English as the Welch.

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Yeah, AD1257 reminds me of this mod alot, it had a neat theme and mechanics, one of my favorite, is the way AD1257, and this one, when your char becomes incapacitated, you switch to another soldier. That's got to be one of the best mechanics I've seen. I've never really understood why a battle has to end just because you get incapped, then the screen goes to the auto-calc, which is like 99% bias toward the CPU

I wasn't trying to give bad publicity to any mod BTW it's just some mods have such glaring active flaws that could have been so easily not put in in the first place. I think Brytenwalda incorporated someone's realism mod, and that's what one of the problems is, these realism mods, some of them, not all of them, should be called "subjectivity mods" so as to avoid confusion LOL.

What you say here:

"I kinda look up to 1257 AD as being a well rounded mod and I've been lucky to play only the stable releases so I've never encountered any glaring issue to spoil the gameplay and unlike many mods it offers you the possibility to have a bit of a headstart which after years of playing M&B and dreading to go through the initial grind each time you start a mod"

That's pretty much what I meant by "casual friendly"

I'd rather spend time playing the game, and gain ground which can be hard enough as it is, rather than spend 10 yrs getting cows for a farmer (definitely not what I play the game for !:=)

Man the seige I had in this game was so fun, about 1760 Gauls tried to siege an Etruscan stronghold, I don't think I ever remember such massive sieges in Native. Keep up the good work, and THX for the responses, and keep up the good work!

Count Roland said:

I won't say a bad word on other mods(especially, because i contributed in 1250AD myself )

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It wasn't my intention to give bad publicity to any mod I can't remeber any issues I had at all with AD1257 myself, it's just that some mods have like these one or two extremes in them that are such an acquired taste, if you will.... if the average gamer encountered them they'd be like .... WTF.... is going on, I'm fighting T1000's while my guy is the only schizophrenic, narcoleptic, epileptic guy  in the entire army.... lol....