Latis the Darkgryphon said:
For immersion of letter start(last heir start) I think there could be that setting:
With the letter you do not drop relation with 3 kingdoms by 5, but 50 so that these kingdoms won't let you go with 800 denar, your relationship with these three kingdoms will be locked at -50 as well so you have to fight, even you become a vassal of other kingdoms you are still hostile to these kingdoms.
Or, you won't be hostile to three kingdoms due to the letter, but after you create the chapter of Griffin, you show up your royal blood, you will be the hostile of three kingdoms, if you are the vassal of one of them, that would means you will be a "traitor" to be independent directly, a good independent feature right?
The letter start is by far the worst already, and you want to push it further? That's insane...
All other starts give you extra skill points and attributes, Letter gives you nearly NADA. Which by itself make it foolish to choose from, but here ya go, have this "free" griffon chapter because it's not like QG are unlimited right? Wrong... Although rare, QGs are easy to farm at mid-late game, which makes spamming Griffon Chapters easy but bothersome, or in other words, straight out boring. So what this start gives you really? Harder early game, bad character build for some gimmick that leaves you with less harassing grind at mid-late, summing up, it gives you nothing and punishes you for it...
for that start to work, or at least be attractive, it should give 99 rtr right off the bat, coupled with extra leadership skills and persuasion. I mean, it wouldn't make sense having extra STR / AGI for being an heir, but it should make it so the player is the only legitimate ruler of pendor, giving a boost to convert lords and undeniable credibility if the player founds a kingdom. So, these would be the only sensible fixes to give that start right on.
In the past, and as of now, I had a bunch of ideas to tie-up this start with epic questing so that you found your kingdom without the grinding, but rather by completing needed tasks to prove that you are the true heir. In other words, allow the player to start the game and without any sort of grinding but instead with fun but extensive questing to found his kingdom jumping straight into mid game. In this case the adjustment on stats wouldn't be needed. Instead, we get punished straight out, and we have the immersion shattered by the forceful grinding you're put into (joining a kingdom as the true heir doesn't make any sense, even more so farming rtr with conventional means, companions lie and make cases, a true heir doesn't need that, even less so to get married).
So there's that, it's a flawed design feature that serves no purpose but to pretend it's there, in other words, the meta makes it suck. Not even starting as a noble is needed in this mod because you are going to be forced into insane grinding anyway, so to become one is a walk-in-the-park, for the advantage of starting as one is none (can't even join tournaments without grinding at least some renown).
So, if by any means, if the player wants to make an Roleplaying adherent to the lore given (by the story told on character creation), they'll be blocked of doing it in favor of arbitrary meta demanded by both some of the players and some of the devs "I don't use dis! Dis too easy, make it harder! Still don't use dat!". The starts should provide different experiences, instead they're made so meta talks louder. There are obvious starting options for any play-through, and what defines those are combat due to the unbalanced AI units and the OPed (present in vanilla too) horse-archery. WB's cheap, when it comes to that regard. Crossbows are useless compared to bows, for they do the same thing but much worse. Thrown weapons are only good when they can shatter shields for infantry attacks, yet in PoP shattering a shield is nearly impossible, so it's only useful to kill a few horses on a cavalry charge, which doesn't help, specially when the AI aims exclusively at humanoids.
Couple those details with the starting options, and you'll 99% of the time have people picking Nomad Leader -> Hunting -> Hunter -> Unfortunate events / Too many enemies. Or, if they so chose to go more melee, it's the classic M&B start picking with the last option always being better with those 2 already mentioned.
Then we have many other factors, like how OPed Heavy Cavalry is, and the massive advantage they give to both players and AI when amassed in big numbers. You only have access to 2 QGs too, which makes going for the hidden mines a wasted effort until you reach at least 3 QGs (Strange Runed Weapons are not much better than merchant-sold counter-parts). Given there's only the access of 2, and one of them being under pure RNG, makes it so you'll be either storing it for an undetermined amount of time so you can get the weapon, or you are saving it for late game, or using it to give a small boost at early-mid game (stats, or getting a KO if you are a vassal, it won't help you found a new kingdom at all). Sure, I've managed to use these 2 to get Noldor to start my kingdom, but never the less, it was much harder than the cheesy ways of joining as a vassal and eventually going independent after building relations within an extensive waiting game while you grind.
So there's where I perceive most of the flaws in this mod: combat's bad because it's too similar to vanilla, same goes for battle control (troops are much less responsive than in other mods that use superior OSPs), then you have an diplomacy not properly adjusted to the mod, as well as more fief features that are only good late game. This makes the game way too grind centered, and much less fun than it could be, for almost everything only becomes useful at late game, but at late game everything's too easy and meaningless so it's usefulness becomes negligible by the time it should pay-off, making it frustrating. On one PM I've sent do Michi about a year ago I was talking about how Late game was meh, and made some proposals as to how to improve it, needless to say that I was mostly ignored. I've even offered the sword model I had made for ACoK that I've mentioned recently, but he straight-out dismissed it with what sounded like excuses. That's why I am a bit mad at the moment, I mean, even when you offer help they refuse, this mod, much like persino, imho are both works of pure vanity, not works of people wanting to improve upon M&B. If they can't see these flaws, also, means that they know little about game design, and most likely carry bad tastes when it comes to what's good and what isn't good. Even VC (which is flawed as hell) provides for a better experience. Unfortunately, the best part of this mod, the lore and creativity behind it, are botched by the meta...
Well, but that's my opinion, regardless of it being an educated opinion, it's sort of personal, so I can't really demand anything much less discredit their work. The mod is good, but could be so much better that it makes me feel as if it's bad at it's current state. Unfortunately for me, I am an potato when it comes to moding M&B, so what I should do is to either accept it as it is and try to enjoy it, or leave it. And in the end, I've left it last year because of those exact same things, but much more so, because of the "anti-cheat" system they've added... Whenever I feel like a mod's bad at some stage of the game, I tend to skip that stage by cheating, if I am punished for cheating, I lose the will to play it because to "cheat without cheating" within the possible alternatives, I'd need to make countless calculations on how much XP, rtr, relations with lords, items, money, etc would be possible to gather over X period of time. That's why it becomes undesirable, I mean, skipping's about saving time and energy rather than going for OPed stuff. Sometimes I would skip massive battles I would win with cheats because I wasn't feeling like doing the same roflstomp over and over again, in PoP, you can't do that haha
EDIT PS: Btw, sometimes you take too much dmg in battle because of OPed AI units, making any movement mistakes very punishing, in these cases, specially when I'm not in combat myself, but rather micro-managing troops, I tend to use the heal. In PoP, that's also not an option.
This brings me back to my criticism regarding how vanilla battles feel here, I mean, here it's about baiting the AI and using archers in a cheap meta-centered way because combat and unit control are just as flawed...
PS 2.0: In 1257ad I manage, with the worst starting stats for combat, to beat enemy lords in tournaments with crappy equipment, because there the combat is more challenging without buffing the AI with nonsensical cheating. Game is harder than PoP, but you can overcome it with pure skill, it's not about gear, yet gear helps. In PoP it's all about power-gaming and grinding, not a fun experience, and skill is meaningless.
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And we all have different desires regarding the difficulty after all. Plus I obviously didn't take into account unkillable Noldors making prisoner gathering too easy, so probably not a good idea indeed 
. The only thing I think we can agree on is that buying Noldor units for Qualis Gems is really not a worthwhile investment currently (in the long run). Hopefully this will change with those Noldor Trade Goods a little 
BTW, I will always find flaws, no matter how good you do something, and by doing so I can point out how to improve things, I'm the dream of any producer when it comes to that regard, even in my profession it's one of my best qualities, and a characteristic that requires people around me to be more mature so they don't get offended, because OBVIOUSLY, I am not aiming to offend anyone, I am practical...
