SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

Late with this comment, but I think the reason for the cost jump between lvl 26 and 27 units, at least for the Anglo-Saxons, was to encourage the creation of Saxon swordsmen and Angle spearmen by giving them some reason to exist. If the cost is competitive, why wouldn't I promote only Saxon spearmen and Angle swordsmen instead for the better eventual tier 5 units?

Somewhat concerned that there may be hidden engine effects of campaign AI setting, but agree you've got to pick one to save testing.

I'm Eric on reddit and Pode on Steam, so that should save you a line in any future credits

You're doing the Lord's work here.

I thought I would mention it in case there were any other interested parties, but I plan on sitting down tonight with WinMerge and integrating the "Dark Age" visual mod by ha3481 with the 5.0 version of the balance mod. I like the grittier and somewhat more realistic armors for that visual mod, but hate the balance changes he includes with it, and much prefer the work that Tingyun has done.

The work will mostly involve going line-by-line in itemkinds and updating the texture fields to use the DA version, and I hope to finish it in time to still have some playing time tonight.

If anyone else is interested at all, let me know, and we can dm e-mails so I can send you the merged files.

Zeqe said:

but hate the balance changes he includes with it

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it's a vanilla balance.. in the latest versions on 99%

Pode said:

cost jump between lvl 26 and 27 units, at least for the Anglo-Saxons, was to encourage the creation of Saxon swordsmen and Angle spearmen by giving them some reason to exist. If the cost is competitive, why wouldn't I promote only Saxon spearmen and Angle swordsmen instead for the better eventual tier 5 units?

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Hmm, this is a good point. I did it mainly for the AI (it was hammering their finances a bit too much, because the jump is fairly severe, especially given how autocalc works). I will take a look at their unit stats and the cost differences, and think about what needs to be and can be done.

Absent other ideas, I might restore it as player only, as much as I am usually against those differences. I had to leave the AI premium for mounted/mercs at 1.2x or so, despite the player going up to 1.5x and 2x, for similar reasons of not having certain units be a drain on their finances in a way that doesn't help them enough.

I do have some thoughts on why it might be ok, let me know if either is convincing:

1) the tier IV unit isn't that much better than its counterpart, the real difference is at tier V, and those units cost the same anyway, and by being a lower level, the level 26 worse unit will be able to promote to the higher tier in larger numbers as a consolation (not much though, about 1.2x I think).

2) In other changes I'm trying to reduce incentives for "around the world" recruiting tours more generally:

- once you have a fief you get serious bonuses to recruiting within it. So if you are an Angle and have an angle fief, you will find it much easier to simply recruit them. The bonus is dramatic, +0-60 for village, + 0-10 for town castle to base numbers (base number reduced if getting higher tier, though at villages that still means +0-30 extra units of tier II, hopefully making villages compete for possible player control as a great source of peasants for your armies). Not reduced by religious differences. Vanilla was +0-2, so it is now 30x or 5x as influential being a lord to recruiting compared to vanilla.

- local relations are much more influential in recruiting success, and the jump to higher tier base is also much more tied to high relationship, with only a few recruits of higher tier at low relationship, so if you build up with a city, you will get their spearmen and swordsmen. Though even at max, it is slightly above 1/2 base recruit numbers if getting the higher tier (there has to be some reduction in numbers if rolling tier III direct, vanilla was giving you the same exact number for towns and castles). Still with relations giving much faster bonus to base numbers, that will compensate a great deal. Villages always give 1/2 base if upgraded tier, because the difference between tier I and II is far less dramatic than II and III.

- religious differences kill recruiting much more effectively, with all sorts of modifiers reduced by local faith. Now, the only way you can overcome religious difference and get some recruit is local relations to the center (this mostly targets Norse bodyguards/Saxon noble silly armies, if someone wants to do that they are going to at least need very high relations.)

- you now have to actually work for your local relations more. Before tournaments gave +6 per win up to 30, now it is the reasonable +1 (no cap) and you have to do quests the rest of the way

I'm hoping this leads to less pick and choose in general, especially as keeping a village allows a player lord to opt into the ability to swell their ranks with troops of a culture at the financial costs of the better fiefs. But maybe players are just going to keep 1 each of Saxon and Angle towns and villages, and pump relations with each. Though maybe then they are expressly opting into that kind of army distinction and working hard for it, and would probably do the same even if the costs were a bit higher, and might as well let them.

Please do give any further thoughts on this, and I'll look into reverting that further as well.

Pode said:

Somewhat concerned that there may be hidden engine effects of campaign AI setting, but agree you've got to pick one to save testing.

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It is possible, but I have reason to think it isn't so.

The campaign AI effects I have seen have been terribly structured. Things like: let's cheat for the player kingdom on information radius for campaigns, whether on normal or hard, just slightly less pro player cheating on hard. Let's make the AI other kingdom lords more willing to join campaigns on hard, exclude the player kingdom, but then give a huge bonus only if the player is the martial.

Basically, it was often working out to--make the player kingdom lords more useless, often still help the player himself, and so make campaign AI a distinction in whether you are actually going to play a cooperative victory with your lords or are going to become even more the star.

The fact that I'm seeing so much AI decision influencing aspects makes me think there aren't a bunch of hidden engine ones,

Basically, I see how Warband makes the AI "smarter" on higher difficulty (expands their information, helps them join the marshall), which makes me think there aren't a lot of hidden influences doing the same.

Btw, the new normal should often be harder, since I am removing pro player cheating that even occurred on hard.

But really difficulty is about army composition more than anything. The recruiting costs for normal will mean they are building back up a more slowly (but that is more about how many times you beat them, less about whether you can beat them), but I am helping their finances enough to compensate, and they should often just let less rents accumulate this way to be taken by the player.

It should take a couple months for AI lord armies to get on board with the new recruiting templates fully, but once they do there should be a great deal more challenge. Let me know if it doesn't work out that way and we can even consider switching the recruiting costs down or something.

But in general I expect 5.0 on Normal to be much harder than vanilla on Hard, as the armies you face will be geared to stand a chance.

Notably, the real difficulty settings in the game are the VC added ones, now that I have bugfixed hardcore finance to work correctly. Strategic difficulty in Warband is about the comparison of armies, and hardcore finance and leveling turned on will do much to keep the player closer to AI army composition, especially combined with the buffs I did to their army templates and the increased cost and rarity of the better mercs. So players who want a more difficult game should use those options, and let the resulting less elite player army create the difficulty.

Pode said:

I'm Eric on reddit and Pode on Steam, so that should save you a line in any future credits

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Yes, thank you! I did realize, I just try to be careful not to "out" people's identities on different forums, even when obvious like this,

Pode said:

You're doing the Lord's work here.

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Ah, well YOU will be doing the lord's work, a bit faster, as I am going to slightly alter the conversion balance in favor of christians. They already get the occasional bonus from close by monasteries, but I think I will increase their conversion effect form buildings to happen a bit more frequently than pagan shrines.

It is pretty clear that Christianity is much more effective at spreading itself than Norse paganism in the real world. I'll start with a very small +0-1 increase in Christian conversion building effects, and that might be all that is needed. Oh, I also might go ahead and make conversions from Christian to pagan much less common for lords than the reverse--I don't know that we even have many examples of that occurring.

Combined with the army template changes to make the Norse more fierce, should lead to an interesting and realistic dynamic--feared pagan armies but a Christian religion that can potentially conquer them even as they conquer Christian lands.


In general, anyone who has read the changelog and has feedback, please raise your thoughts as Pode did--now is the absolute best time to complain of things, as it is very easy for me to change.

A release tonight, probably, but my wife has been a bit neglected in these recent 10 hour modding sessions of late, so tomorrow is also possible. Sorry guys, on the plus side, the delay is only because more things are getting improved, I am commmited to testing extensively to ensure everything works right.

Pode:

Looked into it, here are the tier IV spearmen:

Saxon, 245 polearms, 215 one handed, 5 powerstrike

angle, 250 polearms, 210 one handed, 5 powerstrike

Same spear quality (heavy long and long war spears)

For Tier IV Swordsmen, both Saxon and Angle vets are similar, 235 one handed

So the Level 27 vs Level 26 distinctions seem only geared towards reducing the promotion rate into the Tier V units, where there is actually a difference between the troop quality. There is a level diffeence there to create a pay difference, though the gap is small because it lacks the hardline formula difference cutoff that occurs at level 26 (vanilla) or 27 (Balance Mod 5.0).

Accordingly, I think the change to level 27 as the cutoff point is warranted to get the saxon and angle versions more similar in troop cost at tier IV, since their quality about matches.


However, we could consider making the pay difference at Tier V bigger going forward. I know your concerns were based on the hope for eventual Tier V units making each better, but I think that is best dealt with as a pay difference at Tier V, rather than at the Tier IV level.

Let me know if you still disagree, and if so we can discuss further!

EDIT: see clarification in next post--5.0 will still be save compatible (as in, it won't break saves), it just will include a minority (around 5%) of save incompatible changes that won't  show up in current games (so you will still get 95% of the changes).

No bugs or glitches will occur by upgrading current saves to 5.0, and I highly recommend players do so, you will only be missing a small minority of changes.

So the mod will still be save compatible, it just can't be described as "100%" save compatible anymore after 5.0, because current saves will miss out on a tiny bit of the content.

Some news:

First, I've given up on trying to preserve full save compatibility for 5.0. Too much I want to fix that can't be done that way, and trying to fix archery, autocalcul, and troop wages without changing unit stats just wasn't working. The mod will still work fine with old saves, but you will be missing out on some save incompatible fixes.

Second, I would like to only do this only ONCE. As in, 5.0 will be the only time I include save incompatible fixes, after that not again. That way if you want everything the mod offers, you only have to start a new campaign once.

As a consequence, this is going to take longer than planned to release, because I need to do the following things that won't carry over with existing saves:

- balance all character creation choices
- fix lord stats so they aren't clones of each other
- fix all lord family relationships (many were missing)
- finish rebalancing the skills and stats of troops

And I've still got 20+ things on my save compatible list to implement and test.

Projected release is sometime in the next week or two.

Sorry about the delays, but to prove it will be worth the wait, here is tonight's changelog:

Part 7 of the 5.0 changelog:

Mechanics changes:

- Random lord conversion chance reduced. Now upstanding and martial lords will not randomly convert away from their kingdom's religion.

- A christian kingdom will convert its lords to christianity twice as effectively as a pagan kingdom does the opposite

- Chance of riots destroying religious building minimum faith now equalized to level AI lords had.

Before, player needed a 55-45 majority of their faith to prevent riots.

AI lords needed only a 30-70 minority to prevent them.

The AI number was the sensible one--30 is the level at which you get the message _____ are accepted here.

So now that is the new cutoff for the player as well. Should lead to less riots. Of course mead hall prevent them entirely too.

- (Explanation of strike through edit yesterday) Reverted change making university block riots and replaced it instead with prisoner tower blocking them (at first I chose university because it was otherwise worthless with the non existent renown effect, but since I had improved that with economic benefits better to go with the more thematically appropriate show of force building)

- Bandit XP required to promote changed for easy and normal leveling to 3/2, from vanilla 2/3.

I think the 2/3 was probably a typo in vanilla VC. Hardcore leveling has a 2x modifier for bandit leveling, and while easy and normal should be lower, they shouldn't reverse the trend entirely and make it easier to level bandits. So 3/2 is probably what was intended in the first place.

Unit changes that will work fine with current saves:

- reverted prior archery damage bonus and pd reduction. It would have helped, but I finally think it is time to just fix this the right way, with some save incompatible troop stat changes.

- PD -1  penalty from medium armor, increased penalty from heavy armor to -2. I removed the penalties from helmets to protect units like the briton archer, but the light armor/medium armor divide is a useful way to present some tradeoffs to the norse warrior archer's heavier gear, and seems realistic enough.

- Basic longbow  +1 PD requirement. Dodging the debate of whether higher tech bows arrive with the norse, the other kingdoms can at least make approrpiate drawweights for their worse bows. (This couples with changes to the PD skills of units)

-Angle and Saxon horsemen now are tier III units upgrading from the archer, similar to the briton horsemen, irish horsemen, and pictish horsemen.

As with the britons, picts, and irish, this is a bit odd, but let's face it--the player was basically never going to upgrade into them otherwise. Limit of 2 upgrade paths prevents placing them where most logical, in the swordsmen line.

- standard bearers can now upgrade to bodyguard top[ tier swordsmen. If you use them and one survives long enough, seems fitting.

- Irish horsemen can now upgrade to irish mounted bodyguards. Their skillset fits, and they need something to compensate for being tier IV (compared to the briton skirmishr cav) and only having ponies (compared to both pictish and briton versions)

- Norse warrior archers can now upgrade to tier IV sworsdman Veterans. There is a historically accurate transition among norse from using bow to greater status as a melee fighter, so it makes sense to give that chance, especially given their skillset fits. Being lvl 26 themselves, means it will take a LOT more to get them ready to upgrade than a normal tier III swordsman.

- Briton horsemen can now upgrade to briton tier IV units. The briton line could use some additional potential anyway, and their skillset fits well. As a level 26 unit, it will take forerver to upgrade them anyway.


Unit changes that won't occur for current saves--won't break saves, simply won't change fully:

- Absurdly high pictish veteran 1 handed skill dropped 30 points

- Absurdly low Irish champion 2 handed skill raised 50 points. Then its crazy high irrelevant WP lowered.

- norse bodyguards guarantee helments

- frank horsemen, old captains, irish bodyguard, storyline heavies, pictish noble guarantee gloves

- svear mercs, storyline heavies guarantee helmet

- merc skirmisher cav level lowered to 24 (will make cheaper, especially given mercs and cav are both more expensive in 5.0, and they aren't that good--I never thought they were worth hiring even in vanilla costs)

- All tier II archer units get powerdraw +2, tier III get +3. For most archers with basic bows, this will increase their damage by about 7-10 points. They remain cutting, limiting effectivness against armoed opponents.

- All archers get +40 WP.

-saxon and angle arches get additional +10 WP

- Finn archers get powerdraw +4, +25 bow proficincy above 40 already granted, only use featured longbows. level raised to 24 (archers getting more powerful), puts them over cut off point of lvl 23 making wages more expensive. They will be over twice previous wage cost now, and almost twice as expensive as norse elite archers to maintain, but about their equal in pure archery (with more arrows and a bit more powerdraw because no armor or shield)

- Briton archers get an additional +30 archery proficicncy, putting them just under the skill of the top norse by only 10 less (but with worse bows). They are a tier III unit competing with excelent horsemen skirmisher cavalry.

- Camp Defender archry not buffed (would be silly, none of the prevous iterations of the unit have any archery skill, so she would go from no skill to amazing in one upgrade). Instead, general level reductions for the line of unit, to make upgrades easier and units cheaper.

- Frisian horsemen reduced to be more like an actual tier II unit. They are now fairly comparable to the Frisian Warrior they compete with for upgrades--lvl 21, 170 wp instead of 210, -1 to most skills, etc.

It was crazy before--they were matched to the veteran that the warrior upgrades into, which made no sense.

I have enabled them upgrading into the Veteran though, so if you train them up they can get there.

- frankish horsemen lvl increase to 33, old captain to 38, storyline special heavy units to 38


-standard bearers get guarnteed gloves. they need all the help they can get, and have top armor anyway.

- top tier units have base of level 30 (+1) , better aligns with their value for wages and autocalc.

- Norse noble significantly buffed and then made lvl 33.

- top of the line tier Vs like Norse bodyguard and Saxon noble level increas to 35.  (to reflect top of the top in their class, and get a bit more wages and higher autocalc)

-  Better but not absolute best like angle bodyguard to 33, same reason

- Ok but not top like angle noble to 32.

- lvl 27 tier IV units given between 20-30 extra WP to their primary weapon, to account for wage increase and displayed potential in promotion. (handling the promotion potential fiancnail issue with level differences at tier V, while still having current wages reflect current abilities)

- saxon and angle archer level upgrade EDIT: reverted change

- Briton tier IV and V  units given +10 WP. Let's make them just a little better, and not so clearly the trash faction troop tree.

- Briton tier V noble two handed skill buffed to match one handed

A clarification to above in response to a few inquiries I've received:

5.0 will work completely fine for current saves. 95% of changes will show up and everything will function perfectly without glitches. This includes troop upgrade paths, which are save compatible.

5% of changes will only show up if starting a new game. They won't cause problems--they just won't show up because troop stats and AI lord family relations are stored in the save file, and things like character creation starting choices rebalanced will already be long past for current characters.

The mismatch between your saved game stored troop stats/AI family relations and the current save will not cause glitches or bugs. It simply does not matter--your game will never reference the new values, it will be as if a mini save compatible 5.0 was released that has 95% of the changes.

No changes will break current saves or cause glitches with them, and I still highly recommend everyone upgrade from 4.1 to 5.0 even with current saves.

So the mod will still be save compatible, it just can't be described as "100%" save compatible anymore after 5.0, because current saves will miss out on a tiny bit of the content.

Hi Tingyun, It is totally impressive how many "underwater stones" can be found by a person who mastered the module system... Thank You for the awesome work you are doing, now I see I was totally wrong thinking VC was balanced enough. I began to think what i would change, but unfortunately I'm a profane in the module system.
1. sailors are pretty useless for me, though they increase the ship speed, somehow I have good speed without them and manage to catch the enemies on water without single sailor on my ships. Another point that they are useless as warriors. So maybe it makes sense to upgrade them for example: sailor - raider - old captain (if save-game compatible). Also maybe there is a way to decrease ships damaging in case there are sailors on them. Supposedly the sailors are able to take care the ships and to fix small wreckage just during the sailing. 
2. As you want to make a line of upgrade for Norwegian and Danish vikings, please also do the same for their Swedish colleagues: Swedish viking - elite Swedish viking - ship captain.
3. Shield bash in VC seems useless (or I'm missing something)... normally it should cause blunt damage and enemy to fall down for a second, let's say with 30% chance. I suppose this can be done with a changing of the script, after receiving a shield bash when not covered with his own shield enemy receives some reasonable blunt damage and either is pushed back (like from kick) or falls down for a moment in 30% of cases like they do in some situations. This falling gives a chance for a finishing blow if done quickly. I understand this cannot be save-game compatible but possible to do with changing of the script. After you are done with all save-game compatible balancing maybe you'll manage to do something with it.

scar1981 said:

Hi Tingyun, It is totally impressive how many "underwater stones" can be found by a person who mastered the module system... Thank You for the awesome work you are doing, now I see I was totally wrong thinking VC was balanced enough.

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Thanks Scar!

scar1981 said:

1. sailors are pretty useless for me, though they increase the ship speed,

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The sailor bonus in VC isn't very well-designed--it works off the percentage of your crew that are sailors.

Meaning, you and 5 sailors in a giant boat will be lightning fast.

You and 80 of your men and 5 sailors in a giant boat will be pretty much normal speed.

Obviously, the opposite should be true. Ideally sailor speed bonus should be based on the percentage of the max crew allowed for the fleet, not percentage of current party size. I'll add that to planning list for 6.0.

scar1981 said:

somehow I have good speed without them

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Hmm, you raise an important point.

Speeds in Viking Conquest are about twice as fast as realistic. Whether ship or on land. On ship it is a little worse because the north sea size is shrunk, but the problem exists for land as well.

Basically, the displayed speeds in Viking Conquest on the worldmap are about equal to Miles per Hour, instead of Kilometers per Hour, as determined by traveling between london and york and comparing to real world distance (i.e., the real world distance corresponds as if the numbers displayed were mile per hour, or close enough...I think they were intended to be kilometers, and then they shrunk the map). That makes ships about twice as fast as historical estimates, and the player with a decent riding skill and a horse travels about twice as fast as world record cross-county horse racing championships (using Arabian horses, far faster than what the player would have).

I am going to offer an option of realistic speeds in a future version (not sure if 5.0 or 6.0), possiblly as an optional download, possiblly as default but with an optional download to restore the vanilla 2x realistic speed. It would give a real chance at a truly epic feel of exploring a large world, but not sure how players would like it, so I am hesitent.

If that happens, the sailors might end up being more valuable, allowing you with max bonus to come a little closer to vanilla's speedboat speeds.

scar1981 said:

Another point that they are useless as warriors. So maybe it makes sense to upgrade them for example: sailor - raider - old captain (if save-game compatible).

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An upgrade possibility is a thought, but we'd want it to be a seagoing unit. Would also have to be fairly low level considering sailors are very low level. The raider outlaw units don't get sailing bonuses, nor the old captain (I get a sense he is a "captain of men" kind of army captain, being mounted and such--but at 380 WP I wouldn't put an upgrade path to him anywhere, too powerful). We could let them upgrade to vikingr, but that is pagan and then they could also upgrade to danish/norwegions, which would be weird. I'll add checking about whether any good units exist for that to the list.

scar1981 said:

Also maybe there is a way to decrease ships damaging in case there are sailors on them. Supposedly the sailors are able to take care the ships and to fix small wreckage just during the sailing. 

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This could be done, and I'll add it to the things to look at for 6.0 list.

scar1981 said:

2. As you want to make a line of upgrade for Norwegian and Danish vikings, please also do the same for their Swedish colleagues: Swedish viking - elite Swedish viking - ship captain.

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By Swedish viking, do you mean the Svear Warrior mercs in the tavern?

EvilSquid suggested having them upgrade to Svear Elite Vikingr as well, so others seem to want that as well. I was a little reluctant since one is a mercenary and the other is a bandit, but since you both think its a good idea, I will go ahead and add the upgrade path to them for 5.0. If anyone else disagrees, feel free to voice your objections.

Ok, so Svear Warriors ----> Svear Elite Vikingr, justified by the idea that their time and experience in battle alongside the player has led to them being willing to accept the lower pay recieved by bandits vs mercs. Seems reasonable.

The upgrade will take as much XP as promoting to Tier V, given the svear warrior level, so it should be very rare to achieve, but always nice to have some potential growth for units.

As for upgrading to ship captain, I could add that as a possibility for all elite Vikingr. It won't happen often (elite Vikingr are level 29 units I think, and bandits cost between 150% and 200% normal upgrade XP, so it will be over twice as difficult to get them XP for an upgrade as for promoting a unit to a normal tier V unit). We would have to increase the stats of ship captains though (right now, Svear Elite Vikingr have higher skills and equal Weapon Proficincies to a Ship Captain), so that raises some issues. I will add it to the list of things to examine further.

scar1981 said:

I understand this cannot be save-game compatible but possible to do with changing of the script. After you are done with all save-game compatible balancing maybe you'll manage to do something with it.

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Any changes to shield bash should work fine in saves I think. I'll add looking into shield bash to the future planning list.

Thanks Scar, and please everyone do make any suggestions you have, it is very helpful!

Beta for 5.0 up for download at Nexus. https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandbladevikingconquest/mods/5?tab=files

Still a ton left to do, but I had a thorough test session tonight of everything so far, and it all appears to be working fine. So figured might as well upload.

Should work fine for existing saves (make a backup save just in case of course, but I couldn't find any bugs after some fairly extensive testing of the new systems). Please report any problems you find, and feedback on new mechanics.

You could start a new test game just to use cheat ctrl t to take a look at the new elite Norse lord troop templates (only the danish and norwegions have the now, nrthymbria doesn't have its new templates yet), and check out the new archer stats.

Or just destroy a norse lord in your current saved game, and check out his army after he rebuilds it, should be an impressive sight.

NOTE: The norse are intended to be the most elite of the lord templates, forgoing all tier 1 peasants for more effective raiding and incursions into enemy territory, and with a focus on sword wielding units.

The other factions will get upgraded templates, but not quite as elite as the norse, and they will still carry around a few of the tier I peasants (though, not nearly as many as before). Still, you should be able to get an idea about the MUCH greater challenge you will soon find in fighting lords.

(buried in the past changelogs are financial modifications to let them support their more expensive armies, but let me know if you notice any issues)

Note: the test version is missing some added conversation options with ladies to change their equipment, the change of keeping normal gear in town sneaking in, and all the party template changes for lord armies EXCEPT the norse faction new ones (pulled out the earlier reworked ones, and in the process of rebuilding from start). Those will all be in final version of course, together with the 50-100 changes yet to be made this coming week.

Other than that, all 8 parts of the 5.0 changelog are implemented and seem to be working fine in tests.



Speaking of which, here is changelog part 8:

(short one today because most of the time was testing and prepping the beta)

Fully save compatible:

- Svear Warrior upgrades to Svear Elite Vikingr (given the level this will take as much XP as a Tier V unit, so very very rare). Thanks Scar and EvilSquid for this idea!

- Angle and saxon horsemen now upgrade to banner carriers. Will be very rare though given their level, as rare as a normal tier V upgrade. Briton horsemen upgrade switched to banner carriers, same added for briton archer.

Basically, banner carriers are the pesumptive update for a tier III unit lacking another path now. They distinguished themselves in combat, and earned the honor of carrying the standard. Should encourage use of these units, since you don't have to always sacrifice another good upgrade for them, as before.

- Banner carriers now upgrade back to same unit line they split off from, ie either noble or bodyguard depending on where the banner carrier is in that particular faction troop tree.


Will only show up in new games:

- Guarantee helmets for Frisian veteran.

- Gurantee helmets for Elite bandits (all 3 elite vikingr, ship captain, bandit leader)

- Distinguish touurnament heroes. Uhtred is now the best overall  fighter among them, while Nial is a bit more skilled with swords/axes and Anchorect with spears.

Additional credits for eventual update notes:

Taleworlds users Scar1981 and EvilSquid for ideas for proposing upgrade path for Svear Warriors

Tingyun,

I just wanted to let you know that I'm really impressed with the 5.0 beta and I can't wait to see the finished product. Thanks for doing something that's needed doing for a long time in VC!

-Zeqe

Maybe not a good idea to connect mersenary troops Svear warriors and raiding parties Vikinger. I have an idea to make a promotion line from Vikingr to 3 options equal in cost: Danish elite, Norvegian elite, Swedish elite vikings. To distinguish them i propose to make a bit different specialisation in weapons for them. For example - danish can be better spearmen, norvegian better 2h axemen, swedish better in onehanded. This will give some flexibility. All of 3 to be upgraded to ship captain who will have better stats in 1h and 2h weapons, bonus to sailing speed and decrease damage to ships. He also might improve moral as he is a commander. His gear must be supreme to previous 3 kinds of vikinger.
Svear warriors i'd promoted to Vaeringjar (svear bodyguards) - new troops equal to tier V with top gear and 2h axes, onehanded and shield. But new troops are not save game compatible, as far as I know.

Would like to request you adopt the tweak that garrisons villages with Tier 1 and / or Tier 2 - 3 faction units, and look into extending it to the villager trade parties. Some of them can remain farmers armed with sticks and rocks to represent thralls / serfs, but given the better quality of faction recruits and the number of Tier 2 units named some variation of Freeholder or Free Man, it's hard on immersion to think that only the serfs would be out fighting to defend their village or guarding their harvest.

Zeqe:

Thanks so much for those kind words!

Scar1981:

Those are interesting ideas, but units can only have 2 promotion choices in the warband engine, sadly, that is why I couldn't make vikingr upgrade to swedish as well.

Currently the Swedish vikingr have the highest polearm skill and stats, and are guaranteed throwing weapons, but have worse spears. The Norwegions have the best spear, and the Danish are the swordsmen. Ship captains have a spotting bonus to AI parties (vanilla) and a double sailing bonus (added in VC Balance Mod), and much better equipment (heavy armor always, not the mix vikingr get).

Your ideas sound fun as well, but since stat changes aren't save game compatible, I can't rework a unit into having a new weapon specialty focus, except as their preexisting skills allow. The reason is that fundamentally reworking a unit would disconect the stats of the unit from equipment for anyone using current saves. This is because equipment changes ARE saved game compartible, but stats are not, and reworking a unit would require both to be done, with only half showing up for current saves.

So even as I am now incorporating some stat tweaks that are not saved game compatible, they will never harm a current saved game, they just won't show up. So I can make the equipment and stats of a unit better match what it should be in the current design, but I can't change the design.

Thanks for all the feedback, it is very useful!

Pode:

The Beta has better village defenders, but I think for current saves it would need time to replace the current defenders, maybe them being killed off.

However, it is a bit different than the tweak: villages get defender amount based on prosperity (2x vanilla VC amount), and the defenders distribute between farmers and more advanced upgrades.

I will add your suggestion of villager trading parties getting some tier II units. You are right they definitely should have them--if the player can recruit Tier II units directly from villages, as in both vanilla VC and the mod, they are residing in the village and would be the ones chosen to defend the trading parties.

Tingyun said:

The Beta has better village defenders, but I think for current saves it would need time to replace the current defenders, maybe them being killed off.

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Can confirm based on use of the other tweak that lets you garrison villages, the original spawned villagers need to be killed before the new faction specific ones show up.

However, it is a bit different than the tweak: villages get defender amount based on prosperity (2x vanilla VC amount), and the defenders distribute between farmers and more advanced upgrades.

Click to expand...

Unsure from your description if this will result in faction appropriate village units promoted from faction recruits or all villages full of Watchmen and mercenary spearmen promoted from farmers.

Edit: Answered on Reddit, roughly 1/3rd each for farmer tree and each faction tree

I will add your suggestion of villager trading parties getting some tier II units.

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Much appreciated.

They should end up being mostly faction specific, but a few generic upgrades  might end up in the mix because of the farmers being there, I think.

I don't want to remove the farmers as long as other missions have them--ie, train against bandits, destroy bandit infestations, etc. But probably having some farmers remain as a small part makes sense anyway.

I plan to change up the mix in some other missions soon, by having the train villagers quest result in tier II freeholders (so there is actually some training going on).

First of all thank you for this wonderfull mod, i really like all of the changes so far and i really like where this is going!

I was wondering which is best in Viking Conquest 2.036 + Balance Mod, a player character using a bow or crossbow? (as far as combat goes)

Thank in advance!

Hi Sneeper,

Glad you are enjoying it!

In Balance Mod 4.1 it is basically the same as vanilla VC--I'd say a crossbow is still better for the player, because of the incredible base piercing damage to take on armored opponents.

In the Beta Balance Mod 5.0 (and the future release) crossbows lose their piercing damage and switch to cutting (same as bow) to reduce armor piercing and reflect the limits of Pict crossbows, so a bow will be better for the player if they are ok with investing a lot of skillpoints in powerdraw. However, crossbows will be better if the player doesn't want to invest a lot of skillpoints.

The only substantial modded change is changing crossbows from piercing to cutting--the earlier increases to bow stats were reverted when I decided to instead just increase AI archer unit skills.

Dang! I saw Tingyun post and was hoping it was related to an update. Oh well. 

Zeqe said:

Dang! I saw Tingyun post and was hoping it was related to an update. Oh well. 

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Haha, sorry about that Zeqe.

I'm still on roughly the same schedule as before--likely to do the final 5.0 release in a week or so now. Though I may need to narrow the scope of additions, and just finish the critical stuff: new faction troop templates for all the factions (only the Norse have them in current beta) and looking for any further issues in unit stats seem the important ones to me.

My wife made clear she was feeling a bit neglected from all the time I was spending on modding, so the more time consuming tasks of individualizing all lord stats and adding all family relationships may have to be abandoned. They seem less critical than the others.

I have also preserved a lot of good ideas that are save compatible on my planning list (about 50 in total now), so there isn't a rush to finish those before the release, as they can always be added later.

To that end, for Zeqe or anyone who has tried out the Beta:

1) Any troop issues not yet addressed by 5.0 beta, stats or otherwise? This will be the best chance to modify unit stats, so bring any and all complaints or suggestions, and I will consider them.

2) Any other issues with the new stuff introduced in the beta? In particular, recruiting (greater emphasis on religion and fief control), AI archer unit performance, religious conversion changes, faction lord recruiting templates, etc?

3) Any other critical issues you want to see addressed in 5.0 release? I may not get to them in time, but I will consider all and put them on the future planning consideration list even if they don't make it into the final cut for 5.0.

I may not be around to check messages here until the end of the week, but I'll consider everything left here then, and prepare the 5.0 release somewhere around then. It will either be at the end of this week, or the beginning of next, so within about 7 days or so is likely.

If someone is anxious to start a new campaign with the Beta 5.0 already up for download it should work fine, since I won't be doing the lord stats/family relationship additions, and any further troop stat tweaks are likely to be minor. Troop recruiting templates for AI lords are save compatible (they just take a bit to switch over, as they recruit and drop units or get destroyed), so things should work fine.