Tested out having spearmen use their sidearms (seaxes/axes/swords etc) instead of spears in sea battles (for the most part--they might still use their spears for a moment after switching from throwing weapons, when the battles is just engaging). Seems to improve their performance, and seems more realistic as well. If anyone has any objections, let me know, otherwise it will be in 9.0.
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Hey Tingyun,
Noticed this scenario in my let's play: kingdom of Northvegr took Duin Foither from Alban. Then konungr Eirik besieged it after, which suggests a civil war. Never seen this in vanilla so wondering if you changed something that makes Eirik rebel?
Noticed this scenario in my let's play: kingdom of Northvegr took Duin Foither from Alban. Then konungr Eirik besieged it after, which suggests a civil war. Never seen this in vanilla so wondering if you changed something that makes Eirik rebel?
No, I think it’s a vanilla VC bug, as I’ve seen it before as well, also with Norway sieging places in Alba right after they conquer them (I would guess that is a coincidence and happens with other factions though).
They always just cancelled the siege afterwards though, has the siege continued?
(I would really love to split Norway up and expand the map to create a Fairhair type conquest campaign, but sadly it’s beyond the time I have to do so. Had to settle for giving Eirik a guaranteed disagreeable personality type, and roleplaying Harald as having a sort of regional hegemony)
They always just cancelled the siege afterwards though, has the siege continued?
(I would really love to split Norway up and expand the map to create a Fairhair type conquest campaign, but sadly it’s beyond the time I have to do so. Had to settle for giving Eirik a guaranteed disagreeable personality type, and roleplaying Harald as having a sort of regional hegemony)
I’ll probably upload a final 9.0 within a couple of days.
Has anyone playing the Betas run into any problems? (Except for bandit camp stuff, that doesn’t matter as those changes are reverted)
Please let me know any feedback on the betas, so I can fix issues before release.
One final note—in 9.0 the 1 handed skill of Angle and Norse nobles has been increased, and Norse spearmen line have generally been given fairly good 1 handed weapons. This will not come into play much in field battles, because even with great sidearms, spearmen in VC basically never switch weapons unless their spear breaks (except for mounted troops). What it does do is combine with the AI change to not use spears in ship battles, so as to make the Norse especially fearsome when at sea.
Has anyone playing the Betas run into any problems? (Except for bandit camp stuff, that doesn’t matter as those changes are reverted)
Please let me know any feedback on the betas, so I can fix issues before release.
One final note—in 9.0 the 1 handed skill of Angle and Norse nobles has been increased, and Norse spearmen line have generally been given fairly good 1 handed weapons. This will not come into play much in field battles, because even with great sidearms, spearmen in VC basically never switch weapons unless their spear breaks (except for mounted troops). What it does do is combine with the AI change to not use spears in ship battles, so as to make the Norse especially fearsome when at sea.
Tingyun, I am now fully aware of the large amount of testing needed for what would ultimately be a minor addition to flavor roleplaying, and I'm sorry if I harassed you. I can only point out one mod that you could - in some future where you have free time you choose to use modding VC Balance - utilize as a "reference" for faction leader families. That would be Perisno. As for the upcoming 9.0 and its changes, I'm extremely excited to play and try it out!
A remark on spearmen having sidearms: in VC, the spear is the deadliest melee weapon; more so if a large group is coming at you all uniformly equipped with that polearm. The moment elite tier troops switch to their swords or axes (not the two-handed variety) and use them is actually breathing room for the player. I'm more terrified when they all stick with their spears!
Finally, a question Tingyun: how does one add custom coat of arms to VC WITHOUT overwriting any of those already present in the game? It's not just the main banner you have tinker with but also that quarter circle thing that flaps as the player's party moves throughout the map. Is there a tutorial somewhere?
A remark on spearmen having sidearms: in VC, the spear is the deadliest melee weapon; more so if a large group is coming at you all uniformly equipped with that polearm. The moment elite tier troops switch to their swords or axes (not the two-handed variety) and use them is actually breathing room for the player. I'm more terrified when they all stick with their spears!
Finally, a question Tingyun: how does one add custom coat of arms to VC WITHOUT overwriting any of those already present in the game? It's not just the main banner you have tinker with but also that quarter circle thing that flaps as the player's party moves throughout the map. Is there a tutorial somewhere?
Verisoxy said:
Interesting, thanks for the suggestion, I'll make a note of that.
Verisoxy said:
In VC a spear-armed troop basically never switches to a sidearm unless their spear breaks or they are a designated mounted troop. The exception I'm adding in 9.0 is only for ship battles.
AI performance with spears in the close quarters of ship battles is truly terrible. Even nobles can get themselves slaughtered by relatively common troops wielding shorter weapons, because of how close the combat gets the spears become entirely ineffectual. Performance is increased when they use their sidearms according to a series of tests I ran with a variety of spear units.
This is fully realistic--troops fighting in boats often have favored shorter weapons (the cutlas is a famous example). Besides, VC spear stats assume a soldier bracing themselves against stable ground. No way they would be that effective on a boat.
Verisoxy said:
A lot of things work differently player vs group of ai as opposed to ai vs ai, because for a player, the question is minimizing a very small risk (the 1% or less chance that AI unit will even score a hit). In that context, spears work better against the player, because they inflate the small probability of a backrows or distant 2nd AI getting a hit. But the average performance goes way down for AI units armed with spears outside of formation fighting, when things gets close quarters and devolves to a series of 1 v 1 fights.
Since ship battles are less hero-player-kills-30-men-single-handedly, and more 2 groups of AI largely deciding the battle, the more important balance is the AI vs AI.
Verisoxy said:
Unfortunately I don't know, I haven't actually delved into that area of modding at all. Here's a tutorial google turned up: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=295488.0
Oh yeah, another follow-up question Tingyun: whatever happened to the tripping while moving backwards mechanic? I remember vanilla VC (in custom battles anyway) applying it BOTH to the player and enemy troops. Does nearly maxed out athletics remove that stumbling chance?
Tripping isn't in the current version of vanilla VC, at least for normal battles (never looked into custom or multiplayer, and can't speak to older versions). I remember encountering it when playing Brytenwalda I think, but I don't remember exactly how it worked. So I haven't changed or removed anything relating to it.
Request for future inclusion in your mod, if feasible: A notice of when the upcoming income from enterprises may be expected (As found in ACoK).
Hi TadhgEomonn: I'll make a note to look into enterprise notifications in the future, but it may be awhile--after 9.0 I really do intend to take the break from modding and enjoy a long playthrough (what I got sidetracked from after 8.0). 
Hopefully I'll get 9.0 out tonight, just finishing up the work on the recruiting templates this afternoon.
Hopefully I'll get 9.0 out tonight, just finishing up the work on the recruiting templates this afternoon.
Finished the overhauled recruiting templates, if there are any objections to the below principles, let me know:
Greater variety of tactical situations by varying the troop distribution between factions more. Angles/Saxons/Norse are very shieldwall heavy (with Northymbrian norse having additional dane axe troops, and Frisian norse having both frisian and frankish cavalry in decent numbers). Irish and Picts lighter in the troops within the shieldwall, with more troops of their unique strengths, skirmishers and cavalry (with Irish somewhat more on the cavalry, Picts more on the skirmishers). Osrige goes infantry heavy to go with their viking mercs. Angles and Saxons very little skirmishers and almost no cavalry, Norse a bit more archers, Britons a bit more cavalry and skirmishers yet. In terms of infantry balance between spearmen/swordsmen, the Anglo/Saxons heavy on spearmen, Britons a bit more towards balance between them, Norse more equal yet between spears and swords, and Irish/Picts heavy on the swords/axes. Angles a bit more peasants than saxons to represent greater pressure their lands are under, Irish and Picts also a bit more peasants (with troop distributions a little less concentrated to the center overall, with a bit more low and high tier). Irish a bit more nobles than normal especially in proportion to their lower number of spearmen to represent a thriving caste of local chieftains.
Greater variety of tactical situations by varying the troop distribution between factions more. Angles/Saxons/Norse are very shieldwall heavy (with Northymbrian norse having additional dane axe troops, and Frisian norse having both frisian and frankish cavalry in decent numbers). Irish and Picts lighter in the troops within the shieldwall, with more troops of their unique strengths, skirmishers and cavalry (with Irish somewhat more on the cavalry, Picts more on the skirmishers). Osrige goes infantry heavy to go with their viking mercs. Angles and Saxons very little skirmishers and almost no cavalry, Norse a bit more archers, Britons a bit more cavalry and skirmishers yet. In terms of infantry balance between spearmen/swordsmen, the Anglo/Saxons heavy on spearmen, Britons a bit more towards balance between them, Norse more equal yet between spears and swords, and Irish/Picts heavy on the swords/axes. Angles a bit more peasants than saxons to represent greater pressure their lands are under, Irish and Picts also a bit more peasants (with troop distributions a little less concentrated to the center overall, with a bit more low and high tier). Irish a bit more nobles than normal especially in proportion to their lower number of spearmen to represent a thriving caste of local chieftains.
Mate, I have to say your mod is seriously good!
9.0 Released
9.0 Final Changelog
Initial garrisons at world generation are larger. This is a one-time thing for the start of the game only, and garrisons will become normal size as soon as the initial troops die or the fief is conquered. This is to promote initial stability and prevent early faction elimination by the AI. It also reflects the realistic principle that lands that have been conquered and reconquered are likely weaker in their defense from the devastation of war.
AI switches from spears to shortrange weapons in sea battles. Spear stats in VC only make sense if having stable ground to brace against, and short range weapons perform better in close quarters ship battles (in both real life and the game).
Norse spearmen given better 1 handed WP and weapons. This doesn't affect field battles much (VC troops do not switch from spears to sidearms unless their weapon breaks or they are a designated mounted troop), but it does make the Norse better fighters in sea battles.
Enabled constructing buildings in towns you don't own (for example, finance a school to make the peasants like you, or a temple to win converts to your faith)
Food consumption of player army reduced (each unit of food feeds 4 people as opposed to 3 people in vanilla VC)
All food items approximately doubled in weight (weight here representing also considerations of volume and handling)
Most trade goods increased in weight
Carefully assigned starting religious levels among the world to reflect likely settlement patterns (beginnings of norse inroads in ireland/northymbria/frisia, but still in very early stages, and stronger in castles than villages, but otherwise strongly christian, except in isolated islands and such). The world is now much more polarized and less tolerant, and a lot more realistic given the age.
Reworked all aspects of religious conversion
adjusted recruiting templates so that ai lords recruit slower, making battles more pivotal (so it will take them substantially longer to recover from being wiped out). On normal campaign difficulty, it will take AI lords around a month to fully recover from being wiped out, on hard, about half that time (that is the only real difference between campaign difficulty left in Balance Mod--normal is more realistic and immersive in my opinion, but hard is available for those who want faster enemy kingdom AI lord recovery)
Complete overhaul of ai lord recruiting templates, fine tuning and balancing all army compositions (completing and polishing work from prior versions, placing each faction on a new strict 15/12/9 recruiting pyramid structure). Greater variety of tactical situations by varying the troop distribution between factions more. Angles/Saxons/Norse are very shieldwall heavy (with Northymbrian norse having additional dane axe troops, and Frisian norse having both frisian and frankish cavalry in decent numbers). Irish and Picts lighter in the troops within the shieldwall, with more troops of their unique strengths, skirmishers and cavalry (with Irish somewhat more on the cavalry, Picts a little more on the skirmishers). Osrige goes infantry heavy to go with their viking mercs. Angles and Saxons very little skirmishers and almost no cavalry, Norse a bit more archers, Britons a bit more cavalry and skirmishers yet. In terms of infantry balance between spearmen/swordsmen, the Anglo/Saxons heavy on spearmen, Britons a bit more towards balance between them, Norse more equal yet between spears and swords, and Irish/Picts weighted towards swords/axes. Angles a bit more shieldless tier I peasants than saxons to represent greater pressure their lands are under, Irish and Picts also a bit more shieldless peasants (with troop distributions a little less concentrated to the center overall, with a bit more low and high tier). Irish a bit more nobles than normal especially in proportion to their lower number of spearmen to represent a thriving caste of local chieftains.
Increased ai starting wealth, garrison starting wealth, and garrison recruiting rounds at gamestart to account for new recruiting tables(some lords may need a bit after game start to max out their parties)
Allowed using ranged weapons in tavern (if your life is on the line, a stern word from the innkeeper shouldn't stop you)
Spears now generally somewhat more breakable (Except gungnir)
Fixed a weapon switching condition
Fixed an apparent vanilla VC oversight where only 1 spear had penalty with shield flagged (and all other spears, whether longer or shorter, did not), by removing the flag. The long war spear 203 length version should now perform in accordance with its listed stats, and be comparable to other spears.
Rennamed war axe price and rarity raised. Prices of the very best, rare spears also raised (the heavy long spears).
Ray (and Gugnir as well but a bit less) damage reduced to put it in line with other spears (tradeoff of length vs other factors). Generally, not allowing super weapons that are player only, a spear is a spear, there should be tradeoffs with the best weapons available to ai
Shorter versions of long war and heavy long spear given +1 damage. Creating tradeoffs, and since their weigh the same, presumably some of the weight is going to a purpose in the shorter versions.
Removed illogical happy widow effects (like hiring her for your soldiers magically heals player wounds...that makes no sense).
Gave Irish horsemen better horses (them being tier 4, they shouldn't be confined to ponies)
Made some battles not dependent on player level
Fixed a vanilla VC bug where a pagan walled settlement would never report in the menu as better than "pagans are in the majority"
Adjusted several unit levels and stats slightly (for example, norse/saxon/angle troops strengthened a bit to compensate their lack of unit diversity and early mail armor relative to irish/pict/briton, Angle/Saxon/norse spearmen tiers 4 and 5 spear selection adjusted, some overpowered irish pict tier 3 troops reduced in WP a bit, Adjusted stats on storyline exclusive heavy troops to be reasonably in line with faction top tier troops, Reduced sailor level to match combat ability in autocalc and reduce wages somewhat, fixed some troops with 1.5 handed weapons having bad 2 handed WP, lots of very slight tweaks like that to ensure all WP, levels, upgrade amounts, etc were in logical relationship, lots of equipment changes)
Adjusted spawn rates
Merenary cost modifier moved from Balance Mod 5.0's 200% to 175% (vanilla was 120%)
Helgi now counts as a sailor for speed bonus (same as ship captain, x2 normal bonus).
Speed bonuses at sea now accumulate a little slower (40 ---> 35 for high level norse, 80 ---> 70 sailors)
Some notifications removed (obsolete notification about marshall levying troops, which is removed anyway)
Slave market no longer gives -1 honor regularly (didn't fit the times, or other mechanics related to selling prisoners, and wasn't applied to AI obviously)
Forced religious conversion more effective and less destructive of prosperity and relations (It is still very punishing and almost never worth it though)
Schools relation effect reworked, now also works to stop relation decay, and works even if not player owner (villagers remember their benefactor)
Some centers assigned to lords to better reflect Northymbria settlement situation
removed an extraneous "Lord" from the text when entering a castle (so it doesn't say "Lord Jarl ____" anymore, instead just "Jarl ____".)
Frequency of religious relations affecting faction relations drastically lowered (should allow a viking raider playthrough to be a bit more viable, with a more reasonable rate at which relations deteriorate, but now high donations to priests won't be an express ticket to perfect relations with all factions)
Religion affecting relations of player owned center now slower, and no reliable gain for own religion (people expect to be ruled by someone of their own religion).
Adjusted some caps so that religious buildings have better expected behavior at high religious levels.
Some very rare random relation decay with centers when very high (about 5 points yearly if at high (over 20) relations with a center, so every 2 years do a quest to maintain very high relations) (or build a school if a village, it turns this off)
Town/castle garrisons changed, no longer dependent on player level.
Disabled village battles during raids as workaround for warband no loot/prisoners issue
Modify gear on ladies (use to change wife's outfit, or give gifts)
See skills of lord and ladies (useful since Balance Mod made lords no longer be exact clones of each other in stats)
Relation loss for refusing some rare quests from lords restored but only -2 (compared to -5 vanilla VC)
Only 1 free relation for attending feast in lord hall (ie, when you are attendee, not throwing it yourself, throwing it yourself you get relations as normal)
All Goidelic swords (except short swords) lowered in speed by 3 points. Any with 100+ length lowered additional 2. (except the pure 2 handed sword, which keeps original speed)
Goidelic non-noble length 100 longsword lowered slashing damage 1 point
1.5 handed goidelic swords given +2 slashing damage (making their damage a bit more competitive after the 1.5 handed sword used 1 handed penalty is applied) and sped up a bit
Nad lowered speed 2 points
Oliver sword +2 slashing
Shorter unique swords (80s length) given +3 speed (laufi +6 instead)
byrnjibiter given +3 stab (“byrnie biter”, true to its name)
Draguandil given +1 slashing +2 speed
Widowmaker +1 speed +1 stab
Swords standardized in weight, dane axe lowered in weight
Dane Axe lowered speed 5 points
Unique seaxes given +3 speed
players and companions now operate on same shield scale as ai (3 shield at 7-10 weapon master)
training T2-->T3 from refuge slowed, T1-->T2 sped up, result is T1 to T2 now is max 10 per week, T2 to T3 is max 5 per week, with high intelligence and training skill. T1 to T2 even more advantaged at lower intelligence and training.
unlimited reinforcment waves in battles. Siege battles should still switch to streets when most are dead.
removed keep horse in doccinga defense (with recent changes to improve more basic spear units, it was no longer needed, as the battle has become more reasonable)
made morale in battles (for purposes of routing) even more dependent on level, less random, and generally lower (continuing 8.0 morale changes)
changed troop xp requirements a bit for some settings to be more logical progression
mercenary mounted skirmishers made lower level, reducing cost
removed difference in wounding base chance between player and npc parties
Some prisoner sale price changes (smoothed out lower tier sale price between quality, as assuming they are all going to the galley, made any tier 5 units get much higher price, assumed they are the ones ransomed and have property to pay well, added some missing units from exceptions to special price, removed ransom broker premium over permanent slave sale prices, as assume most everyone is being sold rather than ransomed anyway, and slavers can ransom the few nobles/bodyguards anyway, adjusted special sale prices, removed bonus to sale price from low player honor (if anything a high honor player could provide better assurances of the prisoners obtained in ways that won't come back against the slave trader), changes how the max/actual calculations work as well as how trade and charisma affect them)
Added some set personalities (1 upstanding guranteed for each of the two weakest Briton kingdoms, a martial personality for Einarr based on the 1958 Vikings movie, Alfred the Great's wife becomes moralist, a west seax lord upstanding, a couple others adjusted)
Added some family relationships (Alfred the Great's mercian wife to her parents, and added an additional father/son relation to west seax to make the family trees there a little more interesting, added Einarr as son of elder Angantyrsson and transfered Einarr's mother to married to him from his brother), removed Ubba's son relation to aslaug, based on records and sagas not backing up any relation)
increased chance of ai initiating courtships
increased caravan escort quest rewards slightly
ladies allow x1.5 time to bring request jewelery/amber/etc
now requires 100 renown before a town mayor will entrust the player with kidnapped girl ransom money
reduced cooldown on some dynamic quests
ai lord ideal party size now mostly does not depend on player level, being set as if player was high level from beginning
reduced troop camp/refuge join battle distance (pick up the troops and share loot normally if you want them in the battle, and keeps them from joining when you don't)
changed deserter spawning formula for chance of small parties and cap on big
One goedilic noble longsword reduced -4 slashing damage (its high original value, 35c, seems to have been an error, as the relationship with 100 length vs 94 length weapons in the non noble irish swords is -2 damage for the shorter length, but in the noble variety it was reversed to be +2, resulting in a damage 4 higher than likely intended)
All irish 100 length swords reduced -1 slashing damage (bringing into more reasonable relationship with other culture top swords, as well as their shorter variety).
Ulfberht sword +1 slashing
Woocutter axe now has penalty with shield flag (it being left off looks like an accidental oversight, as all other 1.5 handed axes and swords have the flag)
All mail armor improved in body defense substantially (total player body armor after this change should be close to what was achievable in vanilla VC with hardened gloves (since Balance Mod nerfed gloves base armor and removed the potential to improve them, reducing total body armor from gloves from +9 to +2, but with the armor value pushed more towards the mail armor after this change, it locks better behind price, scales better with the increased heavy armor penalties relative to best medium armor, and applies to the AI top units better, since they never get modifiers to their items)
Many swords, knives, and battle axes improved in stabbing (the rounded tip of viking age swords was actually well-suited to stabbing, and the gameplay mechanics of warband and AI behavior both point towards giving them decent stabbing damage)
Female troop tree reworked heavily, top unit gets medium armor and is now a combo light infantry/skirmisher, possessing both a shield/decent melee weapon and a military sling (but sling rocks instead of lead), giving it a unique niche and worthwhile battlefield performance for the number of upgrades the player invests to get it.
Now all mercs except Old Captains no longer require high renown to recruit (being mercenaries, they care about getting paid. Also surviving, but high renown is not a proxy for troop suitability (probably it is the opposite)).
Raised amount of goods available at special locations (timber, quarries, salt mines)
Dramatically raised prisoner sale price at salt mines and quarries (you are cutting out the middle man, so profit should be higher, not lower)
Lowered base prisoner capacity (so if alone, you get 1 prisoner)---this balances with the increased sale prices at ransom brokers, slave traders, and the quarries/salt mines, and is more realistic as well.
Slave hunter line excluded from mercenary price increases (as obtained from prisoner rescues, they don't have the same options as normal mercs, and in any event aren't subject to the same hire/fire mechanics, and aren't very good units anyway. Figure they are grateful enough at being freed to not gouge you on wages)
Shifted bandit parties a bit smaller in the weighted random function, and adjusted how it works a bit
Made initial spawns forced small (just at the very beginning). I compromise my roguelike RNG integrity here a bit, but I don't want to confuse new players who happen to get an unlikely roll of the dice.
Some minor price and weight adjustments
You may have noticed that the Tier 4 Pictish and Irish swordsmen are completely out of balance with the units of other factions. They have the skills/stats of normal Tier 5 units, and they are equipped with 100% mail armor and weapons to match. I wonder if perhaps they were intended to be Tier 5 units at some point, but it was forgotten to adjust their stats and equipment when they were moved to tier 4. I hadn’t fixed this before because it is somewhat complicated to figure out a good solution, since the Irish Champions, while tier 4, are also meant to be the best heavy infantry the Irish have, and so I didn’t want to nerf them directly.
Here’s the solution I settled on:
1) Nerf the Pictish Tier 4 swordsmen. The Picts still have an upgrade heavy infantry from this, so it doesn’t matter much. Their mail is replaced with cloth, their weapons are downgraded, and their stats/skills are reduced to normal tier 4 levels.
2) Strengthen the Irish Champions WP the final bit to make them match their tier 5 skills/stats/equipment, raise their level to match, and then add a special exception to the troop upgrade XP requirements for the tier 3 unit upgrading into them, making it cost much more XP to do so. At the same time adjust recruiting templates for AI lords so they are recruited in very small numbers, as if they were tier 5.
So the result is the Irish Champions become a tier 5 unit hanging out at the tier 4 slot, with sensible rarity regardless of whether it is AI or player recruiting them. The only downside is that the unit it upgrades to, mounted Irish Bodyguards, then essentially have more total XP going into their upgrade chain. So we mitigate that with a second special exception in scripts, making the Irish champion requires less than normal XP to promote (and there is of course also the alternate light cavalry upgrade route to Irish bodyguards that an earlier version of Balance Mod added)
Another pass on spearmen sidearms
made Irish and Pict nobles have the noble longsword dominate their weapon choice (as is only fitting given the name)
made the non noble Pictish Champions have a chance of using non-noble longswords instead of noble
made the Irish and Pict mounted tier 5 units somewhat favor the longer versions of the longsword
changed some of their equipment guarantee flags.
Fixed Irish and Pict tier 3 swordsmen being assigned higher tier 4 skills.
Fixed Pict tier 3 swordsmen having better armor than suitable for its tier.
Gave Pict tier 4 swordsmen the better shields of the pict tier 4 spearmen
Replaced Irish Champion generic 1.5 handed axes with the Irish specific 1.5 handed axes
Irish Bodyguard loses cloth armor chance (it looked nice, but no way to justify a unit with 100% mail armor, the champion, upgrading to a unit without), and gains chance of cloaked versions of mail (to restore some color to them)
Irish Horsemen gain guaranteed helmet
Removed extra mounted upgrade cost (since it was operating on units upgraded from, not to, it didn't make much sense)
Fixed Slaver Chief being flagged as a mounted and guaranteed horse unit (it is possible the error was instead not assigning them horses, not 100% sure which the VC devs intended, but given their parties are often on water, my best guess was the flags were the mistake)
Strengthened Irish elite skirmisher
9.0 Final Changelog
Initial garrisons at world generation are larger. This is a one-time thing for the start of the game only, and garrisons will become normal size as soon as the initial troops die or the fief is conquered. This is to promote initial stability and prevent early faction elimination by the AI. It also reflects the realistic principle that lands that have been conquered and reconquered are likely weaker in their defense from the devastation of war.
AI switches from spears to shortrange weapons in sea battles. Spear stats in VC only make sense if having stable ground to brace against, and short range weapons perform better in close quarters ship battles (in both real life and the game).
Norse spearmen given better 1 handed WP and weapons. This doesn't affect field battles much (VC troops do not switch from spears to sidearms unless their weapon breaks or they are a designated mounted troop), but it does make the Norse better fighters in sea battles.
Enabled constructing buildings in towns you don't own (for example, finance a school to make the peasants like you, or a temple to win converts to your faith)
Food consumption of player army reduced (each unit of food feeds 4 people as opposed to 3 people in vanilla VC)
All food items approximately doubled in weight (weight here representing also considerations of volume and handling)
Most trade goods increased in weight
Carefully assigned starting religious levels among the world to reflect likely settlement patterns (beginnings of norse inroads in ireland/northymbria/frisia, but still in very early stages, and stronger in castles than villages, but otherwise strongly christian, except in isolated islands and such). The world is now much more polarized and less tolerant, and a lot more realistic given the age.
Reworked all aspects of religious conversion
adjusted recruiting templates so that ai lords recruit slower, making battles more pivotal (so it will take them substantially longer to recover from being wiped out). On normal campaign difficulty, it will take AI lords around a month to fully recover from being wiped out, on hard, about half that time (that is the only real difference between campaign difficulty left in Balance Mod--normal is more realistic and immersive in my opinion, but hard is available for those who want faster enemy kingdom AI lord recovery)
Complete overhaul of ai lord recruiting templates, fine tuning and balancing all army compositions (completing and polishing work from prior versions, placing each faction on a new strict 15/12/9 recruiting pyramid structure). Greater variety of tactical situations by varying the troop distribution between factions more. Angles/Saxons/Norse are very shieldwall heavy (with Northymbrian norse having additional dane axe troops, and Frisian norse having both frisian and frankish cavalry in decent numbers). Irish and Picts lighter in the troops within the shieldwall, with more troops of their unique strengths, skirmishers and cavalry (with Irish somewhat more on the cavalry, Picts a little more on the skirmishers). Osrige goes infantry heavy to go with their viking mercs. Angles and Saxons very little skirmishers and almost no cavalry, Norse a bit more archers, Britons a bit more cavalry and skirmishers yet. In terms of infantry balance between spearmen/swordsmen, the Anglo/Saxons heavy on spearmen, Britons a bit more towards balance between them, Norse more equal yet between spears and swords, and Irish/Picts weighted towards swords/axes. Angles a bit more shieldless tier I peasants than saxons to represent greater pressure their lands are under, Irish and Picts also a bit more shieldless peasants (with troop distributions a little less concentrated to the center overall, with a bit more low and high tier). Irish a bit more nobles than normal especially in proportion to their lower number of spearmen to represent a thriving caste of local chieftains.
Increased ai starting wealth, garrison starting wealth, and garrison recruiting rounds at gamestart to account for new recruiting tables(some lords may need a bit after game start to max out their parties)
Allowed using ranged weapons in tavern (if your life is on the line, a stern word from the innkeeper shouldn't stop you)
Spears now generally somewhat more breakable (Except gungnir)
Fixed a weapon switching condition
Fixed an apparent vanilla VC oversight where only 1 spear had penalty with shield flagged (and all other spears, whether longer or shorter, did not), by removing the flag. The long war spear 203 length version should now perform in accordance with its listed stats, and be comparable to other spears.
Rennamed war axe price and rarity raised. Prices of the very best, rare spears also raised (the heavy long spears).
Ray (and Gugnir as well but a bit less) damage reduced to put it in line with other spears (tradeoff of length vs other factors). Generally, not allowing super weapons that are player only, a spear is a spear, there should be tradeoffs with the best weapons available to ai
Shorter versions of long war and heavy long spear given +1 damage. Creating tradeoffs, and since their weigh the same, presumably some of the weight is going to a purpose in the shorter versions.
Removed illogical happy widow effects (like hiring her for your soldiers magically heals player wounds...that makes no sense).
Gave Irish horsemen better horses (them being tier 4, they shouldn't be confined to ponies)
Made some battles not dependent on player level
Fixed a vanilla VC bug where a pagan walled settlement would never report in the menu as better than "pagans are in the majority"
Adjusted several unit levels and stats slightly (for example, norse/saxon/angle troops strengthened a bit to compensate their lack of unit diversity and early mail armor relative to irish/pict/briton, Angle/Saxon/norse spearmen tiers 4 and 5 spear selection adjusted, some overpowered irish pict tier 3 troops reduced in WP a bit, Adjusted stats on storyline exclusive heavy troops to be reasonably in line with faction top tier troops, Reduced sailor level to match combat ability in autocalc and reduce wages somewhat, fixed some troops with 1.5 handed weapons having bad 2 handed WP, lots of very slight tweaks like that to ensure all WP, levels, upgrade amounts, etc were in logical relationship, lots of equipment changes)
Adjusted spawn rates
Merenary cost modifier moved from Balance Mod 5.0's 200% to 175% (vanilla was 120%)
Helgi now counts as a sailor for speed bonus (same as ship captain, x2 normal bonus).
Speed bonuses at sea now accumulate a little slower (40 ---> 35 for high level norse, 80 ---> 70 sailors)
Some notifications removed (obsolete notification about marshall levying troops, which is removed anyway)
Slave market no longer gives -1 honor regularly (didn't fit the times, or other mechanics related to selling prisoners, and wasn't applied to AI obviously)
Forced religious conversion more effective and less destructive of prosperity and relations (It is still very punishing and almost never worth it though)
Schools relation effect reworked, now also works to stop relation decay, and works even if not player owner (villagers remember their benefactor)
Some centers assigned to lords to better reflect Northymbria settlement situation
removed an extraneous "Lord" from the text when entering a castle (so it doesn't say "Lord Jarl ____" anymore, instead just "Jarl ____".)
Frequency of religious relations affecting faction relations drastically lowered (should allow a viking raider playthrough to be a bit more viable, with a more reasonable rate at which relations deteriorate, but now high donations to priests won't be an express ticket to perfect relations with all factions)
Religion affecting relations of player owned center now slower, and no reliable gain for own religion (people expect to be ruled by someone of their own religion).
Adjusted some caps so that religious buildings have better expected behavior at high religious levels.
Some very rare random relation decay with centers when very high (about 5 points yearly if at high (over 20) relations with a center, so every 2 years do a quest to maintain very high relations) (or build a school if a village, it turns this off)
Town/castle garrisons changed, no longer dependent on player level.
Disabled village battles during raids as workaround for warband no loot/prisoners issue
Modify gear on ladies (use to change wife's outfit, or give gifts)
See skills of lord and ladies (useful since Balance Mod made lords no longer be exact clones of each other in stats)
Relation loss for refusing some rare quests from lords restored but only -2 (compared to -5 vanilla VC)
Only 1 free relation for attending feast in lord hall (ie, when you are attendee, not throwing it yourself, throwing it yourself you get relations as normal)
All Goidelic swords (except short swords) lowered in speed by 3 points. Any with 100+ length lowered additional 2. (except the pure 2 handed sword, which keeps original speed)
Goidelic non-noble length 100 longsword lowered slashing damage 1 point
1.5 handed goidelic swords given +2 slashing damage (making their damage a bit more competitive after the 1.5 handed sword used 1 handed penalty is applied) and sped up a bit
Nad lowered speed 2 points
Oliver sword +2 slashing
Shorter unique swords (80s length) given +3 speed (laufi +6 instead)
byrnjibiter given +3 stab (“byrnie biter”, true to its name)
Draguandil given +1 slashing +2 speed
Widowmaker +1 speed +1 stab
Swords standardized in weight, dane axe lowered in weight
Dane Axe lowered speed 5 points
Unique seaxes given +3 speed
players and companions now operate on same shield scale as ai (3 shield at 7-10 weapon master)
training T2-->T3 from refuge slowed, T1-->T2 sped up, result is T1 to T2 now is max 10 per week, T2 to T3 is max 5 per week, with high intelligence and training skill. T1 to T2 even more advantaged at lower intelligence and training.
unlimited reinforcment waves in battles. Siege battles should still switch to streets when most are dead.
removed keep horse in doccinga defense (with recent changes to improve more basic spear units, it was no longer needed, as the battle has become more reasonable)
made morale in battles (for purposes of routing) even more dependent on level, less random, and generally lower (continuing 8.0 morale changes)
changed troop xp requirements a bit for some settings to be more logical progression
mercenary mounted skirmishers made lower level, reducing cost
removed difference in wounding base chance between player and npc parties
Some prisoner sale price changes (smoothed out lower tier sale price between quality, as assuming they are all going to the galley, made any tier 5 units get much higher price, assumed they are the ones ransomed and have property to pay well, added some missing units from exceptions to special price, removed ransom broker premium over permanent slave sale prices, as assume most everyone is being sold rather than ransomed anyway, and slavers can ransom the few nobles/bodyguards anyway, adjusted special sale prices, removed bonus to sale price from low player honor (if anything a high honor player could provide better assurances of the prisoners obtained in ways that won't come back against the slave trader), changes how the max/actual calculations work as well as how trade and charisma affect them)
Added some set personalities (1 upstanding guranteed for each of the two weakest Briton kingdoms, a martial personality for Einarr based on the 1958 Vikings movie, Alfred the Great's wife becomes moralist, a west seax lord upstanding, a couple others adjusted)
Added some family relationships (Alfred the Great's mercian wife to her parents, and added an additional father/son relation to west seax to make the family trees there a little more interesting, added Einarr as son of elder Angantyrsson and transfered Einarr's mother to married to him from his brother), removed Ubba's son relation to aslaug, based on records and sagas not backing up any relation)
increased chance of ai initiating courtships
increased caravan escort quest rewards slightly
ladies allow x1.5 time to bring request jewelery/amber/etc
now requires 100 renown before a town mayor will entrust the player with kidnapped girl ransom money
reduced cooldown on some dynamic quests
ai lord ideal party size now mostly does not depend on player level, being set as if player was high level from beginning
reduced troop camp/refuge join battle distance (pick up the troops and share loot normally if you want them in the battle, and keeps them from joining when you don't)
changed deserter spawning formula for chance of small parties and cap on big
One goedilic noble longsword reduced -4 slashing damage (its high original value, 35c, seems to have been an error, as the relationship with 100 length vs 94 length weapons in the non noble irish swords is -2 damage for the shorter length, but in the noble variety it was reversed to be +2, resulting in a damage 4 higher than likely intended)
All irish 100 length swords reduced -1 slashing damage (bringing into more reasonable relationship with other culture top swords, as well as their shorter variety).
Ulfberht sword +1 slashing
Woocutter axe now has penalty with shield flag (it being left off looks like an accidental oversight, as all other 1.5 handed axes and swords have the flag)
All mail armor improved in body defense substantially (total player body armor after this change should be close to what was achievable in vanilla VC with hardened gloves (since Balance Mod nerfed gloves base armor and removed the potential to improve them, reducing total body armor from gloves from +9 to +2, but with the armor value pushed more towards the mail armor after this change, it locks better behind price, scales better with the increased heavy armor penalties relative to best medium armor, and applies to the AI top units better, since they never get modifiers to their items)
Many swords, knives, and battle axes improved in stabbing (the rounded tip of viking age swords was actually well-suited to stabbing, and the gameplay mechanics of warband and AI behavior both point towards giving them decent stabbing damage)
Female troop tree reworked heavily, top unit gets medium armor and is now a combo light infantry/skirmisher, possessing both a shield/decent melee weapon and a military sling (but sling rocks instead of lead), giving it a unique niche and worthwhile battlefield performance for the number of upgrades the player invests to get it.
Now all mercs except Old Captains no longer require high renown to recruit (being mercenaries, they care about getting paid. Also surviving, but high renown is not a proxy for troop suitability (probably it is the opposite)).
Raised amount of goods available at special locations (timber, quarries, salt mines)
Dramatically raised prisoner sale price at salt mines and quarries (you are cutting out the middle man, so profit should be higher, not lower)
Lowered base prisoner capacity (so if alone, you get 1 prisoner)---this balances with the increased sale prices at ransom brokers, slave traders, and the quarries/salt mines, and is more realistic as well.
Slave hunter line excluded from mercenary price increases (as obtained from prisoner rescues, they don't have the same options as normal mercs, and in any event aren't subject to the same hire/fire mechanics, and aren't very good units anyway. Figure they are grateful enough at being freed to not gouge you on wages)
Shifted bandit parties a bit smaller in the weighted random function, and adjusted how it works a bit
Made initial spawns forced small (just at the very beginning). I compromise my roguelike RNG integrity here a bit, but I don't want to confuse new players who happen to get an unlikely roll of the dice.
Some minor price and weight adjustments
You may have noticed that the Tier 4 Pictish and Irish swordsmen are completely out of balance with the units of other factions. They have the skills/stats of normal Tier 5 units, and they are equipped with 100% mail armor and weapons to match. I wonder if perhaps they were intended to be Tier 5 units at some point, but it was forgotten to adjust their stats and equipment when they were moved to tier 4. I hadn’t fixed this before because it is somewhat complicated to figure out a good solution, since the Irish Champions, while tier 4, are also meant to be the best heavy infantry the Irish have, and so I didn’t want to nerf them directly.
Here’s the solution I settled on:
1) Nerf the Pictish Tier 4 swordsmen. The Picts still have an upgrade heavy infantry from this, so it doesn’t matter much. Their mail is replaced with cloth, their weapons are downgraded, and their stats/skills are reduced to normal tier 4 levels.
2) Strengthen the Irish Champions WP the final bit to make them match their tier 5 skills/stats/equipment, raise their level to match, and then add a special exception to the troop upgrade XP requirements for the tier 3 unit upgrading into them, making it cost much more XP to do so. At the same time adjust recruiting templates for AI lords so they are recruited in very small numbers, as if they were tier 5.
So the result is the Irish Champions become a tier 5 unit hanging out at the tier 4 slot, with sensible rarity regardless of whether it is AI or player recruiting them. The only downside is that the unit it upgrades to, mounted Irish Bodyguards, then essentially have more total XP going into their upgrade chain. So we mitigate that with a second special exception in scripts, making the Irish champion requires less than normal XP to promote (and there is of course also the alternate light cavalry upgrade route to Irish bodyguards that an earlier version of Balance Mod added)
Another pass on spearmen sidearms
made Irish and Pict nobles have the noble longsword dominate their weapon choice (as is only fitting given the name)
made the non noble Pictish Champions have a chance of using non-noble longswords instead of noble
made the Irish and Pict mounted tier 5 units somewhat favor the longer versions of the longsword
changed some of their equipment guarantee flags.
Fixed Irish and Pict tier 3 swordsmen being assigned higher tier 4 skills.
Fixed Pict tier 3 swordsmen having better armor than suitable for its tier.
Gave Pict tier 4 swordsmen the better shields of the pict tier 4 spearmen
Replaced Irish Champion generic 1.5 handed axes with the Irish specific 1.5 handed axes
Irish Bodyguard loses cloth armor chance (it looked nice, but no way to justify a unit with 100% mail armor, the champion, upgrading to a unit without), and gains chance of cloaked versions of mail (to restore some color to them)
Irish Horsemen gain guaranteed helmet
Removed extra mounted upgrade cost (since it was operating on units upgraded from, not to, it didn't make much sense)
Fixed Slaver Chief being flagged as a mounted and guaranteed horse unit (it is possible the error was instead not assigning them horses, not 100% sure which the VC devs intended, but given their parties are often on water, my best guess was the flags were the mistake)
Strengthened Irish elite skirmisher
There is a good chance 9.0 is the final version of Balance Mod (assuming no issues are found that require patches). Everyone is welcome to create submods.
Final 8.0 download stats: in the 23 days between 8.0 and 9.0's release, 8.0 was downloaded over 800 times, for an average daily download rate of 35 downloads per day. Most of the downloads were at ModDB.
Final 8.0 download stats: in the 23 days between 8.0 and 9.0's release, 8.0 was downloaded over 800 times, for an average daily download rate of 35 downloads per day. Most of the downloads were at ModDB.
Is anyone here a member of the below website?
https://commando.com.ua/viking-conquest/4310-vc-mod-beta.html
If so, can you let them know the above linked mod is actually just an early version of Balance Mod 1.0?
I had uploaded that file to ModDB way back before I had even named this mod, and not realized that file was published and downloadable, until I went to create a page for Balance Mod 8.0 a few weeks ago, and discovered people had been downloading it all this time. I replaced it with the current version on ModDB, but it seems to have been mirrored to other places.
I am very happy that they host 9.0, and they are welcome to host older versions if they wish, but I just want to clear up any confusion of listing that old Balance Mod file as a seperate mod.
https://commando.com.ua/viking-conquest/4310-vc-mod-beta.html
If so, can you let them know the above linked mod is actually just an early version of Balance Mod 1.0?
I had uploaded that file to ModDB way back before I had even named this mod, and not realized that file was published and downloadable, until I went to create a page for Balance Mod 8.0 a few weeks ago, and discovered people had been downloading it all this time. I replaced it with the current version on ModDB, but it seems to have been mirrored to other places.
I am very happy that they host 9.0, and they are welcome to host older versions if they wish, but I just want to clear up any confusion of listing that old Balance Mod file as a seperate mod.
I registered there quick and downloaded the file. This version is probably heavily outdated, since these are the only contents:
I'll write in the comments that this version is outdated. Since I can't speak russian the comment will be in English. Hopefully they'll replace the files nevertheless.
I'll write in the comments that this version is outdated. Since I can't speak russian the comment will be in English. Hopefully they'll replace the files nevertheless.
Tingyun,
Thanks for the info.
Don't worry , we have added cross-references for your mod and there is no confusion.
this is the new version of your mod
Good luck with your mod development.
Thanks for the info.
Don't worry , we have added cross-references for your mod and there is no confusion.
this is the new version of your mod
Good luck with your mod development.
FreeLifeStile: Thank you! I appreciate all the help greatly, and thank you for fixing things.
Plasquar: Thanks for adding the note and helping fix this! Yes, it is very small—Balance Mod 1.0 was just a morgh’s editor mod of troops and items. It wasn’t until 2.0 that I started working with the actual code, when I decided to make bandit spawns random and implement the first version of fixing the Warband kill-order loot overflow glitch (really just a workaround, I didn’t finally fix it fully until 7.0)
Plasquar: Thanks for adding the note and helping fix this! Yes, it is very small—Balance Mod 1.0 was just a morgh’s editor mod of troops and items. It wasn’t until 2.0 that I started working with the actual code, when I decided to make bandit spawns random and implement the first version of fixing the Warband kill-order loot overflow glitch (really just a workaround, I didn’t finally fix it fully until 7.0)
All optional add-ons on Nexus have either been updated to 9.0 or still work with 9.0. Some people have contacted me to ask, so I wanted to make clear that everything at Nexus (except for the stuff archived under prior versions) is safe to use with 9.0.
The only optional add-on dropped from 9.0 is restore vanilla troop upgrade paths. Only 3 users downloaded it, and it would be troublesome to recreate, so it won't be maintained going forward.
The unlimited reinforcement waves add-on became part of 9.0 itself, which is why it is no longer maintained.
The only optional add-on dropped from 9.0 is restore vanilla troop upgrade paths. Only 3 users downloaded it, and it would be troublesome to recreate, so it won't be maintained going forward.
The unlimited reinforcement waves add-on became part of 9.0 itself, which is why it is no longer maintained.
