Recent content by Anthropoid
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
- Anthropoid
- Post #472
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
There is tremendous potential in the various new settlement mechanics TW have introduced. Prior to the 1.1 update, I had noted that pretty much all the settlements had alleys and backstreets which were blocked off with junk. It seems that some (but not all) of those avenues were opened up with 1.1 and the new gang alley system. My hunch is that most all of these systems are Works in Progress and there are bigger long term plans for all of them.
There are also many doors in settlements which appear graphically very similar to those which have a functioning "F" hit box (such as the tavern, the arena and quest givers doors). There are a lot of other doors which do not look as realistic and distinctive compared to the wall in which they are mounted. This leads me to surmise that there are likely long term plans pertaining to interiors in settlements too?- Anthropoid
- Post #448
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Custom Troops
It has been a good while since you posted this bbaydogdu, and you may not even be active on here any longer. But maybe you are and maybe you can help me to find some answers/resolutions to my current issue (which I suspect is related to MLW).Use My Little Warband and be happy. Don't ask TW about things they don't care. Though it make sense for you to do that since you're the ultimate TW defender of this forum
- Anthropoid
- Post #62
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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TaleWorlds Modding Q&A
I am seeking some guidance on trouble shooting an issue with a modded build. I did a search on "My Little Warband" and found a recent mention of it and asked there. But in the interest of increasing my chance of getting guidance I shall quote myself and ask here too:
- Anthropoid
- Post #110
- Forum: The Smithy - Mod Development
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So many abandoned modifications
Yeah the modders are great, they deserve a lot of praise.
Anyone who makes a mod that proves to be useful is a literal hero among us, and deserves nothing but praise, whether their mod is low quality, broken or abandoned.- Anthropoid
- Post #63
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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So many abandoned modifications
I'm using version 1.03 of Bannerlord and installed a mod set inspired by one of Strat Gaming's videos
I also added: Arena Overhaul and Marry Anyone.
Initially, I did not notice any performance issues with this list. I did eventually experience a couple of issues which basically have been addressed: (i) CTDs while in the "My Little Warband" (MLW) troop editor, and (ii) crashes at random times. The latter was corrected by turning off the Realistic Battle Mod Tournament Module (conflicts with Arena Overhaul). The former I avoid by exiting the troop editor, and file saving before going back into the troop editor to continue creating a troop tree. It seems to me that MLW has issues with file writing leading to CTDs.
However, as I've played more hours--and in particular after adding Arena Overhaul and Marry Anyone--I've noticed a new issue for which I have not found any solution: CPU loads go up into the 65 to 75% range in certain scenes: primarily campaign map, settlement menu, and arena. The trade menus, tavern, battle maps (including hideout maps) seem to have more normal CPU loads in the 15 to 25% ballpark.
This is not game breaking, but I really don't like to put that much strain on my machine as a routine. So I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for resolving the issue?
Should I just experiment with removing mods one by one? Is it possible a change in load order could fix it? is there a particular mod that stands out as the likely cause of the high CPU loads in those particular game renders?
My fear is that MLW is the source, and that bums me out, cause I really like that mod. One hunch is that: it is the troop tree I've built with that mod (the mod basically allows the player to create their own custom troop tree), because, like I said: I didn't notice any heavy CPU activity until I had played for a while. It may be that after I had built out an extensive troop tree that that is what is causing the heavy CPU loads in certain scenes?- Anthropoid
- Post #62
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
Referring to the bolded/italicized part: I have seen similar things happen. Also with the F1 + F4.
In 1.1 there is also some kind of glitch where: when the battle setup starts, either from the very beginning of after the user has reconfigured some formations, part of the user inputs are just not responsive. For example: a battle in which I start the setup with 1 formation of infantry, and one of horse archers. I decide at the outset I want to separate my horse archers into two formations: one with the low tier guys, one with the high tier (let the low tier guys get kills). So I start changing formations around. At some point in this process I realize that the WSAD inputs for the camera are completely unresponsive. The formation selection keys (1, 2,3, etc.) are also completely unresponsive. About the only thing that still works is raise/lower camera from the mouse and spin the camera from the mouse. Generally, the problem seems to "fix itself" eventually, either by simply waiting or by selecting "Reset Deployment" then waiting, but it would be nice if it just didn't happen at all.
Another "glitch" in the battle setups: Lets say I have in Battle 1 nothing but horse archers. However I want to be able to place my character where I want and not grouped in on the rear right flank of the horse archers. So I create a second horse archer formation, drag it to 0/35. Put my character in the captain box, and lock it. Okay cool. Now I fight the battle and everything works okay. But next battle, the game will stick 3 or 4 of the horse archers from formation 1 into formation 2 with me. This should NOT happen. Basically, the game should remember EXACTLY what one's formations were from the previous battle and automatically use the EXACT same ones in the next battle. In the past, it seemed like it did this, even to the point of creating problems that prevented starting the battle (e.g., because troops had upgraded and there were none left to put into a particular formation according to its selection criterion).
One last point about the battle setup: it really should not be necessary to get into a fight to configure this stuff. The player should be able to enter the "Battle Planning" pane at ANY TIME they are on the campaign map and not engaged. Unless your code is just the most incredible garbled spaghetti ever, this should not be a real problem to setup.- Anthropoid
- Post #400
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
Some stuff that is "clunky" in 1.1 . . .
. . . playing vanilla campaign in 1.1. Get a marriage proposal for my older bro: Rustica. Ah yeah, I seem to recall she is one of the more vanilla empire nobles without much skills but quite young so moldable. Still, I'm not so desperate for children that I'll just accept. No option to look her up from the proposal prompt. Type her into the Encyclopedia. Blurred out. Last seen at Phycaon. I drop what I'm doing and head to Phycaon. By the time I get there (from Marunath) the prompt tab is gone and I guess there is no way to respond to the proposal now, so the trip was kind of pointless. There are problems here . . .
My suggestions:
1. ANY proposal from ANY Hero should get saved for a period of time. Maybe it goes into the quest panes? It is absurd that you have to decide RIGHT NOW or the proposal goes defunct.
2. If someone proposes marriage, it should automatically reveal most of the details, or at least the basic ones that are shown from meeting them in person about the proposed spouse.
3. Game in general desperately needs some sort of "messenger" system. Make it cost 1 Denar per kilometer or whatever so it is less abusable. I know there is a mod for that, but it really should be in vanilla.
I'm desperately trying to "beat" the campaign in vanilla at least once, and provide as much feedback as I can, but some of the lack of Quality of Life features makes it seem pretty painful.- Anthropoid
- Post #399
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
In my experience, an "experimental branch" can be extremely beneficial to the development of a game. One title in particular stands out to me: Empyrion Galactic Survival. It took them YEARS to get that game to where it is today, and during that entire time frame, they were engaging to a moderate degree with their community--mostly on their forums. Experimental branches gradually became more and more important as a means for the developers to put out some of the latest features or changes or expansions to the game and let only those highly engaged community members who wanted to be "experimented on" engage with it. Many, MANY times over the years things which were partially or even fully implemented were revealed to be problematic through experimental user feedback and then changed before stable release. There were plenty of other times that problems did not get detected, and even sometimes when it seemed the developers basically just ignored feedback; even the most engaged and responsive developers are people too and everyone "makes mistakes." And for that matter, what looks like a "mistake" to an outsider might well have been a highly intentional and well-thought out act by the other.
All we can as users who want to help the game and its communities grow and thrive is offer our feedback. Sometimes we are just wrong and our views don't align with the majority and that is what any business has to aim for: what will move the most units. TW know who their audience is, they wouldn't still be making games if they didn't
But even highly competent professionals can benefit from gentle reminding that it can be useful to listen to your customers.- Anthropoid
- Post #389
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
I have another suggestion for you TW developers, also based on commentary on the Steam discussion. This pertains to the new "Full NPC Fog of War" mechanics in the 1.1 experimental release.
Me personally, I love it. It doesn't make sense that a character in a medieval setting would have SO MUCH information about every character in the land as was the case in previous versions. There is perhaps a need to tweak what information is and is not available (famous people arguably should have a bit more outlines of their identity available right from the beginning), but to me: the new "Full NPC Fog of War" settings as you have them in the 1.1 experimental release are more appropriate than the previous settings.
However, there are many who will disagree vehemently with me (and with your change), and I've already heard from them extensively in the Steam Discussion (just have a look for yourselves). There are two main gists of their grievances: (a) I played the game hundreds or thousands of hours with the previous settings and I prefer it that way (and I would point out to you that, this is an INHERENTLY VALID PERSPECTIVE: you provided the game to them with the previous settings so it is completely natural that they would get accustomed to it that way and come to PREFER IT that way, no matter what you or I might think about what are "better" settings, this perspective simply cannot be refuted and it deserves to be taken seriously); (b) the old system "makes more sense" from a realism/balance/immersion perspective (I won't attempt to debate this point, and don't regard it as inviolable as point (a) but suffice to say, I disagree).
Now this would seem to be a irreconcilable situation, but it most certainly is not. You have an EXTRAORDINARILY easy solution to this problem readily available, and based on my limited experience working in game development, I'd guess it would cost you less than 50 person hours of development work (esp. given that some of the functionality you'd use in the solution already exists in other features in the game already):
Create an option toggle in the game settings that allows a user to choose the level of "NPC Fog of War:" Total | Partial | None (where Total represents roughly the current settings in 1.1, None represented the settings previously and Partial some intermediate degree).
How you would tie each of these settings to difficulty I would not presume to advise you about, though I would point out that if you assign "Bannerlord" difficulty as REQUIRING "TOTAL" NPC Fog of War else it switches the difficulty to "Custom," you may well meet opposition to that as well. I suspect the opposition would be much weaker and more muted, but it would undoubtedly occur.- Anthropoid
- Post #286
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
I have another suggestion pertaining to workshops which arises from this thread on the Steam Discussion boards:
Do the workshops work? :: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord [EN] General Discussions
Is there a better guide then the ones I have found? I own the Brewery and Pottery in Phycaon. They most they have made together is 16 coin. There is clay in town and grain. Phycaon has two towns in its control one has clay and the other has grain. So why is my brewery and Pottery shop stagnant?steamcommunity.com
My suggestion:
What TW should do to address the widespread confusion about "whether or not workshops are broken" or else badly balanced, is to include additional information in the information pane that allow the user to see WHY the thing is performing badly or not. Is the raw material not plentiful enough? Is it too expensive? Is the demand for the finished product too low? Is the selling price too low? Just this basic information would allow the player to examine their situation more closely to try to determine what they might do to alleviate it, and improve the performance of their workshop. Pretty simple stuff really.
However, there are additional layers which could be addressed in the game design too. Presently, a player has a few options to assist their workshops to make money.
Probably the least "accessible" is to end wars and/or to restore order to the settlement and nearby villages, but this is more of a mid to late game approach, and by then workshops are probably not that important. Quest-like undertakings, or agreements with notables that could address such issues could help.
One can buy up all the end product from one's workshop in a given settlement and cart if off to sell at a profit. This will increase demand for that product and should in a few days or so assist with the passive income calculations by the workshop itself.
One can sell lots of the raw material into the local market and that should reduce "overhead" (as I put it in that Steam thread).
One can buy competitor workshops in the same or nearby settlements and change what they sell (again more of a late-early or early-middle strategy, so quest-like game mechanics which allow the player to achieve "undercut the competition" types of effect for periods of time would enhance workshops).
There is great potential in the current economic system in the game and the way the workshops can articulate with it. But it is not sufficiently represented in the game UI that players can make good sense of it, and the game play potentials are only partly realized.- Anthropoid
- Post #261
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
After many years of playing no Taleworld's titles, I have come back to purchase and play Bannerlord. Steams says I'm up to 283 hours. After several restarts I've settled into a playthrough which I hope to stick with for the long haul, and perhaps conquer the map from the Campaign start (Bannerlord difficulty, Ironman mode, 1.1 version). I've seen very few "bugs," and overall the game is a fantastic expansion on the M&B series. I've had only two CTDs. I have yet to do much in the way of sieging or large field battles though, so I have not seen the full range of situations the game can offer. There are of course areas which are a bit barebones, but that is not what I'm posting about. What I am going to focus on here are very basic design issues, largely having to do with UI and UX which IMO should be demarcated as vitally important simply because they will please almost everyone, annoy almost no one and extend the play time of many who are "hard-core" players who spend hundreds of hours playing. I have not explored any mods yet, and I hope to finish the game at least once completely vanilla before modding the game. IMO, the features I will note here should be part of the vanilla game, even if they are already available from mods.
1. Capacity to instruct EXACTLY which soldier goes into each formation. Having precise control over soldier types would be nice, but to be honest, just giving us a list of EVERY soldier in a force and the ability to select, multi-select, rubber band, drag-and-drop them into the formation shouldn't be asking that much. This is 2023, and this sort of UI technology was already well established 15 or 20 years ago. The current "coarse" system you have may be fine for NPC forces, but the player needs to have COMPLETE CONTROL.
2. Features in the Smithy pane which allow actions which presently might take 20 or 40 mouse clicks to be completed in only two to four mouse-clicks. Again: 15 to 20 year old standards for UI/UX. It is understandable that this was not put on top priority previously, but at this point, you have players complaining about stuff like this, and effectively eschewing certain aspects of game play or even eschewing playing the game entirely (and even worse, going into communities to derogate the game) simply because of little annoyances like having to click hundreds of times when the app could provide an "All" or an "Until Exhausted" or an "Ctrl + Left Mouse" to do in increments of 10 and a "Shift + Left Mouse" to do in increments of 100 . . .
3. Much more control over parties that are led by NPCs in one's clan. "Defensive/Offensive/Neutral" feels like filler, and there seems to be almost zero benefit to allocating troops to an NPC clan member in a second party. Even calling them to an army seems to be questionable based on some commenters.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Those to me are the things that stick out as "most annoying" after 283 hours of vanilla play. There are quite a few other "Quality of Life" changes, as well as some basic game design changes that I would like to see. But those tend to be less serious, or else more matters of opinion. If the above issues are implemented as "additional options" to current UX (and don't break any existing features or functionalities) then I don't see how you can go wrong to address these issues.
I will however, include a link to a Steam Discussion I started called "Little Things that Annoy" which lists these things among others, and has a few respondents (so you can see, it isn't just me).
Little Things that Annoy . . . :: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord [EN] General Discussions
Join me in listing the little things about the game that annoy. Lets keep straight up rants about how terrible the game is completely out of this thread please. If you like the game, and think it is overall "good," but have some "little things" that annoy, jump in. 1. If you kill an archer in...
On the whole: great game! Well done TaleWorlds!- Anthropoid
- Post #258
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Ukraine Today
Responding to the first bolded italicized part: no opposition media; no opposition political parties; no organized dissent against the ruling regime; copious examples of dissidents who were either murdered, or forced to flee abroad, or forced to flee abroad and then murdered, or just turned up dead in weird circumstances; a ruler who very likely bombed his own people to create a war drum context to assist with getting (probably, mostly) legitimately elected for his first run at President, and then has progressively used every possible trick to insure his progressive victories as well as recurrent adjustments to laws that would prevent him from holding office recurrently; the same guy has been effectively supreme leader of the Russian Federation for ~20 something years (honestly not that many tinpot African dictators ever managed to last that long, Robert Mugabe aside . . .); a State Media which makes Goebbels Ministry of Truth seem tame--constant ranting and raving about nuking anyone and everyone who opposes them, etc.; 15 years in prison for calling the war a war; homosexuality illegal . . . a system which is corrupt at seemingly every level (a blessing in disguise now that the effects of all that corruption that depleted Russian military capacity is coming into pay) . . . those are just the most basic things which come to mind immediately. I reckon that an actual unbiased Russian scholar would be able to write an entire book about all the ways in which the Putin regime is actually much WORSE than the Soviet Union (Khrushchev was replace by the party because he was deemed to be a loose cannon, but I don't see any "committee" or parliamentary body or ANY force other than a bullet being placed between his eyes by one of his trusted bodyguards holding Putin accountable). Putin has only just got started, as Althix was all to eager to point out: You Ukrainians are not the actual "enemy," it is effectively "the world" or at least that portion of it which eschews Russian supremacy and dominance . . . this is your standard ethno-supremacist, irredentism common to many totalitarian or authoritarian worldviews down through the centuries, with the Nazis being just one of the most egregious examples.Pandora Papers, you mean. He was name-dropped in the report because right before the 2019 election he transferred his stake in an offshore company to one of his aides. But his business before that time was not connected to public finances or administrative power so that's not some kind of state-level corruption. Good enough as far as Eastern European presidents go. When he's caught in corruption while in the office, he's out that's for sure.
I don't know if that's good. This works with authoritarian regimes. You remove the tyrant and that does it.
But have Russia taken the totalitarian turn? Is the majority of the population now beaten into a frenzy and asking for total war? It's actually a possibility, we don't know for sure.
This is what a lot of Russians think. And that is where it might be too late to make any appeasements.
Doesn't it rhyme loud enough for western people to finally get it?
We have a very large European country that was shunned and humiliated by western leaders for a few decades (due to its own previous actions, but still). Resentment is brewing, dreams are dreamt of bringing back the golden age and replaying the recently lost war but winning this time. The established world order, where they are losers, is reviled and they need to bring it down.
They break all the international laws that kept the West at peace. On the pretense of consolidating lands where people who speak the same language live they engulf several European countries before the war is even declared. All the way as they do it they claim that they are actually resisting British and French evil imperialism. Finally, they attack Poland and the big war starts.
It will play out the exact same way this time with Russia. Why does it always have to be Poland?
When someone tells you he's waging war against you, you need to take it seriously or you're caught with your pants down. We've learned it the hard way, but in the West they seem to think they'll be able to sit this one out. Well, guess again. Unless of course, we manage to beat Russia back on our own. But that would be a decade-long slaughter. And if we lose, Russia gets a new foothold and millions of soldiers to bolster its army.
And don't you hope for Russia to be too exhausted to continue. Russians are used to poverty and they will have their rockets and tanks built alright. Look at Iran and they don't even have half the Russia's potential
So there's a simple conclusion: you can't just replace Putin and pretend nothing happened. Many events will have to transpire and many things will have to change yet.
It seems to me that Putin is about where Hitler was on the scale of "threat to humanity" by about 1937 or 1938. Arguably, because Russian Federation has a gigantic nuclear arsenal, Putin is many orders of magnitude worse than Hitler ever managed to be, at least in terms of potential threat to humanity.
I have serious doubts that, even if Putin decided to deploy a nuke, the order would follow through to the NCO or low lever officer(s) who actually flip the switch . . . If he were to attempt such a thing, I suspect there is already a pact among individuals close to him that they WILL take him out, because sane people understand that nuclear weapons are useless for anything except committing suicide, or perhaps at best "playing Russian roulette." This is precisely why the damn things have only been used TWICE in combat since they were first developed in 1945.
Responding to the second bolded-italicized part. The USSR fell apart with very little actual fighting. I realize it was all very complicated, and when the time comes that the Putin regime falls apart it is likely to also be very complicated, probably more messy, and possibly more protracted. Or it may not happen at all. Maybe Putin outlives all of us, and manages to live out his dream: to bring the Russian Empire back to its glory and even beyond that.
There are very few visible Russian leaders who dissent against Putin, but I think there are plenty of Russians who oppose Putin, so the question is: how can we assist them?
- Anthropoid
- Post #8,747
- Forum: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
Based on what I know about Russian history, culture and society, there is much of great merit and which deserves great admiration. But these "heroic" features, and the tens of millions of heroic "everyday Russians" seem to have always been subject to institutions of power which thrive on cultures of anti-merit and anti-humanism.
Putin it seems is the zenith of this despicable dominant set of forces which prevent freedom and the realization of Russian societies full potential.
From my standpoint, Putin needs to be removed, not just for the sake of NATO or the EU or even "the West" but for the entirety of humanity, including the vast majority of most Russians (setting aside the small fraction of oligarchs who continue to benefit disproportionately from the Putin regime). Whether his removal is by his death or his incarceration and trial for war crimes seems largely immaterial, he needs to go. I was convinced as much as early as 2008 (after he gave his "NATO is bad . . . fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe speech"), much less when he invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. I am definitely firmly in the "Putin must go," camp today, and thankfully it seems that more and more Western leaders are awakening to this reality. None of us can be safe and secure in a world with a nation possessing a massive nuclear arsenal which is led by a monster like Putin. Putin's regime also needs to be dismembered and measures taken to prevent this type of genocidal maniac from ever again gaining control of Russia, its military and its nuclear arsenal. Certainly Russia as a society and as a nation must remain, and should be nurtured into its full potential; Freedom for Russians and all people! But this means necessarily "Death to all Orcs," meaning anyone who heartily supports Putin and his ethnocentric, supremacist, irredentist clap-trap. Putin is not only a modern day Hitler, he is much WORSE than Hitler because he has shown himself much more adept at the long-game, at diversified efforts toward imperialism and he is heavily armed with nukes. Thankfully, like most dictators, he seems to have promulgated so much corruption (a tool to keep underlings vulnerable and himself rich) that he has at least in part come to dwell in an echo chamber. The fact that his plans for this takeover for Ukraine were at the outset so severely detached from reality would be hilarious if not for the massive suffering and destruction he has caused.
There can be no compromise. Putin has to go.- Anthropoid
- Post #8,739
- Forum: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
Critical thinking was deemed heresy by certain elements in the social sciences in the 1960s. That argument has reached its zenith and was the dominant notion on American university campuses when I last worked in such places in around 2010.
That is the problem. When you are indoctrinating people to believe, not to think, then it doesn't matter how "free" their speech or anything else is.
Given events of the last 10 to 20 years, I do not think any solution is promising; which means that there are only two paths ahead: (a) descent into New Totalitarian Tribalism; (b) conflict.- Anthropoid
- Post #8,736
- Forum: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
