Recent content by Collie

I remember the Dark Knights. You'd gather a party of about 30 tough fighters (back in the days that you rarely had parties above 50), think you'd kill them easily, then find yourself the last man alive surrounded by 20 knights clad in black whom are desperately trying to trample you down after they'd killed your steed. How I'd love to get my revenge on them now.......

Some great tweaks here. Easy to unbalance the game, but great to just play around with things.

About this change, however : 2. Allow village elders to give quests again after refusing one

It's a surefire way to make villages lose their cattle much quicker than usual, as many of the quests they give will destroy their cattle stocks. Ie they have 100 cattle, then suddenly they're asking you to bring them 8 heads of cattle because bandits took them all...not a lot you can do about it though really without much more modding.

A tweak to increase the reputation gains you get might be nice though.....

I now like to charge my enemies wielding a heavy spiked club/mace - the new short ones that mean you have to be rubbing noses with the enemy to hit them. Most of the time it is rubbish, but in close encounters, especially on crowded castle walls, it comes into its own. Using any weapon with a reach greater than the length of your arm is really cheating in Mount and Blade anyway.

I can never resist taking a pot shot or two at the beginning of battles. Ever since when I first played the game and I threw a random javelin as I rode towards enemy horsemen charging my way, and I killed one with a headshot that scored a difficulty around the 14 region, I've been hooked on it. It is so satisfying getting a headshot on horseback or atop of the hill and hitting someone from hundreds of yards away. When you're highly skilled with bow and horse archery in particular, those difficult shots become more and more frequent. And you never tire of getting them!

For some reason I tend to treat the g more along the lines of the French way of saying it, and Khergit becomes 'Curr Jit'. Don't like having it as a hard G and saying Git. I have no idea why I do that though. Just one of those things.

Were I wearing a hat right now I'd raise it to you Magelord. That's another fine little tweak! I tend to get excited whenever I see a siege battle taking place that I forget to change my equipment so I'm prepared for it. This will save me the bother of having to struggle with a jousting lance in my arm when I try and storm the castle.

Theo said:

Another wild card is that some lords you recruit have enemies and then that will be major setback when trying recruit next one. Is this somehow based to personality or completely random? I might have seen lord with same personality having enemy or rival with another same personality type lord.

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I assume you can figure out if a lord likes or hates another if you help out a lord in battle who's own army is in trouble. If you help the lord win a battle, the other lords usually make some kind of comment about it, either saying well done for helping out Lord X (can't remember if that boosts your relation with them), or 'You should have let them get a kicking' (or words to that effect). It's funny that some lord say their own King should have been left to be beaten! This may just be random, but I'd imagine it had something to do with their character in that particular game.

Has anyone since 1.003 had reputation with a lord go down a point or two for completing a quest from the elder of his village? I once met a lord in a castle who accused me of undermining his authority after I'd helped one of his villages and this shifted my reputation from 0 to -1 or -2. Presumably these lords are not nice people...

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You can also gain reputation the same way I'm sure when some lords thank you for assisting them by looking after their own fief.


I think it's a shame the game doesn't let you make notes or keep track of other lords relations with one another so you can help get a feel for how everyone feels about each other. Like when a peasant tells you 'Lord Banana-Nose loves nothing more than war,' it's a shame when you look up that Lord in the list of characters, that that information isn't added. Would have been a nice touch.

Surely, however, one of the biggest causes of villages running out of cattle is the constant bandit invasions and looting wiping them all out also? Seems to me there are far too many factors that cause a decline in cow numbers, rather than a boost.

It's disappointing the cattle growth rate etc wasn't changed for 1.003. It was so obvious there was a problem in .960 when after a few months it became near impossible to find any cattle.  I used Magelord's little code change to alter cattle's behaviour to follow my party, then went to villages that had a surplus in cows and bought a load, and bought all the cattle at a village that required the Train Peasants quest (that will instantly cause the village to lose all their cows when the attack occurs so you might as well buy them all then and give yourself the money to buy them via cash cheat). I then had a cattle train of about 80 cows following me around the map just for when a village required some cows. Only I ended up losing the cows when I got frustrated at not being able to find a lord for a quest and teleported around the map to find him. Eventually I lost the cows. Still someone must be enjoying a mountain load of beef.

When several lords are campaigning together, it's possible to see the new marshal change several times - even in the same day, all depending on whether they all get defeated in quick succession.

I thought it was a case that a few horses help, whilst many hinder. I normally bring a few extra steeds along, but not a great deal. They're mostly backups for when someone kneecaps my beloved Charger.

Whilst herding is pretty straight-forward and simple, I'm not a fan of the cattle quest. It's ok if the villages you get cattle from are close together, but after a while continual raids and bandits setting up in villages leaves most of the game world without more than a handful of cows. I remember in .960 I ended up using the teleport cheat to try and find a decent number of cattle and nearly every village I came across had less than 6 or so cows, most just a couple if any. One of the annoying things is the quest to train peasants against bandits. The village has lots of cattle, you stay there for 3 days training up the men without leaving, suddenly the bandits have snuck in and took all the cattle. Take a few maybe, but not the entire stock! I think generally cows should reproduce quicker, which might defy the laws of science, but it's only a game and no-one wants to spend 20 minutes leading numerous small groups of cattle around just to gain a small amount of loyalty from a single village.

I don't know if anyone in the thread is still talking about the review or about some other petty thing, but after reading the Gamespot review, I actually think it's one of the better reviews I've read recently. It clearly points out of the negatives and positives, and at times I feel he's trying to give the game a break for being an indie title, but at the same time realises it's in a market dominated by big budget titles and really it does have flaws which the score must reflect.

I've been playing the game since .801 was released and my first experience of the game was purely combat driven. Occasionally you'd go around towns to trade, but for the most part you'd just find a party of bandits or Dark Hunters if you were plucky enough and set about hacking people to death. Rest, and repeat ad-infinitum. As the versions increased in number, this part of the game experience became more and more diluted with quest like elements and politics involving other factions and fiefs, but it was all held together by flimsy basic text and simple tasks that lacked fun and yet took up your time with all the extra travelling and cow herding you'd need to do. Whilst as a beta game we weren't too bothered as we'd seen how the game had been progressing over the years, a certain extra level of critique becomes perhaps necessary as the game reached final release stage. The development towards creating a feature-rich story based game was dropped in favour of just getting M&B realised, but so too was an overall level of completeness. Thus I can see how players unfamiliar with the game may not like it, or at least be apprehensive about Mount and Blade. The game remains very simple and basic, and its selling point is for the most part, the excellent battles. Yet getting to a point where you can fully appreciate large armies fighting and sieges takes a considerable time, and it's during that time the player is plucked into a world where they have no real direction or clue what to do, eventually stumbling upon some of the most mundane quests outside of an Elder Scrolls title. I'm actually struggling to get into the game again without wanting to cheat early on just so I can skip the tedious first 10 hours of trying to make some money and getting some renown so I can actually fight some meaningful battles.

With mods and support from the public, the game has the potential to be truly fantastic in not just the battles, but with a decent and enjoyable storyline. Until then, you can't blame some sites and magazines from awarding M&B scores below 7. Myself personally, I still love the game and the journey it took from beta though to full release. I can imagine it will be one of those games I still enjoy playing occasionally years from now.

One thing that from the review I took note of and AGREE 100% with is this:

The only drawback to the combat system is how hard it is on the wrist. Enemies circle you at numerous times during battles, forcing you to swivel around a lot to avoid getting stabbed in the back. Such continual side-to-side movement is murder on your mouse wrist. Large-scale battles during major engagements can quickly go from intense and entertaining to carpal tunnel throbbing. Take regular breathers.

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I can't think of one another game that has given me wrist troubles more than M&B... aside from Daley Thompson's Decathlon or Hypersports on the ZX Spectrum. I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds M&B a bit of a strain at times!

The new tournaments are great and it's nice to have some variety. I was shocked when I first entered one in a Khergit town and the first round consisted of about 30 horsemen racing around in circles shooting at one another. My character was pretty rubbish at this stage, but I managed to stay out of trouble and win the round, and the next rounds became much easier with fewer combatants.

I see other the other lords and tournament characters like Dranton have an easy passage to the next rounds. Even if you knock them out straight away or finish them off 3 rounds in a row, half the time they're still in the final or penultimate rounds. Whereas my character occasionally gets a by if I'm ko'd, but often I'm eliminated just like that despite knocking out nearly every person in the arena (that isn't wearing the same uniform!)

One thing I wish they would change is to give archers a short sword or one of those new small mace type things for close combat. They have two spare equipment slots just like crossbow units do, but the crossbow setup in tournaments gives you a sword. Whilst much of the time as an archer you can get by with just a bow until you find a spare sword on the floor, there are quite a few times when you spawn too close to another swordsman or horseman and you're killed before you can release more than one arrow. The problem is made worse if your entire team consists of ranged units and the enemy has swordsmen and horses. It's pretty much impossible to survive unless you have 10 in athletics so you can run away!

I'm also still slightly disappointed about the embarrassing mis-matched final rounds. I feel a bit bad if I'm mounted with a lance and my poor foe is on foot with a sword or a bow. Save for a freakish headshot at close range, they have virtually no chance of survival. It's an anti-climax, whereas I should be nervous throughout the final round.

Overall all though, tournaments are easily one of the more fun ways to make money and get stuck into action in the game. I seem to have spent more time trying to fight in tournaments than actually do anything else since I upgraded to v1.003

My first go at the siege defense was a disaster. You spawn in an unhelpful place and it's difficult to kill more than a handful of troops with the crossbow. My troops failed to hold the walls and I was left fighting off about 6+ angry troops all by myself. I tried to flee down one of the castle towers but they started to drop from the top floor instead of taking the stairs and I was cornered and killed. The second attempt was a fairly easy success, however. I placed myself not too far from the gap in the wall where the siege tower is, and took out a few enemy crossbow men. I couldn't find any spare crossbow bolts or arrows, so prepared myself for the melee. As the enemy poured up the siege tower, we killed the first few, then I told everyone to hold position in front of the gap in the wall. This made the difference and the enemy couldn't get a foothold on the ramparts. It was a bit chaotic but we won easily.

The siege attack was crazy. I forced myself onto the walls after exhausting a few quivers of arrows on the ground, but was the only man left on my side when I got up on the walls. Then it was a case of firing through the slits in the walls at the enemy troops and ducking in and out of cover to kill the remaining archers. I killed about 12 troops up there but I found it all a bit silly when I won. All the enemy had to do was charge me and I'd have died.

I'm disappointed there aren't more quick battles. It can take quite a long while in the campaign to get to a stage when you have a fair chance of taking a castle or defending one. A shame a few more such instant battles weren't included but oh well.