Recent content by LuciusDomitiusAurelianus

Will we get a new Future Plans / Statement Regarding Singleplayer V post to go along with this @Duh_TaleWorlds ?

From that one - looks like more Cutscenes, Claimant Quests, Scenes, and I guess some Army AI is still outstanding but the scope of deliverables has greatly reduced.

I'd love to hear more plans on future DLC, Diplomacy (Alliances, NAPs, Internal Factions), Improved Faction Leader RP, Minor Faction improvements, more Bandit/Criminal play style, and Civil Wars/Rebellions.

Shops and Trade in general is still in a dreadful state

Overall, great patch, with some polish issues as expected from a Beta branch.

The targeting is great but please either add backend parameters that archers will maneuver to flanks if they need to get to engagement distance, for archer units with bad range they run right up to the formation and go to melee. This happens even when the Advance command is given.

Ideally, Hold Ground allows targeting as well, this would be good to ensure infantry waits for a specific infantry formation to get to it and also ensure my Archers don't run to their deaths.

In the future, is there any thought on a purely defensive/friendly version of this @Duh_TaleWorlds / @Dejan ? Ideally I would like to instruct certain units to protect other units. Such as ensuring my infantry formation protects a specific archer formation, or that my horse archers protect an infantry formation moving to engage. That would help overall with managing the toil of commanding larger formations.

Also, I'd like a slider or dropdown selector to tune the aggression of the combat AI if that can be meaningfully parameterized. I think it's tuned with too much of a defensive bias where a lot of actors just stare at one another with shields up like they're TES IV Oblivion AI actors. I'd like them to be a bit more opportunistic and look to continually envelope/flank the player or other actors if they have the ability to. I get a lot of this advanced decisioning making continues to put more CPU bottlenecks in place but wanted to share the comments.

Yet another reason to be able to cap the amount of Armies as well as a directive. The Aggressive/Defensive bias does not do much. I'd much rather say "Only X Armies Max, Including Player Army = True/False, Army 1 Defend around this City, Army 2 Attack these Fiefs" via menus or interaction if we want to make it more "immersive"

If you could at least micromanage the Army behaviors and set caps to the amount of Armies and manpower you lose in total that'd somewhat make up for the lousy lack of diplomacy and giving any meaning to Traits and Relations.

There are so many sub-systems in this game that are not fleshed out or do not Work As Intended. Cautious Lords shouldn't be joining Armies or Sieges and only want to outnumber people, Dishonorable Lords should mostly want to focus on Raids, and so on - at least that would keep these death stacks from spawning.

It's like the decision making tree for the AI is incredibly binary so you get a doom stack rolling over a piece of **** castle while you can run around razing their countryside completely unbothered.

The snowballing work really led to all of this. I'd rather go back to 1.5.0 snowballing versus this stalemate tedious bull**** now.

HA AI is in a **** place, so if you F1+F3 or F1+F6 them they'll circle up and then will wade in and get killed and run into each other (or other cav).

So the best way to use them is in an open rank formation behind archers on defense (with heavy inf/cav on the wings) and quickly ferrying them to broadside infantry when you break the AI's stupid cav wave tactic against you.

On offense just set them to follow me, broadside the enemy cav/infantry, and retreat to your lines. Rinse and repeat.

Based.

This is the rare time that a bug is actually a feature, don't fix it please.

When you recruit them in, are they still marked in a "forever war" with their nemesis Major (e.g., if you recruit The Hidden Hand are they still shown at war with N/S/E Empires) @Ananda_The_Destroyer ??

[Insert whimsical wishes about how Relationships & Traits could feed into this]

But, alas...

(I do agree with you OP, it's tiresome)

Making them culturally different won't work, BL is taking place only a few years (months?) after the Empire fractures anyway, so having them be too different would be a bit radical. This is not exactly a Western / Eastern Age of the Dominate where you had Strategoi in the Persian East fighting with Cataphracts and imported Frankish cav or Sarmatian & Avar light cav formations fighting with Celts & Romans in Britain.

Ideally I'd like to see a total overhaul of how the governments work along with policies, which has been talked about a lot, they all operate the same despite their flavor-text differences in government.

A cool perk per zone would be to be able to hire minors or maybe make them more likely to hire a border region. Though a full overhaul will see some disparate and unique trees with:

• Southern Empire favoring heavy cataphracts, camel riders, mace-wielders, along with a noble tier of heavy shock infantry or specialized lance cavalry a la "Kavallaroi" and the Varangian Guard
• Western Empire having more of the Vlandian (Germanic) influence with light / medium cavalry, crossbows, anti-cavalry troops (Melavitoi / pikes) and then the core of heavy shock legionnaires
• Northern Empire having a much more steppe/gothic influence with horse archers, Varanigan-influenced troops, skirmishers, and then the core heavy shock legionnaires as well

As the game progresses the cultures do end up hiring troops but I'd like to see the tactics change but what we are all really asking for are system overhauls that would be necessary to even have this.

At the very least change the ****ing colors...

I like this a lot. Even if they only stay as minor preferences and small buffs / debuffs - at least it'll give utility to Traits.

Right now Traits have maybe less than half a dozen types of scenarios they matter in. Only ones I remember off the top of my head are being Dishonorable makes it more likely to get executed, and you cannot be Merciful for Alleyways. Which is lame.

The best thing would be a blocking/defense tree being added for armor bonuses, blocking bonuses, chambers, max health increases, and damage reduction %. It's more fantasy sure but whatever.

I do not see that happening so I do think the next best thing would be giving small bonuses to XP. Unless you dump all your FPs and APs into them it is still tedious. If someone wants to cheese leveling by blocking for hours on end let them do that.

Ideally you get a bonus (maybe set amount of +10-15%) for automatic blocking and then scale off of either block timing if it's a perfect block or not, or the speed of the swing that you blocked. I think regular shields should give XP to either a Polearm or One-handed but maybe 50-75% less than doing it one handed.

I like the idea of Nords, Darshi and a not-China but the current Kingdom governance, policies and flavors drastically need attention. Right now everyone is the same with flavor text and if you do the main campaign they come to kick your ass all the same.

There are also minor factions we cannot even join, recruit from, nor have a settlement. Without all of that being addressed itd be annoying just to have another container of digital meat to grind

NO GO TOUCH GRASS

I wrote a suggestion on the "1.1.1 Patch Notes...?" thread but I would prefer the next system to be expanded is the Crime Rating itself and make it more of a roleplay element and a tie into to Kingdom and Trait systems for Bandit playthroughs.

Right now the alley ownership is a flavor thing. The gold should be scaled higher - 5% off of prosperity with maybe another +0.1% per 10 Roguery levels of your COMPANION and I'd also like the ability to either have specific missions or continuous projects running like Robbing Merchants, Ambushing Caravans, Ransoming Nobles, something to give more flavor to banditry playthroughs overall and have more of a reason to actually use these alleyways.

And also giving extra recruitment slots or having Crime-boss notables (Whatever they're called) be more likely to back you for that passive influence. A chance to breakout Lords or other prisoners to have them added or ransomed would also be nice. Really need a tiering system to this either scaling off of your Criminal Rating, companion Roguery, or more.

I do agree with the bonus sneak percentage and I'd like an extra (very small) auto-resolve calc bonus if I have alleys with higher tier troops.

Some changes I'd like to see on Criminal Rating (I have no idea if some of these are there or not already)
- Allow the AI to own alleyways as well, not just the Crimeboss type notables, but Lords. This relates to a different point

- Scaling gold from alleyways as criminal rating goes up

- Larger criminal rating gain (provided the some/all changes are present)

- Bandits become neutral or even friendly at a specific Criminal Rating level -- at least in a vicinity around a town -- unsure if that's viable within the codebase. This allows them to jump into help you, prevents them from attacking your peasants/caravans (maybe outright remove the "nearby base" malus), and makes it easier to directly recruit them in early/mid game when you don't have a doomstack

The biggest change I'd want is Criminal / Fugitive status becoming a real thing. Lords should own alleyways especially if they have negative Traits, are Rebellion Lords, Minor Factions, and/or don't any fiefs. Obviously that logic ladder needs to be rectified depending if they're a Minor or Major Faction Lord. At a certain Crime Rating level you get booted from the Kingdom with the ability to seize the town and you have to siege it within 5 days but most of the garrison being assassinated or prisoners being let out to join you.

If you're a Bandit Lord you can only recruit Mercenaries or other Bandit Lords and all bandit parties become neutral and maybe same-culture Bandits (e.g., if you're an Aserai then Desert Bandits, and so on) become straight up friendly. This allows you to have a Kingdom without worrying about Clan Rank but maybe change it as well for the type of Kingdom. Either by locking you out of certain policies or not letting you use them at all. Loyalty maluses should increase at least until a certain point (maybe your crime rating at a fief dropping or your clan tier hitting a certain point). This would be a great thing to have RTR for but existing systems should work.

Also, if you're a Bandit Kingdom, everyone should be able to declare on you as normal with maybe an increased chance as well as being permanently at war with whatever Kingdom you broke away from - no peace option - you should be more likely to be executed, harder to find a wife (more reason to be able to marry others) and this would tie in even better to Claimants.

And as an out you can agree to give up your Kingdom but the penalty of all of your fiefs, troops and **** being taken (since you're in jail) and perhaps the chance of you being executed increased.

To level the fields there should be a conversion to bandit hideouts being able to recruit troops and increase what you can get from your fiefs (but perhaps lockout villages & other notables unless you coerce them). You should have significant bonuses to raiding and coercion, gain speed benefits around hideouts or in other bad terrain except snow, and then new Bandit types should also be added.

Lot's of spit-balling and out of order requests, but lot's of potential to turn the Crime Rating & Alleyways into something really impactful

Hoping 1.1.1 continues to build on these new systems particularly more voice lines & the alleyways and how the Criminal Rating system can be utilized in a different way. Would be cool to actually have Criminal Lords get bumped out of a Kingdom and have war declared sort of like how the Rebellion Clans & Minor Factions work now.

If you get over 50% criminal rating in 50% of the fiefs you get your ass tossed out and are at war with the benefit of having a Kingdom and not needing to get to Clan Tier 4 but maybe give you bonuses to the alleyways in the form of increased sneak percentage (so you can sell/buy) and increased revenue and maybe even increase siege chance (given your criminals can open the gate or what not). What would be even cooler is it makes all Bandits in the area neutral / allied to you sort of like how Peasant parties act so you can freely recruit and they'll end up joining you in battles.

A larger Diplomacy pass is needed either way but I think having a viable way to play a Bandit requires it being hooked into all systems not just have a perk to convert bandits to nobles, hire bandits, and have a few alleys which waste companions

Would be better to have it on a scale instead and you gain & lose influence through actions, maybe make like the Destiny 2 Light Cap in a way where you can raise it with certain criteria and then you only have temporary maluses.

So let's say it is on a scale up to 100, you always start at 0, for every notable you have you get a certain amount added to your cap per their own power level. So maybe keep it the same 0.05/0.15/0.25 so you'd perpetually be at let's say 10 if you had 2 towns and 6 bound villages worth. Then you get some added per renown, per clan rank, per nobles in your clan, and then have some from your Traits (or minus for your traits & traits of clan members).

That would make it a modifier to Kingdom decisions, where it takes into account Traits and Relationship and the tie breaker is the Influence -- so you'd have more weight applied in a direction but it'd be more meaningful since everyone is on a scale of up to 100.

That would mean changing the Policy system to which is in a dire need of a pass. Have a maximum amount of Policies - either scaled off of total fiefs or total clans or average clan rank or something doesn't matter - and then it costs extra money or a permanent influence / relationship malus per Policy over. Purchase extra slots for a lot of money so we have something to do with it.

Of course none of this will happen - it means the entire system would have to be torn out as is

Reticles & Engineering rework next I hope. Good changes though was super frustrating having siege engines automatically useless once the besiegers rushed to your gates